Chapter 7: Work, Discrimination, Leadership

What is horizontal occupational segregation?

Different jobs (same level)

• The tendency for people to be employed in different occupations that require equivalent levels of training or education.

• Segregation system reinforces itself

What are the types of discirmination?

• Access discrimination

• Hiring bias

What are the key barriers?

• glass ceiling

• sticky floor

• glass escalator

• glass cliff

What is glass ceiling?

Form of treatment discrimination that refers to the difficulty of those from historically marginalized groups to break through the top position (or “ceiling”) at an organization.

What is vertical occupational segregation?

Same field, different levels/status

• The tendency for people in the same field to be differentially employed.

What is discrimination?

the differential treatment of individuals based on their membership in a social category whether that is G/S identity (percieved, internalized, expressed), sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, disability, health, age, or any other category.

How can we reduce gender/sex descrimination at work?

People must ID discrimination in order to change it.

• Denial of disadvantage: women believe other women are discriminated against but not themselves (minimize the discrimination)

• Reasons:

  • Uncomfortable

  • Difficult to infer discrimination from one case

  • Social comparison (perceived entitled to less)

  • Negative consequences to self or others for addressing discrimination

  • System justification - belief world is fair; people get what they deserve 

What is access discrimination?

A situation in which an individual is not offered a certain job or is offered a lesser job because of a social identity such as gender/sex, race/ethnicity, etc.

• Not offered a job or offered a lesser job

• Restricts training, mentors, or other factors that allow one to access self-efficacy, career interests, goals, & actions.

• Difficult to know when this type of discrimination is happening.

What is hiring bias?

Serves to maintain power differentials & vertical occupation segregation.

• The G/S against women in hiring was strong in better-paying occupations dominated by men, whereas men were less likely to be hired into low paying occupations dominated by women.

What is treatment discrimination?

A situation in which an individual receives a reduced salary or reduced opportunities for promotion compared to other equally-qualified individuals having the same job.

• Pay disparity is a form of treatment discrimination.

  • Equal Pay Day in US: date women have to work in order to match men’s annual salary

    • March 12, 2024 - extra 71 days of work

  • Exacerbated for women of color

  • LGBTQIA2S+ pay disparity = 90% of cishet workers

3. Key Barriers 

What is concrete ceiling?

Those faced by women of color & are designed to reflect “double jeopardy” of both sexism and racism in the workplace.

• An attempt to describe the reality of the impenetrable barriers to advancement women of color face regardless of their ambition, self-efficacy, & other “internal” factors.

What is the lavender ceiling?

Barriers to promotion faced by LGBTQIA2S+ workers.

What is sticky floor?

Form of TD referring to the difficulty of women to be promoted into middle management & their tendency to be stuck at the bottom of the pay scale if they are promoted.

What is glass escalator?

Form of TD refers to the ability of men to be promoted quickly when they take positions in traditionally feminine fields. (nursing, social work, or education)

• Ex: In nursing, men are 10% of the workforce, but 50% of leaders.

• Most effect for white men.

  • Men of color do not seem to get the same promotional advantage.

• The racialized glass escalator has even been demonstrated in high school, as white boys are “promoted” to leadership positions in performing arts, a traditionally feminine field.

• Glass ceilings, sticky floors, & glass escalators are all likely influenced by our G/S & racial stereotypes regarding what makes a good leader.

What is glass cliff?

Form of TD in which women, especially women of color, are more likely than men to be assigned leadership positions when those positions entail risk. 

• Women, especially women of color, are more likely than men to be assigned a leadership position in a company that is at risk of failing.

• Social support: women have more access to support than men so women can get people to help

• Change in status quo: women leader = change

• Sexism: people setting up women to fail

• Women less selective: more likely than men to accept risky leadership positions (usually because they have less opportunity.)

What is an example of glass cliff?

EX: Angela Merkel became head of the Christian Democratic Union party when it was struggling; Mary Barra was appointed CEO of General Motors after a number of product recalls; Marissa Mayer became CEO of Yahoo after it lost significant market share to Google.

What are gender/sex stereotypes?

people percieve communal person will help negotation difficulties

• G/S stereotypes: people perceive communal person will help negotiation difficulties

• Social support: women have more access to support than men so women can get people to help

• Change in status quo: women leader = change

• Sexism: people setting up women to fail

• Women less selective: more likely than men to accept risky leadership positions (usually because they have less opportunity.)

What is role congruity dilemma?

Idea that leadership is perceived to be masculine & thus incongruent w/ the feminine G/S role.

• Most difficulties women encounter as leaders occur in settings dominated by men, when women display stereotypical masculine behavior, & when elevated by men.

  • Men seen as better leaders in organizations dominated by men, and women better in social service organizations.

What are the leadership styles?

• transformational

• transactional

• laissex-fair

What is transformational leadership?

Inspiring, motivating, role model.

• Combines communal and agentic qualities

• More commonly held by women leaders

What is transactional leadership?

Conventional, monitoring subordinates, rewarding behavior, intervening

• Mixed used by leaders of all G/S

What is laissex-fair leadership?

Non-directive, allows self governance.

• More commonly held by men

• Transformational style most effective

What are the two kinds of prejudice against women leaders?

• descriptive stereotypes

• prescriptive stereotypes

What is descriptive stereotypes?

People may evaluate a woman leader less favorably than a man because she lacks the agentic qualities perceived as being needed for leadership

What is prescriptive stereotypes?

people may evaluate a women leader less favorably than a male leader if she possess agentic leadership qualities because those qualities conflict with the feminine gender/sex role

Men leaders vs Women leaders

• Men as leaders: presence of agency does not imply lack of communion

• Women as leaders: presence of agency implies lack of communion.

What SCCT?

It is social cognitive career theory and it is one theory of career development based on Albert Banura’s social cognitive theory.

• Supposes that several factors interact to influence one’s career choice.

• This includes distal personal inputs like G/S, health status, & race/ethnicity as well as distal background context like whether you had access to particular educational experiences or role models (early punishment or reinforcement of activities like playing sports, liking dolls, or reading)

Career is shaped by…

Self-efficacy

• an individual's personal belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments.

• How well we do in that career or how fulfilling it is (performance & attainment) will restart the cycle.

  • If you land the perfect engineering job right out of college & are reinforced through promotion & advancement, your goals may change less.

  • If you do not feel like you have achieved much, your goals may drastically change.

Experiences

• After your interests, goals, & actions are developed, things can happen to strengthen your views or bump you off your path. 

  • There are the proximal environment influences.  If you experienced bias when being hired for a civil engineering job, prohibiting you from entering into the career, that will impact your engineering interests.  But if you have a deep network connection you may be more resilient to this set back.

  Supports/Barrier

  • Your interest becomes your goals, and your goals become actions so long as your proximal factors are helpful (family support) & not harmful (biased teacher)

    • Ex: The relationship between Lucia’s interests & goals/actions will be especially strong if she has parental support, financial capabilities to live without a job or with a low-paying job while she gets her feet under her, a romantic partner who encourages her to pursue her dreams, and so on.

      • These are all moderator variables - her movement “depends on” factors like these. 

What is support/barrier?

Your interest becomes your goals, and your goals become actions so long as your proximal factors are helpful (family support) & not harmful (biased teacher)

What is demand-side theory?

Discrimination, which emphasizes the different ways workers are treated based on gender/sex indentities; the focus here is on the environement

What is a marital bonus?

• Married men earn more than unmarried men (pay bonus)

• Married women, in aggregate, get a wage penalty

• Different patterns emerges when consider race

  • Marriage associated w/ pay increase for black women.

What is the mommy tax?

• Birth of a child is associated with an income penalty for mothers that fathers don’t face.

• Penalty smaller for lesbian women

• Maternal wall: employers view women as less desirable who become mothers

  • Employers give mothers less opportunities

  • Motherhood perceived as a low status characteristic, undermines competence. (women do more of the unpaid labor and child care at home.)

What is comparable worth (the opposite of pay disparity)

• People in different jobs should be paid the same wage for comparable work, skills, effort, and working conditions.

• Comparable worth is difficult to identify:

  • Job activities

  • Environmental conditions/ hazards

  • Knowledge required

  • Education required

  • Skills involved.

What are structural explanations?

• Discrimination

  • Salary estimation effect - assume jobs inhabited by men are worth more.

• Segregation

  • Men & women work in different jobs

  • Men’s jobs pay more than women’s jobs

  • Self selection: women and men choose different occupations

• Bias

  • Demand side theory: employers presume men & women are better at different jobs 

Why do inequalities persist even with equal qualifications?

• Role scarcity hypothesis: multiple roles have negative effects because time & resources are limited (creates a strain)

  • Role overload: difficulty fulfilling obligations for all of one’s roles because time is limited (to much to do)

  • Role conflict: conflicting demands across multiple roles (worker, parent, student, caregiver all compete for time and effort)

• Role expansion hypothesis: benefits gained from having multiple roles.

  • Resources from 1 role can buffer strain from other role

  • Stress buffering: rewards from 1 role reduce stress of another.

  • Ex: having a higher salary allows money to pay for child care, house cleaning, to focus on career or parenting more.

Why do women avoid negotiation?

Men are more likely to negotiate than women, & men negotiate for more money than women

• Men feel that they deserve more than women feel that they deserve

• Women concerned that negotiation leads to conflict (putting them in a compromising position by asking for more.)

• Women believe in meritocracy (hard work = success) & don;t need to ask. (You will see how hard I work so I will get promoted)

• Negotiation is a  stereotype of incongruent behavior for women. (violates expectation, seen outside of femininity, conflicted with warmth and modesty of women.)