Gender Structure In Developing A More Family-Friendly University Workplace

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Gender Structure In Developing A More
Family-Friendly University Workplace

• by
• Helen Mederer
• Jessica Holden Sherwood
• Barbara Silver
• Presenting at AHS 2008, November 8
• jessicasherwood_at_mail.uri.edu

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workplace workforce

• The Ideal Worker devoted to job without
  interruption (Williams 2000)
• The Ideal Family contains a worker
• Cultural contradiction
• workplace workforce are mismatched

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• Lets change the workplace.
• How?
• 3-level model of gender structure
• Individual
• Interactional
• Institutional
• (Risman 2004)
• No level is primary all need intervention.

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Individual level

• Attitudes and behaviors
• e.g. survey Q Do you support
• this level tends not to be the source of change,
  despite American ideology
• Examples
• Division of household work
• Corporate diversity policy (Kalev 2006)
• Race racism (Bonilla-Silva 1996)

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Institutional level

• Necessary (insight of sociology)
• Policies are insufficient alone
• Unequal availability/implementation
• Bias avoidance (Drago 2007)
• The low rate of policy usage suggests that
  academic parents are not being encouraged to use
  them, are afraid to do so, or both. (ASA
  Resources or Rewards? 2006)
• They just enable the Ideal Worker.

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Interactional level

• fed by prejudice, cognitive bias, statistical
  discrimination, social closure around desirable
  employment opportunities, and network-based
  recruitment (Tomaskovic-Devey and Stainback
  2007)
• e.g. status expectations that lead people to make
  gendered assumptions (Ridgeway 1997)
• second generation discrimination subtle,
  entrenched, unnoticed in organizational
  structures (Sturm 2001)

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Campus Implementation

• Climate change
• Work-Life
• Recruitment
• Institutional funding Fellows
• Interactional climate awareness/commitment
• Faculty development
• Institutional awards, mentoring, networking
• Interactional fosters collegiality
• Individual psychosocial/cultural teachings

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• Successful
• But
• Must ascend the structural ladder
• (Cancian Oliker 2000, Tronto 2002)

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Whats required

• Stop reacting with accommodations
• Instead of the E.R., adopt a preventive care
  model
• Redefine work The Worker
• Caring as a de-gendered social good
• gender-neutral support
• Offer expect it for caring work
• Offer expect it in workplaces
• Ethical and economic payoff