Gender At Work

At a time when some corporate women leaders are advocating for their aspiring sisters to ‘lean in’ for a bigger piece of the existing pie, this book puts the spotlight on the deep structures of organizational culture that hold gender inequality in place. Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations makes a compelling case that transforming the unspoken, informal institutional norms that perpetuate gender inequality in organizations is key to achieving gender equitable outcomes for all. The book is based on the authors’ interviews with 30 leaders who broke new ground on gender equality in organizations, international case studies crafted from consultations and organizational evaluations, and lessons from nearly fifteen years of experience of Gender at Work, a learning collaborative of 30 gender equality experts. From the Dalit women’s groups in India who fought structural discrimination in the largest ‘right to work’ program in the world, to the intrepid activists who challenged the powerful members of the UN Security Council to define mass rape as a tactic of war, the trajectories and analysis in this book will inspire readers to understand and chip away at the deep structures of gender discrimination in organizational policies, practices and outcomes. Designed for practitioners, policy makers, donors, students and researchers looking at gender, development and organizational change, this book offers readers a widely tested tool of analysis – the Gender at Work Analytical Framework – to assess the often invisible structures of gender bias in organizations and to map desired strategies and change processes.

Providing a unique insight into how gender is performed in contemporary high-tech work and introducing a creative and novel way of analyzing the fluidity and rigidity of gender at work through discourse analytic methods the author highlights how changes in the world of work interact with changes in gender relations.

Three themes are drawn together in this book: gender and sexuality, the organisation of work, and the impact of technological change. Their inter-relationship is explored in six area studies: manufacturing, banking, retailing, computing, nursing and housework. Gender at Work presents an account of how each area has changed since the Second World War; sets out ways in which the notion of what constitutes 'proper' work for men and women changes with new work processes; and analyses the prospects for, and limits of, sexual 'equality' in the workplace. Based on the first-hand observations of workers, reflecting on their work experience, this book allows workers to speak for themselves: they reveal the centrality of gender to the way capitalism is organised. 'A notable contribution, both to feminist and labour studies in Australia and further afield. Every woman, whether at home or in the paid workforce, should read this book. It will help her assess exactly what she is - and should be - worth to the community, and how she can help to ensure her true evaluation.' - Newcastle Herald 'A very readable book which makes a major theoretical and descriptive contribution to the analysis of gender in Australian Society.' - Journal of Industrial Relations 'A convincing demonstration of the central place of gender in the work relationships between men and women. The insights it provides, into the underlying causes of the sex division of tasks and the way in which new jobs in any individual setting quickly become sex-typed, are important for any manager of a mixed workplace.' - Practising Manager

A timely work that reviews the phenomenon of gender and its many manifestations of equality. Well-suited for increasing awareness and justice in academic and professional environments, this collective work addresses long-standing and ongoing social problems such as discrimination, stereotyping, prejudice, as well as a plethora of societal and industry influences that sustain the trend of gender imbalance. Aiming to span a broad scope in time, backgrounds and implementation, this book presents a wide variety of topics, including a historical overview, contemporary gender-based Issues, gender approaches across the disciplines, and cultural influences. The reader is guaranteed to confront existing biases when digesting topics related to gender communication differences, stereotypes, tensions and resistances, assigned social roles, transgenderism, non-binary identities, tension fields between equality and equity, relational aggression, and more. A critical underlying aim of this book is to contribute constructively and progressively to the dialogue on the definition of gender, thus addressing an ongoing challenge for policy makers, organizational leaders, and scholars.

Gender equality is a moral and a business imperative. But unconscious bias holds us back and de-biasing minds has proven to be difficult and expensive. Behavioral design offers a new solution. Iris Bohnet shows that by de-biasing organizations instead of individuals, we can make smart changes that have big impacts—often at low cost and high speed.

Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn’t. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. What Is Work? offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.

"By analyzing the process of work in both the electrical and the automobile industries, the supplies of male and female labor available to each, the varying degrees of labor-intensive work, the proportion of labor costs to total costs, and the extent of male resistance to female entry into the industry before, during, and after the war, Milkman offers a historically grounded and detailed examination of the evolution, function, and reproduction of job segregation by sex." -- Journal of American History "Analytic sophistication is coupled with a powerfully rendered narrative: the reader strides briskly along, enjoying one provocative insight after another while simultaneously absorbed by the drama of the events." -- Women's Review of Books

Gender Equality at Work is a practical, easy-to-implement guide for HR practitioners on how to use gender mainstreaming as a strategy to address gender equality in the workplace. Gender Equality at Work will show you how to circumvent many of the barriers to implementing gender mainstreaming. You'll also learn how to create a more enabling environment at work for gender equality initiatives, as well as how to: - Get senior management buy-in - Implement company gender policies and practical corporate guidelines - Develop a gender equality action plan - Operationalise gender equality - Implement sustainable gender equality campaigns And more! This is an essential handbook for any executive who wants to change the gender equality initiatives in their organisation. Unlock practical, easy-to-implement solutions to address gender equality in the workplace.