gender blind organisation

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

A Case Analysis on a Gender Blind Organisation

Introduction

If an organisation expresses a gender regime, which systematically devalues everything connected with the female, the organisation can never become democratic, whatever affirmative action it may introduce, and whatever equal opportunity legislation may be promulgated (Gherardi, 1995).

Most of us believe in the autonomy of the individuals and his or her rights to equality, freedom of choice and personal self-fulfillment. We live in what we call a democracy and would like to believe our organisations treat the individuals who live and work in them with fairness and respect. But those who work in organisations are not all equal or enlightened and there are formidable barriers, particularly toward women, preventing their advancement and creating hurdles in order to have them slipped before they climb over the organisation’s success ladder.

Many organisations are dominated by gender related values that bias organisation life in favour of one sex over another. Thus, organisations often segment opportunity, structures, and job markets in ways that enable men to achieve position of prestige and power more early than women, often operate in ways that produce gender related biases in the way organisation reality is created and sustained in a day to day basis. This is most obvious in the situation of open discrimination and the various forms of sexual harassment that often pervade the culture of the organisation in a way that it is much less visible (Morgan, 1986).

This case study shows a gender blind organisation, which portrayed gender sensitivities, a culture of male dominancy and poor leadership with inadequate communication channels. The culture of this organisation ignores a woman’s identity and experience, and does not give opportunities for career progression. This blindness grew out of an illusion that every one is male. The organisation exhibited favoritism towards the male side of the firm with little consideration towards the female side. The culture adopted has influenced the way of thinking of management and the male side of the firm, in such a way that they see themselves rather more influential in the company and this sense of powerfulness has obstructed the growth of women.

The Case study Analysis:

Within the framework of Jersey Packers case study, one can perceive that the structure of the workplace makes it difficult for women to compete on equal terms with men. There was an absence of women representation, particularly in the higher level of management. This is an organisation where gender balance is not a concern for the employers as well as employees. An organisation whose practices is not gender neutral, but have largely been designed by men, for men, with organisational cultures which value masculine over feminine work styles. There was lack of support from superiors to closely examine the chaotic situation and take adequate corrective measures to develop a policy in which women are accepted, respected and are provided ample opportunities to work in friendly environment workplace. There are evidences of negative stereotyping about women’s abilities and career commitment, poor understandings of the challenges women face at the workplace, lack of advisors for women (“mentoring”), exclusion of women from communication networks, and limited opportunities for career development. There has been less likely of any sort of gender integration and the degree of management support, encouragement and motivation are not evidently noticeable.

There is a gender gap in the management of the organisation as the cultural perspective of the organisation creates different patterns of values and norms for men and women. This differential has led the organisation towards a culture, which associates each sex with specific attributes, qualities and symbols, of male dominancy in which people behaved differently towards women. This dominant culture is, indeed, constructed by the influential people of the organisation where there were little efforts to give both sexes same identity and sense of belongings and there have been little efforts to diversify and institutionalize the culture of the organization. The prevailing work ethics are obviously inefficient towards women and the treatment towards women seemingly unfavorable.

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The organisation’s top management did not encourage Cindy Wanstall to take on more challenging roles and responsibilities. Their leadership practice was poor as well. They could not control the attitudes of her supervisor and other employees towards her. Generally, the behavior of management and senior managers did not encourage treating women equally. There were no efforts for encouragement, support and career development from her superiors. There was also a lack of social support from people at work. There were blockages in communication, lack of appreciation of the need to communicate and lack of skill in overcoming the many formidable barriers to communication. Also, the appraisal mechanism employed to gauge employees’ performance was not clear. Management also did not make any concrete attempt to value their commitment. In addition, the idea of improving quality, the institutionalized passivity, performing routine and passive jobs were other concerns where the management were reluctant to look at them closely and to formulate sound strategies to tackle.

Cindy Wanstall was prepared to work hard for her place in the organisation despite the initial fear imbedded in her by the Marketing Manager, John Ransom, during her induction. He told her that she should not expect to be treated sympathetically for being a woman. He even notified her that he would not be available to give her any form of support, as he would be too busy to supervising the brand managers. From the onset, Ransom had blocked any form of communication channel that Wanstall might have found useful during her tenure at the company. He had created a culture that lacks trust and does not encourage cooperation. Despite all the barriers created, she still wanted to make obvious contributions to the firm, prove to be the first woman to break into that male-dominant firm, and obtain higher position in the organisational hierarchy (See Appendix 1).

Despite all her performance, her efforts were frustrated. Her immediate superior presenting an unbiased free performance review unfairly judged her performance. This clarified that the management of Jersey Packer does not promote equal opportunity rights on sex basis. Wanstall knew that her performance review was unfair but she managed to convince to some extent her line manager that his appraisal was unjustifiably done. The exclusion, alienation and prejudice Wanstall experienced from both the males at work and corporate policies resulted in her feeling totally isolated, undervalued and demotivated. Her only coping mechanism was to quit the job. Thus, the protective male rituals had satisfactorily continued to perform their original function, in providing an exclusive ‘haven’ for men.

Theories/Concepts/Perspectives:

In this case study, traditionally managerial effectiveness has been judged by male values and standards. Interestingly, organisational theories – which we can take to be a specific kind of literature, a cultural product claim to be gender neutral, to refer to genderless organisations employing disembodied workers. However, there is an implicit subtext to this literature, which assumes that workers are male, that managers are men with virile characteristics, and that organisations are the symbolic locus of production just as the home is the locus of reproduction. The feminist critique of traditional organisational theory targeted precisely this purported neutrality, charging that organisational theories are gendered (Hearn and Parkin, 1983) and in a manner such as to perpetuate the male domination and gender based social inequality. Thus, when one discovers that the purported ‘gender neutrality’ of organisations is a falsehood (Ferguson, 1984), one must learn to recognise the prestructuring of management, workplaces and the organisation in gender assumption, rules and values, without forgetting that gender is a pervasive symbol of the power relation.

Many organisations are dominated by gender related values that bias organisation life in favour of one sex over another (Morgan 1986: 178). They lack gender balance, which is an ideal situation where women and men can work harmoniously enjoying equal opportunities and have unusual respect for each other. Thus organisations often express a symbolic order of gender which creates a subordinate difference, female and male domains, segregated occupations, differences in status, power and knowledge, enabling men to achieve positions of prestige and power than women of the same position. This is most obvious in the situations of open discrimination that often pervade the culture of the organisation in a way that it is much less visible. Stereotyped as ‘too emotional’, women are consequently excluded from managerial positions with the exceptions of the few who display an ability to ‘think like a man’. Meanwhile, men’s managerial careers are often constructed with the help of the invisible support of women as secretaries and wives (Collinson & Hearn, 1996). Even within the same occupation, gender cannotations alter as women climbs the prestige ladder. As Podmore and Spender’s (1986) study of the legal profession has shown, men are more frequently employed in more prestigious jobs in commercial or criminal law, and they work with male clients. Women more often do deskwork, handle matrimonial lawsuits, deal with women and devote themselves to tasks, which require ‘caring qualities’.

Women are rightful members of the organisations in which they work, but in actual fact, to use Judi Marshall’s words (1984), they are ‘travellers in a male world’. And as travellers, they acquire different identities in different structured rational and cultural contexts. They are not being assimilated into business organisations to the same extend as men. Numerically, women make up 47% of the workforce in the U.K (Sly, 1993). Both through their presence in the workplace and in a growing number of occupations, women pose a challenge to the traditional gendered division of labour prevalent in most organizations (Redclift and Sinclair, 1991). Yet as recently being reported by Hewlett, women are not “making it into upper management, they remain heavily concentrated in the lower half of the pyramid” (1986, p. 74). Evidently the issue is not women’s actual leadership behavior but it’s the inability of the “corporate tribe” to accept women as equal members. They occupy the lower and middle ranks of the organisation, have unequal access to training and promotion, encounter difficulty entering male dominated professions, and are paid less than men for equal work, despite the rapid rise in women’s labour force participation over the past two decades, constituting approximately half of the workforce in many countries.

It may be superfluous to insist that organisations are not distinct from society, and that they internally reflect the patriarchal system of their environment; a patriarchal system, which, combined with technocracy (Burris, 1989) assigns women to a subordinate role and forces them to adapt to the inequality of the genders. Women are filtered into a narrow range of occupation that tends to mirror assumed low-status job. Women’s entry in the labor force is restricted by a set of values, which are developed and exerted in the culture of the organisation in order to suppress women’s growth and advancement so that they will not be able to take up higher management position (Lgoru Report p1 – 1982). More recent evidence suggests that the position has not changed much. In the 521 local authorities in Britain there were, in 1980, only 48 women chief officers - less than one percent of the total – and only one woman as chief executives. Calas and Smircich (1993) predict that more junior managerial positions, confined to national level concerns, will continue to be feminised, downgraded and deskilled, while men move into and colonise the more powerful, prestigious and strategic globalised functions of transnational corporations.

Furthermore, organisations frequently do not recognise women’s specific needs nor value the special assets they bring to the workplace such as teamwork, intuitive skills, ability to deal with ambiguity, social and interpersonal skills, participatory management and flexibility. Women continue to suffer from occupational segregation in business organisations, despite their suitability for executive positions, and are trapped below the executive-level threshold because of the invisible cultural barriers - “the glass ceiling”. This glass ceiling is not simply a barrier for an individual based on the person’s inability to handle a higher-level job. Rather, the glass ceiling applies to women as a group who are kept from advancing higher because they are women and because they are viewed as weak elements of the workforce (Marrison, White, Van Velsor and the Conter for creative leaderships 1987, p.13). The Hansard Society’s (1990) report on women at the top identified the absence of women in positions of influence and power in management, in education, the professions, trade unions, public and political life. It confirmed that wherever they work, women typically continued to hold secondary, not primary positions.

Research findings however, show just how difficult it is to break through the glass ceiling. Studies demonstrate that even though women are often better educated and qualified than men in the same job, they still have to work harder and perform better than their male colleagues. The consequences for many women include being placed in less strategic areas of activity, not being given varied and challenging assignments, and not being exposed to the range of operations and activities which are crucial factors for climbing the ladder to management jobs.

Recommendations

Until management group changed its ethos, style and behaviour, it is unlikely that more women would wish to join it. They have to provide support for women in challenging the dominant culture at the top. They need to demonstrate commitment from the top all the way up and down the organisation. The company needs to formulate a strategy in order to create a friendly environment where there is mutual respect among employees and employers. They need to develop an environment of trust and openness where employees can express their viewpoints. They need develop the concept of group dynamics that everybody should know the ways and how groups evolve and interact. Team building, performance management, cultural change, sound leadership approach and organisational development are to be the key factors to be addressed for long-term sustainability of the company.

It is necessary for management of Jersey Packer to bring some cultural change, as the present culture of the organisation does not communicate and build the ownership of equal opportunities. It is about challenging the existing structures, attitudes and cultures in pursuit of change. Concrete steps for cause of inequality at work need to be taken so that men and women’s segregation are avoided and chances of misbehavior are prevented from its root. Women should be given more chances to acquire additional opportunities coupled with personal development. Efforts should be made that their voices are heard and their achievements are recognised. They should not deny themselves of the remarkable contributions women could make to wealth creation and the provision of services. Part of this contribution is the sense of collaboration, cooperation, participation, empowerment and involvement that women bring instinctively to their jobs. As the American feminist, Gloria Steinem, pointed out: ‘women tend to define power differently, traditional definitions of power have a lot to do with the ability to dominate other people and benefit unfairly from their work. We, as women, on the other hand, tend to define power as the ability to use our own talents and to control our own lives’ (Steinem, 1984).

They need to invest in time and resources by implementing strategies to identify cultural and structural barriers to equality of opportunity for women and to underpin the change initiative. Most importantly there is a need to change certain cultural sensitivity towards women. The ‘glass ceiling’ categorising jobs would have to be removed and gender bias in job evaluation and/or the poor systematic evaluations of performance to be corrected.

Conclusion

The organisational behaviour in the Jersey Packer firm has been ascribed as an all-male dominant organisation. They observed women’s performance through a ‘gender lens’ (Rothschild and Davies, 1994) that frequently, devalues it relative to men’s. As far as the gender issue is concerned in this case study, Cindy Wanstall was not treated fairly. Her superiors were reluctant to help, support or develop her, based on their assumptions that women could not cope in a male-dominant environment. They therefore erected barriers that would prevent her to breakthrough.

How gender is ‘done’ in an organisation is a crucial phenomenon; and how it can be ‘done’ differently is a challenge to all those who work for the organisation, and indeed to the civilizing process itself. If we are to escape the gender trap, if we are to free ourselves of the idea that there exists two and only two types of individual, if we are to ensure that social differentiation is no longer based on sexual differentiation, we must destabilize all thought which dichotomizes (either male or female) and hierarchises (male as One, as the norm, and female as the Other, the second sex) (Gherardi, 1995).

Gender equity is good for business. Faced with increasing competition in the global marketplace, an organisation’s human resources are increasingly recognised as its most precious asset. Competitive advantage, therefore, lies with organisations, which maximise the potential of their entire workforce, and address the needs and aspirations of all their workers, both male and female. Gender equity also affects the bottom line. The different perspectives, attitudes and work styles men and women bring to the workplace foster innovation and creativity. While a totally gender-free workplace may be impossible, I can envisage one that avoids valorizing men and masculinist practices that devalue women.

Bibliography

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Calas, M.B. and Smircich, L. (1993) ‘Dangerous Liaisons: the “feminine-in-management” meets “globalisation”’, Business Horizons, March/April: 71-81
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