https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/download/14795/13847

Men and Women of the Corporation

Culture in Action

Power is at the core of feminist theories of sexual harassment, although it has rarely been measured directly in terms of workplace authority. Popular characterizations portray male supervisors harassing female subordinates, but power-threat theories suggest that women in authority may be more frequent targets. This article analyzes longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews from the Youth Development Study to test this idea and to delineate why and how supervisory authority, gender nonconformity, and workplace sex ratios affect harassment. Relative to nonsupervisors, female supervisors are more likely to report harassing behaviors and to define their experiences as sexual harassment. Sexual harassment can serve as an equalizer against women in power, motivated more by control and domination than by sexual desire. Interviews point to social isolation as a mechanism linking harassment to gender nonconformity and women's authority, particularly in male-dominated work settings.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122412451728

Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power

A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of organizational power. Fewer studies, however, explore the implications of women in leadership positions for the opportunities and experiences of subordinates. Do women leaders serve to undo the gendered organization? In other words, is women’s greater representation in leadership positions associated with less gender segregation at lower organizational levels? We explore this question by drawing on Cohen and Huffman’s (2007) conceptual framework of women leaders as either “change agents” or “cogs in the machine” and analyze a unique multilevel data set of workplaces nested within Fortune 1000 firms. Our findings generally support the “agents of change” perspective. Women’s representation among corporate boards of directors, corporate executives, and workplace managers is associated with less workplace gender segregation. Hence, it appears that women’s access to organizational power helps to undo the gender...

Women in Power: Undoing or Redoing the Gendered Organization?

Applying a theory-based conceptual model of organizational diversity, climate of inclusion, and beneficial/detrimental outcomes, this study analyzes 30 qualified studies (N = 496,740 workers) publi...

The Promise of Diversity Management for Climate of Inclusion: A State-of-the-Art Review and Meta-Analysis

Building on prior work surrounding negative workplace experiences, such as bullying and sexual harassment, we examine the extent to which organizational context is meaningful for the subjective experience of sex discrimination. Data draw on the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, which provides a key indicator of individuals' sex discrimination experiences as well as arguably influential dimensions of organizational context—i.e., sex composition, workplace culture and relative power—suggested by prior research. Results indicate that the experience of sex discrimination is reduced for both women and men when they are part of the numerical majority of their work group. Although supportive workplace cultures mitigate the likelihood of sex discrimination, relative power in the workplace seems to matter little. We conclude by revisiting these results relative to perspectives surrounding hierarchy maintenance, group competition and internal cultural dynamics.

Thomas Nolan Ratliff

Papers

The Context of Workplace Sex Discrimination: Sex Composition, Workplace Culture and Relative Power

The Context of Workplace Sex Discrimination