Women in Organisations: Challenging Gender Politics

Citation

Dick, P. (1998), "Women in Organisations: Challenging Gender Politics", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 206-207. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijm.1998.19.3.206.5

Women in Organisations: Challenging Gender Politics is concerned with the position of women within a variety of occupational sectors. The book sets out, via a series of organizational case studies, to examine the reasons for gender‐ based inequality, and, within this general framework, attempts to understand the attitudes, aspirations, and behaviour of women themselves. The book examines eight organizations: the Health Service, retailing, publishing, trades unions, teaching, public transport, Customs and Excise and personnel. In addition to these eight case study chapters, there is an introductory chapter which sets the context of the book, by describing the broad business environment within which the position of women has evolved and continues to develop, and by describing an analytical framework to understand the behaviours and attitudes of women within the case study organizations. Broadly, this framework is concerned with women’s consciousness of gender politics and the strategies which women use to manage both their careers and their gender within these organizations.

Each chapter begins with an examination of the major historical and contextual influences on the position of women in the case study organization and then goes on to focus on the experiences of women themselves, concentrating on the key areas set out in the introductory chapter: career aspirations, career and gender management strategies. The case studies are all based on survey type research, supported by in‐depth interviews. Each chapter concludes with a section summarizing the research findings and drawing out the major themes to emerge from the case study research. There is an overall concluding chapter which attempts to draw the major themes from all the case studies into an integrated analysis of those strategies and contextual factors which appear to be most successful in assisting the removal or diminution of gender inequalities.

Women in Organisations provides a useful and up‐to‐date review of women’s advancement and progress within organizations. It is also useful to hear some views from the horse’s mouth regarding women’s experiences of, and attitudes towards, organizations with a considerable history of patriarchy. The analytical framework employed by the editors is also useful for a better understanding of how and why women differ in the strategies they use to manage their gender and their careers, and the analysis at the end of the book is helpful in terms of understanding the types of contextual factor which can help or hinder equality issues in organizations. For example, the editors argue that strongly gendered organizational cultures can make it more difficult for women to be active in the sense of pushing for equality.

Because the research base for all the case studies is survey and interview, however, the book does not always get to grips with some of the more assumptive features of gender issues in organizations. For example, many chapters deal with the notion of commitment, arguing that women do demonstrate the same levels of commitment as their male counterparts. However, very few of the chapters which deal with this notion actually challenge the concept of commitment and the fact that in most organizations this concept is concerned with the amount of time people are seen to invest at work (i.e. simply being there). Commitment will always, therefore, be something a lot of women (and men) with (and without) children will not appear to demonstrate. Does this, however, mean they are less effective than their “committed” counterparts?

Overall, a useful though not particularly novel contribution to gender issues in organizations. Likely to be of interest to both academics and students.