Blog Post #14

Britton used the theory of gendered organization to frame her research questions on occupational segregation both in general, and in the prison system. This theory includes separate levels which are structure, culture, and agency. We think about all of these levels in gendered ways. No organization is gender neutral, and most organizations are based on preexisting assumptions that reproduce gender segregation. All of these things affect job choice, employer preference, and the practices and policies of organizations, and in turn we see ongoing job segregation of the basis of male and female. Britton questions why this segregation is so persistent. She also questions why it is that the jobs we have culturally socialized as “female jobs” pay less. On that same note she wonders what factors keep women and “female jobs” at the bottom of the occupational ladder. Britton gives the example of female attorneys who specialize in “female” areas like family law and public defense that make far less money than male attorneys in “male” specializations. Why are female skills devalued? This type of segregation that seems to be engrained in our culture and our institutions is not allowing any further forward progress, and that is what Britton wants to look deeper into, and it is at the heart of gendered organization.

Structure, agency, and culture are all interlinked in the ongoing process of gendered organization because they all influence each other, and affect the choices of employees and employers. Culture connotates our social beliefs about gender, and what traits are male and female, and which jobs each other those traits fits into. Therefore, culture defines male and female jobs. The practices and policies of organizations are based on what the culture has defined as proper male and female jobs. A great example of this is informal practices job assignments for men and women in the same job are based on culturally defined “male” and “female” traits, and women end up in more domestic assignments, and men get the strength and intellectually based jobs. Then what culture defines and what organization base their structure on is reinforced by agency. The workers search for the individual identity as a work, and interpret themselves as possessors of appropriate masculine or feminine qualities. This is likely to reinforce gender inequality in the work place.

When Britton says that “organizations are gendered at the level of structure,” she means that policies and practices of organizations are based on gender, whether it is directly or indirectly. These practices and policies are created on the basis of what the workers and what culture defines as occupational masculinity or femininity. Obviously, this plays a major role in gender segregation.

Public and private spheres have become a gendered concept because it is much harder for women to separate the two, than for men, and women are negatively affected when jobs call for complete separation. As a culture we have decided that women are in charge of domestic responsibilities. This most likely originates from when women never workers and they we homemakers, but there has been little shift in domestic responsibility since women have joined the work force. Because women still have to handle domestic tasks like child care, the men can more easily enjoy the separation of work and home, than women can. Since women joined the workforce, women are expected to be the jack of all trades – a good mom, employee, wife, sister, daughter, cook, house cleaner, etc. Most employers are going to assume that a woman requires a certain level of flexibility to handle her domestic responsibilities, and that affects their choice on whether they are going to employ certain women.
In turn, women have to make trade offs to have that level of flexibility, and they pay the price for it. They more likely to be stuck in gender jobs, dead end jobs, and jobs that have a significantly lower pay scale.