‘Caring/Sharing’: Gender and Horizontal Co‐ordination in the Workplace

Classical organizational theory assumes a hierarchical structure and the vertical co‐ordination of work. Horizontal co‐ordination between organizational participants is currently recognized only at upper and middle organizational levels. This qualitative study of workers at the lowest rungs of the organizational hierarchy finds that they do engage in horizontal co‐ordination by working together in ways that are invisible. This study also finds differences between same‐sex work groups in how they perceive working together. The caring/sharing phenomenon describes the sharing of work, and the implementation of horizontal co‐ordination, undertaken in the context of caring relationships among work colleagues, all of whom were women. Women and men working in same‐sex work groups differ in their conceptions of how those work groups form and how they function. The findings from this study indicate that common conceptions of teams and teamwork may in fact be male norms of horizontal co‐ordination.     

‘Now,We Have the Same Rights as Men to Keep Our Jobs’: Gendered Perceptions of Opportunity and Obstacles in a Mexican Workplace

Drawing on extensive qualitative data at a Mexican‐owned multinational corporation, this case study investigates professional employees’ perceptions of changes to a prohibitive work policy requiring women to quit working upon marriage and having children. Employees believed the policy change meant working women were valued employees, but how this translated into opportunity highlighted distinct views of the types of positions professional women could occupy at the company, reinforcing sex‐segregated job allocation. Whereas women's narratives pointed to cultural resistance, men's narratives attributed the dearth of women in higher level positions to their lack of professionalism and commitment to work. The work policy change only guaranteed the right for women to work as the company modernized to fit the neoliberal demands of the global marketplace. Now women faced the challenge of turning that right into career advancement in a traditionally masculine‐defined company. I argue that even with the policy change, gendered discourses on women in professional occupations constructed and maintained gender inequities in the workplace. This study contributes to the scholarly discussion on gendered discourses within the context of global restructuring by showing how mechanisms at work maintain gender inequity in the workplace.     

‘Belonging’ and ‘Otherness’: Sex Equality in Banking in Turkey and Britain

The struggle for sex equality at work has largely been achieved in the developed world, it is claimed. The number of well‐qualified young women entering white‐collar employment and achieving promotion to first‐line and middle management positions now matches or exceeds their male peers. Many young women have high career aspirations and argue that sex discrimination no longer exists. However, this perception is over‐optimistic. Major sex inequalities persist at senior management level in the salaries and benefits offered to female and male staff and in access to certain favoured occupations and sectors of employment. Questionnaires, interviews and documentary evidence from three Turkish and six British banks and high street financial organizations showed that their claimed commitment to equal opportunities by sex was not matched by their practices. Members of managerial elites (who were almost exclusively male) held firm views about the characteristics of ‘the ideal worker’, which informed organizational ideologies, including human resource policies and practices concerning recruitment and promotion. They also permeated organizational cultures, which affected employees’ working practices and experiences. The outcome of these internal negotiation processes was to differentiate between a favoured group of staff seen as fully committed to the companies’ values, who were promoted and rewarded, and an ‘out’ group, whose members were denied these privileges. This distinction between ‘belonging’ and ‘otherness’ is gendered not only along the traditional lines of class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but also along the new dimensions of marriage, networking, safety, mobility and space. Despite local and cross‐cultural differences in the significance of these factors, the cumulative disadvantage suffered by women staff seeking career development in the industry was remarkably similar.     

Discourses of Work–Life Balance: Negotiating ‘Genderblind’ Terms in Organizations

This article examines current debates about gender equality, work‐life balance and flexible working. We contrast policymakers’ and organizational discourses of flexible working and work–life balance with managers’ and employees’ talk about these issues within their organizations. We show how, despite the increasingly gender‐neutral language of the official discourses, in the data studied participants consistently reformulate the debates around gendered explanations and assumptions. For example, a ‘generic female parent’ is constructed in relation to work–life balance and flexible working yet participants routinely maintain that gender makes no difference within their organization. We consider the effects of these accounts; specifically the effect on those who take up flexible working, and the perceived backlash against policies viewed as favouring women or parents. We argue that the location of work–life balance and flexibility debates within a gender‐neutral context can in practice result in maintaining or encouraging gendered practices within organizations. Implications of this for organizations, for policymakers and for feminist researchers are discussed.     

‘To Do Or Not To Do (Gender)’ and Changing the Sex‐Typing of British Theatre

Concepts of doing, and undoing, gender have become increasingly prevalent within studies of sex‐typed work. However, these concepts, as currently figured and applied, contain a significant analytical lacuna: they tend not to register changes in the sex‐typing of work. In this study we engage this research gap by addressing the changing sex‐typing of British theatre — specifically, the shift from female‐dominated amateur to male‐dominated professional theatre work. We draw upon and develop concepts of doing and undoing gender to understand changes in the sex‐typing of work. In so doing, we explain how spatially and temporally differentiated ways of doing ‘male’ and ‘female’ become implicated in how people make sense of, and enact, the changing spaces and times of ‘amateur/female’ ‘professional/male’ work. Our analysis of theatre work suggests that, despite recent criticisms of their wider significance, concepts of un/doing gender are useful to understand broader changes in the sex‐typing of work. Thus, it also appears possible to (un)change such sex‐typings by undoing gender. However, our analysis suggests that such subversive acts remain ineffective, unless those involved in such gendered undoings engage with, rather than renounce, the gendered doings that help enact the changing sex‐typing of work.     

‘Heroes and Matriarchs’: Working‐Class Femininities,Violence and Door Supervision Work

Door supervision work is traditionally seen as a working‐class, male‐dominated trade. In addition, it is deemed to be one that is physically risky, where violence is seen as a ‘tool of the trade’ and where ‘bodily capital’ and ‘fighting ability’ are paramount to the competent performance of the job. This paper is a timely analysis on the manner in which the increasing numbers of women who work in door supervision negotiate their occupational identity and construct their work practices. The analysis focused on the way in which discursive constructions of both violence and workplace identities are variably taken up, reworked and resisted through the intersection of gender and class. This resulted in the identification of two main discourses; ‘playing the hero’ and the ‘hard matriarch’. These findings allow us to theorize that multiple, gendered and classed occupational identities exist beyond normative expectations and can be seen to be both emancipatory for working women, while simultaneously bolstering exploitation, workplace harassment and violent practices.     

Agency and clientship in public encounters: co‐constructing ‘neediness’ and ‘worthiness’ in shelter placement meetings

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff’s attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of ‘neediness’, ‘worthiness’ and ‘value for money’ that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client.     

Becoming ‘Real’ Entrepreneurs: Women and the Gendered Normalization of ‘Work’

This article focuses on the way in which women entrepreneurs legitimate their place in a gendered economy by reifying a divide between ‘real work’ and ‘not‐real work’. Using ethnographic approaches to follow the everyday lives of several women who own and operate small businesses in the USA, our article documents three gendering practices the women use for ‘becoming real workers:’ embodied, spatial and temporal. The study shows that women entrepreneurs become ‘productive workers’ by recasting reproductive work as non‐productive or not‐real work. At the end, we explore two possible alternative conceptualizations of ‘work’ that could contribute to dissolving this gendered divide.     

‘Cukup for me to be successful in this country’: ‘staying’ among left‐behind young women in Indonesia's migrant‐sending villages

By examining the aspirations of young, rural Indonesian women who, unlike their parents, want to stay behind rather than migrate for work, we look at how these women's experiences of feeling left‐behind affect their quests for alternative futures. Using a household relational lens, we employ the mediating concept of enough (cukup) to analyse the aspirations of young women wishing to remain at home. By focusing on their commitment to inter‐generational continuity and care rather than a lack of choice, we are able to offset the discourses associated with the culture of migration and its accompanying remittance euphoria. Our findings showed three main reasons for their choice. First, these young women pursue remittance‐funded higher education as a counter to parental sacrifice. Second, staying allows them both to provide the hands‐on care they themselves were denied as children and to pursue meaningful local careers. Third, the idea that migration has been ‘enough’ is a rational response to the social risks with which migration confronts a family.     

‘It's Just Acting’: Sex Workers’ Strategies for Capitalizing on Sexuality

This article reports on an ethnographic study of female sex workers in Britain who work in the indoor prostitution markets. The empirical findings contribute to the sex‐as‐labour debate and add to the sociological literature regarding the gendered and sexualized nature of employment, particularly the aesthetic and emotional labour of service work. Grounding the empirical findings in the theory of identity management and emotional labour and work, the article reviews some of the existing examples of how sex workers create emotion management strategies and describes an additional strategy, that of the ‘manufactured identity’. I argue that sex workers create a manufactured identity specifically for the workplace as a self‐protection mechanism to manage the stresses of selling sex as well as crafting the work image as a business strategy to attract and maintain clientele. Drawing on comparisons between sex work and other feminized service occupations, I argue that sex workers who are involved in prostitution under certain conditions are able to capitalize on their own sexuality through the construction of a manufactured identity. The process of conforming to heterosexualized images in prostitution is conceptualized as not simply accepting dominant discourses but as a calculated response made by sex workers to manipulate the erotic expectations and the cultural ideals of the male client.     

Chronic Presenteeism: The Multiple Dimensions to Men's Absence from Part‐Time Work

While there is considerable debate in the popular press about the changing roles of men and women, labour force statistics suggest that there has been little change in the work patterns of men and women. Despite the increasing availability of part‐time work, men in professional and managerial roles are not considering part‐time as an option for them. Rather, there are increasing organizational pressures for men to be working long hours in the paid workforce. In this paper, men's absence from part‐time work is considered from a multidisciplinary perspective. Factors operating at the individual, social and organizational levels are identified and explored in terms of their impact on men's working patterns. A model is presented that characterizes men's absence from part‐time work as a result of the mutually reinforcing nature of these factors.     

‘Riding the Wave’: Working Systemically with Traumatised Families

This paper draws on the authors’ clinical experience as family therapists, working predominantly with families who have experienced trauma such as sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect, to demonstrate that taking a systemic trauma‐informed approach is a powerful therapeutic modality that can facilitate positive outcomes for all family members. The paper discusses the impact of trauma on relationships, and then outlines a rationale for a trauma‐informed, systemic approach with those traumatised families who are, at times, challenged by excessively heightened behaviour and emotional dysregulation. Drawing from parenting research, it includes a discussion of the place of parent work and how this can be integrated with systemic family work. Key constraints and considerations are highlighted followed by a discussion of key interventions the authors have found useful in building a clinical framework for this work, including what is critical for the therapeutic process. While working with traumatised families is complex and challenging, offering a safe place for families to be in the presence of each other's pain and ‘ride the wave’ of emotions can be a powerful path to recovery.     

‘All the single ladies’ as the ideal academic during times of COVID‐19?

Much of what has hitherto been written about women’s lived experiences of the coronavirus pandemic takes their status as mothers and the spouses of men for granted. Skewed care demands on women researchers working from home may translate into individual career disadvantage and cumulative, large‐scale gender inequalities in the future, which is undeniably a serious issue. However, the narrative that single, childfree women must currently, by contrast, be unconcernedly enjoying a surge of productivity needs to be nuanced. Therefore, with this article, I autoethnographically discuss how living alone in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic provides its own set of circumstances and is hardly problem‐free, which affects how one can deal with issues of academic productivity and work–life balance. Also, I take issue with the premise that our productivity is the golden standard against which we and our worth should be measured while we are living through a global crisis.     

More than ‘information provider’ and ‘counselor’: Constructing and negotiating roles and identities of nurses in genetic counseling sessions

This paper contributes to research on genetic counseling by exploring the complexity of this activity from the angle of identity construction. We argue that an analysis of the processes through which healthcare providers construct and negotiate their roles and identities in these encounters may contribute to a better understanding of the complexities of genetic counseling. Drawing on more than 150 video‐recorded genetic counseling encounters between nurses and clients in Hong Kong, we illustrate that the discursive processes involved in the construction of the nurses' identities are complex, overlapping and at times contradictory as the nurses respond to the (sometimes) competing norms and expectations of their institution, their clients and their own. They manage to solve these tensions by drawing on the roles traditionally assigned to nurses in these encounters such as information provider and counselor, as well as creating the new roles of co‐decision maker and cultural broker/mediator.     

From ‘public health’ to ‘safeguarding children’: British health visiting in policy,practice and research

This study examines the location of British health visiting in contemporary policy discourses concerned with public health and safeguarding children. It argues that professional identity and orientation can be understood through health visiting’s long history of public health work with children and families, which has included an engagement with protecting children. The expansive safeguarding children agenda, which includes the requirement to undertake a progressive universal approach to service provision and which incorporates a broad concept of risk and requires early intervention, has created tensions, particularly given current workforce constraints. The location and visibility of British health visiting in the academic and practice worlds also shape how the profession is understood.     

Doing gender in the ‘new office’

This paper investigates how gender is performed in the context of an office setting designed to promote intensive, fluid networking. We draw on an ethnographically oriented study of the move of staff into a new office building constructed primarily from glass, and incorporating open plan offices, diverse collective areas and walking routes. Although the designers aimed to invoke changes in the behaviour of all staff, they conceptualized these changes in masculine terms. We therefore analyse the gender norms materialized by the workspaces of the ‘new office’ and how women responded to these. We suggest that the new office encourages an image of the ideal worker which brings together ways of acting and interacting that have been characterized as both masculine and feminine — active movement and spontaneous encounters, but also intensive face‐to‐face interaction and deep relationship‐building. Women are driven into this mode of working in an uncompromising, almost aggressive way, but a straightforward gender‐based dynamic does not emerge in their responses, with conventional gender characteristics being reshuffled and recombined.     

Metamorphosis: From ‘Nice Girls’ to ‘Nice Bitches’: Resisting Patriarchal Articulations of Professional Identity

This article explores the random strategies women adopt in resisting patriarchal articulations of their professional identity and the kind of organizational discourses women’s resistance brings about. The focus is on describing the context, dynamics of contradictory tensions and ambivalence inherent in situations of resisting. The article draws upon the authors’ own experiences in academia. In addition to participatory observation, the authors are using themselves as research instruments that enable them to highlight the emotions and ambivalent dynamics in the construction of gendered identities and power relations in organizations. The study indicates that there are several sets of rules in motion in one and the same social situation, such as the rules of organizational behaviour, rules of friendship and the rules of gender relations in public places. By describing two overtly sexualized discourses that women’s resistance brought about, the article highlights that organizational sexuality does not necessarily differ in kind or in degree from ‘street sexuality’ or sexuality in semi‐public places. The study’s findings argue that it is important to extend research to both informal and semi‐formal organizational gatherings. These liminal spaces are important sites of communicative struggles over organizational meanings and identities.     

Public Sector Reform and Women's Work in Poland: ‘Working for Juice,Coffee and Cheap Cosmetics!’

The debate on the transformation of work in east central Europe has concentrated on the restructuring of employment in manufacturing to the detriment of any discussion of the transformation of work in the service and public sectors, where the majority of women are employed. Moreover, while it is frequently recognized that women have been hit hard by job loss and unemployment, less attention has been paid the changing experiences of women in work. This article looks at the profound impact of market‐driven reforms in the Polish health and education sectors implemented in the late 1990s, and considers their implications for women and their work. It reports on interviews with a cross‐section of women workers in schools and hospitals and with trade union leaders at both the national and branch level. The impacts of the reforms and the experiences of women workers are discussed through the themes of changing employment levels, the restructuring of working conditions, job security, wages, training, and the double burden of balancing domestic and work lives. The general findings are that although the impact has been highly uneven between workplaces and regions, in general women have experienced an intensification of work and deteriorating working conditions. Their personal lives are not only more stressful due to the pressure at work, but also the double burden of paid and domestic work has increased due to the marketization of public provision. In both sectors, the response to reform has been widespread and militant industrial action, which has gained considerable political attention. We therefore also focus on how women have contested change, both passively and actively, through trade unionism and other political practice.     

‘Live to Work’ or ‘Work to Live’? A Qualitative Study of Gender and Work–life Balance among Men and Women in Mid‐life

Many contemporary studies of ‘work–life balance’ either ignore gender or take it for granted. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with men and women in mid‐life (aged 50 to 52 years) in order to compare their experiences of work–life balance. Our data suggest that gender remains embedded in the ways that respondents negotiate home and work life. The women discussed their current problems juggling a variety of roles (despite having no young children at home), while men confined their discussion of such conflicts to the past, when their children were young. However, diversity among men (some of whom ‘worked to live’ while others ‘lived to work’) and women (some of whom constructed themselves in relation to their families, while others positioned themselves as ‘independent women’) was apparent, as were some commonalities between men and women (both men and women constructed themselves as ‘pragmatic workers’). We suggest ways in which gender‐neutral theories of work–life balance may be extended.