Gender and Power in Organizations SOCI 302 Spring 2012 Instructor: Deniz Yükseker Koç University

Are organizations gendered? Taylorist scientific management assumed that workers were not gendered. Scholarship on bureaucracy focused on the impersonal, legal-rational aspects of organizations which were supposed to be genderless. Human relations approach focused on “emotions”, but neglected gender and sex.

We will focus on -- women and power in corporations (Rosabeth Moss Kanter) -- the gender of organizations (Joan Acker)

Feminist organizational research since the 1970s: Bureaucratic organizations, hierarchies, job definitions, norms of worker and manager conduct, the delivery of services, and the organization of labor in production are all gendered

Women and power in organizations Rosabeth Moss Kanter studied “power and powerlessness in organizations” Where does power come from in organizations? -- Importance of informal social networks (a point made by the Human Relations school): alliances with sponsors, peers, subordinates “People who have authority without system power are powerless.” If people feel powerless, they concentrate their power needs on those over whom they have authority.”  Stereotypes about women managers “bossy women managers”

Kanter: women are treated as “tokens”, or “symbols” in organizations rather than as individuals Their actions and behavior are always under scrutiny and suspicion Women are in a “no-win” situation: women managers are expected to act like men; -- if they don’t, they are seen as inadequate for the job. -- if they act too much like men, they are accused of violating their gender identity

Solution according to Kanter: Number of men and women in organizations should be equal for women to have real power

How can Moss Kanter be criticized? What are some other perspectives?

Moss Kanter and other early feminist organization scholars considered bureaucracies to be gender-neutral, and proposed gender as an additive category Moss Kanter: bureaucratic organizations are gender-neutral, but tokenism towards women resulted in their powerlessness Ressner: a dual organizational structure consisting of bureaucratic power (which is gender neutral) and patriarchy (male power)

A radical feminist approach which challenges Moss Kanter and Ressner: Ferguson: bureaucracy exemplifies oppressive male power. Bureaucracies “feminize” their clients and workers. In order to overcome this, women should develop non-bureaucratic feminist organizations based on participatory, bottom-up democratic “female” values

Joan Acker’s criticism to all of the above: gender is not an additive category Organizations are gendered processes: “Advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine.”

Gendering of organizations 1- Constructions of divisions along lines of gender (e.g. division of labor, of physical space, of skilled versus unskilled work) 2- Construction of symbols and images that explain, express, reinforce, or sometimes oppose those divisions (e.g. notions of masculinity and femininity constructed in language, ideology, popular culture, etc.)

3- Interactions between women and men, women and women, men and men, that enact dominance and submission (e.g. conversation patterns between men and women)

4- The above processes produce gendered components of individual identity (e.g. consciousness of the existence of the above three aspects of gender, such as, choice of appropriate work, language use, clothing, and presentation of self as a gendered member of an organization)

5- Gender is a constitutive element of the organizational logic (exemplified in work rules, labor contracts, job evaluations, etc.) Joan Acker gives an example about how job evaluations are constructed by management

Gendering of job evaluations Jobs are separate from people (a set of tasks, competencies and responsibilities) Jobs are located in a hierarchy, which is, again, separate from people Organizational logic assumes a congruence between responsibility, job complexity, and hierarchical position

In organizational logic, both jobs and hierarchies are abstract categories that have no occupants, no human bodies, no gender. However, an abstract job can exist, can be transformed into a concrete instance, only if there is a worker.

The closest the disembodied worker doing the abstract job comes to a real worker is the male worker whose life centers on his full-time, life-long job, while his wife or another woman takes care of his personal needs and his children. The woman worker, assumed to have legitimate obligations other than those required by the job, did not fit with the abstract job.

A job is thus a gendered concept. “"A job" already contains the gender-based division of labor and the separation between the public and the private sphere. The concept of "a job" assumes a particular gendered organization of domestic life and social production”

Hierarchies are also gendered Hierarchies are also gendered. Highest positions in a hierarchy are supposed to be filled by people who are “suitable” to take the responsibilities described in the job description.

The assumption of gender-neutrality also assumes that bodiless workers have no sexuality, emotions and do not procreate. Thus, men’s and women’s sexualities are controlled or fostered in different ways in bureaucratic organizations. hegemonic masculinity is expected of managerial men sexualization of certain jobs filled by women

The positing of bodiless, sexless jobs (and hence of job evaluations – recall Richard Edwards) is also used as a mechanism for labor control Rational-technical and seemingly gender-neutral labor control mechanisms are used to create gendered organizations  women’s labor is controlled, women are excluded from certain jobs, or they are oppressed in certain positions within bureaucratic hierarchies