“Women on the Plains: Identity and the Experience of ...



“Women on the Plains: Identity and the Experience of Leadership”

By

Lindsay Bergenheier

(Qualitative Methods Spring 2007)

Women have been entering the workforce in increasing numbers since the 1970's. This paper examines ways female leaders develop work identities and their struggles to balance competing demands upon their time.

Literature Review

The inequalities women face in the workplace have been documented extensively through various bodies of sociological work. Predominately female occupations tend to pay substantially less than male occupations (Macpherson and Hirsch 1995), and on average women earn about 76 cents for every dollar earned by a man (Riss 2005). The exclusion of women in high ranking corporate culture has been linked to an invisible caste, creating a situation where “it is the embeddedness of gendered attitudes and behavior in organisational culture that is inimical to women, and hinders their progress” (Wilson 1998:398). Simpson asserts that women become isolated and highly visible within male dominated environments at work, and despite the increased number of female managers over the last few decades women still face inequalities in pay, status and hierarchical position (1997).

Women face barriers to occupational success in terms of competing demands upon their time outside of work as well. Child care creates a tremendous time responsibility for any working parent, and studies have shown that companies are less likely to offer upwardly mobile positions to women when the organization perceives that her commitment to family supercedes the commitment she has at work (Budig and England 2001). Ann Crittenden, in her book “The Price of Motherhood” finds that the “mommy tax” is highest for well educated, high income women. The interruptions at work for sick child care or the taking time off after the birth of a child negatively impacts young women as they begin their careers (2001).

Method and Data

This paper looks at the narratives of seven women working in leadership positions in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Semi-structured depth interviews were conducted lasting between one and two hours, generated in the fall of 2007. All of the participants were white and between the ages of thirty and sixty. Questions centered on family background, parental work ethic, definitions and attitudes about leadership, the effects of mentorship relationships, and the relationships the women had with their families.

Fargo Moorhead is located on the boarder of North Dakota and Minnesota. Most of the surrounding area is made up of small rural towns with a few smaller cities in North Dakota and Minneapolis four hours away. The careers of these women were fairly typical for many middle to upper middle class people living in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Although by no means a poverty stricken area, Fargo Moorhead does not have the quantity of affluent members of the community that one would find in a larger metropolitan area, such as Minneapolis. This project is meant to examine how women leaders in this specific geographic area develop identity about work and by no means is meant to apply universally to all women. However, this does give us the potential to examine an often unrepresented part of the population when it comes to women in leadership. Often times the focus of this type of research involves looking at high powered women working in large corporate settings. This project gives voice to what might be considered the average American woman, how she internalizes what work means to her and her struggle to achieve career goals.

Results

This study finds that leadership is an integral part of the identity of the seven women who participated. A belief in the importance of a strong work ethic was part of early socialization by family and other cultural actors, and the drive to be successful and have their work make a difference carries a powerful sense of meaning to these women. Women in the workforce, especially those with children, must strive to fulfill multiple roles at the same time, and the implications for the development of identity will be explored regarding this dilemma.

Work Ethic as Identity

Almost all of the women who participated in this study were born and raised in the Northern Plains of the United States (86%) and all of them characterized their parents as having a very strong work ethic. Growing up in rural parts of North Dakota and Minnesota seemed to play a major role in the lives of these women, influencing the direction they took with their careers later in life. Their narratives about small town life infer that status within these communities is based not upon one’s income, but rather the level of commitment to hard work one displays. The life of a farmer is in some ways very similar to that of a leader: it requires continual commitment to the work, and success is dependent upon accomplishing long term goals and bringing a vision of one’s work to fruition. Growing up in the Northern Plains, these women saw their parents working at the high paced standard rural life set for them, and a crucial part of their early socialization centered on a commitment to hard work over monetary status. Eloise became an organizational leader by climbing the corporate ladder at a multi-national technology firm while starting a family and raising two children. She had this to say about how she perceived her parents:

My work ethic was always very strong, but I thought it was made strong from childhood. I had a father that put in numerous hours, two jobs, until he got one of his businesses down to where it could become the sole income...When I was two we were moved into a neighboring town and he bought a restaurant and he was running that. At the same time he was selling insurance at night. He was up in the morning making breakfast for the farmers that would come into town for breakfast and sometimes getting the lunch thing started, but then he’d be off when he had appointments in the afternoon and after supper...Do what you need to do to make an income, but also do the right thing... It was a small town. What I admire about my dad is he would go to a customer and tell them which policy was the right one to buy based on what it would do for them, the value it would bring them and at the best cost. He was giving them a smart, sound decision. His ethics was hard work [sic], he was up at four in the morning going to this restaurant and be up ‘til late at night. It was just work, work, work... He had a great reputation in our town, people loved him. They still do... There was always a very strong work ethic in our house as we grew up. I think that’s very common in the Midwest, actually.

For Eloise the most important part of her work was not the paycheck she took home but the hard work she put into her job, as well as the good she saw herself doing for other people. This was a sentiment echoed by all of the women leaders interviewed for this study, that making a difference and getting the respect of those who followed you was the biggest part of their job. Thus accomplishment at work took on a deeper sense of meaning and became part of their identity. Work is not simply something these women did, but rather an integral part of who they are.

The early socialization of these women plays a major role in shaping their career decisions later in life. Patricia grew up on a farm and she describes the work ethic of her parents:

My parents were farmers. My mom was in the field just like my dad was. I would help as well. I think with a lot of farmers you have a strong work ethic because you’re doing it seven days a week. With my parents what I saw was they had a strong love for the soil. They did what they did because they enjoyed it. That’s what I saw from my dad, that’s the message I got. That’s probably why my mom and I still have the farm. We still have about six hundred acres. There’s a responsibility there but it’s the one place where if I’m feeling overwhelmed its one place I can go and get on my four wheeler and I can go out and ride and feel almost with nature.

Patricia goes back to the farm every weekend after she is done working as a high level administrator in a major governmental healthcare organization. Despite having an extremely busy schedule, being back on the farm and doing the work that is important to her, and relationship she has with her mother, is a fundamental aspect of her life.

Although none of these women currently live in a small town or have professional positions that directly relate to farm life, the ties to their community of origin and the work ethic they brought with them out of these settings transferred onto the way they lead their lives, including time spent in college. Johanna joined the military right after graduating from high school and her career as a captain in the United States military has been characterized by a strong sense of direction and commitment, regardless of what project she chooses to take on. This work ethic carries over into every aspect of her life. She said “College was kind of a job for me. I worked two jobs (when in college); I went to school full time. I don’t know why. I didn’t need to work two jobs; I had my college paid for (because of the GI bill).” The definition of success in leadership for Johanna, and the other women as well, did not come from a paycheck, rather, it came from what they saw themselves being able to accomplish.

In accordance with having a strong work ethic and a deep sense of meaning about hard work, passion was also a major motivation for these women. Leadership positions require a tremendous amount of time and energy. In order for their hard work to be “worth it,” what they were doing needed to matter on a more personal level. Many of the positions held by the women leaders who participated in this study could be characterized as “pink collar” professions. Over half (57%) worked in the healthcare industry, three of whom had backgrounds in nursing and one who worked as a social worker. The other women in this study, although they were not in traditional feminine professions, considered helping people to be the most important part of what they did. Johanna, who is currently working in the military’s public affairs office, says in response to what she cares most about at work:

I care so much for my troops. Probably too much at times. There’s nights that I’m up at night and my husband is just kind of trying to get me to drop it, “there’s nothing you can do.” That’s something I’m learning. You can do all you can, but at some point it can’t effect your family life. When it’s a passion, that’s kind of hard to do sometimes.

Caring was central to how these women approached leadership, whether or not they worked in a care-giving profession. To some women, however, it was entirely crucial to how they made decisions about their careers.

Two of the women working in healthcare had started their own businesses. Both women were motivated not just by the financial security of owning a business but also because they saw their business as being able to satisfy communal needs. Henrietta’s primary motivation for starting her home healthcare company was the frustration she felt working in a large corporate healthcare setting. She said “I started looking at what services were available in the community.... In the back of my mind, you know what, there’s a lack of services out in the community.” After working as administrative manager in a hospital for a number of years she quit and started a business that gives home care to the elderly. As well as providing much needed services to seniors she has also served as City Counsel woman, bringing her passion to help others into the entire community.

The women who started their own businesses have very persistent and determined approaches to leadership, and they direct their efforts into whatever action brings them closer to their goals. Loretta has a teenage daughter at home, and past work history has always involved goal-oriented public works projects, such as volunteering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. However, after a frustrating experience where she saw a client slip through the cracks she decided to start her own home health service agency.

Well, there was a young man that I was working with as a disability right’s advocate... he was injured, very significant injury, paralytic injury and he…was also extremely obese. And they put him in a nursing home because all of the home health care agencies essentially boycotted him because of his size. It was that they felt, as a system, that…he needed to be monitored...they were saying that he was going to eat himself to death and therefore, for his own good, they need to put him in a nursing home, knowing the statistics of that kid dying in a nursing home were extremely high. And it just pissed me off, so bad…We just started a business.

Work, since it is tied so closely to the identity these women have for themselves, must carry a meaning that goes beyond monetary compensation. Frequently the women who participated in this study acknowledged the need to put the higher purpose of what they were doing above financial gains. Patricia said “I could probably earn more money if I was working in the private sector ... For me it’s the mission, that’s what it’s that all about.” Reflecting her earlier statements about her farming parents being motivated by the love they had for the soil, Patricia, and the other women as well, saw the identity they derived from work tied to the deeper meaning that work reflected. Elizabeth is a human resources director at a non-profit organization whose mission is to help disabled individuals live as independently as possible. She considered passion to be an indelible part of what made her a successful leader, saying “What makes me good is finding the right fit. I think this is the right fit for me because it is my passion.” The passion for the work, and the profound meaning is carries for them, makes the role of leader a fundamental part of their identities as women.

The descriptions these women gave about what they considered good leadership reflected what could be considered traditional female traits. The emphasis on group communication, mutual respect and caring among co-workers, was not only a part of their work identity but their identity as women as well. The role of leader was not seen as being anathema to the identity they held as women, rather, the two seemed to be interwoven and mutually influential upon one another. The motivation for leadership is rooted in a humanistic element for these women. They want to help, not only the clients that they serve, but also the employees around them. Patricia, when questioned why she chose to move into the administrative side over nursing she had this to say:

I think making a difference. Knowing that I like process, I like to see people be able to take things and move them forward. Really feeling like I could help in some way, making a difference. Be it with a veteran or being with an employee or moving the organization forward. Probably just that I could make a difference.

Furthermore, when asked what made her an effective leader she said:

Listening to people. Encouraging them to problem solve their ideas. Rather than, if somebody comes forward and they have an issue, rather than having them just take care of it say, “Ok, what are some things we can do with the situation, how can we do it a little differently?” Helping them walk through the steps rather than telling them you need to do it this way.

Although there was a great variation in whether or not the women in this study saw a difference in male and female leadership characteristics, Elizabeth considered her gender to be a crucial part of what made her an effective leader. The work that Elizabeth does as an HR director involves balancing the needs of staff with the needs of the clients her organization serves, and she saw her maternal instinct and the deep concern for other people as a fundamental resource in her work.

I’m never going to get rid of it [her emotional side], nor do I want to because I’m a mom. All of that helps me to be a leader, it’s shaped me into the person that I am. Me caring for people, wanting to help people. Especially in the role that I’m in, in a different role it might not have helped me. But in what I’m doing it has helped me because I’m in the helping profession. I still am very involved with clients and families. I still have to have those [maternal feelings], the ability to be personable and empathetic, sympathetic. All those helped shape me into the leader that I am.

Being a woman leader is not a superficial role acted out by the women in this study, rather, it is a deeply internalized part of their identity. The passion they have for work and their accomplishments are deeply meaningful for them and as a result, in accordance with much of the early socialization they receive from their parents and communities of origin, work is more about passion than it is about monetary status. Furthermore, they are extremely driven to make their passionate ideas a reality, and have developed leadership characteristics that are direct yet still caring and compassionate. However, as important as being a leader is to these women it is not by any means their sole source of identity and meaning making. Women leaders must deal with managing competing roles in their lives, including motherhood, marriage and other familial obligations, and their own sense of personal well-being.

The Maid Needs a Maid

The commitment necessary for being a leader is extremely time consuming. Although the meaning and higher purpose of the work they did made the demands of their job “worth it” in their eyes, these women still made sacrifices in their jobs to accommodate other personal goals.

Eloise worked as a sales and technology manager in a major global technology corporation for many years but recently she left the job that she loved in order to be a “full time” parent to her two young sons. Her situation at work suddenly changed after an organizational restructuring, and in order for her to maintain her current status or more optimally move up in the company, she would have needed to relocate to the East Coast. Although she had always wanted to move out of the area, at least for a time, the pressure she received from her husband and both their sets of parents to stay proved to be too powerful, and ultimately she quit her job. The taboo for mothers to relocate their families in order to pursue a career seems to be a persistent factor in the upward mobility of women in the workforce. The full time responsibilities of motherhood compete with the demands of a successful career, and mothers have been shown to earn 60% of the income a father makes in the same role (Roth ). Other works have been done regarding the detrimental effects a partners’ high demanding job has upon a family. Although men have been in the past more willing to sacrifice family for work, their spouses and children remain extremely dissatisfied by this decision to prioritize career over family (see Perlow1967). The women in this study were unwilling to sacrifice their personal lives, and the lives of their families, for climbing the ladder within their careers. And although Eloise missed her job, she did not regret her decision:

Very often they (my children) were the last ones picked up, when I worked at Indsco. I traveled a lot, my husband and I juggled things. That’s how we managed ourselves. ..Where I am with my life, I had set a goal that I would stay there (Indsco) twenty years, but all of a sudden I’ve got a six and a four year old. And the six year old is starting first grade and looking at the flexibility I was desiring in my schedule I really couldn’t keep going at the pace I had been going and still be able to say, I would like to be off work at three o’clock to be able to get my children and be with them.

The relocation Eloise would have had to make to the East Coast would have only meant her and her husband’s hectic schedule would have gotten worse. Ultimately, for this woman leader, the need to have the home life she desired has taken precedence in her life, at least for now when her children are young.

Johanna is a self described “workaholic” and her strength as a leader is tied to her decisive, “go-getter” attitude. However, this approach to work ended up creating major conflict in her marriage. According to the narrative she gave, her husband thought it was unfair that she put so much time and energy in her work, and perceived her commitment to work as a threat to her commitment to her family.

My husband, he even said it during one of the hardest times in our marriage, when it was almost it’s either going to end or we’re going to figure this out. There was that breaking point. And he said to me that he felt like, “You love (your job) more than me, I feel like if I gave you that option you’d pick work.” And I said, “Well if you love me you wouldn’t give me that option.” And we’ve been to counseling. We both loved each other and it was just, he had trouble dealing with it.

As time progressed, and the couple had their first child, Johanna was able to find a better balance between work and home life. However, she makes a conscious effort to always keep her husband and son in mind when she makes dramatic decisions at work, knowing that her career priorities have the potential to create serious conflict within her marriage.

The relationship a woman leader has with her spouse also has the potential to be extremely beneficial to her career. Henrietta claimed that the most important mentor in her life was her husband. Throughout their marriage Henrietta and her husband have been there to support one another during career transitions. This woman has been very successful not only in the current leadership position she holds as a business owner, but also in the leadership role she had when serving in the local government as City Commissioner for eight years. With the support of her husband she is able to make decisions based on her personal and intellectual prerogatives.

One thing, I’ve been tremendously fortunate with is having a spouse who’s very supportive. I don’t know if this is a belittling comment or not, but truly, what a person needs is a wife. Someone to take care of you, to some degree. And we’ve both done that for each other. It’s been interesting, we’ve been married for 32 years, and in those 32 years both have us have taken risks and done something at a time when the other one is stable. Then when the other spouse gets stable in what they’re doing, I would go off and do something. The first eight years or so we bought a house so we were both working full time. Then I decided to go back to school, drop back part time. And then, as I was finishing school he started his business. Then I went back full time, cuz he was drawing a salary. And then when he stabilized I decided to go back to graduate school. I quit my job and went off to graduate school. It’s been like that throughout our entire 32 years. It’s worked out well.

Henrietta has future plans for possibly going back into government, eventually selling her business and finding new career opportunities. Her potential to follow her dreams truly makes her work about passion, and putting her energy into making the social differences has been extremely important to her. Her ability to do so has been due in large part to the mutual relationship she has had with her spouse.

Positive and encouraging spousal support is extremely beneficial for women who desire upward mobility in their careers. However, women experiencing social pressure to perform traditional roles, especially the guilt regarding their duties as parents, find it difficult to balance work live with the demands of home. This can have a very negative impact upon their potential for careers in leadership. Loretta felt very frustrated that, although she was the head of her company, the social expectations she perceived from others about her role in the home was in no way lessened. She too had a very supportive spouse, but nevertheless perceived social pressure to conform to the same traditional expectations held for mothers, namely that she must be in complete charge of the home regardless of her obligations at work. She felt as though her mother and grandmother would be appalled that her home was not clean all the time or that she was unable to have dinner cooked and on the table when the other members of the family came home. She described an incident where another mother criticized her for letting her work interfere with the demands of motherhood.

I couldn’t attend an activity meeting because every single time it was scheduled I was out of town or something, she said to me “Well I raised three children and I managed to get to all of their activity meetings” and I said to her, well clearly you are a far, far better mother than I am. “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that.” No, but that’s what you said though... I was absolutely torn apart over the fact that this woman said that I was not a good mother because I could not make it to a meeting on the right day.

Loretta’s frustration is common to most of the women who participated in this study. Although for these female leaders there wasn’t an internal conflict between their public identity as women leaders and their private identities as wives and mothers, the external social pressure directed at them, specifically the expectation that their responsibilities in the home should not be effected by the demands at work, created a constant struggle to balance out their lives and prove that they were able to do both successfully. However, in order to make this happen, these women had to choose which part of their lives would suffer, and for the women who found motherhood just as important part of their identity, if not more so than their role as leader, compromising the well-being of their children simply was not an option.

Elizabeth is a single mother and although she holds a leadership position as HR director she has made the decision to have a career with less status in order to be able to spend the time with her child she feels is necessary to be a good parent. Being able to leave work at 3 o’clock in the afternoon in order to pick her daughter up from school takes precedence in her life. Her duties as a mother are more important to her than being able to have a more upwardly mobile career.

I have aspirations of either being a consultant or being an executive director. Definitely I’m still a single mom, have been since my daughter was just about a year old. That has definitely been, put me at a standstill at times and will continue to. If I’m going to aspire to do those things it does make it more difficult. I still can’t devote all my time to doing what I want to do because of that. That is my biggest hurdle. I don’t regret that either. I would never regret having my daughter and having her in my life because I think being a single mom helped me develop some of my characteristics.

Comparing the careers of the seven women who participated in this study, it is interesting that the woman leader with the “lowest” status position was a single mother (Elizabeth), while on the other hand the woman with the “highest” status position was unmarried and had never had children (Patricia). Mothers with the aspiration to be leaders must make compromises in both spheres in order to accommodate competing time constraints of multiple roles. As Eloise illustrated, sometimes having the career you desire and the home life you want simply just do not fit together. However, it is interesting to note that although Eloise is no longer formally employed at Indsco, she spends much of her time consulting and acting as an informal leader to the work contacts she formerly had. And despite the fact that Patricia did not have to balance work with children, she was still extremely active in the community, participating in over a dozen different organizations. All of the women in this study were asked what the most difficult part of being a leader was, and Patricia’s answer reflected a common sentiment: “Probably time. Getting it all done, balancing out that life. That would be the greatest challenge.” Regardless of the particular personal and familial situations women leaders have the need to make time for roles and aspirations outside of their leadership role played an important part in negotiating their career paths.

Finding the leadership role that “fits” and was meaningful was an indelible part of the identity of the women leaders interviewed for this project. However, holding a leadership position is not the only source of identity and meaning making in their lives, and the need to constantly make sacrifices in order to balance their time was a ubiquitous theme throughout all of their narratives. Leadership was but one aspect of the identity of these women leaders, and although finding the time to fulfill all of their roles and at the same time be successful could be a struggle, it was a crucial part of who they were.

Scope and Limitations

This project has focused on using qualitative research techniques in examining the narratives of seven women. All interviews were separately obtained in one session, so no follow-up questions were done after the project came to cessation. Although the sample size is small and limits the research in various ways, this project was in no way intended to be applied to the experience of all women in leadership positions. Rather, this study seeks to deconstruct the individual ways these women have developed work identities and to possibly understand how their experiences are shared by other women. This sample does not represent women who hold elite leadership positions; instead the focus has been on what could be considered middle management, as well as the two cases of small business ownership. The description of the lives and experiences of members of the upper classes are for the most part non-existent in sociological research, and this project unfortunately does not further that endeavor.

Conclusion

As women are expected to be a part of the workforce in order to maintain a middle class lifestyle, they have come to connect to their job in a way that goes beyond simply earning a paycheck. More women are going to college, earning better grades, graduating with a higher frequency than men, and are more likely to pursue a professional degree as well (Tamar 2006). Work becomes a part of who they are, and for the seven women in this study, their identity as women share a relationship with their identities as leaders. Although the descriptions these women gave regarding their leadership styles seemed to reflect what might be considered traditional female behaviors and traits, further research should be directed at discovering empirically whether or not women leaders are more likely to have a “nurturing” style of management and whether or not their co-workers perceive them as having feminine leadership qualities. Also, further research should be done regarding the mores and social values developed in the small rural towns of the Midwest. The homogenous populations of these areas often have very little stratification amongst its members and personality traits seem to play a much greater role in the social status ascribed to individuals.

The need for women in the workforce to have support networks is a crucial factor in determining the potential they have in their careers. Although the “mommy tax” affects highly educated, high earning women the most severely, all women with child care responsibilities face challenges in the workforce and wage penalties as a result(Crittenden 2001). However, women putting the needs of their children above climbing the hierarchal ladder certainly should not be penalized. Women who use their social capital to mother are providing a valuable service to society by putting their efforts into raising well-adjusted future citizens. Rather, it is the inequality in childcare responsibilities that puts pressure on women to time and again pull the “double shift,” putting the majority of household stress upon her shoulders. A future area of research should be directed at understanding whether or not households with equally responsible fathers, who spend just as much time on home cares as their partners, lead to mothers being less penalized in the workplace. The equal distribution of household responsibility makes the burden of childcare more dispersed, causing less conflict for women between work and home. Furthermore, as men are regarded as being equally responsible for domestic duties the penalties incurred within the workplace could lessen. As shown by the narrative given by Henrietta, the mutual exchange between partners gives women an immediate advantage in their careers in terms of sharing responsibilities in the home, as well as providing the necessary support she needs. In a quantitative study on leadership done in the fall of 2006, the lack of spousal support was statistically significant in terms of barriers women experienced in accessing leadership positions. In the study “Selling Women Short” by Louise Marie Roth, men who have stay at home partners have a distinct advantage in their careers since both partners work to further his career. The inequality in household responsibilities between two working partners, regardless of the type of career the woman has, ends up requiring more time and energy spent in the domestic sphere by the female partner (Roth 2006). The socialization of men to accept a deep and open commitment to child-rearing would be extremely beneficial to women’s careers.

The women in this study gave descriptions of their identity that included many factors. Their community of origin, and growing up in small Northern Plains towns, played a major role in shaping their values and work ethic. Their experiences and orientation as women directed their professional interests and influenced the style and approach they took in the workplace. Women leaders create identity through the work they do, the roles they play, and the internal motivations and intellectual and emotional beliefs they hold. All of the lived experiences of the women who participated in this study varied in many ways, but what brought them together was the personal meaning they gave to being women leaders on the plains.

Works Cited

Budig, Michelle J. and Paula England. 2001. “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood.” American Sociological Review 66:204-225.

Giddens, Anthony. 1991. “The Time-Space Constitution of Social Systems.” Pp. 455-461 in Social Theory: Roots and Branches, edited by Peter Kivisto. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company.

Lewin, Tamar. July 9, 2006. “”At College, Women are Leaving Men in the Dust.” The New York Times

Macpherson, David A. and Barry T. Hirsch. 1995. “Wages and Gender Composition: Why do Women’s Jobs Pay Less?” Journal of Labor Economics 13:426-471.

Munch, Allison and J. Miller McPherson and Lynn Smith-Lovin. 1997. “Gender, Children, and Social Contact: The Effects of Childrearing for Men and Women.” American Sociological Review 62:509-520.

Perlow, Leslie A. 1967. Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices New York: Cornell University Press.

Reskin, Barbara. 1988. “Bringing the Men Back In: Sex Differentiation and the Devaluation of Women’s Work.” Gender and Society 2:58-81.

Reskin, Barbara. 1993. “Sex Segregation in the Workplace.” Annual Review of Sociology 19:241-270.

Ridgeway, Cecilia L. 1997. “Interaction and the Conservation of Gender Inequality: Considering Employment.” American Sociological Review 62:218-235.

Riss, Susanne. 2005. “How Can We Close the Gender Pay Gap?” NAFE Magazine Winter:18-23.

Roth, Louise Marie. 2006. Selling Women Short: Gender and Money on Wall Street. NJ: Princeton University Press.

Simpson, Ruth. 1997. “Have Times Changed? Career Barriers and the Token Woman Manager.” British Journal of Management. 8:S121-S130.

Wilson, Elizabeth. 1998. “Gendered Career Paths.” Personnel Review 27:396-411.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download