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Please edit Organisational Theory EssayBelow are the tips: (i need it by 29/08/12
The ‘modernism theory’ and ‘postmodernism theory’ sections need to be shortened (probably reduce to 3/5 of the current content) and instead, more focus should be placed in the ‘apple inc. and modernism’ and ‘apple inc. and postmodernism’ sections. Please allocate approximately equal words to each section unless you feel one perspective is more useful than the other, in which case you will have to provide a justification for this assertion.
Also, the ‘organizational theory in practice – a case study of apple’s introduction’ is too long. It should just be a brief overview of apple. Approximately 1 paragraph. Maybe a portion of the information in this section can be used in the main introduction.
Apart from that, the essay is missing a conclusion at the end.
Lastly, although there are 16 references in the reference page, but more than 40 reference were used in the essay. Please reduce the use of references. Use more personal analysis rather than description. Therefore, please reduce references preferably by 15. Also, please state pages for references if possible. Especially for the (Hatch, M J & Cunliffe, A L 2006, ‘Organization Theory, 2nd edition’, Oxford University Press, Oxford) book.
NOTE: The focus in this essay is on analysis rather than description. Any description of your chosen perspectives must form part of your analysis and must contribute to the argument that you are making in the essay.
ANALYSINGTHE MODERNIST AND POST-MODERNIST ORGANIZATIONAL THEORIES IN THE APPLE ACORPORATION. 1
ANALYSING THE MODERNIST AND POST-MODERNIST ORGANIZATIONAL THEORIES IN THE APPLE ACORPORATION. 12
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INTRODUCTION
The performance of business establishments is principally established on the base of influence, variance, and resistance. There are assorted ways of comprehending the influence, control and conflicts within a business (Clegg, Kornberger & Pitsis, 2005). Some of these methods or views include the neoclassical theory perceptions, modernization, the critical theory, and symbolic-interpretive perceptions. (Linzmayer 1999) affirmed that resistance and conflicts usually take a variety of appearances, dependent on the executive structure. For instance, if a business establishment has a matrix construction it will confront inconsistencies that are related to decision-making, as a member of staff may be compelled to answer to more than one supervisor (Segal 2012).
This is particularly decisive with international corporations where managers usually report to their nation’s head of affairs in the company, as well as the industrial superior. This can bring about uncertainty, and a level of resistance that may have unfavorable consequences. This essay will focus on significantly investigating the dual propositions of post-modern and modern outlooks that have different approaches in understanding authority, control, and antagonism in business establishments (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006).
Modernism Theory
According to (Nickelson & Todd 2002, modernist tends to concentrate on objectivism, which is a belief in a purpose, and exterior reality that separately exists from our understanding of idealistic deliberations. (Nickelson & Todd 2002) also declared that from the epistemology interpretation, modernism elevates the ‘trust in reason to a height in which it becomes associated with development.” According to (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006), modernism experiences agreement with the beliefs of optimism – which ascertain the authenticity by utilizing reliable dimensions and legitimate ideas to analyze the facts in opposition to an objective civilization.
(Stewart & Kornberger 2003) clarified that modernist hypothesis theorists believe that inclusive details mean realizing how, and why business establishments operate as they do, and how their functions are subject to the reality. (Stewart & Kornberger 2003) also reiterated that epistemology is the process of ‘understanding how you can know’, and elaborated on this declaration by providing methods in which facts can be substantiated (Stewart & Kornberger 2003). In addition to information accumulation, in which principles can be used to differentiate the important facts from the unreliable information, it also has to be considered how the perception of how realism should be depicted or defined (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). Moreover, such principles highlight the interdependent association between ontology and epistemology (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006).
Modernists view the business establishment as a construction that has to be amended in order to suit environmental specifications. The contemporary approach to a company business is multidimensional, as many theorists in an assortment of fields have contributed to its enhancement. The key distinction is the dynamic quality of communication, and the importance of integrating individual and organizational objectives (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). Some of the major characteristics of modern interpretations of the business establishment comprise of, multivariate dimension, systems perspective, and descriptive facets.
An adaptive, multidisciplinary perspective and the energetic process of relations between the personnel in any business establishment are other ways in which organizational dynamics are interpreted in the present society. Most modernists find a lot of bureaucracy in modern business corporations. This is related to Weber’s model sort of a corporation characterized by the sharing out of responsibilities, the chain of command in companies, plainly defined duties, merit-based hiring practices, advertising, and organizational regulations (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). The business is perceived as a limited and separate unit that seeks to observe certain standards in order to realize the distinctively stated objectives.
(Stewart & Kornberger 2003) have stated that a reasonably bureaucratic business establishment is founded on three elementary values: a set of laws, actions, strategies, and records that are all certified. A business establishment is a device that changes duties into attainable objectives in a specific and conventional manner (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). That authority is based on the executive position, which is subject to the distinctive abilities of employees.
The major qualities of the bureaucracy are the division of the labor practices into lesser units, and assigning different employees to be accountable for the completion of those tasks (Putnam & Fredrick 2004). The division of responsibility is vital to the accomplishment of the objectives of any business establishment. The various duties are defined by the corporation’s requirements, and objectives, and not by the people performing the jobs. The looming difficulty, according to philosophers, is the loss of formality, disaffection, and lack of inspiration of workers (Putnam & Fredrick 2004).
This is because the work process can reduce inventiveness, ingenuity, and employee characteristics. The dehumanization of workers takes place when staffs are viewed as tools of the creation of particular products, instead of human beings who have unique desires and requirements (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). The customs of the business establishment view workers as possessions through which expenses are sustained, and the corporation garners proceeds (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). As a result, the inspiration of workers is dependant on improvement in productivity, which might provoke considerable conflict or insurgence within the business institution. The bureaucratic system insulates workers from the difficult real life obstacles such as disagreements, arguments, the employment of authority to solve issues, experiences that employees go through, socialization, politics, and the manifestation of reticence and inequity.
Postmodernism Theory
The rising outlook of the inadequacy of modernist theory brought about the questions of what to do efficiently in order to alter the bureaucratic structure. Many theorists have carried out tests on the systems of business institutions and configurations in order to uncover ways of altering technical systems in businesses. The investigations and researches carried out resulted in a definite paradigm shift that endeavors to alter the aged bureaucratic customs and install the current models (Nickelson & Todd 2002).
For instance, the businesses could benefit from a transformation from local domestic markets to the competitive international markets, a change from regularity in the labor force to include a more multicultural work force, technical revolutionization from the use of mechanical gadgetry to electronic means, and allowing the principles and ideologies to be more flexible as a substitute for rigid values. In addition, organizational competencies of successful businesses have been known to convert from being profit-focused to concentrating on workers, and clients (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). There has been an adjustment in leadership from dictatorial tendencies to employee empowerment in such firms, and the designation of duties and responsibilities, which ends up facilitating swift decision-making processes (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006).
In reality, postmodernism has experienced the ‘change of work’ approach from a long favored individualistic way of operating, to one that includes cooperation, thus enhancing modernization and collaborative efforts (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). This has encouraged more partnerships as opposed to rivalry and divergences among the workers within business establishments. Postmodernists perceive businesses as units that constantly adjust their boundaries (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). This is because there is a profusion of development coalitions, a set of connections, the inclusion of various businesses, but also through the rising fluctuation in workforce dependence (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). The business establishment’s constitution revision effects more work related suspensions. This affects the uncertainty among workers, and there is a subsequent struggle among employees to find employment.
The contractual employment of staffs has grown with its aim, in the postmodernism’s opinion, to evade the issue of surplus workers on the payroll that end up costing the company due to the reduced demand for their services (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). Postmodernists believe that this situation can result into possible animosity, unease, and arguments between contractual workers and permanent workers (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). The permanent employees will start to perceive temporal members of staff as direct replacements who have been employed to steal their permanent jobs (Stewart & Kornberger 2003).
Contrary to the views of modernist theorists on bureaucratic principles that accentuate strict responsibility, the postmodernist outlook sees every individual as being responsible for the triumph of the entire business. The issues are that every worker’s efforts are vital for the triumph of the business’s aims and policies (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). Workers are made to understand the major objectives of the corporation in order to direct their group effort along with other employees (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). Knowledge is evenly circulated and disseminated, right from the chief executive officer’s office, to the employees functioning under him (Linzmayer 1999).
ORGANIZATION THEORY IN PRACTICE – A CASE STUDY OF APPLE
Introduction
One of the fastest-developing businesses at present is the electronics manufacturing trade. This business is comprised of many expansive and well recognized corporations such as such as Microsoft, IBM, and Apple Inc. There are also many smaller upcoming companies such as small-scale producers of electronics in the less developed nations. The figure of the average sized companies joining this field is constantly rising, and the big manufacturers are also continuously increasing their dimensions. This scenario has brought about some stiff competition among the electronic companies, particularly the small ones (Jones 2004).
Apple Inc. is an international producer of consumer electronic goods. This company produces and draws blueprints for electronic goods, and software products that are used locally as well as globally. It is one of the key international producers of electronic goods, along with Microsoft and some Japanese electronic corporations. What makes Apple Inc. constantly reinvent itself in inspiring ways is the existence of big rivals, who are also international, and colossal electronic goods manufacturers (Robbins & Barnwell 2006).
The existence of such powerful competitors means that only companies that come up with the most exciting electronic gadgets will attract the attention of buyers. Electronic companies constantly have to produce better phones or other electronic goods than their rivals. Apple Inc. begun as a simple computer producer, known as the Apple Computer Corporation, in 1977. Its name was altered when the corporation branched out and began to produce other electronic goods such as MP3 players, and televisions sets. Presently, Apple Inc. is one of the principal brands in the production of consumer electronic goods.
Apple Inc.’s current challenge constitutes of finding out how it can preserve its existing position in the marketplace, in view of the stiff competition in the business. In a trade where inventiveness is exhibited on an almost daily basis by the genius architects in rival companies, and change is ceaseless, Apple Inc. has to keep improving on its deliverances to the public in order to hold the attention of consumers competition. Apple also has to compete with manufacturers in every nation where it carries out business activities (Lashinsky 2012).
The reason for competition among business players or producers is the fast-paced modernization of the goods and services. Each corporation has to carry out excellent research and subsequently develop goods based on that research, as the corporations essentially compete to find out which of them will produce the best products first. They also compete in finding out why corporation’s marketing strategies are the most amazing, and will attract the largest percentage of clients.
The best practice that a business establishment like Apple Inc. can adopt in order to be miles ahead of the competition is to concentrate on developing the abilities of the workers who come up with the most creative ideas (Lichtenstein 2009). Workers are also priceless assets, not unlike production equipment and or buildings structures. Many businesses even believe that their workers are their best and most valuable asset. Efficient human resource supervision is a font of competitive advantage, and can even develop to become the distinct determinant of a corporation’s sustained success (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006).
Apple Inc. and Modernism
Modernism endeavor to create a rational world-view, while postmodernism aims at removing the disparity between low and high (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). Modernist ideas affirm that humanity improves by making use of reason and science. Modernist thinking trusts in learning from various occurrences, and believes in manuscripts that relate the past. Pro-city, pro-growth, pro-technology, the environmental modernist has materialized in recent years to suggest a different image for the future (Mills & Simmons 1995).
His aim is to restructure environmentalism by stripping it of outmoded traditions and views. This will render modernism to be less apocalyptic and more positive. Such a move would also widen the constituency of modernism. Genuine economic development can harmonize with environmental stewardship, according to the contemporary modernism theorists (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). This is just what the Apple Corporation believes, and tries to realize in its policies.
In some senses, the Apple Corporation is an example of a company that exemplified the outdated nature of some of the beliefs of modernism. Apple Inc.’s electronic creations have surpassed the stage of rendering purpose for consumers, to some extent. These gadgets now are widely revered because they easily catch the interest of consumers. In the environmental front, however, Apple is leading the way. Since 2006, Apple has assessed its environmental impact expansively by appraising the total life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) discharges connected with all its manufactured goods that are shipped (Gallo 2012).
After discovering that as much as 98 percent of its gas discharges originate from the greenhouse gas released from the creation, transportation, use, and the reprocessing of products, Apple took steps to confront this problem. The initial step was to ensure that Apple’s facilities were made more energy efficient in order not to use needless energy. Decreased energy consumption results in lessened environmental impact: The purest energy is that which is never utilized. Apple optimizes the effectiveness in existing plants and creates new facilities to be as energy efficient as possible.
The second stage of Apple’s energy policy concentrates on producing its own pure and renewable energy in its facilities. At present, the renewable energy production has involved the use of fuel cells, photovoltaics, and other proper technologies (Edson 2012). Onsite production permits Apple to meet its energy requirements within its own sound environmental objectives even while reducing reliance on grids, and decreasing environmental impact. The third level of Apple’s energy policy focuses on meeting its lingering energy requirements with pure and renewable energy, which is produced offsite (Edson 2012). Offsite generation is necessary because of restricted physical space for on site production, and because the continuously changing energy demands of Apple Inc.’s facilities disallow 100 percent onsite production (Edson 2012). The advantages of supporting offsite production include renewable energy growth in areas where renewable reserves are abundant (for instance, solar hot spots, wind corridors), and developing the renewable energy which is accessible from local energy providers.
Apple utilizes grid-procured renewable energy from newer developments in order to supply energy producers with the motivation to generate more renewable energy reserves. Apple Inc. also supports ventures that are situated within the same locality or grid region as its facilities, so as to constructively support local renewable energy expansion. This three-stage energy policy is helping Apple in moving closer to attaining its net zero objectives for its business amenities. These policies also contribute in aiding the Apple Corporation in reducing its GHG discharges.
Apple Inc. and Post Modernism
The Apple Corporation can be said to be the one company that embodies the postmodern culture. Its existence as a powerful company in the market is hinged on its continuous capacity to improve on its products. The Apple Corporation does not believe in any one product as the main cause of its well-documented success in the electronics industry. It even has a reputation of hiring only the most creative and imaginative personalities to head its various divisions, and does not shrink from luring the geniuses that work for its rivals. The company then ensures that it’s stable of masterminds do not begin searching for greener pastures by giving them outrageous salaries with various benefits.
Apple Inc. has long dominated the global market in the retailing of electronic devices. It utilizes the procedure identified as “transcreation,” which gives businesses the liberty to tackle cultural gaps by moving past translation to produce something that envisions the quintessence and spirit of a message, converting it into one that is meaningful and relevant to the local population (Daft 2007).
Imagery counts more than expressions do when it comes to defining transcreation. Apple usually also makes use of amazing techniques in its international advertisement campaigns (Hatch & Cunliffe 2006). In addition to selecting a singular image that can be shown worldwide, this company makes use of a minimum of text in the English language (Clegg & Kornberger 2005). Consequently, even if there is a play on expressions or terms that must be altered to stay relevant in other overseas markets, the phrase typically does not need too many expressions in other tongues to convey a similar idea to the local population.
Though hardly ever mentioned, the Apple Corporation has also long acknowledged the significance of not only maintaining its skilled workers, but of also giving back to the community. In recent times, it has launched a new benevolent matching plan for its workers, with the corporation vowing to match workers’ individual charitable contributions up to the tune of above $10,000 annually. This plan is at present limited to permanent U.S. workers, with plans to enlarge it to other nations over the next few years.
Reference List
Clegg, S Kornberger, M Pitsis 2005, ‘Managing Organizations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice’, Sage, New York.
Daft, R L 2007, ‘Understanding the Theory and Design of Organizations’, Thomson South-western, Mason.
Edson, J 2012, ‘Design Like Apple: Seven Principles For Creating Insanely Great Products, Services, and Experiences’, Wiley, Hoboken.
Gallo, C 2012, ‘The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty’, Mc Graw-Hill, New York.
Hatch, M J & Cunliffe, A L 2006, ‘Organization Theory, 2nd edition’, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Lashinsky, A 2012, ‘Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired- and secretive- Company really Works’, Business Plus, New York.
Linzmayer, O 1999, ‘Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc.’, No Starch Press, San Francisco.
Lichtenstein N 2009, ‘The retail revolution, How Wal-Mart Created A Brave new World of Business’, Henry and Holt Company, New York
Jones, G R 2004, ‘Organizational Theory: Text and Cases’, Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA.
Mills, A & Simmons, T 1995, ‘Reading Organization Theory: A Critical Approach’, Garamond Press, Toronto.
Nickelson, J A & Todd, R Z 2002, ‘Being Efficiently Fickle: A dynamic theory of organizational choice’, Organizational Science.
Putnam, L L & Fredrick M J 2004, ‘New Handbook of Organizational Communications: Advances in Theory, Research, and Methods’, Sage Publications Inc., New York.
Robbins, S & Barnwell, N 2006, ‘Organization Theory: Concepts and Cases. 5th edition’, Pearson Education Australia, Sydney.
Segal, K 2012 ‘Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success. 2012’, Portfolio Penguin, New York.
Stewart, R C Kornberger, M 2003, ‘Modernism, Postmodernism, Management and Organization Theory, in Edwin A. Locke (ed.) Post Modernism and Management’ (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol 21, pp.57-88.
Wagner, T S 2003, ‘Human Nature and Organization Theory’, Edward Elgar Publishing, London.
required readings (part2)/.DS_Store
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Gender & Society
DOI: 10.1177/0891243206289499
2006; 20; 441 Gender & Society
Joan Acker
Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations
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Sociologists for Women in Society Feminist Lecture
INEQUALITY REGIMES
Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations1
JOAN ACKER
University of Oregon
In this article, the author addresses two feminist issues: first, how to conceptualize intersectionality,
the mutual reproduction of class, gender, and racial relations of inequality, and second, how to iden-
tify barriers to creating equality in work organizations. She develops one answer to both issues, sug-
gesting the idea of “inequality regimes” as an analytic approach to understanding the creation of
inequalities in work organizations. Inequality regimes are the interlocked practices and processes that
result in continuing inequalities in all work organizations. Work organizations are critical locations
for the investigation of the continuous creation of complex inequalities because much societal
inequality originates in such organizations. Work organizations are also the target for many attempts
to alter patterns of inequality: The study of change efforts and the oppositions they engender are often
opportunities to observe frequently invisible aspects of the reproduction of inequalities. The concept
of inequality regimes may be useful in analyzing organizational change projects to better understand
why these projects so often fail and why they succeed when this occurs.
Keywords: gender; class; race; intersectionality; organizations
Much of the social and economic inequality in the United States and otherindustrial countries is created in organizations, in the daily activities of
working and organizing the work. Union activists have grounded their demands
in this understanding, as have feminist and civil rights reformers. Class analyses,
at least since Harry Braverman’s 1974 dissection of Labor and Monopoly Capital
have often examined the doing of work, the labor process, to understand how
class inequalities are produced and perpetuated (Burawoy 1979). Feminists have
looked at the gendering of organizations and organizational practices to compre-
hend how inequalities between women and men continue in the face of numerous
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I want to thank Don Van Houten with whom I did the research that inspired this
analysis, Barbara Czarniawska who helped me to rewrite the article to make it more comprehensible,
Sandi Morgen who has been an invaluable research partner, and all the many other feminist scholars
whose work has made mine possible.
GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 20 No. 4, August 2006 441-464
DOI: 10.1177/0891243206289499
© 2006 Sociologists for Women in Society
441
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442 GENDER & SOCIETY / August 2006
attempts to erase such inequalities (Acker 1990; Collinson and Hearn 1996;
Ferguson 1984; Kanter 1977). Scholars working on race inequality have exam-
ined the production in work organizations of racial disparities that contribute
to society-wide racial discrimination and disadvantage (Brown et al. 2003;
Royster 2003).
Most studies of the production of class, gender, and racial inequalities in orga-
nizations have focused on one or another of these categories, rarely attempting to
study them as complex, mutually reinforcing or contradicting processes.2 But
focusing on one category almost inevitably obscures and oversimplifies other
interpenetrating realities. Feminist scholars of color have argued for 30 years,
with the agreement of most white feminist scholars, that much feminist scholar-
ship was actually about white middle-class women, ignoring the reality that the
category gender is fundamentally complicated by class, race/ethnicity, and other
differences (Davis 1981; hooks 1984; Joseph 1981). Similar criticisms can be
made of much theory and research on race and class questions: “race,” even when
paired with “ethnicity,” encapsulates multiple social realities always inflected through
gender and class differences. “Class” is also complicated by multiple gendered and
racialized differences. The conclusion to this line of thinking—theory and research
on inequality, dominance, and oppression must pay attention to the intersections
of, at least, race/ethnicity, gender, and class.
The need for intersectional analyses has been, for the past 15 years at least, widely
accepted among feminist scholars (Collins 1995; Crenshaw 1995; Fenstermaker
and West 2002; Weber 2001). How to develop this insight into clear conceptions
of how dimensions of difference or simultaneous inequality-producing processes
actually work has been difficult and is an ongoing project (Holvino 2001; Knapp
2005; McCall 2005; Weber 2001). Different approaches provide complemen-
tary views of these complex processes. For example, Leslie McCall (2001, 2005),
using large data sets, shows how patterns of gender, race, and class inequality
vary with the composition of economic activity in various areas of the United
States. The analysis I suggest contrasts with McCall’s approach, as I propose
looking at specific organizations and the local, ongoing practical activities of
organizing work that, at the same time, reproduce complex inequalities. The orga-
nizing processes that constitute inequality regimes are, of course, related to the
economic decision making that results in dramatically different local and regional
configurations of inequality across the United States. Exploring the connections
between specific inequality regimes and the various economic decisions that
affect local economies would be still another approach to these complex interre-
lations. Here, my goal is limited—to develop the analysis of organizational inequal-
ity regimes.
I base this analysis on the voluminous research, including some of my own
(Acker 1989, 1991, 1994; Acker and Van Houten 1974), on the organization
of work and power relations in organizations. This analysis has its origins in my
earlier arguments about the gendering of organizations, reconceptualizing that
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approach to add class and race and extending the discussion in various ways
(Acker 1990, 1992).3
INEQUALITY REGIMES
All organizations have inequality regimes, defined as loosely interrelated prac-
tices, processes, actions, and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender,
and racial inequalities within particular organizations. The ubiquity of inequality
is obvious: Managers, executives, leaders, and department heads have much more
power and higher pay than secretaries, production workers, students, or even pro-
fessors. Even organizations that have explicit egalitarian goals develop inequality
regimes over time, as considerable research on egalitarian feminist organizations
has shown (Ferree and Martin 1995; Scott 2000).
I define inequality in organizations as systematic disparities between partici-
pants in power and control over goals, resources, and outcomes; workplace deci-
sions such as how to organize work; opportunities for promotion and interesting
work; security in employment and benefits; pay and other monetary rewards;
respect; and pleasures in work and work relations. Organizations vary in the
degree to which these disparities are present and in how severe they are. Equality
rarely exists in control over goals and resources, while pay and other monetary
rewards are usually unequal. Other disparities may be less evident, or a high
degree of equality might exist in particular areas, such as employment security
and benefits.
Inequality regimes are highly various in other ways; they also tend to be fluid
and changing. These regimes are linked to inequality in the surrounding society,
its politics, history, and culture. Particular practices and interpretations develop in
different organizations and subunits. One example is from my study of Swedish
banks in the late 1980s (Acker 1994). My Swedish colleague and I looked at gen-
der and work processes in six local bank branches. We were investigating the
degree to which the branches had adopted a reorganization plan and a more equi-
table distribution of work tasks and decision-making responsibilities that had
been agreed to by both management and the union.4 We found differences on
some dimensions of inequality. One office had almost all women employees and
few status and power differences. Most tasks were rotated or shared, and the
supervision by the male manager was seen by all working in the branch as sup-
portive and benign. The other offices had clear gender segregation, with men han-
dling the lucrative business accounts and women handling the everyday, private
customers. In these offices, very little power and decision making were shared,
although there were differences in the degrees to which the employees saw their
workplaces as undemocratic. The one branch office that was most successful in
redistributing tasks and decision making was the one with women employees and
a preexisting participatory ethos.
Acker / INEQUALITY REGIMES 443
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In the following sections, I discuss in some detail the varying characteristics
of inequality regimes, including the bases of inequality, the shape and degree of
inequality, organizing processes that create and recreate inequalities, the invisi-
bility of inequalities, the legitimacy of inequalities, and the controls that prevent
protest against inequalities. I also discuss efforts to reduce inequality in organi-
zations, including consideration of what elements in inequality regimes impede
and/or further change. Finally, I speculate about changes in inequality regimes
that are emerging as a consequence of globalizing processes.
WHAT VARIES? THE COMPONENTS
OF INEQUALITY REGIMES
The Bases of Inequality
The bases for inequality in organizations vary, although class, gender, and race
processes are usually present. “Class,” as I use the term, refers to enduring and
systematic differences in access to and control over resources for provisioning
and survival (Acker 2006; Nelson 1993). Those resources are primarily monetary
in wealthy industrial societies. Some class practices take place as employment
occurs and wages are paid. Thus, class is intrinsic to employment and to most
organizations. In large organizations, hierarchical positions are congruent with
class processes in the wider society. The CEO of the large corporation operates at
the top of the national and often global society. In smaller organizations, the class
structure may not be so congruent with society-wide class relations, but the owner
or the boss still has class power in relations with employees. “Class” is defined
by inequality; thus, “class equality” is an oxymoron (Ferguson 1984).
Gender, as socially constructed differences between men and women and the
beliefs and identities that support difference and inequality, is also present in all
organizations. Gender was, in the not too distant past, almost completely inte-
grated with class in many organizations. That is, managers were almost always
men; the lower-level white-collar workers were always women. Class relations in
the workplace, such as supervisory practices or wage-setting processes, were
shaped by gendered and sexualized attitudes and assumptions. The managerial
ranks now contain women in many organizations, but secretaries, clerks, servers,
and care providers are still primarily women. Women are beginning to be distrib-
uted in organizational class structures in ways that are similar to the distribution
of men. Gender and class are no longer so perfectly integrated, but gendered and
sexualized assumptions still shape the class situations of women and men in dif-
ferent ways.5
“Race” refers to socially defined differences based on physical characteristics,
culture, and historical domination and oppression, justified by entrenched beliefs.
Ethnicity may accompany race, or stand alone, as a basis for inequality. Race, too,
444 GENDER & SOCIETY / August 2006
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has often been integrated into class hierarchies, but in different patterns than
gender. Historically, in the United States, women and men of color were confined
to the lowest-level jobs or excluded from all but certain organizations. People of
color were totally excluded from the most powerful (white, male) organizations
that were central in shaping the racialized and gendered class structure of the
larger society. For example, the twentieth-century U.S. military was, until after
World War II, a racially segregated organization dominated by white men. Other
examples are the elite universities such as Harvard and Yale.
Other differences are sometimes bases for inequality in organizations. The
most important, I believe, is sexuality. Heterosexuality is assumed in many orga-
nizing processes and in the interactions necessary to these processes. The secre-
tary is or was the “office wife” (Kanter 1977). Homosexuality is disruptive of
organizing processes because it flouts the assumptions of heterosexuality. It still
carries a stigma that produces disadvantages for lesbians and gays. Other bases of
inequality are religion, age, and physical disability. Again, in the not too distant
past, having the wrong religion such as being a Jew or a Catholic could activate
discriminatory practices. Today, having a Middle Eastern origin or being a
Muslim may have similar consequences. Currently, age seems to be a significant
basis for inequality, as are certain physical inabilities. I believe that although
these other differences are important, they are not, at this time, as thoroughly
embedded in organizing processes as are gender, race, and class.
Shape and Degree of Inequality
The steepness of hierarchy is one dimension of variation in the shape and
degree of inequality. The steepest hierarchies are found in traditional bureaucra-
cies in contrast to the idealized flat organizations with team structures, in which
most, or at least some, responsibilities and decision-making authority are distrib-
uted among participants. Between these polar types are organizations with vary-
ing degrees of hierarchy and shared decision making. Hierarchies are usually
gendered and racialized, especially at the top. Top hierarchical class positions are
almost always occupied by white men in the United States and European coun-
tries. This is particularly true in large and influential organizations.6 The image of
the successful organization and the image of the successful leader share many of
the same characteristics, such as strength, aggressiveness, and competitiveness.
Some research shows that flat team structures provide professional women more
equality and opportunity than hierarchical bureaucracies, but only if the women
function like men. One study of engineers in Norway (Kvande and Rasmussen
1994) found that women in a small, collegial engineering firm gained recognition
and advancement more easily than in an engineering department in a big bureau-
cracy. However, the women in the small firm were expected to put in the same long
hours as their male colleagues and to put their work first, before family responsi-
bilities. Masculine-stereotyped patterns of on-the-job behavior in team-organized
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work may mean that women must make adaptations to expectations that interfere
with family responsibilities and with which they are uncomfortable. In a study of
high-level professional women in a computer development firm, Joanne Martin
and Debra Meyerson (1998) found that the women saw the culture of their work
group as highly masculine, aggressive, competitive, and self-promoting. The
women had invented ways to cope with this work culture, but they felt that they
were partly outsiders who did not belong.
Other research (Barker 1993) suggests that team-organized work may not
reduce gender inequality. Racial inequality may also be maintained as teams are
introduced in the workplace (Vallas 2003). While the organization of teams is
often accompanied by drastic reductions of supervisors’ roles, the power of
higher managerial levels is usually not changed: Class inequalities are only
slightly reduced (Morgen, Acker, and Weigt n.d.).
The degree and pattern of segregation by race and gender is another aspect of
inequality that varies considerably between organizations. Gender and race seg-
regation of jobs is complex because segregation is hierarchical across jobs at dif-
ferent class levels of an organization, across jobs at the same level, and within
jobs (Charles and Grusky 2004). Occupations should be distinguished from jobs:
An occupation is a type of work; a job is a particular cluster of tasks in a partic-
ular work organization. For example, emergency room nurse is an occupation; an
emergency room nurse at San Francisco General Hospital is a job. More statisti-
cal data are available about occupations than about jobs, although “job” is the rel-
evant unit for examining segregation in organizations. We know that within the
broad level of professional and managerial occupations, there is less gender seg-
regation than 30 years ago, as I have already noted. Desegregation has not pro-
gressed so far in other occupations. However, research indicates that “sex
segregation at the job level is more extensive than sex segregation at the level of
occupations” (Wharton 2005, 97). In addition, even when women and men “are
members of the same occupation, they are likely to work in different jobs and
firms” (Wharton 2005, 97). Racial segregation also persists, is also complex, and
varies by gender.
Jobs and occupations may be internally segregated by both gender and race:
What appears to be a reduction in segregation may only be its reconfiguration.
Reconfiguration and differentiation have occurred as women have entered previ-
ously male-dominated occupations. For example, women doctors are likely to spe-
cialize in pediatrics, not surgery, which is still largely a male domain. I found a
particularly striking example of the internal gender segregation of a job category
in my research on Swedish banks (Acker 1991). Swedish banks all had a single
job classification for beginning bank workers: They were called “aspiranter,” or
those aspiring to a career in banking. This job classification had one description; it
was used in banking industry statistics to indicate that this was one job that was
not gender segregated. However, in bank branches, young women aspiranters had
different tasks than young men. Men’s tasks were varied and brought them into
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contact with different aspects of the business. Men were groomed for managerial
jobs. The women worked as tellers or answered telephone inquiries. They had
contact only with their immediate supervisors and coworkers in the branch. They
were not being groomed for promotion. This was one job with two realities based
on gender.
The size of wage differences in organizations also varies. Wage differences
often vary with the height of the hierarchy: It is the CEOs of the largest corpora-
tions whose salaries far outstrip those of everyone else. In the United States in
2003, the average CEO earned 185 times the earnings of the average worker; the
average earnings of CEOs of big corporations were more than 300 times the earn-
ings of the average worker (Mishel, Bernstein, and Boushey 2003). White men
tend to earn more than any other gender/race category, although even for white
men, the wages of the bottom 60 percent are stagnant. Within most service-sector
organizations, both white women and women of color are at the bottom of the
wage hierarchy.
The severity of power differences varies. Power differences are fundamental to
class, of course, and are linked to hierarchy. Labor unions and professional asso-
ciations can act to reduce power differences across class hierarchies.7 However,
these organizations have historically been dominated by white men with the con-
sequence that white women and people of color have not had increases in orga-
nizational power equal to those of white men. Gender and race are important in
determining power differences within organizational class levels. For example,
managers are not always equal. In some organizations, women managers work
quietly to do the organizational housekeeping, to keep things running, while men
managers rise to heroic heights to solve spectacular problems (Ely and Meyerson
2000). In other organizations, women and men manage in the same ways
(Wacjman 1998). Women managers and professionals often face gendered con-
tradictions when they attempt to use organizational power in actions similar to
those of men. Women enacting power violate conventions of relative subordina-
tion to men, risking the label of “witches” or “bitches.”
Organizing Processes that Produce Inequality
Organizations vary in the practices and processes that are used to achieve their
goals; these practices and processes also produce class, gender, and racial
inequalities. Considerable research exists exploring how class or gender inequal-
ities are produced, both formally and informally, as work processes are carried
out (Acker 1989, 1990; Burawoy 1979; Cockburn 1985; Willis 1977). Some
research also examines the processes that result in continuing racial inequalities.
These practices are often guided by textual materials supplied by consultants or
developed by managers influenced by information and/or demands from outside
the organization. To understand exactly how inequalities are reproduced, it is nec-
essary to examine the details of these textually informed practices.
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Organizing the general requirements of work. The general requirements of
work in organizations vary among organizations and among organizational levels.
In general, work is organized on the image of a white man who is totally dedi-
cated to the work and who has no responsibilities for children or family demands
other than earning a living. Eight hours of continuous work away from the living
space, arrival on time, total attention to the work, and long hours if requested are
all expectations that incorporate the image of the unencumbered worker.
Flexibility to bend these expectations is more available to high-level managers,
predominantly men, than to lower-level managers (Jacobs and Gerson 2004).
Some professionals, such as college professors, seem to have considerable flexi-
bility, although they also work long hours. Lower-level jobs have, on the whole,
little flexibility. Some work is organized as part-time, which may help women to
combine work and family obligations, but in the United States, such work usually
has no benefits such as health care and often has lower pay than full-time work
(Mishel, Bernstein, and Boushey 2003). Because women have more obligations
outside of work than do men, this gendered organization of work is important in
maintaining gender inequality in organizations and, thus, the unequal distribution
of women and men in organizational class hierarchies. Thus, gender, race, and
class inequalities are simultaneously created in the fundamental construction of
the working day and of work obligations.
Organizing class hierarchies. Techniques also vary for organizing class hier-
archies inside work organizations. Bureaucratic, textual techniques for ordering
positions and people are constructed to reproduce existing class, gender, and
racial inequalities (Acker 1989). I have been unable to find much research on
these techniques, but I do have my own observations of such techniques in one
large job classification system from my study of comparable worth (Acker 1989).
Job classification systems describe job tasks and responsibilities and rank jobs
hierarchically. Jobs are then assigned to wage categories with jobs of similar rank
in the same wage category. Our study found that the bulk of sex-typed women’s
jobs, which were in the clerical/secretarial area and included thousands of women
workers, were described less clearly and with less specificity than the bulk of sex-
typed men’s jobs, which were spread over a wide range of areas and levels in the
organization. The women’s jobs were grouped into four large categories at the
bottom of the ranking, assigned to the lowest wage ranges; the men’s jobs were
in many more categories extending over a much wider range of wage levels. Our
new evaluation of the clerical/secretarial categories showed that many different
jobs with different tasks and responsibilities, some highly skilled and responsible,
had been lumped together. The result was, we argued, an unjustified gender wage
gap: Although women’s wages were in general lower than those of men, women’s
skilled jobs were paid much less than men’s skilled jobs, reducing even further
the average pay for women when compared with the average pay for men.
Another component in the reproduction of hierarchy was revealed in discussions
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with representatives of Hay Associates, the large consulting firm that provided
the job evaluation system we used in the comparable worth study. These repre-
sentatives would not let the job evaluation committees alter the system to com-
pare the responsibilities of managers’ jobs with the responsibilities of the jobs of
their secretarial assistants. Often, we observed, managers were credited with
responsibility for tasks done by their assistants. The assistants did not get credit
for these tasks in the job evaluation system, and this contributed to their rela-
tively low wages. But if managers’ and assistants’ jobs could never be compared,
no adjustments for inequities could ever be made. The hierarchy was inviolate in
this system.
In the past 30 years, many organizations have removed some layers of middle
management and relocated some decision making to lower organizational levels.
These changes have been described as getting rid of the inefficiencies of old
bureaucracies, reducing hierarchy and inequality, and empowering lower-level
employees. This happened in two of the organizations I have studied—Swedish
banks in the late 1980s (Acker 1991), discussed above, and the Oregon
Department of Adult and Family Services, responsible for administration of
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and welfare reform (Morgen, Acker,
and Weigt n.d.). In both cases, the decision-making responsibilities of frontline
workers were greatly increased, and their jobs became more demanding and more
interesting. In the welfare agency, ordinary workers had increased participation in
decisions about their local operations. But the larger hierarchy did not change in
either case. The frontline employees were still on the bottom; they had more
responsibility, but not higher salaries. And they had no increased control over
their job security. In both cases, the workers liked the changes in the content of
their jobs, but the hierarchy was still inviolate.
In sum, class hierarchies in organizations, with their embedded gender and
racial patterns, are constantly created and renewed through organizing practices.
Gender and sometimes race, in the form of restricted opportunities and particular
expectations for behavior, are reproduced as different degrees of organizational
class hierarchy and are also reproduced in everyday interactions and bureaucratic
decision making.
Recruitment and hiring. Recruitment and hiring is a process of finding the
worker most suited for a particular position. From the perspectives of employers,
the gender and race of existing jobholders at least partially define who is suitable,
although prospective coworkers may also do such defining (Enarson 1984).
Images of appropriate gendered and racialized bodies influence perceptions and
hiring. White bodies are often preferred, as a great deal of research shows
(Royster 2003). Female bodies are appropriate for some jobs; male bodies for
other jobs.
A distinction should be made between the gendered organization of work and
the gender and racial characteristics of the ideal worker. Although work is organized
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on the model of the unencumbered (white) man, and both women and men are
expected to perform according to this model, men are not necessarily the ideal
workers for all jobs. The ideal worker for many jobs is a woman, particularly a
woman who, employers believe, is compliant, who will accept orders and low
wages (Salzinger 2003). This is often a woman of color; immigrant women are
sometimes even more desirable (Hossfeld 1994).
Hiring through social networks is one of the ways in which gender and racial
inequalities are maintained in organizations. Affirmative action programs altered
hiring practices in many organizations, requiring open advertising for positions
and selection based on gender- and race-neutral criteria of competence, rather
than selection based on an old boy (white) network. These changes in hiring prac-
tices contributed to the increasing proportions of white women and people of
color in a variety of occupations. However, criteria of competence do not auto-
matically translate into gender- and race-neutral selection decisions. “Competence”
involves judgment: The race and gender of both the applicant and the decision
makers can affect that judgment, resulting in decisions that white males are the
more competent, more suited to the job than are others. Thus, gender and race as
a basis for hiring or a basis for exclusion have not been eliminated in many orga-
nizations, as continuing patterns of segregation attest.
Wage setting and supervisory practices. Wage setting and supervision are class
practices. They determine the division of surplus between workers and manage-
ment and control the work process and workers. Gender and race affect assump-
tions about skill, responsibility, and a fair wage for jobs and workers, helping to
produce wage differences (Figart, Mutari, and Power 2002).
Wage setting is often a bureaucratic organizational process, integrated into
the processes of creating hierarchy, as I described above. Many different wage-
setting systems exist, many of them producing gender and race differences in
pay. Differential gender-based evaluations may be embedded in even the most
egalitarian-appearing systems. For example, in my study of Swedish banks in
the 1980s, a pay gap between women and men was increasing within job cate-
gories in spite of gender equality in wage agreements between the union and
employers (Acker 1991). Our research revealed that the gap was increasing
because the wage agreement allowed a small proportion of negotiated increases
to be allocated by local managers to reward particularly high-performing work-
ers. These small increments went primarily to men; over time, the increases
produced a growing gender gap. In interviews we learned that male employees
were more visible to male managers than were female employees. I suspected
that the male managers also felt that a fair wage for men was actually higher
than a fair wage for women. I drew two implications from these findings: first,
that individualized wage-setting produces inequality, and second, that to under-
stand wage inequality it is necessary to delve into the details of wage-setting
systems.
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Supervisory practices also vary across organizations. Supervisory relations may
be affected by the gender and race of both supervisor and subordinate, in some
cases preserving or reproducing gender or race inequalities. For example, above I
described how women and men in the same aspiranter job classification in Swedish
banks were assigned to different duties by their supervisors. Supervisors probably
shape their behaviors with subordinates in terms of race and gender in many other
work situations, influencing in subtle ways the existing patterns of inequality. Much
of this can be observed in the informal interactions of workplaces.
Informal interactions while “doing the work.” A large literature exists on the
reproduction of gender in interactions in organizations (Reskin 2003; Ridgeway
1997). The production of racial inequalities in workplace interactions has not
been studied so frequently (Vallas 2003), while the reproduction of class relations
in the daily life of organizations has been studied in the labor process tradition,
as I noted above. The informal interactions and practices in which class, race, and
gender inequalities are created in mutually reinforcing processes have not so
often been documented, although class processes are usually implicit in studies
of gendered or racialized inequalities.
As women and men go about their everyday work, they routinely use gender-,
race-, and class-based assumptions about those with whom they interact, as I briefly
noted above in regard to wage setting. Body differences provide clues to the
appropriate assumptions, followed by appropriate behaviors. What is appropriate
varies, of course, in relation to the situation, the organizational culture and his-
tory, and the standpoints of the people judging appropriateness. For example,
managers may expect a certain class deference or respect for authority that varies
with the race and gender of the subordinate; subordinates may assume that their
positions require deference and respect but also find these demands demeaning or
oppressive. Jennifer Pierce (1995), in a study of two law firms, showed how both
gendered and racialized interactions shaped the organizations’ class relations:
Women paralegals were put in the role of supportive, mothering aides, while men
paralegals were cast as junior partners in the firms’ business. African American
employees, primarily women in secretarial positions, were acutely aware of the
ways in which they were routinely categorized and subordinated in interactions
with both paralegals and attorneys. The interaction practices that re-create gender
and racial inequalities are often subtle and unspoken, thus difficult to document.
White men may devalue and exclude white women and people of color by not lis-
tening to them in meetings, by not inviting them to join a group going out for a
drink after work, by not seeking their opinions on workplace problems. Other
practices, such as sexual harassment, are open and obvious to the victim, but not
so obvious to others. In some organizations, such as those in the travel and hos-
pitality industry, assumptions about good job performance may be sexualized:
Women employees may be expected to behave and dress as sexually attractive
women, particularly with male customers (Adkins 1995).
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The Visibility of Inequalities
Visibility of inequality, defined as the degree of awareness of inequalities,
varies in different organizations. Lack of awareness may be intentional or unin-
tentional. Managers may intentionally hide some forms of inequality, as in the
Swedish banks I studied (Acker 1991). Bank workers said that they had been told
not to discuss their wages with their coworkers. Most seem to have complied,
partly because they had strong feelings that their pay was part of their identity,
reflecting their essential worth. Some said they would rather talk about the details
of their sex lives than talk about their pay.
Visibility varies with the position of the beholder: “One privilege of the privi-
leged is not to see their privilege.” Men tend not to see their gender privilege;
whites tend not to see their race privilege; ruling class members tend not to see
their class privilege (McIntosh 1995). People in dominant groups generally see
inequality as existing somewhere else, not where they are. However, patterns of
invisibility/visibility in organizations vary with the basis for the inequality.
Gender and gender inequality tend to disappear in organizations or are seen as
something that is beside the point of the organization. Researchers examining
gender inequality have sometimes experienced this disappearance as they have
discussed with managers and workers the ways that organizing practices are gen-
dered (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Korvajärvi 2003). Other research suggests that
practices that generate gender inequality are sometimes so fleeting or so minor
that they are difficult to see.
Class also tends to be invisible. It is hidden by talk of management, leadership,
or supervision among managers and those who write and teach about organiza-
tions from a management perspective. Workers in lower-level, nonmanagement
positions may be very conscious of inequalities, although they might not identify
these inequities as related to class. Race is usually evident, visible, but segregated,
denied, and avoided. In two of my organization studies, we have asked questions
about race issues in the workplace (Morgen, Acker, and Weigt n.d.). In both of
these studies, white workers on the whole could see no problems with race or
racism, while workers of color had very different views. The one exception was in
an office with a very diverse workforce, located in an area with many minority res-
idents and high poverty rates. Here, jobs were segregated by race, tensions were
high, and both white and Black workers were well aware of racial incidents.
Another basis of inequality, sexuality, is almost always invisible to the majority
who are heterosexual. Heterosexuality is simply assumed, not questioned.
The Legitimacy of Inequalities
The legitimacy of inequalities also varies between organizations. Some orga-
nizations, such as cooperatives, professional organizations, or voluntary organiza-
tions with democratic goals, may find inequality illegitimate and try to minimize
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it. In other organizations, such as rigid bureaucracies, inequalities are highly
legitimate. Legitimacy of inequality also varies with political and economic con-
ditions. For example, in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the civil rights
and the women’s movements challenged the legitimacy of racial and gender
inequalities, sometimes also challenging class inequality. These challenges
spurred legislation and social programs to reduce inequality, stimulating a decline
in the legitimacy of inequality in many aspects of U.S. life, including work orga-
nizations. Organizations became vulnerable to lawsuits for discrimination and
took defensive measures that included changes in hiring procedures and educa-
tion about the illegitimacy of inequality. Inequality remained legitimate in many
ways, but that entrenched legitimacy was shaken, I believe, during this period.
Both differences and similarities exist among class, race, and gender processes
and among the ways in which they are legitimized. Class is fundamentally about
economic inequality. Both gender and race are also defined by inequalities of var-
ious kinds, but I believe that gender and racial differences could still conceivably
exist without inequality. This is, of course, a debatable question. Class is highly
legitimate in U.S. organizations, as class practices, such as paying wages and
maintaining supervisory oversight, are basic to organizing work in capitalist
economies. Class may be seen as legitimate because it is seen as inevitable at the
present time. This has not always been the case for all people in the United States;
there have been periods, such as during the depression of the 1930s and during
the social movements of the 1960s, when large numbers of people questioned
the legitimacy of class subordination.
Gender and race inequality are less legitimate than class. Antidiscrimination
and civil rights laws limiting certain gender and race discriminatory practices
have existed since the 1950s. Organizations claim to be following those laws in
hiring, promotion, and pay. Many organizations have diversity initiatives to
attract workforces that reflect their customer publics. No such laws or voluntary
measures exist to question the basic legitimacy of class practices, although mea-
sures such as the Fair Labor Standards Act could be interpreted as mitigating the
most severe damages from those practices. In spite of antidiscrimination and
affirmative action laws, gender and race inequalities continue in work organiza-
tions. These inequalities are often legitimated through arguments that naturalize
the inequality (Glenn 2002). For example, some employers still see women as
more suited to child care and less suited to demanding careers than men. Beliefs
in biological differences between genders8 and between racial/ethnic groups, in
racial inferiority, and in the superiority of certain masculine traits all legitimate
inequality. Belief in market competition and the natural superiority of those who
succeed in the contest also naturalizes inequality.
Gender and race processes are more legitimate when embedded in legitimate
class processes. For example, the low pay and low status of clerical work is his-
torically and currently produced as both a class and a gender inequality. Most
people take this for granted as just part of the way in which work is organized.
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Legitimacy, along with visibility, may vary with the situation of the observer:
Some clerical workers do not see the status and pay of their jobs as fair, while their
bosses would find such an assessment bizarre.9 The advantaged often think their
advantage is richly deserved. They see visible inequalities as perfectly legitimate.
High visibility and low legitimacy of inequalities may enhance the possibili-
ties for change. Social movements may contribute to both high visibility and low
legitimacy while agitating for change toward greater equality, as I argued above.
Labor unions may also be more successful when visibility is high and legitimacy
of inequalities is low.
Control and Compliance
Organizational controls are, in the first instance, class controls, directed at
maintaining the power of managers, ensuring that employees act to further the
organization’s goals, and getting workers to accept the system of inequality.
Gendered and racialized assumptions and expectations are embedded in the form
and content of controls and in the ways in which they are implemented. Controls
are made possible by hierarchical organizational power, but they also draw on
power derived from hierarchical gender and race relations. They are diverse and
complex, and they impede changes in inequality regimes.
Mechanisms for exerting control and achieving compliance with inequality
vary. Organization theorists have identified many types of control, including
direct controls, unobtrusive or indirect controls, and internalized controls. Direct
controls include bureaucratic rules and various punishments for breaking the
rules. Rewards are also direct controls. Wages, because they are essential for sur-
vival in completely monetized economies, are a powerful form of control (Perrow
2002). Coercion and physical and verbal violence are also direct controls often
used in organizations (Hearn and Parkin 2001). Unobtrusive and indirect controls
include control through technologies, such as monitoring telephone calls or time
spent online or restricting information flows. Selective recruitment of relatively
powerless workers can be a form of control (Acker and Van Houten 1974).
Recruitment of illegal immigrants who are vulnerable to discovery and deporta-
tion and recruitment of women of color who have few employment opportunities
and thus will accept low wages are examples of this kind of control, which pre-
serves inequality.
Internalized controls include belief in the legitimacy of bureaucratic structures
and rules as well as belief in the legitimacy of male and white privilege.
Organizing relations, such as those between a manager and subordinates, may be
legitimate, taken for granted as the way things naturally and normally are.
Similarly, a belief that there is no point in challenging the fundamental gender,
race, and class nature of things is a form of control. These are internalized, often
invisible controls.10 Pleasure in the work is another internalized control, as are fear
and self-interest. Interests can be categorized as economic, status, and identity
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interests, all of which may be produced as organizing takes place. Identities, con-
stituted through gendered and racialized images and experiences, are mutually
reproduced along with differences in status and economic advantage. Those with
the most powerful and affluent combination of interests are apt to be able to con-
trol others with the aim of preserving these interests. But their self-interest
becomes a control on their own behavior.
CAN INEQUALITY REGIMES CHANGE?
Inequality regimes can be challenged and changed. However, change is diffi-
cult and change efforts often fail. One reason is that owner and managerial class
interests and the power those interests can mobilize usually outweigh the class,
gender, and race interests of those who suffer inequality. Even where no obvious
economic interests are threatened by changes, men managers and lower-level
employees often insist on maintaining ongoing organizing patterns that perpetu-
ate inequalities. For example, white masculine identity may be tied to small rela-
tive advantages in workplace power and income. Advantage is hard to give up:
Increasing equality with devalued groups can be seen and felt as an assault on
dignity and masculinity. Several studies have shown that these complicated
motives on the part of white men, in particular, can scuttle efforts at organiza-
tional change, even when top management is supporting such change. For exam-
ple, Cynthia Cockburn (1991) analyzed the multiple ways that men resisted
equality efforts in four British organizations in spite of top-level support for these
efforts. In the Oregon pay equity project (Acker 1989), some male unionists could
not believe that women’s work might be as skilled as theirs and thus deserve
higher pay. The men maintained this objection even though their own wages
would not be lowered if the women’s wages were increased. It was as though their
masculine self-respect depended, to a degree, on the differences in pay between
women and men, not the actual level of pay.
Successful change projects seem to have had a number of common character-
istics. First, change efforts that target a limited set of inequality-producing mech-
anisms seem to be the most successful. In addition, successful efforts appear to
have combined social movement and legislative support outside the organization
with active support from insiders. In addition, successful efforts often involve
coercion or threat of loss. Both affirmative action and pay equity campaigns had
these characteristics. Affirmative action programs sought to increase the employ-
ment opportunities for women of all races and men of color in organizations and
jobs in which they had very low representation. The federal legislation required
such programs, and similar equality efforts, in organizations that received gov-
ernment funds. Employers who did not follow the law were vulnerable to loss of
funds. Pay equity projects, intended to erase wage inequality between women-
predominant jobs and men-predominant jobs of equal value, were authorized
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primarily by state and local legislation and took place primarily in public-sector
organizations. In both types of efforts, the mobilization of civil rights and women’s
movement groups was essential to success.
When the political climate changed, beginning in the 1980s, pressures against
such equality-producing initiatives grew.11 By 2006, affirmative action programs
had become mere bureaucratic paper shuffling in most organizations, undermined
by a lack of outside enforcement and inside activism and by legal attacks by white
men claiming reverse discrimination.12 Pay equity efforts were undermined
by industrial restructuring, attacks on labor unions, delegitimation of the public
sector, and legal attacks.13 Industrial restructuring began to undermine blue-
collar, well-paid, male employment and to turn unions away from pay equity to
the problems of their white male members and the defense of unions themselves
against employer attacks. Unions had been prime actors in the pay equity move-
ment; their relative weakening undermined the movement. Furthermore, govern-
ment organizations came under attack in the era of private-sector, free market
celebration, and funds for various programs including wage reforms were cut.
When pay equity campaigns succeeded, wage gains were often modest, as, for
example, the Oregon case showed (Acker 1989). The modest gains that did occur
resulted from political compromise to keep costs down: The potential costs of
raising clerical and other service workers’ pay to comparable levels with skilled
blue-collar workers or the pay of female-typed professions to the pay of male-
typed professions were enormous. These potential costs were, I believe, the
underlying reasons for legal challenges to pay equity (Nelson and Bridges 1999).
Real pay equity extending into the private sector would have imposed huge
increases in labor costs at the very time that employers were cutting their work-
forces, turning to temporary workers, outsourcing, and off-shoring jobs to save on
labor costs.
The history of pay equity projects reveals a fundamental contradiction facing
many efforts to reform inequality regimes: The goals of inequality reduction or
elimination are the opposite of some of the goals of employing organizations, par-
ticularly in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the
private sector, management wants to reduce costs, increase profit, and distribute
as much as possible of the profit to top management and shareholders. In the pub-
lic sector, management wants to reduce costs and minimize taxes. Reducing costs
involves reducing wages, not raising them, as pay equity would require. While
wage inequality is not the only form of inequality, eliminating that inequality may
be basic to dealing with other forms as well.
Another lesson of this history is that a focus on delimited areas of inequality,
such as gender and racial imbalance in job categories or pay gaps between
female and male jobs of equal value, do nothing to address underlying organi-
zational class inequality. Both of these models of intervention work within the
organizational class structure: Affirmative action intends to remove racial and
gender barriers to entry into existing hierarchical positions; pay equity efforts
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compare male and female jobs and sometimes white predominant jobs and
other-than-white predominant jobs within organizational class levels, not across
those levels.14
These interventions also fail to address other underlying processes of inequal-
ity regimes: the male model of organizing or the persistent gendering and racial-
ization of interactions in the workplace. Family-friendly policies provide only
temporary relief for some people from the male model of organizing. The use of
family-friendly policies, primarily by women when they have young children, or
the use of part-time work, again primarily involving women, may increase gender
inequalities in organizations (Glass 2004). Such measures may reinforce, not under-
mine, the male model of organizing by defining those who conform to it as serious,
committed workers and those who do not as rather peripheral and probably unworthy
of promotions and pay increases (Hochschild 1997).
Diversity programs and policies seem to be often aimed at some of the more
subtle discriminatory processes dividing organizational participants along lines
of race/ethnicity and sometimes gender through education and consciousness
raising. Diversity programs replaced, in many organizations, the affirmative
action programs that came under attack. As Kelly and Dobbin (1998) point out,
diversity programs lack the timetables, goals, and other proactive measures of
affirmative action and may be more acceptable to management for that reason.
But that may also be a reason that diversity training will not basically alter
assumptions and actions that are rooted in the legitimation of systems of orga-
nizational power and reward that favor whites, particularly white men. The
legitimacy of inequality, fear of retaliation, and cynicism limit support for
change. The invisibility of inequality to those with privilege does not give way
easily to entreaties to see what is going on. The intimate entwining of privilege
with gendered and racialized identity makes privilege particularly difficult to
unsettle.
Change projects focused on gendered behaviors that are dysfunctional for the
organization provide examples of the almost unshakable fusion of gendered iden-
tities and workplace organizing practices. For example, Robin Ely and Debra
Meyerson (2000) describe a change project aimed at discovering why a company
had difficulty retaining high-level women managers and difficulty increasing the
proportion of women in upper management. The researcher/change agents docu-
mented a culture and organizing practices at the executive level that rewarded
stereotypical “heroic” male problem-solving behaviors, tended to denigrate
women who attempted to be heroes, and failed to reward the mundane organiza-
tion building most often done by women. Although members of the management
group could see that these ways of behaving were dysfunctional for the organi-
zation, they did not make the links between these organizing practices, gender,
and the underrepresentation of women. In their eyes, the low representation of
women in top jobs was still due to the failure of individual women, not to system
processes.
Acker / INEQUALITY REGIMES 457
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GLOBALIZATION, RESTRUCTURING,
AND CHANGE IN INEQUALITY REGIMES
Organizational restructuring of the past 30 years has contributed to increasing
variation in inequality regimes. Restructuring, new technology, and the global-
ization of production contribute to rising competitive pressures in private-sector
organizations and budget woes in public-sector organizations, making challenges
to inequality regimes less likely to be undertaken than during the 1960s to the
1980s. The following are some of the ways in which variations in U.S. inequality
regimes seem to have increased. These are speculations because, in my view,
there is not yet sufficient evidence as to how general or how lasting these changes
might be.
The shape and degree of inequality seem to have become more varied. Old,
traditional bureaucracies with career ladders still exist. Relatively new organi-
zations, such as Wal-Mart, also have such hierarchical structures. At the same
time, in many organizations, certain inequalities are externalized in new seg-
mented organizing forms as both production and services are carried out in
other, low-wage countries, often in organizations that are in a formal, legal
sense separate organizations. If these production units are seen as part of the
core organizations, earnings inequalities are increasing rapidly in many differ-
ent organizations. But wage inequalities are also increasing within core U.S.-
based sectors of organizations.
White working- and middle-class men, as well as white women and all people
of color, have been affected by restructuring, downsizing, and the export of jobs
to low-wage countries. White men’s advantage seems threatened by these changes,
but at least one study shows that white men find new employment after layoffs
and downsizing more rapidly than people in other gender/race categories and that
they find better jobs (Spalter-Roth and Deitch 1999). And a substantial wage gap
still exists between women and men. Moreover, white men still dominate local
and global organizations. In other words, inequality regimes still seem to place
white men in advantaged positions in spite of the erosion of advantages for middle-
and lower-level men workers.
Inequalities of power within organizations, particularly in the United States, also
seem to be increasing with the present dominance of global corporations and their
free market ideology, the decline in the size and influence of labor unions, and the
increase in job insecurity as downsizing and reorganization continue. The increase
in contingent and temporary workers who have less participation in decisions and
less security than regular workers also increases power inequality. Unions still exer-
cise some power, but they exist in only a very small minority of private-sector orga-
nizations and a somewhat larger minority of public-sector unions.
Organizing processes that create and re-create inequalities may have become
more subtle, but in some cases, they have become more difficult to challenge. For
example, the unencumbered male worker as the model for the organization of
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daily work and the model of the excellent employee seems to have been strength-
ened. Professionals and managers, in particular, work long hours and often are
evaluated on their “face time” at work and their willingness to put work and the
organization before family and friends (Hochschild 1997; Jacobs and Gerson
2004). New technology makes it possible to do some jobs anywhere and to be in
touch with colleagues and managers at all hours of day and night. Other workers
lower in organizational hierarchies are expected to work as the employer
demands, overtime or at odd hours. Such often excessive or unpredictable
demands are easier to meet for those without daily family responsibilities. Other
gendered aspects of organizing processes may be less obvious than before sex and
racial discrimination emerged as legal issues. For example, employers can no
longer legally exclude young women on the grounds that they may have babies
and leave the job, nor can they openly exclude consideration of people of color.
But informal exclusion and unspoken denigration are still widespread and still
difficult to document and to confront.
The visibility of inequality to those in positions of power does not seem to
have changed. However, the legitimacy of inequality in the eyes of those with
money and power does seem to have changed: Inequality is more legitimate. In a
culture that glorifies individual material success and applauds extreme competi-
tive behavior in pursuit of success, inequality becomes a sign of success for those
who win.
Controls that ensure compliance with inequality regimes have also become
more effective and perhaps more various. With threats of downsizing and off-
shoring, decreasing availability of well-paying jobs for clerical, service, and man-
ual workers, and undermining of union strength and welfare state supports,
protections against the loss of a living wage are eroded and employees become
more vulnerable to the control of the wage system itself. That is, fear of loss of
livelihood controls those who might challenge inequality.
CONCLUSION
I had two goals in writing this article. The first was to develop a conceptual
strategy for analyzing the mutual production of gender, race, and class inequali-
ties in work organizations. I have suggested the idea of inequality regimes, inter-
linked organizing processes that produce patterns of complex inequalities. These
processes and patterns vary in different organizations; the severity of inequalities,
their visibility and legitimacy, and the possibilities for change toward less
inequality also vary from organization to organization. In the United States at the
present time, almost all organizations have two characteristics that rarely vary:
Class inequality, inflected through gendered and racialized beliefs and practices,
is the normal and natural bedrock of organizing, and white men are the normal
and natural top leaders.
Acker / INEQUALITY REGIMES 459
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My second goal was to better understand why so many organizational equal-
ity projects have had only modest success or have failed altogether. Looking at
organizations as inequality regimes may give some clues about why change pro-
jects designed to increase equality are so often less than successful. Change
toward greater equality is possible, but difficult, because of entrenched economic
(class) interests, the legitimacy of class interests, and allegiances to gendered and
racialized identities and advantages. When class identities and interests are inte-
grated with gender and racial identities and interests, opposition may be most
virulent to any moves to alter the combined advantages. However, top male exec-
utives who are secure in their multiple advantages and privileges may be more
supportive of reducing inequalities than male middle managers who may lose
proportionately more through equality organizing.
Greater equality inside organizations is difficult to achieve during a period,
such as the early years of the twenty-first century, in which employers are push-
ing for more inequality in pay, medical care, and retirement benefits and are
using various tactics, such as downsizing and outsourcing, to reduce labor costs.
Another major impediment to change within inequality regimes is the absence
of broad social movements outside organizations agitating for such changes. In
spite of all these difficulties, efforts at reducing inequality continue. Government
regulatory agencies, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in partic-
ular, are still enforcing antidiscrimination laws that prohibit discrimination
against specific individuals (see www.eeoc.gov/stats/). Resolutions of com-
plaints through the courts may mandate some organizational policy changes, but
these seem to be minimal. Campaigns to alter some inequality regimes are under
way. For example, a class action lawsuit on behalf of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million
women workers is making its way through the courts (Featherstone 2004). The
visibility of inequality seems to be increasing, and its legitimacy decreasing.
Perhaps this is the opening move in a much larger, energetic attack on inequal-
ity regimes.
NOTES
1. Some of the analysis in this article is based on chapter 5 in my book Class Questions: Feminist
Answers (Acker 2006). I began to develop the concept of inequality regimes in a series of papers
beginning in 1999 (see Acker 2000).
2. An outstanding exception to this generalization is Cynthia Cockburn’s (1991) In the Way of
Women: Men’s Resistance to Sex Equality in Organizations. Cockburn’s study of gender equality pro-
grams in four large British organizations integrates understanding of class processes and racial dis-
crimination in her analysis of efforts to achieve sex equality.
3. I base my analysis primarily on organizations in the United States. However, I also use
research that I and others have done in Sweden, Norway, and Finland, where inequality issues in orga-
nizations are quite similar to those in the United States.
4. At that time, the employees of all banks in Sweden were organized by the same union,
Svenskabankmannaforbundet. Thus, a union-management agreement applied to all banks, although
460 GENDER & SOCIETY / August 2006
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they were separate enterprises. Also, at that time, the union cooperated with management on issues of
organization of work. In our study, we did observations and interviews in branches of the two largest
Swedish banks.
5. See Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation for an early analysis
of the gendered realities faced by managerial women, realities of the workplace that made top jobs
more difficult for women than for men. These gendered class realities still exist 30 years later,
although they may not be as widespread as in 1977.
6. Women have never been more than a tiny fraction of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. In
2004, eight women were 1.6 percent of the CEOs of these companies (see http://www.catalyst.org/
files/fact/COTE%20Factsheet%202002updated ).
7. In some European and Scandinavian countries in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a push for
workplace democracy by social democratic parties and labor confederations that resulted in a number
of innovations to give workers, usually through their unions, more voice in organizing decisions. In
Sweden, for example, a codetermination law was passed in the late 1970s encouraging the signing of
labor-management contracts on employee/union participation in many company and workplace issues
(Forsebäck 1980). No such broad initiatives occurred in the United States.
8. An example of such naturalization of inequality occurred in 2005 when Lawrence Summers,
then president of Harvard, explained the low representation of women in science by saying that
women did not have the natural ability to do mathematics that men had. The local and national uproar
over this explanation of inequality indicates how illegitimate such arguments have become.
9. The film 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and others captured this alternative view from
below. Its great success suggests a wide and sympathetic audience that understood the critique of
workplace relations.
10. Charles Perrow (1986) calls these “premise controls,” the underlying assumptions about the
way things are.
11. For a review and assessment of legislation and court antidiscrimination cases related to racial
inequality, see Brown et al. (2003, chap. 5).
12. For an analysis of affirmative action and women’s employment, see Reskin (1998).
13. Figart, Mutari, and Power (2002) discuss several reasons for the demise of comparable worth,
including the privatization of many public services. See also Nelson and Bridges (1999) for a discus-
sion that includes an analysis of court cases undermining pay equity.
14. Cynthia Cockburn (1991) also makes this point.
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Acker / INEQUALITY REGIMES 463
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Joan Acker is a professor emerita in the Department of Sociology, University of Oregon. She
has written on class, women and work, gender and organizations, and feminist theory. She has
been awarded the American Sociological Association (ASA) Career of Distinguished Scholarship
Award and the ASA Jessie Bernard Award for feminist scholarship. Her new book is Class
Questions: Feminist Answers (2006, Rowman & Littlefield). Her most recent empirical
research is a large, collaborative study of welfare reform in the state of Oregon, Oregon
Families Who Left Temporary Assistance to Needy Families or Food Stamps: A Study of
Economic and Family Well-Being from 1998 to 2000.
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__MACOSX/required readings (part2)/._Acker 2006.PDF
required readings (part2)/GC_brochure_FINAL[1]
Corporate Sustainability in
the World Economy
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Launched in July 2000, the UN Global Compact
is a leadership platform for the development,
implementation and disclosure of responsible
and sustainable corporate policies and practices.
Endorsed by chief executives, it seeks to align busi-
ness operations and strategies everywhere with
ten universally accepted principles in the areas
of human rights, labour, environment and anti-
corruption. With more than 8,500 signatories in
over 135 countries, the UN Global Compact is the
world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability
initiative.
Through a wide spectrum of specialized work-
streams, management tools, resources, and topical
programs, the UN Global Compact aims to advance
two complementary objectives:
• Mainstream the ten principles in business
activities around the world
• Catalyze actions in support of broader UN
goals, including the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs)
By doing so, business, as the primary driver of
globalization, can help ensure that markets, com-
merce, technology and finance advance in ways
that benefit economies and societies everywhere
and contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive
global economy.
The UN Global Compact is not a regulatory instru-
ment, but rather a voluntary initiative that relies
on public accountability, transparency and disclo-
sure to complement regulation and to provide a
space for innovation and collective action.
What is the UN Global Compact?
Never before has there been a greater alignment between the objectives of the internation-
al community and those of the business world. Common goals, such as building markets,
combating corruption, safeguarding the environment and ensuring social inclusion, have
resulted in unprecedented partnerships and openness between business, governments, civil
society, labour and the United Nations.
• Adopting an established and globally recognized
policy framework for the development, imple-
mentation, and disclosure of environmental,
social, and governance policies and practices.
• Sharing best and emerging practices to advance
practical solutions and strategies to common
challenges.
• Advancing sustainability solutions in partner-
ship with a range of stakeholders, including UN
agencies, governments, civil society, labour, and
other non-business interests.
• Linking business units and subsidiaries across
the value chain with the UN Global Compact’s
Local Networks around the world – many of
these in developing and emerging markets.
• Accessing the United Nations knowledge of and
experience with sustainability and development
issues.
• Utilizing UN Global Compact management tools
and resources, and the opportunity to engage in
specialized workstreams in the environmental,
social and governance realms.
Why Should Companies Participate
The UN Global Compact seeks to combine the best properties of the UN, such as moral
authority and convening power, with the private sector’s solution-finding strengths and
resources, and the expertise and capacities of other key stakeholders. The initiative is
global and local; private and public; voluntary, yet accountable.
Participation in the UN Global Compact offers a wide array of practical benefits:
the Corporate Commitment
The UN Global Compact is a leadership initiative,
requiring a commitment signed by the compa-
ny’s chief executive, and, where applicable, en-
dorsed by the highest-level governance body. Any
company joining the initiative is expected to:
• make the UN Global Compact and its principles
an integral part of business strategy, day-to-day
operations, and organizational culture;
• incorporate the UN Global Compact and its
principles in the decision-making processes of
the highest-level governance body;
• engage in partnerships to advance broader
development objectives (such as the MDGs);
• integrate in its annual report (or in a similar
public document, such as a sustainability
report) a description of the ways in which it
implements the principles and supports
broader development objectives (also known
as the Communication on Progress); and
• advance the UN Global Compact and the case
for responsible business practices through ad-
vocacy and outreach to peers, partners, clients,
consumers and the public at large.
How do you join the UN Global Compact?
To participate in the UN Global Compact,
a company:
• Sends a letter signed by the chief executive
(and, where possible, endorsed by the board) to
the United Nations Secretary-General express-
ing support for the UN Global Compact and its
principles (mailing address: United Nations,
New York, NY 10017; fax: +1(212) 963-1207).
• Completes the online registration form on the
UN Global Compact website (www.unglobal
compact.org) and uploads a digital copy of the
letter of commitment.
Financial Contributions
In addition to these actions, participating compa-
nies are asked, upon joining, to make an annual
financial contribution to help support the work
of the UN Global Compact. suggested annual
contribution levels are set as follows:
• USD 10,000 for companies with annual
revenues of USD 1 billion or more;
• USD 5,000 for companies with annual revenues
between USD 250 million and USD 1 billion;
• USD 2,500 for companies with annual revenues
between USD 25 million and USD 250 million;
• USD 500 for companies with annual revenues
of less than USD 250 million.
Further sponsorship opportunities are
available for events and specialized work
streams.
The Foundation for the Global Compact serves as
the financial intermediary for all contributions
(www.globalcompactfoundation.org).
“ We need business to give practical meaning
and reach to the values and principles that
connect cultures and people everywhere.”
— Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations
Participation in the UN Global Compact
blueprint for Corporate
sustainability leadership
The Blueprint is a model for achieving higher
levels of performance and generating enhanced
value through the Global Compact. It provides
an action plan in three core areas: (i) integrating
the Global Compact ten principles into
strategies and operations; (ii) taking action in
support of broader UN goals and issues; and
(iii) engaging with the Global Compact. The
Blueprint identifies best practices in each of
these dimensions, with a total of 50 criteria for
leadership. The Blueprint sets targets that all
companies can work towards in order to ascend
the learning and performance curve.
Global Compact Local Networks:
Local Networks in over 90 countries perform
increasingly important roles in rooting the
UN Global Compact within different national
and cultural contexts. As self-governed multi-
stakeholder bodies led by business, they support
companies in their implementation efforts,
while also creating opportunities for further en-
gagement and collective action. Local Networks
also play a key role in facilitating participants’
Communications on Progress and safeguarding
the overall integrity and brand of the Global
Compact.
Dialogue and Learning: A culture of dialogue
and learning is crucial to continuous perfor-
mance improvement. From its inception, the
UN Global Compact has fostered and promoted
dialogue between business and other stakehold-
ers around critical challenges, covering a diverse
range of sustainability issues. These working
symposia and policy dialogues take place at the
global, regional and local levels.
Specialized Workstreams: The corporate
responsibility movement has evolved signifi-
cantly, triggering a need to place stronger focus
on key trends driving the global agenda. The UN
Global Compact has responded to theses trends
by launching several specialized workstreams on
critical issues such as climate change (Caring for
Climate), water (The CEO Water Mandate), man-
agement education (The Principles for Responsible
Management Education), or responsible invest-
ment (The Principles for Responsible Investment).
These programmes offer UN Global Compact
participants additional engagement opportunities,
aiming to advance both practical solutions and
sensible public policy development.
Partnership Projects: The UN Global Compact
asks its participants to seek partnerships in sup-
port of broader UN goals, such as the Millen-
nium Development Goals. The basic concept of
partnerships is simple and straightforward – to
identify common ground between the private
and the public sectors, and to combine their
resources, skills and expertise. As the primary
entry point of business to the United Nations
System, the UN Global Compact is uniquely posi-
tioned to channel the capacities and resources of
its participants and other stakeholders. Partner-
ships focus on the many areas where private
actors and public institutions can engage in
win-win relationships, such as poverty reduction,
health, education and community development.
Maximizing Engagement in the UN Global Compact
The UN Global Compact offers numerous action platforms for participants to demonstrate
leadership on critical issues and advance the ten principles.
HUMaN riGHtS
Businesses should support and respect the protection of
internationally proclaimed human rights; and
make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
LaboUr
Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the
effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
the effective abolition of child labour; and
the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment
and occupation.
ENviroNMENt
Businesses should support a precautionary approach to
environmental challenges;
undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental
responsibility; and
encourage the development and diffusion of
environmentally friendly technologies.
aNti-CorrUPtioN
Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms,
including extortion and bribery.
Principle 1
Principle 2
Principle 3
Principle 4
Principle 5
Principle 6
Principle 7
Principle 8
Principle 9
Principle 10
the ten Principles of the
United Nations Global Compact
The UN Global Compact asks companies to embrace, support and enact,
within their sphere of influence, a set of core values in the areas of human
rights, labour standards, the environment, and anti-corruption:
Published by the UN Global Compact Office
Printed at the United Nations, New York
Contact: UN Global Compact Office,
United Nations, DC2-612, New York City, NY 10017, USA
globalcompact@un.org
www.unglobalcompact.org
February 2011 | 10.M
__MACOSX/required readings (part2)/._GC_brochure_FINAL[1]
required readings (part2)/Walby 2011
Is the Knowledge Society
Gendered?gwao_532 1..29
Sylvia Walby*
The article comprehensively reviews the theoretical and empirical work on
gender and the knowledge society and introduces the articles of the special
issue. Three ways in which the knowledge society and economy are gen-
dered are distinguished: the gendering of human capital; the gendering of
networks and the gendering of the definitions of the knowledge society.
Using data from the Labour Force Survey, an original analysis of the
gendering of the UK knowledge economy is presented. It finds that the
choice of definition of the knowledge economy makes a difference to its
gender composition: the more centred on technology and fixed capital, the
more masculine, the more centred on human capital, the more gender
balanced. The knowledge economy provides better work and conditions.
Gender gaps are narrower in the knowledge economy than the overall
economy: occupational hierarchies are narrowed to women’s advantage,
while differences in work temporalities are narrowed to men’s advantage.
Keywords: knowledge economy, knowledge society, gender, human capital,
social capital, employment
Introduction
Is the knowledge society gendered? The development of the knowledgesociety has the potential to change the nature of gender relations, with
implications for work and organization. The knowledge society and
economy draw on increases in human and social capital. If human capital
and social capital are gendered, then this has the potential to change
the gendered nature of the workplace, with implications for work and
organization.
There has been much celebration of the knowledge economy as the next
stage of economic development (Castells, 1996), from early accounts of the
coming of post-industrial society (Bell, 1973) and the second industrial divide
Addreas for correspondence: *Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1
4YT, UK, e-mail: S.Walby@Lancaster.ac.uk
Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 18 No. 1 January 2011
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
(Piore and Sabel, 1984) that requires flexibility in working practices (Handy,
1994) and delivers human capital-rich work (Reich, 1993) with horizontal
networks and personal autonomy replacing vertical hierarchies (Leadbeater,
2000, 2008). Some writers extend this celebratory approach to gender rela-
tions: Castells (1997) looks forward to the end of patriarchalism, with
women’s employment leading to the transformation of family life.
Numerous governmental reports have asserted the simultaneous potential
benefits of more women in science and technology for both gender equality
and the economy in the UK (Blackwell and Glover, 2008), the European Union
(EU) (European Commission, 2005) and internationally (UNESCO, 2007). UK
governmental reports from the 1960s onwards including the Dainton Report in
1968, the Finniston Report in 1980, the White Paper, Realising Our Potential, in
1993, Excellence and Opportunity in 2000, Maximising Returns to Science, Engi-
neering and Technology Careers, and the Department of Trade and Industry
Greenfield Report in 2002 promoted this synergy (Blackwell and Glover, 2008).
In parallel, the EU’s Lisbon Agenda seeks to develop the European economy
into the leading knowledge economy in the world (Kok, 2004; European
Commission, 2005) and simultaneously to narrow gender gaps in employment
and pay; these agendas overlapping in the European Employment Strategy
(European Commission, 2005) and in policies for gender equality (Pascual
et al., 2001; Rees, 1998; Walby, 2004, 2005, 2009).
However, there are also hesitations, caveats and critiques. Castells (1998) is
careful to note that not all are likely to participate and that there will be areas
without the skills and connections to benefit. Boltanski and Chiapello (2005)
show that autonomy can be recuperated to a fierce work ethic to the benefit of
modern capitalism. Quah (2003) notes that the sale of easily multiplied prod-
ucts made by a few can increase the gaps in rewards between the top and the
bottom. There has long been ambivalence as to the implications of science and
technology for women and pessimism about the implications of deeply
embedded gender inequality in its practices, cultures and institutions (Adam,
1998, 2005; Etzkowitz et al., 1994; Haraway, 1997; Wajcman, 1991, 2004).
Reviews of the evidence on the emerging knowledge economy do not
suggest a clear increase in gender equality and suggest that governmental
interventions have made little impact (Mósesdóttir et al., 2006; Stanworth,
2000; Walby et al., 2007).
In this context, how should the implications of the emerging knowledge
society and economy for gender relations and gender equality be analysed?
This article over-viewing the possible answers to this question has four sec-
tions. Firstly, is the increase in human capital that underpins much of the
knowledge economy gendered? Secondly, are the networks through which
the knowledge economy is increasingly organized gendered? Thirdly, what
are the implications of the different definitions of the knowledge economy for
gender relations? Fourthly, what are the gendered contours of the knowledge
economy?
2 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Firstly, in a knowledge economy and society, human capital has an
increased importance in production and many social activities. Since women
are increasingly more successful than men in gaining school-based and
university-based education and qualifications they might be expected to
do well in the knowledge economy and society. But many doubt that this
has happened. Is this due to women gaining the wrong sort of qualifications
or cultural stereotypes, inappropriate governmental regulation or for
other reasons? These issues are addressed in the articles in this issue by
Mósesdóttir and Caprile and Pascual.
Secondly, in a knowledge economy and society there is a shift in organi-
zational form away from domestic relations, markets and hierarchies towards
networks. Since women are often seen as more likely than men to possess the
social skills that make for successful networking, this change in organiza-
tional form might be expected to be advantageous to women. But has this
occurred? Do the informal practices in networks instead facilitate various
forms of informal social closure against women? These issues are addressed
in articles in this issue by Banks and Milestone and by Durbin.
Thirdly, what are the different definitions of the knowledge society and
economy and what are their implications for the understanding of gender
relations here? Does a more technological focus produce a more masculinist
picture than one that includes a wider range? How explicit and formal must
knowledge be in order to be counted as such? Boundary issues in the defi-
nition and construction of knowledge are addressed by Nishikawa in this
issue.
Fourthly, the article provides an empirical overview of conditions of
work in the gendered knowledge economy, using data from the UK in 2005
from the Labour Force Survey, comparing the implications of different defi-
nitions of the knowledge economy. This addresses gendered inequalities in
occupational hierarchies and the gendered variations in the quality of work
conceptualized as spatialities, contractualities and temporalities, and mul-
tiple engagements with space, different forms of contracts, and different
ways of organizing working time. Distinctive spatialities include working at
or from home, especially with the use of information and communication
technologies (ICT) such as computers and telephones. Contractualities
include distancing from the employer in practices such as self-employment
and temporary rather than permanent contracts. Temporalities include part-
time working, special working hours’ arrangements, overtime and shift
working (Aneesh, 2006; Gottfried, 2003; Gottschall and Kroos, 2007;
Holtgrewe, 2007; Huws et al., 1999; Sassen, 2000; Walby, 2009; Walby et al.,
2007).
The articles in this special issue of Gender, Work & Organization on the
knowledge society address these issues in original and innovative ways. In
this introductory overview article, the contours of the various debates are
mapped out.
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 3
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
Is human capital gendered?
The early understanding of capital was developed in relation to fixed capital:
capital institutionalized in machines, buildings and technologies. However, it
is possible to identify three additional major forms of capital that are becom-
ing more important in the information age: finance capital (Soros, 2008),
human capital (Becker, 1964) and social capital (Bourdieu and Wacquant,
1992; Putnam, 2000).
There is an increasing separation between fixed or industrial capital and
finance capital. Finance capital is not made up of fixed objects but circulates in
a virtual form as money, credit, debt, mortgages, shares, including stock
options and securitized debt obligations (Strange, 1986; Tavakoli, 2003). Its
increased prominence is dependent upon the development of electronic
information, communication and computing technologies that increase the
speed of transactions and facilitate specific forms of risk and speculative
assessments, as well as a specific politico-regulatory environment that allows
(or did allow, until 2009) new financial instruments to operate and be
deployed at a distance from other forms of capital (Stiglitz, 2006; Krugman,
2008).
Knowledge can be understood as a form of capital, as human and social
capital, when capital is understood broadly as a set of resources and a social
relationship that is stabilized and institutionalized. One advantage of using
the concept of capital is that it embeds the concept of social relations at the
centre of discussions of economic forms. The knowledge economy and
society is distinctive in the increased use of knowledge as a factor of produc-
tion (Castells, 1996) and in the reflexive constitution of social relations and
institutions (Beck, 2002; Beck et al., 1994).
The concept of human capital is intended to capture the resources brought
by workers to their jobs. It is composed of the skills, qualifications and
experience owned by individuals and embedded in their person, which can
be sold on the labour market. Human capital can be acquired through edu-
cation in schools, universities and adult education courses and also through
training on the job (Becker, 1964). How human capital is gendered is the main
focus of this section.
In the ‘old’ economy the most important form of capital was that of fixed
capital, though there has always been some small presence of the other three
forms. In the ‘new’ economy there is an increase in the significance of human
capital, finance capital and social capital, as well as changes in the form of
fixed capital. The discussion of the knowledge society and economy is most
usually focused on human and social capital; however, all these four forms of
capital, their gendering and their relationship with other social relations are
interrelated.
The knowledge economy and society privilege those with greater amounts
of human capital. In both qualifications and social skills women appear to be
4 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
advantaged. Young women have not only closed the gender gap in enrol-
ments and exam passes at school and university but have overtaken young
men in most countries of the global North, although among older people,
gender gaps in education remain. Women more often than men have highly
developed and effective social skills. This might mean that women would do
well in the knowledge economy. However, this does not appear to be hap-
pening (Mósesdóttir et al., 2006). There are several potential explanations for
this, including gaps in education policy, specialized rather than general
human capital, motherhood, occupational segregation, gender stereotypes
and the devaluation of women’s human capital.
Are there still significant gendered educational gaps resulting in gender
gaps in human capital? Although gender gaps among young people do not
favour men there are still gender gaps that favour men among older people.
Educational policy in the UK that is supposed to increase educational levels
among older people through a strategy of life-long learning is not as focused
on older people, as might have been expected. Instead it benefits most those
aged 16–19, thereby doing little to address gender inequalities among older
people (Appleby and Bathmaker, 2006).
While women do well in acquiring the general forms of human capital that
can be acquired in formal education, they do less well in acquiring the specific
technical skills that appear most relevant to science, engineering and tech-
nology (SET). They may achieve high levels of general human capital, but not
necessarily the specific types of human capital needed for high technology
jobs (Tam, 1997; Tomaskovic-Devey and Skaggs, 2002). The gender segrega-
tion in education and training can feed through to segregation in employ-
ment. The debates here are not so much over the fact of segregation but, more
importantly, over the reasons for the lesser value placed on women’s skills
and areas of work and the reasons for the segregation of women in areas
other than SET. Why are the skills and qualifications that women possess
treated as being of so little value in the knowledge economy? Why do women
acquire the wrong sort of skills for the knowledge economy?
The traditional explanation for the absence of women from higher levels of
jobs and pay is that motherhood precludes the equal development of
women’s human capital (Budig and England, 2001). Blackwell and Glover
(2008) find that women in science-based employment have both low rates of
motherhood and very low retention rates, suggesting that women leave such
occupations when they have children and have lower rates of return than in
other sectors of the economy. This implies that SET occupations are worse
than others in providing the environment needed to combine paid work and
care work.
One explanation for the relative absence of women in higher positions is
that the value of their human capital is underestimated as a result of the
cultural devaluation of women’s skills (Kilbourne et al., 1994), which is often
considered to be a general process. This type of explanation focuses on
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 5
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
culture and gendered stereotypes. In this approach, educational and occu-
pational sex segregation is said to be due to gendered culture, ideas and
stereotypes while technology is seen to be masculine.
These gendered ideas, stereotypes and discourses about women’s capa-
bilities that limit women in SET can be held by women (their choice, their
fault), employers or male colleagues, or by all of these groups (Erwin and
Mauratto, 1998; Frenkel, 2008; Knights and Kerfoot, 2004; Phipps, 2007). In
many cases the focus of the analysis is largely on the stereotypes of SET work
held by girls and women. This approach has long been important in UK
programmes that seek to increase the proportion of women in science and
engineering, offering as a remedy a revisioning of science and engineering as
gender neutral and the provision of additional routes of access to education
and training (Henwood, 1996). In other cases the approach to cultural stereo-
types focuses instead on the beliefs held by dominant groups, thereby avoid-
ing the tendency to blame the victim. One way in which this process operates
is by the naturalizing of skills found in women’s work, treating them as if
they are always available to women as a consequence of their human nature,
so they do not need a financial or status reward. This approach is found in a
wide variety of works in the literature, as discussed by Adkins (1995, 1999)
and Adkins and Lury, (1999).
In some studies it is suggested that women, bosses and co-workers share
these cultural stereotypes. Ruiz Ben (2007) considers the continuing gender
gap in software development and Germany’s information technology (IT)
sector more broadly, finding that women are a very small proportion of
workers in the technical side of the software industry. Although she is inter-
ested in the use of the concept of profession and its relationship to power, her
reported empirical findings concern the definition of expertise: the ideas held
by men and women about technology and customer service. The women
defined themselves as using social rather than technical skills, and this cor-
responds with the expectations of the personnel managers. Thus, the article
focuses on the ideational world, on the role of stereotypes. In a similar way
Peterson (2007) focuses on the way stereotyped images of gendered qualities
are used to justify the exclusion of women from IT consultancy.
While some studies appear to show men and women agreeing on gen-
dered valuations of science and technology, others find diverse multiple
co-existing gendered discourses that indicate a less than perfect mapping of
practice and ideology. This is perhaps made most visible when jobs are
restructured and there are potentially new opportunities for new gender
configurations. An example of this is the development of new hybrid posi-
tions in information systems that need not only high level technical skills
but also social skills to engage appropriately with the user and customer
(Woodfield 2002; Moore et al., 2008). Woodfield (2002) investigates whether
this was an opportunity in which women who have both technical and social
skills could do better than men who only have technical skills and much
6 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
poorer social skills. The outcome, however, was not one in which women did
better. This was despite the official rhetoric celebrating the opportunities the
new hybrid positions offered to women while simultaneously meeting an
industry need. Rather, two alternative discourses became dominant. In one
women’s social skills were treated as naturally available to women and thus
not important enough to be rewarded, while in the other, men’s social skills
to ‘close the deal’ and to shine with wizardry were fêted. Woodfield draws the
conclusion that the general devaluation of women’s skills in society is the
main cause of the disappointing outcome for these female hybrid workers.
However, while Woodfield’s description of this situation is fascinating, her
explanation is unpersuasive. The curious absence at the heart of this work is
any analysis of power. In the context of multiple existing discourses, who had
what power to make some discourses, rather than others, hegemonic? This
requires an investigation of the resources available to different groups to
produce hegemony.
While the perception that science and technology are culturally masculine
clearly exists in some locations, it is a leap too far to conclude this is a major
cause of the gender composition of this field. This is because the gendered
culture of science and technology might be a consequence rather than a cause
of its gendered composition, a mere correlation, or they might be mutually
determining. Critical discourse analysts, such as Fairclough (1992), caution
against simple cultural determinism, suggesting that the relationship
between discourse and the social environment requires investigation. Hege-
monic discourses are the outcome of struggles in which a variety of resources
are deployed by contesting groups (Gramsci, 1971).
In some accounts the contestation between competing discourses is made
more visible. Henwood (2000) finds that young women did just as well as if
not better than young men in educational courses in technology in terms of
their exam results but did not report to the interviewer the same level of
confidence in their abilities as did the young men, describing themselves as
less competent despite their exam achievements. Henwood (1996) draws
attention to studies (such as Devine, 1992) that show prejudice, negative
attitudes, discrimination and active hostility towards women from the ‘male
culture of the workplace’ in science and engineering.
To conclude: human capital is gendered in various ways. Although women
are increasingly gaining educational qualifications this has not had the sig-
nificant impact on their position in employment that might have been
expected. This is partly because education and training are themselves gen-
dered, so that women are slightly less likely than men to acquire the special-
ized human capital that is needed for jobs in science and technology. A
further aspect of this is the devaluation of women’s human capital as a
consequence of the uneven distribution of gendered power that allows mas-
culinist discourse to become hegemonic despite multiple competing dis-
courses on gender and human capital.
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 7
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
Are networks gendered?
The development of the knowledge society and economy is linked
with the development of networked forms of the organization of work.
There are four main forms of work organization: domestic, markets,
hierarchies and networks. The increase in the network forms of organiza-
tion is linked with the increased significance of social capital as compared
with human capital: ‘who you know, not only what you know’.
These changes have complex and contested implications for gender
relations.
The most traditional form of work organization is the domestic form; not
all work organization is modern. Knowledge work still depends on the per-
formance of care work (Perrons, 2007). Further, there are remnants or rein-
ventions of domestic relations in some contexts, such as the use of couples as
the employment unit in some aspects of the hospitality trade (Adkins, 1995,
1999). With modernity, the major form of work organization is that of
markets. However, alongside markets there exist also hierarchies and net-
works. The very existence of the firm implies the existence of practices to
organize work other than markets (Coase, 1937; Williamson, 1975). Networks
are the form of work organization most often associated with knowledge
work (Leadbeater, 2008).
While there is often a presumption that there is an ongoing change from
hierarchies to networks, the changes in the organization of highly educated
labour are not entirely one way. In some universities there has been an
increase in commodification and marketization, on the one hand, and an
increase in bureaucratization (linked to an increase in audit) on the other
(Fletcher et al., 2007). There appear to be contrary trends in the industrializa-
tion of the academy and the collegialization of industrial research, suggesting
a partial or asymmetrical convergence. While traditional hierarchical man-
agement practices are entering the academy, collegiality and networking are
increasingly found among some workers in some high technology firms
(Kleinman and Vallas, 2001).
The most important new form of organization in the knowledge economy
is that of networks (Castells, 1996). Networks are linked to informal, flexible
working practices that enable nimble responses to rapidly changing economic
opportunities (Powell, 1991). The concept of network is linked to that of social
capital; indeed, access to networks is the key resource that constitutes social
capital (Portes, 1998).
Networks have been seen as producing more egalitarian forms of working
relations than markets or hierarchies (Leadbeater, 2008). Much of the enthu-
siasm for the knowledge economy is built around its potential for a better
quality of working life. But are network forms of work organization more
egalitarian than other forms; do they deliver a better quality of working life
(Gill, 2002; Walby et al., 2007)? There are strong divides in the literature as to
8 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
the implications of networked organizational forms for equality in general
and gender equality in particular.
A key contrast is between hierarchical and networked forms of organiza-
tion. Are formal hierarchies worse than networks for gender equality? The
answer to this question depends on whether the hierarchies are governed by
principles that support or reduce gender equality. Traditionally it has been the
former (Walby, 1986; Witz, 1992). However, the bureaucratic nature of hier-
archical work organization has proved more open than networks to recent
intervention by states and other polities such as the EU that seek to regulate
inequalities in the workplace. The documentation and evaluation of work
tasks and the regularization of recruitment and promotion means that equali-
ties issues can be made visible and subject to controls (Walby, 1999). Fordism
is vulnerable to feminism in so far as this has become embedded in trade
unions and the polity.
Powell (1991) compares networks with markets and hierarchies. He sug-
gests that networks have methods of conflict resolution that involve norms of
reciprocity, as compared with haggling, court enforcement, administrative
fiat and supervision. The tone or climate of networks is open-ended with
mutual benefits, as compared with precision, suspicion, formal and bureau-
cratic structures. Leadbeater (2000, 2008) is a leading proponent of the advan-
tages of networked organizational forms, in that they deliver creativity,
sharing, egalitarian, independent and fulfilling working lives. He celebrates
the development of horizontal connections between people in networks,
rather than hierarchal relations. While noting that there are some inequalities
due to variations in connectedness to the e-world, he counters this with the
advantages to the global South of easier access to knowledge.
However, networks are not only about horizontal connections and sharing
but concern resources and power. Varied access to networks that have power
and uneven power resources available from different networks means that
power is central to the operation and consequences of networks (Burt, 1992).
Indeed, the concept of social capital is predicated upon networks collectively
providing access to resources to those who are in the network and not to
those who are not (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992; Putnam, 2000). Often,
networks are made up of people of the same sex, the same ethnicity, the same
religion and the same sexual orientation. Networks may be centred on occu-
pational groups, professions, trade unions and professional associations,
which use their resources to maintain and enhance their positions (Devine,
1992). Networks can thus act as forms of gendered social closure in a variety
of ways. Male subcultures in employment can act as old boys’ networks that
create barriers to women in technical areas of work (Lindsay, 2008). Their
exclusiveness can be maintained by informal practices and shared leisure
activities, from golf to football to lap-dancing clubs, as financial services
work in the City (of London) involves various shared post-work activities
(McDowell, 1997). They can: provide privileged access to information about
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 9
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
job and promotion opportunities to members of strong or weak networks
(Burt, 1992; Granovetter, 1973); create informal rules of preferment that
contain criteria that benefit insiders, such as long hours and presenteeism that
are hard for care-givers to meet (Rutherford, 2001); provide support and
encouragement to insiders to help them over difficulties, but offer a hostile
(Devine, 1992) or chilly climate (Blickenstaff, 2005) to others; as well as gang
up on, bully, or harass outsiders (Stanko, 1988).
New organizational forms can be associated with new contractualities,
new spatialities and new temporalities. There is a tendency to shift away from
long-term employment by a single employer with standard hours of 9–5 on
weekdays towards shorter contracts with more employers and unsocial
hours. In this way, workers rather than employers tend to bear the risks
associated with employment, such as the costs of sickness, unemployment
and pensions. The work, while highly skilled, may be precarious. However,
this varies significantly between different sections of the knowledge economy
(Walby et al., 2007).
New organizational forms offer different forms of gendering of working
relations. While networks are often celebrated for increasing the likelihood of
horizontal and collegial forms of working relations, their informality reduces
the possibility of using conventional equal treatment laws and opens the door
to informal social closure.
Are the definitions of the knowledge society and
economy gendered?
The definitions of the knowledge society and knowledge economy vary in
what they encompass, with significant gender implications. The knowledge
society is a more encompassing term than the knowledge economy, for
example including education and governance. The definition of the knowl-
edge economy varies in the extent to which ‘knowledge’ is centred on the
technical or broadened to include a wider range of forms of science or struc-
tured knowledge, with implications for the picture of the gender composition
of the knowledge economy.
In a knowledge society a wide range of social institutions have been
restructured or inflected by new forms of knowledge, from education to
governance. Institutions may be more reflexive, drawing on expertise (Beck
et al., 1994). There may be new ways of doing politics as a result of new ways
of circulating information by e-mail and the Internet and the development of
epistemic communities (Haas, 1992; Leadbeater, 2008). There may be new
forms of sociality from Facebook to virtual games, with consequences for
identity (Agger, 2004). There are new forms of online consumption, from
shopping to gaming to porn (Adam, 2005). Education is a social institution
with key implications for the shape of social relations in the knowledge
10 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
economy (Appleby and Bathmaker, 2006; Brine, 2006), although not all are
convinced that the development of the knowledge economy has been held
back by insufficient development of human capital (Livingstone, 1999).
These changes have varied implications for gender equality. While there is
greater inclusion of women in some areas, such as education, this is not
uniform. There are forms of relative gendered digital exclusion in society, in
the differential gendered use of the computer and Internet, e-mail, informa-
tion searching and online services, buying goods and services online and
interaction with public authorities. Women can be information-poor because
of their income levels, socioeconomic situations and traditional cultures. New
forms of Internet provision, such as pornography, may reproduce traditional
gender imagery. The use of market mechanisms may exacerbate these gender
divides. There are both increases and decreases in gender equality (Adam,
2005; Törenli, 2006).
Governmental institutions are important in regulating and shaping the
knowledge society and economy, including its gendering. The EU has pro-
moted both the development of the knowledge economy (European Com-
mission, 2005) and the development gender equality (European Commission,
2007) and argued for a synergy between the two in the European Employ-
ment Strategy (EES) (European Commission, 2005). However, there has been
a softening in the priority accorded to gender equality over the last decade.
Gender mainstreaming was once one of 10 policy goals of the EES. However,
the revised 2005 EES, following the Kok Report (2004), has increased the
focus on growth and jobs at the expense of the reduction in the visibility of
gender equality goals. As Mósesdóttir et al. (2006) have argued, the lack of
equal participation of women in economic decision-making holds back the
full integration of gender equality policies.
The choice of definition of the knowledge economy has important impli-
cations for its gendered image. There are a range of definitions in use, includ-
ing SET, ‘science, technology, engineering and mathematics’, ‘information’,
IT, ICT, ‘new media’ and ‘cultural creatives’. Most recent empirical work
provides accounts that are specific to particular small parts, industries or
occupations including the new media (Gill, 2002), IT (Jansson et al., 2007;
Peterson, 2007), ICT (Crump et al., 2007; Moore et al., 2008), software devel-
opment (Ruiz Ben, 2007) and information systems development (Woodfield,
2002). The choice of definition is gendered. Is call centre work knowledge
work because it uses new ICTs or not, since most of the work is done by
women and is routine (Durbin, 2007)? Is care work, often performed by
women, knowledge work because it involves tacit knowledge or not, because
little of the knowledge is made explicit (Lam, 2002; Nishikawa and Tanaka,
2007; Nonaka and Nishiguchi, 2001; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)?
There are three main ways of drawing boundaries around the industries
that make up knowledge work put forward by statisticians in the UN (2005),
OECD, 2005) and EU (Eurostat, 2005a, 2005b). These define the knowledge
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 11
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
economy as one of three sets of relevant industries: high technology manu-
facturing, information or ICT and knowledge-intensive services (Shire, 2007).
These vary crucially by whether or not technology is given the central place in
the conceptualization of the knowledge economy. The first definition restricts
the knowledge economy to high technology in manufacturing, the second
focuses on the new technologies’ associated information and crosses the
conventional manufacturing/service divide and the third focuses on the
human capital rather than fixed capital aspects of knowledge economy, in
including service industries where the labour force is usually educated to
university level (Shire, 2007; Walby et al., 2007).
The choice of definition affects the picture of the gender composition of the
knowledge economy. In the two categories centred on technology and fixed
capital, women are a minority of the workers, in the category centred on
human capital, the gender balance is nearly even, with women comprising a
slight majority of the workers (Labour Force Survey, 2005a, 2005b; Shire, 2007;
Walby, 2006).
The selection of definition has implications for both theory and for policy.
If the knowledge economy is defined in relation to fixed or human capital,
then the knowledge economy appears to be masculine. But if it is defined in
relation to human capital, then it is gender-balanced. This has serious impli-
cations for policy. If the state promotes the development of the knowledge
economy using a technologically centred definition it helps predominantly
male workers but if a human capital-centred definition is used then it helps
both male and female workers.
Is the knowledge economy better for women than the
old economy?
Are women or men more likely to be found in the knowledge sector or the
rest of the economy? Are the jobs in the knowledge economy of higher quality
than the rest of the economy and are the gender gaps in the quality of
working life narrower here? This section draws on an analysis of employment
in the UK in 2005 using data from the Labour Force Survey, a large nationally
representative sample survey (Walby, 2006). It compares the gender compo-
sition of the knowledge economy with the rest of the economy and investi-
gates the effect of using three different definitions. It compares employment
in the knowledge economy with the economy as a whole, assessing the
quality of working life and its gendered constitution along a range of char-
acteristics including occupational levels, spatialities, contractualities and
temporalities.
There are three major definitions of the knowledge economy: high tech-
nology manufacturing, the information sector and knowledge-intensive ser-
vices (Shire, 2007; Walby, 2006). High technology manufacturing includes:
12 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
office machinery, computers and other information-processing equipment;
electronic communication equipment, including radio, television, telephone,
sound or video recording or reproducing equipment; and scientific instru-
ments, especially those for measuring, checking and testing (Eurostat, 2005a,
2005b). The information sector includes: publishing, printing and reproduc-
tion of recorded media; post and telecommunications; computer and related
activities including software publishing, data processing and database activi-
ties; and television, video, news and library (UN, 2005). Knowledge-intensive
services are service industries that have knowledge-intensive work practices,
as indicated as the average level of education of the workforce in these
industries. They include water transport, air transport, post and telecommu-
nications, financial intermediation, insurance and pensions, auxiliary finan-
cial intermediation, real estate, renting equipment, computing, research and
development, other business, education, health and social work and recre-
ation, culture and sport (Eurostat, 2005a, 2005b).
When the most technologically focused definition, ‘high technology manu-
facturing’ is used the proportion of employment in the economy that is
‘knowledge’ is just 1% and the proportion of women is 32%, as shown in
Table 1. When the category ‘information’, which straddles the traditional
divide between manufacturing and services, is used, then the proportion of
employment in the economy that is knowledge is just 4% and the proportion
of women is 36%. When the definition that focuses most on human capital,
‘knowledge-intensive services’ is used, then 42% of total employment is in the
knowledge sector and the proportion of women in it is 61%. The more the
definition centres on fixed capital and technology, the smaller is the propor-
tion of women working in it, while the more it is centred on human capital the
larger is the proportion of women. The gender composition of the knowledge
economy depends on the definition of the knowledge economy that is used.
Table 1: Gendered composition of the knowledge economy according to three
definitions
% of
employment % female
High technology manufacturing 1 32
Information sector 4 36
Knowledge intensive services 42 61
Manufacturing — 26
Services — 56
All economy 100 48
Source: Labour Force Survey 2005a.
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 13
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
The proportion of women is higher in the knowledge sectors than in the
economy overall (48%). The proportion of women in high technology manu-
facturing (32%) is higher than in all manufacturing (26%). The proportion of
women in the knowledge-intensive services is greater (61%) than in all
service industries (56%).
Gendered occupational hierarchies
Occupational location is associated with social inequality and the quality of
working life. Those in higher level occupations, such as managers, profes-
sionals and associate professionals (for example, nurses or teachers), are
likely to earn more and have more social prestige and more influence than
those in lower level occupations. This section investigates the extent to which
the knowledge economy is associated with higher level occupations and the
extent to which this association varies according to gender.
The definitions of the knowledge economy used so far have used classifi-
cations of industries. Within each industry and enterprise there is a range of
occupations. There is a question as to whether occupations in the knowledge
economy are on a higher level and are more skilled than those in the economy
overall (as implied in the European Council Lisbon declaration 2000). If so the
development of the knowledge economy would lead not only to more jobs
but also to better jobs. On the other hand there may be no necessary relation-
ship between changes in industrial and occupational structure.
The occupations in the knowledge economy are typically at a higher level
than those in the economy as a whole, as shown in Table 2. A higher propor-
tion of workers are to be found in the three top occupational groups of
managers, professionals and associate professionals in the knowledge
economy: high technology manufacturing 59%, information 69%,
knowledge-intensive services 54%, compared with the economy as a whole
(42%) or manufacturing (37%) or services (45%).
The gendering of the occupational hierarchy in the knowledge economy is
different from its gendering in the economy as a whole, as shown in Table 3.
In each of the knowledge economy sectors, high technology manufacturing,
information and knowledge-intensive services, women are more likely to be
in the three higher level occupational groupings than when working in the
economy as a whole, as are men also.
A slightly different way of looking at the gendering of the occupational
hierarchy is to compare the gender gaps in the composition of the higher level
occupations between the knowledge sectors and the economy as a whole.
Looking just at the gender composition of the top three occupations there is
little difference between high technology manufacturing and manufacturing
as a whole, while when comparing knowledge intensive services and services
as a whole, women are in slightly higher occupations in knowledge-intensive
services, as shown in Table 4.
14 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
T
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IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 15
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
T
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16 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
T
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IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 17
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
The implications are that more workers in the knowledge sectors of the
economy are in the higher level occupations than in the economy as a whole;
but the gender gap between men and women has only slightly narrowed —
a little in the knowledge intensive services but has not in high technology
manufacturing. The knowledge economy is good for the occupational level of
both women and men but there is little difference in gender inequality
between the knowledge sector and the whole economy.
Gendered spatialities, contractualities and temporalities
Occupational hierarchies are not the only source of variation in the quality and
equality of working life.
The knowledge economy is associated with new spatialities in the organi-
zation of work (see Table 5). The information sector is the most associated
with working at home. In each of the knowledge sectors (high-tech manufac-
turing, information, knowledge intensive services) those employed were
slightly more likely to work at different places with home as a base in the
economy as a whole. Working at home often involved using a phone and
computer (men 80%, women 73%).
These spatialities are gendered but in non-traditional ways, in that men are
much more likely than women to work at home or in different places with
Table 5: Spatialities in knowledge work
Own
home
Different
places with
home as
a base
Not worked
at home
during
reference
week
High-tech manufacturing
Men 2 9 89
Women 2 5 92
Information
Men 21 6 72
Women 15 3 82
Knowledge-intensive services
Men 4 11 84
Women 4 4 92
Whole economy
Men 8 5 86
Women 8 2 90
Source: Labour Force Survey 2005a.
18 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
their home as a base (see Table 5). It is not the case that gender patterns of
caring have led to women disproportionately working from home; rather it is
men who are more likely to work away from their employer, either at home or
at different places using their home as a base.
Is the knowledge economy linked to new contractualities, such as self-
employment and temporary employment? This is not the case in the UK, with
only small exceptions. Self-employment is not more common in the knowl-
edge economy than the economy as a whole, with the exception of software
publishing and data processing (see Table 6). In the UK self-employment is a
mixed category: for example, it more prevalent among men than women and
is common in the construction industry. Temporary work is relatively uncom-
mon in the UK and is not significantly gendered (men 5%, women 6%). The
knowledge economy is not generally associated with greater temporary rather
than permanent employment except in education (men 13%, women 12%).
The knowledge economy has been associated with new temporalities of
working life, with a move away from standard to non-standard working
hours (see Table 7). The temporalities of work take many forms; some new,
some old, some constituting an increase in the quality of working life, others
a decrease. Temporalities include special hours working arrangements, espe-
cially flexitime, but also annualized hours contracts, term-time working, job
sharing, a 9-day fortnight or a 4.5 day week, a zero hours contract, part-time
working, overtime, unsocial hours working including working in the evening
or at night, working at the weekend and shift working. Working time
Table 6: Contractualities in knowledge work
Self-
employment
Temporary
working
High-tech manufacturing 3 4
Men 4 4
Women 1 4
Information 13 5
Men 15 7
Women 8 4
Knowledge-intensive services 11 7
Men 17 7
Women 7 7
Whole economy 13 6
Men 18 5
Women 7 6
Source: Labour Force Survey 2005a.
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 19
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
T
ab
le
7:
T
em
po
ra
lit
ie
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20 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
practices in the knowledge economy are different from those in the overall
economy in several important respects; these differences are gendered.
Special hours working arrangements are slightly more common in most of
the knowledge economy (high technology manufacturing 23%, knowledge-
intensive services 27%) than in the economy as a whole (21%). Women are
more likely to use special working time arrangements than men in the
economy as a whole (men 16%, women 27%) including manufacturing (men
17%, women 18%) and services (men 18%, women 28%) but the gender gap
is different in the knowledge economy. In high technology manufacturing
men are slightly more likely than women to use special working time
arrangements (men 24%, women 22%), while women are more likely to use
these in information (men 17%, women 21%) and knowledge-intensive ser-
vices (men 20%, women 31%).
There is very slightly less part-time working in the knowledge economy
than in the equivalent total sectors (high technology manufacturing 7%,
manufacturing 9%; knowledge-intensive services 31%, services 32%). Part-
time work remains gendered in that women are more likely to follow this
practice than men but the gender gap is smaller in the knowledge economy
than in the economy overall, primarily as a result of less part-time working by
women in these sectors (high technology manufacturing; men 2%, women
17%; manufacturing; men 3%, women 26%; knowledge-intensive services:
men 13%, women 42%, services; men 15%, women 46%).
Overtime working is more prevalent in each sector of the knowledge
economy (high technology manufacturing 54%, information 45%,
knowledge-intensive services 42%) than in the economy as a whole (39%).
Men are more likely to work overtime than women in each sector of the
economy, whether knowledge or not (high technology manufacturing men
60%, women 42%; manufacturing men 53%, women 36%; knowledge-
intensive services: men 45%, women 41%; services overall: men 41%, women
36%).
Unsocial hours working (usually working nights, Sundays and shifts) is
generally lower in the knowledge economy than in the overall economy. This
is slightly the case for working nights: high technology manufacturing 7%,
information 9%, knowledge-intensive services 11%, manufacturing 11%, ser-
vices 11%, overall economy 11%). This is also the case for Sunday working:
high technology manufacturing 6%, information 13%, knowledge-intensive
services 16%, manufacturing 11%, services 20%, overall economy 18%. It is
most clearly the case for shift working: high technology manufacturing 10%,
information 8%, knowledge-intensive services 13%, manufacturing 19%, ser-
vices 15%, overall economy 14%.
Men do more of this unsocial hours working than women. However,
the gender gap in unsocial hours working has disappeared in the know-
ledge economy as compared with the economy overall (high technology
manufacturing, men 9% women 10%; information, men 8% women 7%;
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 21
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
knowledge-intensive services men 12%, women 14%; manufacturing men 23%
women 8%; services men 17%, women 13%; overall economy men 16% women
12%. Women’s previous advantage in this unsocial hours working dimension
in the quality of working life disappears in the knowledge economy.
Summary
Work is organized differently between the knowledge sector of the economy
and the economy as a whole. The quality of work in the knowledge economy
in the UK in 2005 is better than that in the economy as a whole. This applies
whichever definition of the knowledge economy is used, whether high tech-
nology manufacturing, information or knowledge-intensive services.
However, the choice of definition affects the gender composition of the
knowledge economy: high technology and information are predominantly
male areas of employment while knowledge-intensive services are slightly
more female areas.
The occupations in the industrial sectors of the knowledge economy are at
a higher level than those for the economy as a whole, in that a higher
proportion of jobs fall into the top three occupational groups. This has been to
the advantage not only of the women but also to the men in those positions.
The gender gap in occupational hierarchy is very little narrower in the knowl-
edge economy than in the economy as a whole.
Work practices in the knowledge economy tend to be different from those
in the economy as a whole in respect to some aspects of spatialities, contrac-
tualities and temporalities. Working conditions in the knowledge economy
tend to be better than in the economy as a whole, in relation to temporalities
involving greater use of special hours working arrangements and a lesser use
of unsocial hours working (nights, Sundays and shifts). The gender gaps in
these temporalities has narrowed somewhat. However, since these gender
gaps had previously been to women’s advantage, this is not an improvement
in the position of women relative to men.
Thus, the knowledge economy does provide better work and conditions
for those working in it. Gender gaps are narrower in the knowledge economy
than in the overall economy. When the focus is on occupational hierarchies,
this narrowing of the gender gaps is to the advantage of women. When the
focus is on work temporalities, the reduction in the gender gap has been to
the advantage of men.
Articles in this special issue
The knowledge society and economy are gendered in varied and contested
ways. The comparison of the knowledge economy with the overall economy
in the UK shows that knowledge workers typically occupy a higher
22 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
occupational level than other workers and work more flexible and fewer
unsocial hours. While women in the knowledge economy narrow the gender
gap in their favour when the focus is on occupational level, it is men who
narrow the gender gap in their favour when the focus is on flexible and
unsocial hours.
There are three main issues in explaining this complex gendering of the
knowledge economy, to which the articles in this special issue offer innova-
tive contributions: human capital, networked organizational forms and
definitions of knowledge work.
The development of human capital is of special importance to the knowl-
edge economy. While women do well in education this has not proved
sufficient to eliminate gender inequalities in the knowledge society. This
gender inequality is linked to the different gendering of the specialized
human capital used in the technical side of the knowledge economy, the
devaluation of women’s human capital, segregation, discriminatory practices
and the absence of sufficient regulatory intervention. These issues are
addressed further in the articles by Mósesdóttir and by Caprile and Pascual.
The development of networked organizational forms is a feature of key
areas of the knowledge economy. However, the organizational form in the
knowledge economy is not exclusively that of networks but involves also
markets, hierarchies and remnants of domestic relations. This is investigated
in the analysis of retraditionalization in the article by Banks and Milestone.
While some have fêted networks for leading to flatter hierarchies, networks
can also constitute forms of informal closure against women. This is explored
in the article by Durbin.
The selection of the definition of the knowledge economy makes a differ-
ence to the gender composition and size of the sector. The more the definition
is centred on technology and fixed capital, the more masculine the gender
composition; the more it is centred on human capital, the more gender bal-
anced the gender composition. The relationship between tacit and explicit
knowledge is key to a different tradition in the conceptualization of knowl-
edge, explored by Nishikawa’s article.
Mósesdóttir in ‘Gender (in)equalities in the knowledge society’ asks why
the advantage that young women have over young men in education does not
lead to the reduction of gender inequalities in the economy. While these
women have better overall educational qualifications than men, they are
concentrated in the arts and humanities rather than in science and engineer-
ing, which are seen as more important for the knowledge economy. In addi-
tion, there are still gender inequalities in the division of care work, which has
an impact on gender inequalities in employment. Mósesdóttir et al. (2006) ask
why the EU’s policy instruments have been so slow to address these issues,
despite their privileging of the development of a knowledge economy and
their recognition of the significance of women’s labour for achieving this
goal. She describes how the importance attached to gender equality in the EES
IS THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY GENDERED? 23
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011
appears to have diminished over the last decade, with a failure to identify and
challenge the problematic issues. Only if women actively participate in politi-
cal decision-making will the contribution of women to the knowledge
economy and to gender equality be adequately addressed. This would require
a challenge to the market forces underlying gender inequality.
In ‘The move towards the knowledge-based society: a gender approach’,
Caprile and Pascual examine whether there has been a decrease in gender
inequality associated with the development of a knowledge economy. The
knowledge-based society is treated as a new production paradigm, involving
increasing use of new ICTs, together with new forms of knowledge, the
tertiarization of the economy and new forms of work organization and regu-
lation. The authors challenge the notion that the knowledge-based society is
reducing gender inequality, although noting the narrowing of the gender gap
in employment rates. They show that high-level engagement in the new
technologies is less common among women than men and note the tenacity of
gender stereotypes and segregation. They develop an analysis of key dimen-
sions of gender inequality: gender gaps in employment rates, in pay and in
childcare, and find that variations in education and institutional diversity are
important in explaining the differences between countries. They conclude that
there is no simple association between different dimensions of equality.
Banks and Milestone, in ‘Individualization, gender and cultural work’,
critique the notion that work in the new economy is ‘cool’ and egalitarian,
suggesting a much more ambiguous and multifaceted set of changes. They
argue that processes of detraditionalization, such as suggested by Beck and
Giddens, have been much overstated and that there are, even in the cultural
work of the new economy, patterns of gender inequality that have much in
common with traditional practices. These forms of retraditionalization
include the use of couples led by a husband rather than individuals as the
unit employed in some service industries, as noted by Adkins: individualiza-
tion is not universal. In the new media sector, often considered to be at the
forefront of new economy developments, they find that women are often
expected to adopt traditional female roles of caring and support rather than
to contribute to the technical and creative side.
Durbin, in ‘creating knowledge through networks’, discusses gender seg-
regation in the formal and informal networks through which so much of the
work at the managerial level in the knowledge economy is organized. Reject-
ing the simple assumptions that networks provide a route to equality for
women and men, Durbin discusses the different ways in which homophily
occurs. Women have skills in networking but these can have limited effects if
they are predominantly confined to women-only networks. She shows the
implications of this gender segregation not only for the position of women in
the occupational hierarchy but also for the exclusion of women from the
creation of the tacit knowledge that is essential for the effective working of a
knowledge-based organization. The exclusion of women from the production
24 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume 18 Number 1 January 2011 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
and exchange of tacit knowledge as a consequence of gender segregated
networks can have significant implications for the effective working of an
organization.
Nishikawa, in ‘(Re)defining care workers as knowledge workers’,
addresses some of the fundamental questions of the definition of knowledge
itself and the significance of the interplay between its varied tacit and explicit
facets. She explores the issues in an intricate analysis of a traditionally female
area of work, that of care work. Are care workers, with their specific ways of
exchanging and developing knowledge, tacit knowledge workers? Or should
the designation of knowledge workers be retained exclusively for those
engaged in the exchange and development of explicit knowledge? Nishikawa
argues that care workers could become and, indeed this is an essential change
if the quality of care is to be improved.
Together the articles address the themes of the contested definitions of
knowledge and of gender, the constitution of human capital and the impli-
cations of different organizational forms such as networks to collectively
constitute an original and innovative contribution to the field.
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