Women at Work: Interviews with Women in Business Regarding Gender Inequality

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Wo(men) at Work Interviews with Women in
Business Regarding Gender Inequality

• Stephanie Roth

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Overview

• Introduction
• Review of Literature
• Theories
• Method
• Findings
• Discussion

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Thesis

• The purpose of this paper is to assess gender
  inequality in the workplace specifically how
  gendered assumptions affects women in business
  and to ascertain whether prejudices regarding
  gender occur in the professional setting and it
  hinders promotion.

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Previous Studies on Women and Careers

• Glass Ceiling
• Davis-Netzley (1998)
• Women in Colleges and Universities
• Bradley (2000) and Joy (2000)
• History
• Goldin and Katz (2000) / Blair-Loy (1999)
• Women on Corporate Boards and CEO positions
• Daily, Certo, and Dalton (1999)
• Renzulli, Aldrich, and Moody (2000)

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Theories

• Virginia Woolf
• Room of Ones Own (1929)
• Simone de Beauvoir
• The Second Sex (1953)
• Betty Friedan
• The Problem That Has No Name (1963)

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Methods

• Interviews
• Participants
• Six professional women in the Michiana region
• Selected through upon their membership to a
  professional women's organization or by using a
  snowball sampling method from contacts given by a
  member of a professional womens organization
• Procedure
• 30 open-ended questions

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Findings

• Background
• Geographic location
• Midwest
• Social Class
• Working to Middle Class
• Parental guidance
• Fathers impact
• Faith
• Roman Catholic
• Education
• Personal Information
• Relationships
• Children
• Community Positions
• Work/Life Balance

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Findings

• Geographic Area
• Midwest
• University of Notre Dame
• 100 experienced gender inequality
• Specific experiences
• No long term impact

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Discussion

• Importance of Perception
• Frequency of discrimination
• Narrow Socially Constructed View

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Questions?