The prevailing metaphor for understanding the persistence of gender inequalities in universities is the "chilly climate." Women faculty sometimes resist descriptions of their workplaces as "chilly" ...and deny that gender matters even in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. I draw on interviews with women academics (N=102) to explore this apparent paradox, and I offer a theoretical synthesis that may help explain it. I build on insights from Ridgeway and Acker to demonstrate that women do experience gender at work, but the contexts in which they experience it have implications for how they understand gender s importance and whether to respond. Specifically, I find that women are likely to minimize or deny gender's importance in interactions. When it becomes salient in structures and cultures, women understand it differently. Placing gender in organizational contexts can better inform our understanding of gender inequality at work and can help in crafting more effective efforts to foster gender equity.
When most people think of prisons, they imagine chaos, violence, and fundamentally, an atmosphere of overwhelming brute masculinity. But real prisons rarely fit the Big House stereotype of popular ...film and literature. One fifth of all correctional officers are women, and the rate at which women are imprisoned is growing faster than that of men. Yet, despite increasing numbers of women prisoners and officers, ideas about prison life and prison work are sill dominated by an exaggerated image of men's prisons where inmates supposedly struggle for physical dominance.In a rare comparative analysis of men's and women's prisons, Dana Britton identifies the factors that influence the gendering of the American workplace, a process that often leaves women in lower-paying jobs with less prestige and responsibility.In interviews with dozens of male and female officers in five prisons, Britton explains how gender shapes their day-to-day work experiences. Combining criminology, penology, and feminist theory, she offers a radical new argument for the persistence of gender inequality in prisons and other organizations. At Work in the Iron Cage demonstrates the importance of the prison as a site of gender relations as well as social control.
Considerable attention has been paid recently to the gendering of organizations and occupations. Unfortunately, the gendered-organizations approach remains theoretically and empirically ...underdeveloped, as there have as yet been few clear answers to the question central to the perspective: What does it really mean to say that an organization itself, or a policy, practice, or slot in the hierarchy, is "gendered"? Reviewing literature in the gendered-organizations tradition, the author discusses three of the most common ways the perspective has been applied and argues that all of these definitions pose potential problems for the project of meaningful social and organizational change. The article concludes with some suggestions about how a more useful conception of the gendered organization might be built.
In this paper, we explore the context for the emergence of a theory of gendered organizations and define the basic features of the approach, noting the explosion of scholarship in the area and the ...now firmly established trend toward understanding gender, race, class, and sexuality as aspects of social structures. We focus on three of the most important emerging areas in research on gendered organizations: the study of intersectionality, the increasing emphasis on the importance of organizational context, and the exploration of mechanisms for organizational change. We conclude by briefly noting prospects for the further development of research on gendered organizations.
DANA M. BRITTON (2007-2011) BRITTON, DANA M.
Gender & society,
06/2011, Volume:
25, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The Gender & Society journal celebrates 25 years of publishing feminist scholarship. In the first year of the journal, 1986, they received 94 manuscripts; during the calendar year 2010 they received ...465. The journal has moved from a shoestring budget to a well-funded enterprise that is the envy of many other professional societies (and the regret, perhaps, of the American Sociological Association, which turned down that initial invitation to sponsor the journal). Here, Britton reveals on how she has been shaped as a scholar and current editor of this journal by the feminist sociology that her predecessors helped to create. Moreover, she expresses her gratitude to the people who made her work as an editor possible.
keeping rank britton, dana m.
Contexts (Berkeley, Calif.),
10/2012, Volume:
11, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Open access
Sociologist Dana M. Britton examines barriers to advancement in the academy, focusing on long-term associate professors. In particular, she draws attention to the role of “institutional ...reproduction”—teaching, advising, and service—as a barrier to advancement.
This article uses Acker's theory of gendered organizations to frame an analysis of the ways in which policies and practices in a men's and a women's prison reflect and reproduce gendered ...inequalities. The article offers a working definition of one of Acker's key theoretical concepts, the notion of "gendered organizational logic." Then, using interview data collected from correctional officers in a men's and a women's prison, the article examines the ways in which officer training and assignments, although designed to be nominally generic, assume a male worker and disproportionately benefit male officers working in men's institutions. These findings imply that the perspective could more usefully be conceived as a theory of "masculinized" organizations.
Beyond the Chilly Climate Britton, Dana M
Gender & society,
02/2017, Volume:
31, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The prevailing metaphor for understanding the persistence of gender inequalities in universities is the "chilly climate." Women faculty sometimes resist descriptions of their workplaces as "chilly" ...and deny that gender matters even in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. I draw on interviews with women academics (N=102) to explore this apparent paradox, and I offer a theoretical synthesis that may help explain it. I build on insights from Ridgeway and Acker to demonstrate that women do experience gender at work, but the contexts in which they experience it have implications for how they understand gender's importance and whether to respond. Specifically, I find that women are likely to minimize or deny gender's importance in interactions. When it becomes salient in structures and cultures, women understand it differently. Placing gender in organizational contexts can better inform our understanding of gender inequality at work and can help in crafting more effective efforts to foster gender equity.
This article examines the relationship between race and sex and perceptions of the work environment among correctional officers. It addresses four central questions: (1) Are there race and sex ...differences among correctional officers in their perceptions of the work environment? (2) Do characteristics of the job and the institutions in which officers work account for these differences? (3) Do these differences attenuate over time? (4) Are there factors that mediate the relationship between race and sex and perceptions of the work environment? These issues are explored using data drawn from the correctional officer sub‐sample (N= 2,979) of the 1992 administration of the Prison Social Climate Survey. Findings indicate that race and sex do play a role in shaping officers’ perceptions of the work environment, that these differences between groups are not completely accounted for by job or institutional characteristics and do not attenuate over time, and that there are factors that mediate the relationship between race and sex and workplace perceptions. Among minority male officers, greater efficacy in working with inmates appears to be an important factor in creating lower levels of job stress, while white female officers’ higher levels of overall job satisfaction are accounted for largely by a more positive evaluation of the quality of supervision.
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