Kaarten: C&O Week 3 Part 2 | Quizlet

What a communication perspective brings to study of gender dynamics at work

1. Understands both women and men have gender and engage in gendered communication in everyday life
2. Critical communication perspective understands power as a routine feature of gender-work relationship
3. Recognises gender is fluid and dynamic - not located in people but emerges from social contexts (we perform or 'do' gender)
4. Recognises gender identities are not fixed but historically variable (being a man or woman is not the same today as in the past)

Feminism

A movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression

Key question common to all feminist approaches

How do we understand, explain and critique relationship between gender and power

Three perspectives of feminism in organisational communication

1. Liberal feminism
2. Radical feminism
3. Critical feminism

Liberal feminism (Wollstonecraft & Mill)

Organisations: Views organistions as creating barriers to women's advancement (glass ceiling)
Gender: Are social roles played by men and women; gender is variable
Communication: different comm styles reflect gender / are expression of gender roles
Goal: Equal opportunities for women and men

Radical feminism (Firestone & Lorde)

Organisations: Inherently patriarchal; needs alternative org rooted in women's knowledge
Gender: Essential features of women and men
Communication: Built on patriarchal meanings; needs women-centred forms of communication
Goal: World based on feminist principles, free from patriarchy

Critical feminism

Organisations: Gendered forms that construct systems of meaning and power (glass slipper)
Gender: We are accountable for our gendered performances
Communication: Linked heavily with power; communication creates gendered identities
Goal: Free women and men from systems of power that make both prisoners of gender

Glass ceiling

Metaphorical ceiling preventing women from progressing in organisational hierarchies

Two important phenomena in understanding link between gender and organisational communication

1. Tokenism
2. Homosocial reproduction

Tokenism

Condition whereby a person finds themselves identified as a minority in a dominant culture - visible within organisations, so any mistake is amplified and competence is overlooked

Characteristics of tokens

1. High organisational profile
2. Perceived as contrasting significantly with members of dominant culture, such that those members exaggerate their differences from tokens
3. Is assimilated into the stereotype of their token group and not allowed by majority to function as an individual (without the label of being a token)

Homosocial reproduction

A condition that describes an organisation context in which "the men who manage reproduce themselves in kind" (men working with other men like them, facilitating biased communication flows)

Occupational ghettoes

Professions that are defined as women's occupations e.g nurses, secretaries, elementary teaching

Glass escalator

Men in female-dominated professions experience more upward mobility and get promoted more often than women (not true for minority men such as black male nurses)

Intersectional approach

Where combined effects of race, class, gender and sexuality on people's positions in society are explored

Glass cliff

The precarious position women managers find themselves in once they have succeeded in shattering the glass ceiling (e.g appointing women CEOs in times of crises and men in stable times)

Three advices for women in managerial positions (Sandberg)

1. Sit at the table - feel more confident and secure and seize opportunities when they come along
2. Don't leave before they leave - don't make family decisions prematurely and pass up career opportunities in fear of getting in the way of family
3. Make your partner a real partner - reject traditional gender roles of family and staying home - get more men to stay home

Limitations of Sandbergs arguments

1. Treats women as a single, undifferentiated category - ignores structural intersectionality
2. Too focused on what individual women can do to empower themselves, instead of collective forms of empowerment (focused on individual rather than structure)

Limitations of Liberal Feminist approach

1. Places responsibility on women to adapt to male-dominated organisational environment - doesn't ask for changes in men / structure
2. Largely a women-in-management approach - neglects minorities and working-class not in that position
3. Treats gender as a variable, not a constitutive feature of everyday organisational life

Aim of radical feminism

Transforming various patriarchal features of society through developing alternative women-centred ways of thinking, feeling and acting

Features of collectivist women-based organisations

1. Authority resides in collective, not individuals
2. Minimal enforcement of rules, not bureaucratic
3. Social relations are personal and of value in themselves, not goal-driven
4. Recruitment and advancement based on friends and shared values rather than specialised training
5. Power distributed in egalitarian manner - individuals don't have power over collective
6. Division of labour minimised - promotes sharing jobs and functions

Why collectivist women-based organisations don't exist

1. Essentialist approach to gender issues - assumes women and men have inherent characteristics and that women's characteristics are superior to men's
2. Separatist philosophy - women-only rule isn't inclusive and naturalises differences in men and women
3. Disconnected organisation - organisations have to be integrated with other organisations to survive - these were limited to women-only organisations

Feminist-bureaucratic control

(A contemporary feminist organisation's efforts to adopt) a hybrid structure that combines feminist values with the bureaucratic formalisation of organisational goals and principles

Advantages of critical feminism approach

1. Views gender as a socially constructed phenomenon that is subject to change
2. Views gender not as an organisational variable to be studied separately from other organisational phenomena but as a defining, constitutive feature of everyday organisational life
3. Focuses on ways organisation members do/perform gender
4. Enables us to look closely at the relationships among gender, work and power

Gender accountability

How each of us is constantly held accountable for adequate performance of masculinities and femininities, with each performance judged in terms of the social context it occurs

Glass slipper (Ashcraft)

The alignment of occupational identity with embodied social identities as it yields systematic forms of advantage and disadvantage - draws attention to the ways certain forms of identity are deemed to fit more naturally with certain professions (Cinderella and her slipper)

Hegemonic masculinity

dominant view of what it currently means to be masculine - aggressiveness, strong heterosexuality, assertiveness, independence

3 motivations for men to go to hair salon instead of barbershop

1. Enjoy salon as a place of leisure, luxury and pampering
2. Form personalised relationships with their hair stylists
3. Obtain a stylish haircut that they view as reflecting a white, professional aesthetic

Two forms of sexual harassment

1. Hostile environment - conduct directed at a person because of their sex interferes with the person's ability to perform their job
2. Quid pro quo - harasser demands sexual favours with the promise of preferred treatment regarding employment or evaluation