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Women pursuing male-dominated careers face well-documented barriers to career success (e.g., stereotypes, sexual harassment, limited access to professional networks, and mentoring), which have the potential to be exacerbated or diminished by the increasing prevalence of work from home (WFH). In this chapter, the authors first review key career obstacles for women in male-dominated fields and analyse the impact of WFH on these barriers and, second, provide actionable strategies for organisations to implement WFH in a way that promotes rather than hampers the success of women in these fields. Both career obstacles and WFH remedies are considered through an overarching framework focussed on the significance of work–family boundary management, inclusion, and career advancement. Drawing on the extant research, the authors provide evidence-based, actionable guidance to help organisations and supervisors leverage WFH to support the career success of women in male-dominated careers.

In the aviation sector adversity faced by female pilots stemming from stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination are well documented. Such adversity in the workplace can cause occupational stress, which may be greater for female pilots, and this influences individual resiliency, impacting job performance and wellbeing. Resilience may be a mitigating factor for coping with occupational stress and individual resilience can be factored into an organisation’s resilience as a whole. When organisations face challenges, there is a need for resilience in order to survive and adapt during disruption and adversity. Resilience with respect to employee and workplace contexts includes both personal resources among the employees as well as workplace resources that are connected to the workplace and organisational environment. As resilience continues to emerge as part of a human capital management strategy, the need to understand the role of the workplace is magnified. For aviation, understanding resilience can potentially inform organisational interventions to address the known occupational stressors and workplace adversity to increase employee performance and well-being. The role of workplace adversity and perceptions of workplace resource availability including supportive environments are discussed in relation to how they influence employee resilience specifically in the aviation industry. The aim of this chapter is to define resilience specific to employee and workplace contexts, introduce personal and workplace resources to influence employee resilience, and discuss the role of occupational stressors specifically for women in male-dominated career fields such as aviation.

Based on a model of employee personal gender self-categorization, we examine the relationships between prejudicial attitudes and experiences of aggression in a male-dominated workplace. Data collected from 603 employees in a male-dominated global workplace revealed that individuals who self-categorize as either males or females experience differential powerful emotions. Additionally, we found that the more anger experienced by employees who self-categorize either as males or females, the stronger their female prejudicial attitudes. In contrast, we found that contempt was negatively associated with female prejudicial attitudes; that is, the more contempt experienced by employees who self-categorize either as males or females, the weaker their female prejudicial attitudes.

Sociologists have documented how women in male-dominated occupations experience subtle and overt forms of discrimination based on gender stereotypes. This study examines women professional chefs to understand how they perceive and respond to stereotypes claiming women are not good leaders, are too emotional, and are not “cut out” for male-dominated work. Many of our participants resist these stereotypes and believe that their gender has benefited them in their jobs. Using in-depth interviews with women chefs, we show that they utilize essentialist gendered rhetoric to describe how women chefs are better than their male counterparts. While such rhetoric appears to support stereotypes emphasizing “natural” differences between men and women in the workplace, we suggest that women are reframing these discourses into a rhetoric of “feminine strength” wherein women draw from gender differences in ways that benefit them in their workplaces and their careers. Our conclusion discusses the implications of our findings for gender inequality at work.

Academic literature portrays prison officers in various ways: as insensitive figures lurking in the background (Cohen & Taylor, 1972), as brutes prone to violence (Kauffman, 1988) or more positively as noble people struggling to get the job done as best as they could (Thomas, 1972). Traditionally, the role of the prison officer is overshadowed by stereotypical views of male officers being uneducated, brutish and insensitive (Crawley, 2004a). Officers were traditionally recruited to the service from a military background, an environment that is as structured and disciplined as the working conditions in the prison service. Women have worked in the prison service for many years, although historically they were confined to administration roles and were in the main, invisible. After the passing of Peel's Gaol Act (1823), only female officers could work in women's prisons, and male governors were replaced with matrons. At the time, it was felt that female demureness, good temper and compassion would rub off on the female prisoners and that reformed prisoners would emulate their behaviour (Zedner, 1991).

In England and Wales, there is a growing body of literature related to prison officers (Arnold, 2005; Crawley, 2004a; Liebling & Price, 2001; Liebling, Price, & Shefer, 2011; Tait, 2008); however, none of this is dedicated to female prison officers. Arguably, this could be due to the fact that the profession has traditionally been recognised as a male occupation, and therefore the prison officer literature has been dominated by the thoughts and actions of men. Consequently, we know little of female prison officers' experiences of working in male-dominated, masculine organisations. In particular, we know very little about female prison officers' perspectives on gender-specific issues, such as pregnancy and motherhood while working in these institutions, either on their own or the women prisoners they work with. Drawing on qualitative research in a women's prison, this chapter will focus on female prison officers as mothers and their roles and relationships with women in prison who are also mothers. The chapter will explore how gendered experiences such as pregnancy, miscarriage, child birth and child-rearing (of both the officers and women prisoners) can create unique emotional burdens for some female officers, impacting their working role, home life and relationships with the women they work with. The chapter will go on to illustrate the ways in which these female officers manage or mismanage their emotions whilst presenting as professional in this male-dominated workplace.

Only 5 per cent of commercial airline pilots worldwide are women and women who enter the profession may experience negative attitudes and differential treatment on account of their gender. Although a growing body of research has focussed on the experiences of women pilots once they are hired, there is a need to examine women’s experiences during their initial (ab initio) training when their personal and professional identities are being developed and contested. Drawing on empirical fieldwork of the experiences of both women and men ab initio pilots undergoing training at two UK-based Flight Schools, this chapter reveals that women cadets not only perceive elements of their professional identities differently from men but that they actively adopt a range of strategies to negotiate potential conflicts between their developing personal and professional identities. The chapter makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to existing studies of gender-dominated professions and offers recommendations to Flight Training Schools and airlines who are seeking to encourage more women to enter the airline pilot profession.

The public transport sector is known for high levels of violence, but women are particularly at risk of gender-based violence, including sexual harassment, from both passengers and fellow workers. Furthermore, women transport users face high rates of sexual harassment. This chapter provides evidence of the extent of gender-based violence and harassment in public transport, arguing that attention, though minimal, has been paid to the experiences of female passengers, but overlooks women workers’ experiences of gender-based violence. The chapter discusses the role of key actors in dealing with and preventing gender-based violence for both passengers and women workers. It draws on evidence from Kenya, collected as part of research for the International Transport Workers Federation on the future of work for women in public transport, and other published sources. It argues that the state (national and local), employers, trade unions and civil society actors all have a key role to play in preventing sexual harassment and gender-based violence at work, but need to do more, particularly through adopting and publicising a zero-tolerance approach to gender-based violence. It also highlights the importance of collaboration among key stakeholders for effective intervention and enforcement.

The International Labour Organisation Convention 190 on Violence and Harassment in the World of Work, with an accompanying Recommendation, came into force in June 2021. This represents a potentially powerful new framework for action on tackling and preventing violence and harassment at work that recognises the interrelated effects of gender-based violence and harassment, gender stereotypes and unequal gender power relations, which underpin occupational gender segregation. The transport sector was particularly mentioned in the Convention as an area where change is needed. The chapter briefly considers the Convention’s potential to tackle gender-based violence in the transport sector and how global trade unions are using this opportunity.

Based on in-depth interviews with 64 women in 5 Japanese firms, this chapter examines how women workers interpret workplace sexual behaviors and interactions in different organizational contexts. The chapter explores the processes by which workplace sexual interactions, including harmful behaviors, are normalized and tolerated. It discusses three types of sexual workplace interactions in Japanese firms: (1) taking clients to hostess clubs, which women workers often see as “a part of their job”; (2) playing the hostess role at after-work drinking meetings, where a certain amount of touching and groping by men is seen as “joking around” or simply as behavior that is to be expected from men; and (3) repetitive or threatening sexual advances occurring during normal working hours, which are seen as harassment and cause women to take corrective action. The chapter confirms previous studies that have shown that women's interpretations of sexual behaviors can vary from enjoyable to harmful, depending on the organizational contexts. The chapter also argues that Japanese organizational culture, through its normalization of male dominance and female subordination, fosters and obscures harmful behaviors. Eradicating harmful sexual behaviors will require firms to reevaluate sexualized workplace customs and mitigate the large gender gap in the organizational hierarchy in Japanese firms.

The focus of this chapter is intersectional bullying and harassment in the rail sector in Britain, where the workforce is male-dominated, gender-segregated and ethnically diverse. There have been significant gender and race equality issues in the sector that have resulted in a number of high profile legal cases. The authors draw on data from a trade union survey of members (Transport and Salaried Staffs Association) focussing on their experiences achieving equality at work. The survey received 1,054 useable responses. The authors have used both additive and multiplicative data analysis methods to capture the methodological debates concerning intersectional analysis. The analyses provided some varied responses, depending on the methods used, but an enduring factor was that older, ethnic minority women were the group who were most likely to feel that they had suffered bullying and harassment. The authors discuss these findings in relation to the limited legal interventions for intersectional bullying and harassment. The authors argue that employers and trade unions must develop proactive institutional responses to mitigate its damaging consequences.