Summary literature Master Gender & Diversity in Organizations
Week 1
Acker “inequality regimes: gender, class and race in organizations”
In this article, the author addresses two feminist issues: first, how to conceptualize intersectionality,
the mutual reproduction of class, gender, and racial relations of inequality, and second, how to
identify barriers to creating equality in work organizations. She develops one answer to both issues,
suggesting the idea of “inequality regimes” as an analytic approach to understanding the creation of
inequalities in work organizations. Inequality regimes are the interlocked practices and processes that
result in continuing inequalities in all work organizations. Work organizations are critical locations for
the investigation of the continuous creation of complex inequalities because much societal inequality
originates in such organizations. Work organizations are also the target for many attempts to alter
patterns of inequality:The study of change efforts and the oppositions they engender are often
opportunities to observe frequently invisible aspects of the reproduction of inequalities. The concept
of inequality regimes may be useful in analyzing organizational change projects to better understand
why these projects so often fail and why they succeed when this occurs.
- Most studies of the production of class, gender, and racial inequalities in organizations have
focused on one or another of these categories, rarely attempting to study them as complex,
mutually reinforcing or contradicting processes.2 But focusing on one category almost
inevitably obscures and oversimplifies other interpenetrating realities.
- Theories and research on inequality should pay attention to the intersections of race, gender
and class.
- I propose looking at specific organizations and the local, ongoing practical activities of
organizing work that,at the same time,reproduce complex inequalities.
Inequality regimes:
- = interrelated practices, processes, actions and meaning that result in and maintain class,
gender and racial inequalities within organizations.
- Inequality in organizations = systematic disparities between participants in power and
control over goals, resources and outcomes; workplace decisions; opportunities for
promotion; security in employment and benefits; pay; respect; and pleasures in work and
work relations.
- Organizations vary in the degree to which these disparities are present and in how severe
they are.
- Inequality regimes are fluid and changing. They are linked to inequality in the surrounding
society, politics, history and culture.
What varies? The components of inequality regimes:
- Bases of inequality:
o Class, race and gender are often linked through jobs in organizations.
o Class = enduring and systematic differences in access to and control over resources
for provisioning and survival.
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, In large organizations, hierarchical positions are congruent with class
processes in the wider society. The CEO of the large corporation operates at
the top of the national and often global society. In smaller organizations, the
class structure may not be so congruent with society-wide class relations,but
the owner or the boss still has class power in relations with employees.
“Class” is defined by inequality; thus, “class equality” is an oxymoron
o Gender: Gender was, in the not too distant past, almost completely integrated with
class in many organizations. That is, managers were almost always men; the lower-
level white-collar workers were always women. Class relations in the workplace, such
as supervisory practices or wage-setting processes, were shaped by gendered and
sexualized attitudes and assumptions. Women are beginning to be distributed in
organizational class structures in ways that are similar to the distribution of men.
Gender and class are no longer so perfectly integrated, but gendered and sexualized
assumptions still shape the class situations of women and men in different ways.
o Race = socially defined differences based on physical characteristics, culture and
historical domination and oppression, justified by entrenched beliefs. Race, too, has
often been integrated into class hierarchies, but in different patterns than gender.
People of color were totally excluded from the most powerful (white, male)
organizations that were central in shaping the racialized and gendered class structure
of the larger society.
o Sexuality: heterosexuality is assumed in organizing processes and interactions.
Homosexuality is disruptive of these processes plus there is a stigma that produces
disadvantages for homosexuals.
o Other bases of inequality are religion, age and physical ability.
- Shape and degree of inequality:
o Steepness of hierarchy: hierarchies are usually gendered and racialized, especially at
the top, particularly in large and influential organizations.
The steepest hierarchies are found in traditional bureaucracies in contrast to
the idealized flat organizations with team structures, in which most, or at
least some, responsibilities and decision-making authority are distributed
among participants. Between these polar types are organizations with
varying degrees of hierarchy and shared decision making.
Flat team structures may provide women more equality and opportunity
than hierarchical bureaucracies, but only if the women function like men
(masculine stereotypes).
o Degree and pattern of segregation by race and gender: Gender and race segregation
of jobs is complex because segregation is hierarchical across jobs at different class
levels of an organization, across jobs at the same level, and within jobs
Occupations should be distinguished from jobs: An occupation is a type of
work; a job is a particular cluster of tasks in a particular work organization.
For example, emergency room nurse is an occupation; an emergency room
nurse at San Francisco General Hospital is a job.
Research indicates that “sex segregation at the job level is more extensive
than sex segregation at the level of occupations”
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, desegregation has not progressed equally in different jobs. Even when men
and women have the same occupation, they are likely to work in different
jobs and firms.
Reconfiguration instead of desegregation: women have entered male-
dominated occupations, but still have different jobs ( for example female
doctors specialize in pediatrics, not surgery) = internal gender segregation.
What appears to be a reduction in segregation may only be its
reconfiguration.
o Wage differences: this often varies with the height of hierarchy.
o Severity of power differences: Gender and race are important in determining power
differences within organizational class levels. E.g. women managers often face
gendered contradictions when they use organizational power in actions similar to
those of men (they are called bitches).
- Organizing processes that produce inequality:
o = Organizations vary in the practices and processes that are used to achieve their
goals; these practices and processes also produce class, gender, and racial
inequalities.
o Organizing general requirements of work:
In general work is organized in the image of a white man who is totally
dedicated to work and has no responsibilities for children/family.
Flexibility to bend these expectations are more available to high-level
managers than low-level workers.
Because women often have more obligations outside of work than men, this
gendered organizing helps maintain gender inequality.
o Organizing class hierarchies:
Bureaucratic techniques for ordering positions and people are constructed to
reproduce existing inequalities.
It appears that sex-typed women jobs were described less clearly and with
less specificity than men’s jobs plus they were assigned into less categories
at the lowest wage ranges. Sometimes managers get the credit for their
assistants tasks, which results in even lower wages.
The women’s jobs were grouped into four large categories at the bottom of
the ranking, assigned to the lowest wage ranges; the men’s jobs were in
many more categories extending over a much wider range of wage levels.
Our new evaluation of the clerical/secretarial categories showed that many
different jobs with different tasks and responsibilities,some highly skilled and
responsible, had been lumped together. The result was, we argued, an
unjustified gender wage gap: Although women’s wages were in general
lower than those of men, women’s skilled jobs were paid much less than
men’s skilled jobs, reducing even further the average pay for women when
compared with the average pay for men.
o Recruitment and hiring:
Work is often organized on the model of the unencumbered (white) man,
and both women and men are expected to perform according to this model
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, Gender and race partially define who is suitable for a job. Images of
appropriate gendered and racialized bodies influence perceptions and hiring.
Although work is organized on the model of men, this does not mean that
men are the ideal workers for all jobs. The ideal worker for many jobs is a
woman, who will accept orders and low wages. This is usually a woman of
color or migrant women.
Hiring through social networks is one of the ways in which gender and racial
inequalities are maintained in organizations. Affirmative action programs
altered hiring practices in many organizations, requiring open advertising for
positions and selection based on gender- and race-neutral criteria of
competence, rather than selection based on an old boy (white) network.
However, criteria of competence do not automatically translate into gender-
and race-neutral selection decisions. “Competence” involves judgment: The
race and gender of both the applicant and the decision makers can affect
that judgment, resulting in decisions that white males are the more
competent, more suited to the job than are others.
o Wage setting and supervisory practices:
These are class practices. Gender and race affect assumptions about skill,
responsibility and fair wage.
Wage setting is often a bureaucratic organizational process, integrated into
the processes of creating hierarchy, as I described above. Many different
wage-setting systems exist, many of them producing gender and race
differences in pay.
Individualized wage-setting produces inequality, because small rewards for
high performance are often given to men and not women.
To understand wage inequality it is necessary to delve into the details of
wage-setting systems.
Supervisors shape their relationships with subordinates in terms of gender
and race in many work situations, thus influencing the inequality.
o Informal interactions while ‘doing the work’:
Men and women routinely use gender-, race-, and class-based assumptions
about those with whom they interact. These practices are often subtle and
unspoken, for example: not asking for the opinion of women or not listening
to them to meetings or sexual harassment.
- The visibility of inequality:
o = degree of awareness of inequalities.
o Lack of awareness can be intentional or unintentional.
o Visibility varies with the position of the beholder: one privilege of the privileged is
not to see their privilege.
- The legitimacy of inequality:
o This varies between organizations and also with political and economic conditions.
o Some organizations, such as cooperatives, professional organizations, or voluntary
organizations with democratic goals, may find inequality illegitimate and try to
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