Summary of Oxford Handbook Gender in Organizations.
The following chapters are summarized: 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 19, 20, 22
The summary of Chapters 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 19, 20 and 22 has been extended and the rest of the chapters somewhat more concise.
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,Chapter 1
Theorizing Gender-and-Organization: Changing Times… Changing Theories?
Marta B. Calás, Linda Smircich, and Evangelina Holvino
Men moet kijken naar hoe de gender verschillen over de tijd zich hebben geuit en hoe ze worden
beïnvloedt door de steeds weer veranderende omgeving.
There are two mainstream approaches in the literature to look at gender and organizations.
1. Gender in organizations: looks at the sex as biological characteristics – male and female – and
gender as social or cultural categorization. Issues are mostly conditions for women compared to
men. Here it is assumed that people as sexes/ gendered being acting within the confines of a
neutral organization.
2. Gendering organizations: it focus on gender as a social institution which is socially accomplished
through gender relations. This stream looks at the cultural production of gender of social
structuring. Social constructivist accounts consider the way gender(ing) is an outcome or a co-
production of organizing processes.
Theorizing ‘Gender in organizations’: Gender = Sex = Women (and Men)
After establishing that women are assumed as good as men, researched focused on women in
management and the problems they face. Women are still underrepresented in positions of authority
since the general conceptions of a ‘successful manager’ includes characteristics identified with men (The
so called think manager- think male). Another thing that keeps women down is the glassceiling. While
men in a female dominant profession benefit from a ‘glass escalator’. When women do break through,
female leaders are more likely to be appointed in a time of poor performances or when there is an
increased risk of failure. This is also called the ‘glass cliff’.
Theorizing Gender in Organizations through Cognitive Processes: An individual Lens
Gender in organizations tend to theorize these conditions as outcomes of cognitive mechanisms – social
judgements processes, stereotyping about traits and abilities which interfere with the accurate the
perception of women. There is looked at the underlying social role theory: where gender is associated
with roles appropriate for each sex and via status characteristics .
Role theory: gender as a social role
There is a tendency of men and women to occupy different roles, which require somewhat different
behaviours. Gender roles are understood to be descriptive of the ways people act and prescriptive of the
ways they should act. So in practice women are disadvantaged because stereotypes suggest ‘they don’t
fit’.
Status Processes: Gender as a Diffuse Status Characteristic
Status generalization is seen as an alternative mechanism behind the creation and recreation of gender
inequality. Status beliefs thus explicitly imply both difference and inequality, with inequality being
grounded in group members itself. The gender differences are here more about hierarchical inequality,
since women are seen as less competent group member when there is talked about working.
, Gender as a Primary Cultural Frame
Gender is a primary cultural frame for coordinating social relations. People automatically and routinely
sex-categorize one another they implicitly draw on gender stereotypes in which status beliefs and beliefs
about traits and roles are embedded.
Where does this leave women?
Women are being judged whether their actions are filtered through conceptions of roles, status, or
cultural beliefs. It looks at how women face dilemma’s in situation of authority. Women must act in ways
to disconfirm female gender stereotypes, but in doing so they risk coming across as socially deficient and
not as a proper women. This mean that women can face a backlash.
The problem that remains is that the system is assumed to be gender neutral, and so are the norms by
which members are judged and the relationship of these norms to desirable outcomes. Women have still
the disadvantage of being different.
Organizational Mechanisms Of Stratification: An organizational Lens
The everyday organizational practices through which organizations recruit, evaluate, compensate and
promote employees to assess whether and how gender inequalities are produced.
So potential remedies are direct in the organizational change.
The problem with gender in organizations is that none of the approaches theorize gender. Psychological
and sociological concepts are used to explain the problem of low number of women in positions of
authority in organizations
From theorizing gender in organizations to theorizing gendering organizations: Produced, Producing and
Reproducing
Gendering in organizations will be explained by comparing it with gender in organizations. The differences
have important implications when examining sex/ gender inequalities in organizations.
1. Gender is an emergent feature of social situations, not something one has as an individual, but
something humans do in relation to each other as ongoing accomplishment in social life. Similar
sex is not naturally meaningful as a relevant social category, it is produced socially relevant. Sex
and gender is seen as part of social processes contributing to the production of institutional
context as gendered spaces (Gendering organizations). Human as social being who produce and
reproduce what then is reified as social structure and experiences as resources or constraints for
humans actions.
2. There is also looked at the production and reproduction in circumstances where gender is done
as power relations. Organizations can be seen as ‘gender factories’ or ‘inequality regimes’
interconnecting organizational processes that produce and maintain racialized and gendered
class relations. It is not about the perception when people face each other in the organization
rather about the organizations that are already gendered as people enter them.
3. Gendering in organizations is framed through a critical, mostly feminist philosophy. People do not
discriminate intentionally on the basis of sex; it is that people who seem different are imputed
stereotypical characteristics affecting how they are perceived as capable or not. The point from
gendering organizations is that gender difference is the basis for the unequal distribution of
power and resources. Thus gendering is constitutive of social and organizational processes where
practices, images, and ideologies as well a distribution of power, contribute to the production
and maintenance of gender inequality.
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