Gender Equality and Work-Life Balance

Glass Handcuffs and Working Men in the U.S.

Sarah Blithe

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317515258
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Economics
• Categoría: Labour Economics

Pressure to achieve work-life "balance" has recently become a significant part of the cultural fabric of working life in United States. A very few privileged employees tout their ability to find balance between their careers and the rest of their lives, but most employees face considerable organizational and economic constraints which hamper their ability to maintain a reasonable "balance" between paid work and other life aspects—and it is not only women who struggle. Increasingly men find it difficult to "do it all." Women have long noted the near impossibility of balancing multiple roles, but it is only recently that men have been encouraged to see themselves beyond their breadwinner selves.

Gender Equality and Work-Life Balance describes the work-life practices of men in the United States. The purpose is to increase gender equality at work for all employees. With a focus on leave policy inequalities, this book argues that men experience a phenomenon called "the glass handcuffs, " which prevents them from leaving work to participate fully in their families, homes, and other life events, highlighting the cultural, institutional, organizational, and occupational conditions which make gender equality in work-life policy usage difficult. This social justice book ultimately draws conclusions about how to minimize inequalities at work.

Gender Equality and Work-Life Balance is unique as it laces together some theoretical concepts which have little previous association, including entrepreneurialism; leave policy, occupational identity, and the economic necessities of families. This book will therefore be of particular interest to researches and academics alike in the disciplines of Gender studies, Human Resource Management, Employment Relations, Sociology and Cultural Studies.

Part I Contexts for the Glass Handcuffs Phenomenon

2 Organizational Contexts for the Glass Handcuffs Phenomenon

DOI: 10.4324/9781315719191-2

In order to understand how the glass handcuffs phenomenon occurs, it is necessary to comprehend the existing contexts that frame the current working environment in the United States. In this chapter, I begin with some theoretical work about how communication constructs organizations, which makes transparent the permeable nature of organizational cultures and policies—relevant for thinking about how inequalities in organizations might be undone. Next, I present some of the most pressing areas of structural inequality for issues of work–life, including biased organizational logics, occupational segregation, the wage and wealth gaps, the maternal wall, and unconscious bias. Finally, I discuss organizational inequity as it relates to leaves of absence policies.

The Communicative Constitution of Organizations

Traditional conceptions of organizational communication considered communication as message transmission (Axley, 1984) and organizations as things. The idea that the shape of the organization shapes the kind of communication that occurs at work and that the organization exists separately from communication pervaded much early organizational communication scholarship and still dominates in much business and management research. This model drives many undergraduate organizational communication classes that teach “effective communication” and seek to coordinate message transmission and build skills. In this view, communication accomplishes goals within the boundary of the organization, and merely expresses organizational realities that preexist (Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009). While this view of communication is an important part of organizational and business communication, scholars have transcended this limiting model and broadened the concept of organization. Rather than viewing an organization as a “container” (R. Smith, 1993), these scholars began to understand an organization as something that is created through communication. From this perspective, aspects of an organization, such as culture or policies, are not independent “things” but rather fluid constructions that make up the organization (Ashcraft et al., 2009).

The linguistic turn in the late 1960s centered language as a necessary component of social realities (Rorty, 1967). From this premise stemmed a growing trend to consider communication for its ability to produce social realities (McPhee & Zaug, 2000; Searle, 1995; Taylor & Van Every, 2000) in addition to the traditional view that communication expresses social realities (K. Ashcraft et al., 2009). Recently termed the Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) (Putnam & Nicotera, 2008), this perspective views organizational structures as the manifestations of constant negotiation (Taylor & Van Every, 2000). From a CCO perspective, communication is the process that determines the possible versions of social realities for people at work. As such, it is more accurate to describe “organization” as a verb rather than a noun (Putnam & Nicotera, 2008; Weick, 1979) and organizations are physical manifestations of human interactions (Koschmann, 2012).

The CCO view of communication creates possibilities for new ways of viewing organizational structures, forms of power, inequalities, and policy discrepancies. CCO scholars do not suggest that organizations are wholly discursive (Putnam & Nicotera, 2009) but, rather, the highly discursive nature of organizations suggests that seemingly rigid structures are malleable (see K. Ashcraft et al., 2009, for an analysis of the material component of CCO work). Policies and inequalities at work are thus the result of human interaction and are not immutable “things” (Koschmann, 2012). This view opens up the possibility to challenge, contest, and dismantle organizational systems (Deetz, 1992), to question how central organizational concepts, the validity of organizational structures, and power relationships came to be part of organizational life (K. Ashcraft et al., 2009; Koschmann, 2012).

The shift to a CCO view of organizational communication has been a major ontological shift and an integral step in understanding how organizations fit within larger society (Cheney, 2000). Explaining how organizations are produced through the process of communication helps to explain, understand, and make visible more dimensions of organizational life (McPhee & Zaug, 2000; Putnam & McPhee, 2008; Putnam & Nicotera, 2009). Explicating the processual role of communication in constituting organization, K. Ashcraft et al. (2009) defined communication as the

ongoing, dynamic, interactive process of manipulating symbols toward the creation, maintenance, destruction, and/or transformation of meanings, which are axial—not peripheral—to organizational existence and organizing phenomena . . . taking communication (as defined here) seriously means treating discursive struggle as a generative process. A communicative explanation is thus any account that hones our understanding of how communication constitutes organizational reality, clarifies how communication works as an organizing mechanism, or illuminates communication (rather than, for instance, physical location) as the site of organization. (pp. 22–23)

Indeed, the conception of communication as a generative process is highly useful for studying organizations because process theory reveals explanations for rather than descriptions of organizational life (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005). Put simply, communication is the explanation for how organizations and our experiences of organizations come to exist.

Considering this historical development of organizational communication is important because it provides a framework for identifying important turns in the theoretical consideration of organizational life and illuminates the potential and possibilities that arise from shifting ontological thought from “things” to “processes.” This is an important consideration for this project because it makes visible the constructed (and therefore potentially contested) nature of organizational facets such as policies, practices, and organizational culture. CCO reveals how “facts” and seemingly cemented organizational ideologies are actually liquid. Through this lens, power, domination, and inequalities in organizations are reversible, while occupational stories become contestable narratives. It is through communication that the politics of all organizational facets develop, and also how norms, roles, and expectations frame the actions of individuals (K. Ashcraft et al., 2009). Unfortunately, the historical development of these organizational facets has been far from equitable.

Structural Inequality

In 2010, The Economist hailed organizational equality for women at work, complete with Rosie the Riveter on its cover and the text “We did it!” Claiming that organizations had finally reached equal numerical participation by men and women in the U.S. workforce, the article represents a growing colloquial argument that gender equality at work has been achieved. In some ways, the article celebrates actual progress at work. Men and women are competitive in terms of pay for similar jobs with similar hours during the first two years of their careers. Childless men and women remain fairly wage comparable over the term of their careers. This wage competitiveness is surprising, considering that, on a wide scale, women earn less than men do and are far less likely to hold leadership positions at work. In addition, women’s educational achievement has increased substantially: women earn more college degrees than their male counterparts and 60% of undergraduate students are women. Women attend the same kinds of higher education institutions and have a higher grade point average than men (3.3 vs. 3.18), which will presumably set them up for success at work after graduation (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011; Corbett & Hill, 2012; Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 2010; Moe & Shandy, 2010).

However, equal numerical participation in work is not the same as achieving equality. Myriad gender oppressions continue to persist in U.S. workplaces, which prevent the attainment of true equality. In this section, I draw out some of the most prevalent areas of gender inequality in the U.S. workforce, which include (a) biased organizational logics, (b) occupational segregation, (c) the wage and wealth gaps, (d) the maternal wall, and (e) unconscious bias. While there are certainly many other ways employees experience discrimination at work, these are some of the most influential areas pertaining to work–life issues.

Biased Organizational Logics

Organizational logics are important to understand because they underscore hidden scripts that disadvantage some employees. Organizations, and U.S. organizations in particular, tend to organize in ways that preserve an unequal social order (see, e.g., Baines, 2010; Grimes, 2002; Tienari, Quack, & Theobald, 2002). Large-scale, seemingly impenetrable systems of inequality characterize most U.S. organizations. Inequality regimes (Acker, 2006) and institutional inequality (Albiston, 2010) explain the ways that organizations and other institutions developed historically such that people in power determined which ways of acting in organizations (how to organize work, how pay, benefits, respect, and pleasure at work are determined, how individuals attain promotions, etc.) were appropriate. These concepts explain how “commonsense” ways of acting were produced to posit some identities and ways of being as more desirable to others (Acker, 2006; Albiston, 2010). Inequality regimes and institutional inequality describe how work came to be work: set in a particular political context, developed and maintained by people in power, and perpetually reproduced by individuals enacting expectations at work every day. The historical construction of inequalities, however, is important to emphasize because constructions can be deconstructed. Recognizing institutional inequality offers a means for social change by facilitating the reinterpretation of taken-for-granted meanings.

The well-known division of social order into masculine and feminine is a core piece of inequality in organizations. This order assumes two persistent logics across contexts: first, that males are different from females and, second, that masculine norms are prioritized in a well-defined hierarchy (Hirdman, 1990). This gender system is identifiable in most societies around the world and throughout history and has a profound impact on the construction of identities. Male bodies are ascribed masculine characteristics while female bodies are ascribed feminine characteristics, and bodies and characteristics that are labeled “feminine” are regarded as less than whatever is deemed as masculine (Butler, 1999; Lindgren & Packendorff, 2006). This gender system has been both evident and problematic in organizations, particularly as more and more women with their ascribed femininities have entered the workforce. Indeed, Lindgren and Packendorff (2006), drawing on Ferguson (1984), claimed, “bureaucratic organizations and industrial mass production can be seen as contributing to a gender order that manifested itself in the whole life of modern human beings” (p. 842). Thus, it is not surprising that organizations, which are patterned after social order, highly prioritize masculinity over femininity; however, it is troubling that this pattern is continually reinforced in practice.

One particular problem in the structural organization of work is that it emerged around a white middle-class universal/ideal worker (Acker, 1990; Albiston, 2010). This universal/ideal worker is disembodied and asexual (Acker, 1990), available to work full time, does not have domestic responsibilities, and is able-bodied and healthy (Albiston, 2010). Furthermore, the most effective universal/ideal workers are able to set their personal lives and emotions aside (Judiesch & Lyness, 1999), likely because this universal/ideal worker has no relationships or responsibilities outside of the workplace and has no outside attachments or obligations (Fenstermaker & West, 2002). While the universal worker ideal unfairly disadvantages white women, women of color, single parents, people with disabilities and serious medical conditions, mothers, dual-income couples, people working in less affluent jobs, and men who cannot or will not conform to the ideal (C. Connell, 2010; R. W. Connell & Wood, 2005), it is a significant part of U.S. organizational life and sets the tone for modern U.S. workplaces.

Occupational Segregation

When looking closely at the “equal participation” of women in the U.S. workforce, a clear pattern of occupational segregation occurs. There are large gender discrepancies in college majors and in occupations. Thus, while women make up a majority of health care (88%) and education (81%) majors, they account for only 19% of computer and information science majors, and 18% of engineering and engineering technology majors (Corbett & Hill, 2012). The percentages are lower for actual graduation rat...