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Chapter 10: Gendered Organizational Communication
I. Gendered Stereotypes in the Workplace: Social expectations of sexes influence how
we treat people in professional contexts.
A. Stereotypes of Women: Women in the workplace are often stereotyped into one of
the following four categories.
1. The sex object stereotype defines a woman’s role though her appearance
and sexuality, reinforcing cultural views of femininity.
2. The mother stereotype of women defines an individual by her nurturing,
supportive, deferential nature.
a. Others expect women to perform the “emotional labor” of smiling,
exchanging pleasantries, listening to, and supporting others.
3. The stereotype of woman as child reflects a view that women are less
mature and competent at making decisions and being professionals.
4. Stereotyping a woman who is ambitious, directive, competitive, and
sometimes tough as an iron maiden defines a woman with these qualities
C. These stereotypes do not reflect the reality of the workplace. Most people do not fit
neatly into the categories described above.
II. Masculine Norms in Professional Life
A. Because men have historically dominated institutional life, masculine norms in
professional life infuse the workplace.
B. Masculine Images of Leaders
1. The communication skills developed in masculine speech communities are
often associated with management and leadership skills. These skills include
assertiveness, independence, competitiveness, and confidence.
2. Women, socialized into feminine speech communities, are often not
recognized as leaders or given the opportunity to advance in organizations.
3. Women don’t need to communicate in a masculine fashion to succeed. In fact,
the most effective leadership styles are those that blend relationship-building
and instrumental qualities.
4. Changing positions allow both men and women to develop new
communication skills as they adapt to new expectations.
C. Outdated Norms for Career Paths
1. We tend to think of careers as linear, that we start at an entry position and
work our way up the ladder. We also think of them as being full-time jobs.
With both men and women working outside of the home now, men and
women face difficulty in meeting the needs of both home and workplace.
2. Workers often want organizations to have more flexible schedules and
policies to accommodate family and life choices that are not consistent with
the full-time, linear model (such as flexible hours, on-site child care, part-time
work, and more flexible overall career paths).
3. Women’s careers tend to be sacrificed more than men’s when a heterosexual
couple decides to have children or when family members need care.
4. Recent research shows that women who work outside of the home are happier
and healthier than stay-at-home mothers, and that the children of working
mothers are just as advanced academically, emotionally balanced, and socially
adjusted as those of stay-at-home mothers.
a. Most mothers who leave paid work to care for children to plan to
return at some point. However, this is not always easy. It can be
difficult to find work, there are barriers to prestigious advancement as
a result of taking time away, and women’s earning power tends to be
reduced by leaving the workforce for a few years.
b. The reduction in earning power as a result of taking time away from
work is only experienced by women; men frequently do not experience
cuts in pay or position when they return to full-time work.
5. Men, too, find the traditional career path to be overly restrictive, preventing
them from being actively involved in their families, homes, and communities.
III. Gendered Patterns in Organizations
A. Formal Practices
1. Leave Policies
a. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) states that employees can
take up to 12 weeks unpaid leave to care for new babies or sick family
members. In 2010, this was extended to workers in same-sex
relationships who needed time to care for a partner’s child.
2. Work Schedules
a. In companies with a 9-to-5 type schedule, there is pressure that if one
B. Informal Practices: These are unwritten understandings that can make or break
careers.
1. Unwelcoming Environments for Women
a. Even when used unintentionally, language relating to sports, sexuality,
2. The Informal Network
a. Informal networks, or the “old boy network,” are comprised of
predominately male members. Hiring and promotion decisions are
3. Mentoring Relationships
a. A mentor is an experienced colleague who helps a less-experienced
4. Workplace bullying is when one repeatedly acts toward another person in a
way that humiliates, intimidates, or undermines the person’s credibility.
a. Workplace bullying can be overt, covert, or both. It can interfere with
5. Glass Ceilings and Glass Walls
a. The glass ceiling is an invisible barrier that limits the advancement of
women and minorities. This most often results from subtle
discrimination.
IV. Efforts to Redress Gendered Inequity in Institutions
A. Equal Opportunity Laws
1. Equal opportunity laws grew out of the Brown v. Board of Education case in
1954 that overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” educational systems
for white and black students.
2. The two main equal opportunity laws passed since Brown are:
3. Equal opportunity laws focus on discrimination against individuals, not
groups.
4. Because equal opportunity strategies focus on present practices, they do not
address historical or past discrimination.
B. Affirmative Action Policies
1. Affirmative action grew from the need to address the weight of historical
2. Three key ideas of affirmative action are:
a. Historical patterns of discrimination have affected groups of people, so
3. Two limitations of affirmative action are:
a. Affirmative action recognizes the limited availability of women and
minorities for certain jobs or academic programs and attempts only to
4. Courts have had to regularly evaluate how much an organization should take
5. In recent years, there has been growing interest in revising affirmative action
to give preference based on socioeconomic status rather than race-ethnicity.
6. In 2009, President Obama directed attorneys to begin drafting policies that
would prohibit discrimination against transgender employees working for the
federal government. In 2012, the EEOC ruled that it is illegal to discriminate
against a person for being transgendered.
C. Quotas and Goals
1. Quotas require a specific number or percentage of women or minorities
to be admitted, hired, or promoted. There are penalties if the quota is not
met; thus, it is possible (though not always the case) that under or unqualified
people may be admitted, hired, or promoted in order to meet a quota.
2. Goals consist of an institution’s stated intention to achieve representation of
minorities or women. There are no penalties for failing to meet the goal.
3. Goals and quotas may work against women and minorities.
a. Other institutional members may assume they got in only because of
their sex or race and thus women and minorities may be perceived as
under-qualified.
b. They may also work against underrepresented groups when the quota
or goal is seen as the maximum (rather than the minimum) number of
women or minorities who will be admitted, hired, or promoted.
D. Diversity Training
1. Diversity training aims to increase awareness of and respect for
2. A drawback of these programs is that it requires personal choice that some
organizational members may not be willing to commit to in order to effect
change.
Journal Entries
1. Do you think family leaves should be available to both male and female parents?
Should both be required to take time off for families?
2. Explain why you support a certain “remedy” for gender inequities or why you don’t favor
any discussed in Chapter 10 of Gendered Lives. For example, the majority of students say
they benefit educationally from ethnic and racial diversity on their campuses; yet, this may
not mean that they support affirmative action policies. Where do you stand?
3. Reflect upon your own or others’ organizational experiences. Have you observed instances
of classifying women or men according to the sex stereotypes identified in this chapter?
How are these stereotypes imposed upon workers? How might workers resist being
stereotyped?
4. Imagine you are in a long-term committed romantic relationship. How would you feel if
your partner made more money than you? How would you feel if you made more money
than your partner? Imagine you two decide to have children. Who, if either of you, will stay
home with the child? Could you imagine ever having a different arrangement?
5. First, come up with a best-case scenario of yourself as a worker and/or parent ten years from
now. What would an average, good workday look like? Next, consider whether some of the
formal and informal gendered organizational patterns discussed in Chapter 10 would help
you enact or hinder you from enacting an average, good day. If gendered organizational
patterns stand in the way, how would you suggest changing those patterns to allow you (and
others) to achieve their dreams and goals?
InfoTrac Activities
1. Choose the Advanced Search option using InfoTrac College Edition. Select title and type
“Women still ‘pigeonholed’ in pink collar jobs, says new AAUW study.” What factors,
besides those cited by the researchers, might contribute to the gendered division of labor?
2. Choose the Advanced Search option using InfoTrac College Edition. Select title and type
“Having it all, or not?” by Deborah L. Rhode. How does Rhode challenge Sylvia Ann
Hewlett’s argument about women who place their career first? Which argument do you find
more compelling?
Suggested Activities
1. Panel: Balancing Work and Home: Invite a panel of dual-worker couples to discuss ways
they balance roles, duties, and obligations within the home and professional organization. In
our classes, students have responded favorably to this panel as they move out of the
2. Stereotypes in the Workplace: Split your class into small groups (minimum of three
people). Assign each group a stereotype. Provide ten minutes for them to brainstorm how
3. Nickel and Dimed: Assigning chapters from Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed
provides an excellent springboard for rich discussions concerning labor, hierarchy, and
mobility that often lead naturally into debates surrounding legislation to redress inequities.
Some possibilities for opening discussion: To what extent are people able to freely choose
their labor? What are the precursors to choosing one’s labor, and to social mobility? (i.e.
education, proper food and shelter, health care, etc.) How might we better enable choice
and mobility for America’s working and poverty classes? Given the ways in which sexism,
racism, and classism have historically informed social hierarchies, what methods of redress
do you think are useful and/or productive?
4. Panel: Nontraditionally Gendered Workers: Invite a panel of speakers who work in jobs
that are not or have not historically been seen in our culture as typical for their sex. This
5. The Price of Passing: Spradlin’s article “The Price of Passing” is a short essay about the
strategies she used to negotiate being a closeted lesbian in her workplace. Have students
read this article and discuss it in small groups, using the following discussion questions: (1)
What are the strategies Spradlin used and how did she employ them? (2) Why do you think
Spradlin did not simply reveal her sexuality? (3) How easy do you think it is now for
LGBTQ people to come out in the workplace? (4) Think of an organization you are part of.
Do you think that members of that organization feel pressure to hide their sexuality? Why
or why not? You may add additional discussion questions to this exercise. This is also a
good time to discuss and potentially debate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Many
students are surprised to hear that the policy is viewed by many as discriminatory and
degrading.
6. Difficult Decisions: Place students into small groups and ask them to read the following
scenario and consider the questions that follow. Debrief the exercise as a large group. What
assumptions ground students’ arguments and decisions? How are different activities,
including work, art, and raising children, valued? Did any group come up with creative
solutions to the scenario?
How would you assess Jennifer’s request? Is it legitimate? Should the organization
accommodate her parenting needs? Why or why not? What do you think of Tanesha’s
response? Should her participation in the arts be part of the calculation? Why or why not?
Should her longer tenure with the organization confer her any rights or privileges? Should
the fact that she is in a committed relationship enter the discussion? Why or why not? If
you were Susan, how would you resolve this situation?
7. Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunities, Quotas, and Goals in Action: This activity
helps students understand these four ways of redressing inequities by applying them to a
specific case. Give students the handout that follows, and ask them to follow the
instructions. This activity works best if the students work in small groups. After they have
worked in groups, share and discuss their answers in the large group to ensure that they
understand the differences between these policies.
NOTE: Be prepared that the discussion could become heated about these policies. Some
people feel strongly about these remedies, and they may want to share those perspectives,
especially if they think one of the policies results in an unfair situation for one of the
potential applicants. To help you prepare, be sure you are very clear on the policies. Also,
you may want to learn what policies are used at your university or college. It is likely that
students may want to talk about their experience at your institution, and it’s helpful if you
can accurately tell them which policies are used.
Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunities,
Quotas, and Goals in Action
Directions: Read the scenario below. Then follow the instructions for each numbered question.
Scenario: Marjorie (a woman), Layla (a woman), and Mason (a man) are applying for the same
job as a loan officer at The American Bank. The job requires a degree in a finance or banking-
related field. Typically, men have tended to dominate the banking industry, and 80% of
employees at TAB are men. Layla and Mason both have undergraduate degrees in personal
finance. Marjorie has an undergraduate degree in English with a 4.0 GPA. Mason has an MBA;
however, an MBA is not required to apply for or to do the job. Both Layla and Mason perform
well in interviews, and each of their references check out well. It seems that both Layla and
Mason are qualified and would do well in the job.
1. Who do you think should be hired?
2. If The American Bank used affirmative action, who should be hired? Why?
3. If The American Bank used equal opportunity, who should be hired? Why?
4. Layla has withdrawn her application because she got another job. Now only Marjorie and
Mason are potential employees. If The American Bank had a quota policy of having 40%
female employees by the next year, who should be hired. Why?
5. All three applicants are still contenders. If The American Bank had a goal policy of
having 40% female employees by the next year, who should be hired? Why?
