"Women-as-Employees" & the Reproduction of Regimes of Exclusion.
| Author | Sachdeva, Leena |
Introduction
Culturally informed constructions of 'women-as-employees' underlying occupational segregations constitute the most pervasive determinant of the gender dynamics of labor markets (Cross, 2002). Occupational segregations define and enforce role demarcations, which have significant impact on gender-based division of labor arrangements. Deep-rooted social structures utilize deeply entrenched socialization processes to condition and apportion occupational spaces as suitable and unsuitable depending on the gender of the individual. It is in this context that social classifications like traditional and non-traditional occupations get associated with what is culturally appropriate and consequentially of perfect fit depending on whether the subject in question is a man or a woman (Anker, 1998). Occupations are traditional when they have socially acceptable fit with a particular gender and are considered as a culturally sanctioned career option for them. Non-traditional occupations for a particular gender would be occupations which do not find convergence with socially acceptable and culturally sanctioned occupational categories (Altendorf, 2018). This is the type of seemingly innocuous classifications that are at the root of untenable and insidious occupational segregations which leads to under-representation of a particular gender groupings in occupations which are culturally prohibited and discouraged. As a result, men dominate certain occupations and women are found in minority in such settings because of the setting up of social and cultural fences (Gale & Cartwright, 1995). For illustration, men mostly dominate managerial and administration roles, craft occupations, and plant and machine operations and women appear to be populating clerical and secretarial, service and sales, and nursing roles (Cross, 2002).
Gender segregation is present in both horizontal and vertical levels in the labor market (Cross, 2002). Horizontal gender segregation restricts entry into culturally forbidden territory and vertical gender segregation pushes women to lower levels of organizational power hierarchies (Cross, 2002). Occupational segregation translates not only in to stagnation at lower levels of power hierarchies, but also manifests itself in terms of restricted entry, lower wages or salary, very little advancement, lower status and lesser authority (MacDougall, 1997). Due to occupational segregation, women lose out in the power sweepstakes and it is mostly men who get to occupy most top management positions ironically not only even in occupational spaces which are culturally 'earmarked' for women. (Cross, 2002). As a result, most women practically have to struggle for their space even in occupations culturally relegated to them and find it difficult even to gain entry into the occupations (Mastracci & Arreola, 2016). Mastracci and Aerrola (2016) also argued how entry-level interface with barriers deeply affects their future career directions.
The existing literature on the interface of gender and occupational segregation, on careful analysis, points towards two broad trends in interpreting the modalities of women's occupational experiences at the point of role performance levels and in seeking advancement in their workplace fortunes (Miner et. al., 2018). The first and a traditional line of research emphasizes gender differences between men and women as constitutive of occupational segregation suggesting that differences in one or more factors like personality, attitude, behavior, education, training, and skills and also their career related decisions determine suitability or the lack of it (Fagenson, 1990). This viewpoint envelops organizational and managerial thinking and seeps into formal organizational structures, processes, policies, practices and relations. The second trajectory of research focus is on explicit cultural-patriarchal discrimination at both societal and organizational levels as plausible explanations for the limited representation of women in segregated occupational spaces (Ahuja, 2002; Acker, 2006). These broad interpretative orientations are the basis for an exploration into the lived experiences of women at work in order to conceptualize the interplay of factors when 'women-as-employees' confront socio-occupational segregation in workplace settings (Acker, 2006; Cross, 2002).
Data for this study has been carried out in a rail transport organization where the representation of women in culturally specified non-traditional roles has been minimal though some changes are discernible over the last two decades. The organization has a total employee strength of 13,33,966 and women employees constitute merely 6.84 percent of the total workforce (Committee on Empowerment of Women Report, 2015).
Mode & Method of Research Engagement
This is a study of how gender plays out in an organization not in the objective sense of what organization do on this front but as subjectively experienced and as articulated by women employees. The organization as an objective entity or even as a projected objective entity may have its own narrative of gender initiatives through its policy and perspectives. That is not the focus of this study.
The objective of the study is to capture the lived experiences of 'women-as-employees' in their own words, to interpret the subject's words for a deep insight into the latent world of the subject's lived gender experiences, to conceptualize subjective experiences to understand the subjective world of work as it appears to 'women-as-employees', to try and fuse the sensitizing concepts together into an interpretative pattern and a conception of the organization from a 'women-as employees' lens. The focus of this study is on gender undercurrents subjectively experienced by women-as-employees.
Data was collected by interviewing 44 women respondents--50% were below 40 years and 50% were above 40 years; 89% were graduates and 11% post-graduates; 61% married, 25% single, 14% widowed/ divorced/remarried; 61% have 2-4 family members and 39% have 5-7; 41% have 10 years work experience and below, 20% have 10-20 years' experience and 39% have above 20 years' experience.
These interviews were conversational with an indicative interview schedule used as suggested by Mihas (2019). To maintain anonymity, the identity of respondents has been kept confidential (Patton, 2005). All human subjects' protocols have been followed--clearly explaining the purpose of the study, assurance of anonymity and confidentiality and the researcher secured explicit consent from the respondents to be interviewed with the option of opting out at any time for the respondent. After data collection, content analysis approach was used to examine whether any pattern in relation to the research questions was discernible from the transcripts (Corbin et. al., 2015). The totality of transcripts of the interviews and its multiple readings not only helped in crafting a strategy for analysis but also gave a holistic sense of the context in which...
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