To what extent does gender influence the processes of securing paid employment, the status and expectations of a work role, and workplace interactions and relationships?

that women’s role in society must belong within a child-rearing and nursing capacity

(Basow, 1992) and not a business-minded vocation.

The occupational segregation has been viewed as one of the main reasons for the

gender pay gap (House of Common, 2005). The gender pay gap has been defined as

the differences between women's and men's average earnings (weekly full-time

equivalent). Despite the introduction of the 1970 Equal Pay Act, women still earn

around 15-18 percent less than men in full-time employment and between 37-40 per

cent of part-time employment (ONS, 2013). The Fawcett Society, an organisation

which contemporarily fights for women’s equality, had found that as a consequence

of such pay structures women now in fact work “free from November” (The

Guardian, 2016). This is cause for concern as three months worth of income for

anyone regardless of gender is huge, it is evident that some form of subtle

discrimination is taking place as women’s work is devalued severely. However many

contend that due to lifestyles and influences have in their life (childbirth, childcare,

elderly care) women prefer to take time out from work which the statistics do not take

into account (Halbert and Inguli, 2014).

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Overall, women can expect to earn significantly less than men over their entire

careers as a result of differences in caring responsibilities, clustering in low skilled

and low paid work, the qualifications and skills women acquire, and outright

discrimination.

Women, as a result, start to lose ambition and become engrossed and constrained into

these feminised low paid-positions due to becoming convinced that they do not

acquire the masculine characteristics needed to become an ‘effective leader’ (Cann

and Siegfried, 1990; Oakley, 2000). To become the ‘successful businesswoman’

women must lose their feminine characteristics and womanhood.

Status and expectations

Employees are expected to manage and adhere their emotions, physicality and attire

to fit the organisations brand and identity. There are two main processes in which this

is conducted: emotional labour and aesthetic labour.

Emotional labour is characterised by the ways in which employers manipulate and

routinise workers by commercialising their emotions by “inducing or suppressing

feelings in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of

mind… a coordination of mind and feeling”, (Hochschild, 1983:7). Hochschild

(1983) uses the examples of the overly-zealous, smiling flight attendant against the

stern, deflating bill collector as a means of projecting the polar opposite ways in

which feelings are managed. The sets of feeling attached to each role are different due

to the expectation of the job; the flight attendant must enhance the customers status

above their own as they “are never wrong” (Hochschild, 1983:139).Whereas the bill

collector uses “anti-apathetic” or “negative” emotions (Rafaeli and Sutton, 1989;

Korczynski. 2003) in the form of demoralising customers to retrieve payment.

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Hochschild (1983) uses the examples of the friendly, smiling flight attendant against

the stern, deflating bill collector as a way projecting the strikingly polar opposite

ways in feelings are managed. Hochschild (1983) states that the employee’s feelings

and emotions are given to them at work, meaning that they lose all senses of their

identity, as the employer has purchased them for use in the creation of profit. This

once again links in with Marx’s theory of alienation; the worker essentially sells their

commodity for money. Subsequently, they use their wages to purchase commodities

which are necessary for survival in society, as a result, they have no money left and

restart this procedure again hence become puppets in capitalism (Churchich, 1990;

Bratton, Denham and Deutschmann, 2009).

Aesthetic labour refers to the commodification of employees’ face, voices and

appearance into interactive work, where employees bodies become “valorised and

converted into economic capital for the organisation (Witz, Warhurst and Nickson,

2003:40-41). Aesthetic labour is crucial to consumer capitalism, in general, this

applies to women in the labour market, more predominantly front-line retail workers.

Retailers subtlety discriminate against workers whose appearance is not “slim, toned,

youthful and blemish free” (Fineman, 2011:71) which projects what a “woman ought

to look like” (Fireman, 2011:71). Similarly, the physical appearance of flight

attendants is scrutinised and discriminated against as only female hostesses must

manage and monitor their bodies as they are subject periodic weigh-ins in which they

will be disciplined for not maintaining the ‘companies’ body. Heyes (2006) uses the

Foucauldian notion of self-surveillance to discuss this further as the worker would

attempt to construct and nurture a new ‘self’ by forms of dieting and exercising to

conform to the companies guidelines

Similarly, aesthetic labour also takes place in male-dominated roles such as; bouncers

and bill collectors. Bouncers are employed by their traditional hegemonic masculine

traits, such as physicality and violence, and is commodified for nightlife culture as a

means for protection (Hobbs, Hadfield, Lister and Widow, 2002). The ability for man

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to project a forceful, masculine identity is utilised performatively due to the

assumption that big men are hard men (Winlow, Hobbs, Hadfield, and Lister, 2001).

Aspects of their appearance such as height, weight, the muscle become surveilled by

fellow night workers and clubs as they assess whether or not the bouncer is

competent to regulate disruptive customers. If the bouncer to lacking in one of the

mentioned aspects, their masculinity would be ridiculed and stigmatised (Monaghan,

2002). Hence a further male hierarchy, which excludes and includes, is constructed

within men in service work. Bouncers who are deemed as tall and muscular are

classed as the ‘superordinate' whereas ‘retail security guards’ who have non-imposing

bodies (less physicality) are seen as the subordinate “muppets” (Connell, 1995;

Monaghan, 2002).

More recently, however, workers are pitted against both emotional and aesthetic

simultaneously, from my experience working in retail at Next PLC. Retail workers

are increasingly becoming overly policed and surveillance by the company with the

use of ‘mystery shoppers’. Mystery shoppers, sent by management, disguise

themselves as ordinary customers who assess and scrutinise workers in relation to a

check list. Employees are personally assessed on a never-ending checklist in which

they ‘must’ meet, e.g. smart attire is worn, personal hygiene and appearance are

satisfactory, wide product knowledge are good (Cook, 2002; Wasson, 2012). From a

personal experience if workers fail to meet the criteria they face losing their month’s

bonus (along with all the retail workers) and are apprehended by management who

‘record card’ workers (formal disciplinary).

Research also suggests that not only do aesthetic and emotional labour combine,

flight attendants now also have to suffer the wrath of an additional third form of

labour, “sexually-commodified labour” (Hochschild, 1983; Tyler and Abbott, 1998).

Flight attendants are expected to assume the role of “part mother, part servant, part

tart” (Tyler and Abbott, 1998:440), in which they attend to the sexual desires of men.

Women and flying in the air become part of a sexualised ‘fantasy’ for men

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(Hochschild, 1983:93-4) flight attendants unwillingly must take part in this

sexualised role-play or face the paying customer complaining. This reinforces the

subordinate, societal position women are in, women lose all sources of freedom and

rights to men who use capitalism as a means of controlling women.

Harassment: form of ‘control.'

Harassment in the workplace is the final form of ‘patriarchal control’ in this

discussion; there are two main forms this occurs in, management environment and

customer service environment.

When management is involved this tends to be of a sexual nature, where “unwanted

imposition of sexual requirements in the context of a relationship of unequal

power” (MacKinnon, 1979:1). This form of discrimination takes place when women

enter non-traditional places of employment. Along with their minority status which

they hold, these women become “greatly visible, polarised and isolated, highlighting

the incongruity between sex role and work role leading to harassment” (Herring and

Henderson, 2014:85). This is evident in Collinson and Collinson’s study (1996) as

they examine the sexual harassment experiences of women 'life assurance sales

managers' against their immediate boss, ironically named “Dick”. Jenny had been

subject to sexual advances both in a professional and non-professional field, where

Dick routinely would unzip his trousers insinuating sexual intercourse and that she

did not know “what she was missing” (Collinson and Collinson, 1996:34).

Sheila, another manager, had accepted sexual harassment as part of her daily routine

and did not feel the need to report Dick’s sexual advancements. Instead, she would

manage her feelings and retain control of the situation by laughing at the situation

and make it into ‘locker room’ banter with the other male workers (Collinson and

Collinson, 1996:36). Both Jenny and Sheila had taken polar opposite methods in

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dealing with sexual harassment, namely ‘resistance’ and ‘integration’. Sheila, in fact,

had made a mindful effort to distance herself away from Jenny which for her was a

career move, as she did not wish to be associated with her. What is interesting here is

that Dick had gone to further lengths with Sheila than he had with Jenny, which had

positioned Sheila in a more vulnerable light as he had proved to “get away with

it” (Collinson and Collinson, 1996:38).

Women, just like Jenny, feel the backlash of accusing men of sexual advances as

management continuously dismiss any complaints as pure whingeing by a

“complaining feminist” (Collinson and Collinson, 1996: 36) or would blame the

victim for becoming confrontational and causing a scene.

There was a sense of unity amongst fellow female workers they all had felt the need

and ‘obligation’ to provide informal advice to new female recruits in the form of

avoiding certain people, Dick, and places at work, for instance ’gropers alley’ also

known as the “badly-lit filling room.”

In a retail environment, hostility and harassment can occur during a face-to-face

encounter with a disgruntled customer or in a phone-to-phone encounter where a

customer is dissatisfied with the service. Researchers have identified this field of

employment, call-centre workers, having significantly receiving rude, racial and

dehumanising forms of behaviour from customers (Healy, 2000; Korczynski, 2002;

Nath 2011).

Workers as part of their role for Indian call-centres must adapt and display distinct

Western accents (Bryson, 2007). As well as use Western pseudonyms during

customer interactions to disillusion customers from their Indian identity to fit the

company’s national identity (D’Cruz and Noronha, 2008; Poster, 2007). Inevitably

customers tend to discover such “flaw” which discredits and “stigmatises” these

workers (Nath, 2011:710). In this scenario, both the customer and the company are

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forcing the worker to manage and “conceal their disreputable (Indian)

markers” (Nath, 2011:710) which inevitably leaves the worker suffering from low

self-esteem, anxiety and forms of depression (Link and Phelan, 2001).

Walby (1988) theorised sexual harassment as a patriarchal control strategy used by

men to keep women in “their place” (Walby, 1988). She argues that sexual

harassment is about control of women, Cockburn contends that men’s social power

gives them a degree of ‘sexual authority’ in the workplace which conveys the

message to women that “you’re only a woman…and at that level your vulnerable to

me and any man” (1991: 142). The use of the word ‘vulnerable’ places women in a

marginalised position as they viewed as a ‘prey’ only for the animalistic pleasures of

men who

Conclusion

It has become increasingly apparent the discourses around gender plays a

fundamental role in influencing the types of role men and women are ‘assigned’ as

suited to their socially constructed role in society. The construction of gendered roles

is intrinsically linked to the status and expectations of a work role, interlocking the

process by which men and women are deemed as performing the role of their

‘biology’ (Oakley, 1974). Workplace interactions and relationships are heavily

subjected to the gender encompassed; women are viewed as caregivers and therefore

are largely able to secure domestic duties which is socially constructed as a ‘natural’

part of womanhood (Williams, 1993; Carreon, Cassedy and Borman, 2013).Similarly,

the male sex is assigned paid employment that is viewed as corresponding with their

‘assigned’ gender; with their ‘natural role’ occupying the labour force, of which

highlights their ‘masculinity’ and enables them to ‘perform’ their gender as the

natural breadwinner (Ross, 2016).

Gender plays a significant role in influencing the processes of whether women will

secure paid employment in the face of gendered institutional structures. Feminists

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have highlighted how institutional structures that reproduce the current expectations

of an unpaid role are also emerging as supporting women’s current subordinate

position in the face of paid work. The discourse and gender ideology consumed by

society is reflected in the ways in which women’s paid work often mirrors their

unpaid work; the belief they are the natural gender to encompass service work

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