Women In Workplace Research Articles

How can mentoring support women in a male-dominated workplace? A case study of the UK police force

There is little academic research in relation to mentoring, learning and women, particularly in the male-dominated organizational context of the UK Police force. Currently, there is a Home Office drive to address inequality within the UK Police with a number of initiatives proposed including mentoring interventions, flexible working arrangements and positive-action recruitment initiatives. The purpose of this study is to investigate what policewomen mentees and mentors perceive they are learning through formal mentoring over time and how this makes a difference for them in the workplace. This will provide insights into whether Government investment in formal mentoring is the right intervention to help create a more gender-reflective, more equal workforce, in the Police. This study takes a critical realist position and an interpretivist theoretical perspective investigating a single case study organization. Key themes, spread across the four phases of the mentoring lifecycle were explored through 68 semi-structured interviews and four focus groups. Key findings are uncovered in relation to learning outcomes for these policewomen, both as mentees and mentors. It was found that mentoring added value across all four learning domains (cognitive, skills, affective-related and social networks) and that the largest number of responses over time, were in relation to the affective-related domain, particularly building self-confidence. These findings are significant as they demonstrate that formal mentoring programmes can support and empower women within the specific workplace of the UK Police. In conclusion, if women are being precluded from breaking the “glass labyrinth” because of lack of knowledge, opportunity and networks to progress within this context, then mentoring could be part of this solution. If the masculine organizational culture is also creating prejudice and obstacles for women in the workplace (the “concrete floor”), then mentoring might be one way towards breaking down these barriers. In addition, if all (or some) of these factors are contributing to women’s lower self-confidence levels and the “sticky floor” syndrome, then again the findings suggest that mentoring may be part of the solution towards empowering women beyond their current role. It is hoped that these insights will impact the emphasis put on the various Home Office recommendations and the initiatives offered by different Police forces. It is also hoped that these insights will have implications for other organizations that are considering investing in mentoring interventions, for similar groups or beyond. This article is published as part of a collection on the role of women in management and the workplace.

Risk Assessment: Factors Contributing to Discomfort for Menopausal Women in Workplace.

The purpose of this study was to review the Factors contributing to discomfort for menopausal women in workplace and the perceived effects of working conditions on menopausal symptoms, and to produce recommendations for managers and women. This study was a review article. We searched PubMed and Science Direct for articles related to menopause and workplace. Keywords included: menopause AND workplace OR occupational health or menopausal women AND managers. Because we aimed to update the literature following the 2011 review of menopause and workplace, only English-language articles published between 2011 and 2017 were included. This review showed that how managers could be help and awareness and what should be done for menopausal women in workplace by risk assessment. Many risk factors are contributing to discomfort for menopausal women in workplace and managers should be assessed them. Managers should be aware that menopausal transition causes difficulty for some women at work, then occupational health and safety and health promotion policies will be increasingly important. It may help inform the development of tailored occupational health policies and programs that cater for the needs of women as they transition through menopause in the workplace.

“Unwanted” and “bad,” but not “sexual”

Purpose– As prior research has indicated, women who experience behaviors that fall under the accepted definitions of sexual harassment, do not label, acknowledge, or claim these behaviors as such. The purpose of this paper is to explore an alternative explanation for this non-labeling by arguing that apprehension in expressing sexuality, stemming from apparent subjugation of sex and sexuality by society, posited in a culturally value laden backdrop, leads to Sri Lankan women not labeling or acknowledging sexual harassment.Design/methodology/approach– Employing grounded theory, in-depth, one-on-one interviews were conducted with 40 working women.Findings– It was revealed that social construction of gender and sexuality in Sri Lankan society, with its instilled moralistic beliefs and norms such as respectability, sexual innocence, chastity, and purity among women, suppress and govern their sexuality in the workplace. The resultant self-surveillance and self-discipline lead to women evading expressing and using vocabulary denoting sexuality – including the term “sexual harassment” – mainly for fear of social censorship, self-blame, and victim blame.Practical implications– The study shows how policies and procedures of sexual harassment must heed the gendered everyday realities of women in workplaces and questions the capacity and utilization of these laws and policies that employ the label “sexual” in addressing the issue.Originality/value– This paper advances knowledge on sexual harassment by providing new insights on how cultural values and norms leading to social construction of gender and sexuality play an important role in non-labeling of sexual harassment. Moving further, this paper illustrates how Foucault’s treatise of “sexuality and power,” and “social construction of reality” can be employed to theorize non-labeling.

“Relational by Nature”? Men and Women Do Not Differ in Physiological Response to Social Stressors Faced by Token Women

Women in male-dominated occupations report negative workplace social climates, whereas most men in female-dominated occupations report positive workplace social climates. Using a laboratory experiment mimicking the negative workplace social climates experienced by these token women, the author examines whether women are more sensitive to negative workplace social climates than men are or if, instead, men and women react similarly. Using salivary cortisol, the author finds that token men and token women are equally likely to exhibit a physiological stress response to social exclusion on the basis of gender. A second experiment shows that token men and token women who are socially included do not exhibit physiological stress response. Findings imply that(1) social exclusion on the basis of gender may be associated with physiological stress response and consequent negative health outcomes and (2) combined social-structural and social-interactional components of token women's workplace climates would be stressors to both men and women workers.

Perspective on Sexual Harassment of Women in Workplace

This article explore the Iranian women’s experience of sexual harassment at workplace, it effects on the harassed female workers and the coping strategies employed by them and the available laws that protect them from sexual harassment misconduct. This article focuses on sexual harassment in Iran which is relatively widespread. It is overwhelmingly directed at women, especially those in less-powerful position in the labour market. Analysis is also conducted on the Iran national legislation; its weakness and ignorance about harassment of working women at workplace and also the organization‘s fault in not having a good and serious policy and programs to protect and support women worker in work environments. Since people in order to economic need to be employment and they have to have relationship with individual and various group communities both man and woman at workplace. So workplace can be where for sexual harassment and also communication problems. According to labour law and human rights legislation, any statement and action has a gender massage, views or action that respondent does not accepted and become uncomfortable is considered sexual harassment. This is an analytical study. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n2p69

Taking Work Home: the private secretary and domestic identities in the long 1950s

ABSTRACTThis article explores how the role of the private secretary informed domestic identities in the long 1950s, arguing that as a highly visible figure in social commentary and popular culture she became an important icon around which discussions of feminine ideals circulated. Using archived television news film it is possible to open up a discussion of the visual themes surrounding the female secretary in the second half of the twentieth century and also to begin to study the secretary as a speaking subject. ‘Taking work home’ refers to the complex relationship between women's workplace and domestic identities and how they operated together in shaping women's participation in television news and resonated with changes in women's status at large. Thus the media archive becomes a valuable source for examining the changing place of paid work in women's lives and how this was being accommodated and articulated in popular culture.

Caught in suffering bodies: a qualitative study of immigrant women on long-term sick leave in Norway.

This article explores the issues faced by immigrant women on long-term sick leave due to chronic pain, focusing on their personal perspectives on their daily lives, their bodies and their pain. An increasing number of immigrants in Norway present a challenge to the public health service, above all in relation to the health needs of immigrant women, many of whom risk having to take long-term sick leave due to chronic pain. This study has a qualitative design, with participant observation and in-depth interviews. Participant observations were carried out from a sample of fourteen immigrant women in an outpatient clinic at a rehabilitation hospital. In addition, qualitative interviews were conducted after the rehabilitation period. A hermeneutic approach was used to understand the meaning of the narrated text. The analysis revealed one main theme, 'Bodies marked by onerous experiences', as well as two subthemes: 'It is in my body' and 'Invisible pain'. The immigrant women struggled with invisible, chronic pain, which they blamed on physically tiring workdays and stressful life situations. Furthermore, they felt that their experiences of discriminative attitudes at the workplace worsened their suffering. The chronic pain made the immigrant women suffer, because they experienced it as a threatening, incomprehensible and unreal force, without meaning or the ability to be controlled. Their own psychological distress exacerbated their pain. Immigrant women on long-term sick leave are likely to need special approaches that are closely adapted to their different backgrounds and their unique personal experiences. We recommend culturally appropriate family counselling and collaboration with employers at the women's workplaces.

Work–family conflict and the commodification of women's employment in three Chinese airlines

In the East, where gender is mediated by different family structures, societal institutions and economic development, the work–family conflict (WFC) metaphor remains appropriate. This paper investigates Chinese women's experiences of WFC in the fastest growing commercial airline sector in the world. It finds that, in contrast to the West, work-to-family, rather than family-to-work, conflict dominates. Liberalization, competition and commercialization have also had a significant gendered impact on jobs. The latter resulting in the commodification of women's aesthetic and emotional labour, job segregation, employment insecurity, poor career opportunities and increased WFC. We explore reasons why HR policies and practices in airlines fail to address women's workplace concerns and find that occupational status and lack of organizational power, together with the prevalence of traditional gendered norms and attitudes, play important roles

Employment status, residential and workplace food environments: Associations with women's eating behaviours

There remains a lack of consistent evidence linking food environments with eating behaviours. Studies to date have largely ignored the way different individuals interact with their local food environment and have primarily focussed on exposures within the residential neighbourhood without consideration of exposures around the workplace, for example. In this study we firstly examine whether associations between the residential food environment and eating behaviours differ by employment status and, secondly, whether food environments near employed women's workplaces are more strongly associated with dietary behaviours than food environments near home. Employment status did not modify the associations between residential food environments and eating behaviours, however results showed that having access to healthy foods near the workplace was associated with healthier food consumption. Policies focused on supportive environments should consider commercial areas as well as residential neighbourhoods.

Flexible Labor

This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object of knowledge in 1980s US public culture. The keyword flexibility, which crossed economic discourses about topics ranging from production to remuneration to consumption, was constructed as coextensive with feminism at this time. The essay begins by analyzing popular knowledge concerning labor flexibility created in scholarship and mainstream news. Next, the paper focuses on the contemporaneous articulation of flexibility to feminism. Since 1980, news, scholarship, and film argued that flexibility might provide a feminist antidote for late twentieth-century capitalism's harsh draining of labor from bodies. Particularly, flexible working conditions became publicized as a way that mothers could be better accommodated in the workplace. Yet as the century waned, flexibility failed to uproot standard time-intensive models of work and excluded some women from job opportunities and job security. When flexibility appeared to fail, pundits blamed feminism for wage-earning women's difficulty balancing family and workplace. This analysis shows that the various contradictory practices understood as flexibility rendered it troublesome as a feminist strategy. The paper concludes with an examination of the contemporary implications of this recent discursive history of flexibility.

The All‐or‐Nothing Workplace: Flexibility Stigma and “Opting Out” Among Professional‐Managerial Women

Using a model of the stigmatization of flexible work based on status legitimation theory, we analyze the experiences of a sample of 54 mothers who “opted out” of professional jobs. Qualitative text analysis reveals that features of women's workplaces are conducive to the creation and maintenance of flexibility stigma and bias and that women working flexibly are subjected to various forms of stigmatizing treatment, which plays a role in their decision to suspend their careers. We find limited evidence, however, that women perceive high levels of stigma and differential treatment as reflecting bias or prejudice. Instead, the majority appears to accept the legitimacy of professional time norms and view their treatment as justifiable. We identify factors that moderate or inhibit their perception of flexibility bias, as distinct from stigma per se, and discuss the limitations of our research as well as its implications for future research and policy.

Work Life Balance Issues of Women Employees: A Study in Bangalore City of Karnataka

Traditionally, the role of women involved cooking, cleaning, raising children, But, today's women have changed and have made their mark in every field. The proportion of women in work place is increasing, and it is a major challenge for them to balance the competing demands of work and family. So, a big question arising now-a-days for women employees is how they balance their work with life at home. Based on the current issue of the work-life balance (WLB) of the women employees, the present topic “Work - Life Balance Issues of Women Employees: A study in Bangalore city of Karnataka” is undertaken.

Gender differences in space–time mobility patterns in a postcommunist city: a case study based on mobile positioning in the suburbs of Tallinn

The reflection of gender roles in spatial mobility has been in the research focus of geographers as these issues are related to important aspects of the spatial organisation of society and planning such as the location of activities and services, the use of transportation, and housing policy. In this paper we compare gender-driven differences in the activity spaces of a new suburban community in the rapidly transformed former Soviet country Estonia. The authors used a questionnaire survey based on 573 households, and during eight days in 2006 tracked 256 people by mobile positioning. The results show that the space–time behaviour of men and women from the suburbs of Tallinn differs significantly in several aspects: Men have larger activity spaces and drive a car more, while women's workplaces are more concentrated in the city centre, they spend more time in suburban homes, and they use more public transportation. Comparing gender differences in Estonia with differences in other countries on the basis of similar studies conducted in Western countries, it appears that while the distribution of daily activities and the use of transportation are quite similar, there are differences in the location of workplaces.

Fragmented Sisters? The Implications of Flexible Working Policies for Professional Women's Workplace Relationships

Much is being done by governments and organizations to help workers reconcile their family and employment responsibilities. One such measure has been the introduction of flexible working policies. While academic and policy debates focus on the barriers to flexible working, less consideration is paid to those who work alongside flexible workers. Through a gendered lens, this article focuses on professional women and explores the implications of UK flexible working policies for women's workplace relations in organizations that have traditionally been based on male models of working. Drawing on interviews conducted in three English organizations, it was found that the women's interests did not always coincide and that their social relationships, with respect to flexible working, involved both support and resentment. In particular, the women's interests were affected by organizational and job‐related factors and their stage in the life course. These findings illuminate the ways in which policies are negotiated at the level of daily workplace life and show that co‐workers are a pivotal part of the wider picture of flexible working.

Shame As A Structure of Feeling: Raped and Prostituted Women In J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Futhi Ntshingila’s Shameless

If colonialism and apartheid shaped masculinities of past, transition to democracy in South Africa in 1990s has had effect of unsettling and unseating entrenched masculinities: masculinities which were, in main, patriarchal, authoritarian and steeped in violence.- Graeme Reid and Liz Walker, Masculinities in QuestionWhile seemingly fertile ground for negotiation of gendered, racial, and sexual politics of post-apartheid South Africa, raped and prostituted female body in South African fiction demands de-metaphorization. In her essay, Rainbow Womb, Meg Samuelson contends that the metaphorical use of women's bodies eclipse [s] and distort[s] social and political realities they inhabit (88). Samuelson's point elucidates problematic rendering of female form by South African writers as penetrable and violatable, and yet as a self-contained, abstracted symbol of national fantasy. Reduced either to abjected materialism or abstracted symbolism, women's bodies appear to function as un-integrated, de-contextualised, and convenient dumping ground for masculine anxieties and desires.Rather than reinforce notion that female form is a carrier and container of meaning, it is essential to acknowledge mode of affect - that is, - that motivates acts of violence against women in first place. Sexually independent and newly-empowered women in workplace, for instance, effectively threaten patriarchal power, resulting in feelings of on part of men followed by an attempt to recover dominance through sexual violence as well as through displacement of upon women in form of public stigmatization. An approach to raped and prostituted women, then, ought not to privilege female body as preferred site of negotiating colonial trauma, tensions of post-apartheid democratization, or destabilising of Zulu masculinities, but should examine affect of as embattled ground of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic systems. In J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, a system of anxious masculine desire is mobilized through feelings of disgrace - a of that carries with it notions of private (inward) shaming and public stigmatization. Similarly, in Futhi Ntshingila's Shameless, rhetoric of shame is directed toward prostituted, female body. Intriguingly, though, is not represented statically, but is enacted in both novels through its concomitant a\>owal and dism'owal. In Disgrace, Lucy Lurie (a lesbian) is gang-raped and impregnated by three violent black men and yet refuses to publically acknowledge trauma of this act - just as her father, David Lurie, publically denies effect and affect of Iiis sexual assault on one of Iiis students, Melanie Isaacs. In Shameless, protagonist Thandiwe renounces stigmatization of prostitution, arguing that to be a female labourer in any sector of society is simply to be another kind of whore (59). The disavowal of on part of female protagonists in these fictions serves to negate a reading of female body as passive receptacle of masculine fear and fantasy, and points instead to political and social pressures that are its cause. To be sure, along complicated nexus of shame, who is ashamed and who is shaming another is never an entirely divisible line.Tracing workings of as a structure of feeling underscores complexity of its distribution and circulation in both private and public spheres. For as Raymond Williams writes in Marxism and Literature, structures of are products of interrelating subjects, creating a set of specific internal relations at once interlocking and in tension (132). Williams' formulation of interlocking and dividing elements of relational subjects is remarkably compatible with an examination of operations of shame, since is at once inward (opposed to, or turned away from community) and vicarious (shared by members of community). …

Design development scopes towards occupational wellness of women workers: Specific reference to local agro based food processing industries in NE India

Women workers constitute one of the most vulnerable segments of the country's labour force. They often face different workplace health challenges than men do. They are engaged in a range of work that extends from heavy, monotonous, repetitive jobs, which are in many times experienced with low-paid and involves in long hours of work. Women's workplace health problems are frequently compounded by getting more of the same at home--the "double jeopardy" of domestic work. Specific issues to improve the workers motivation leading to enhancement of productivity and improving occupational health and safety were addressed. Context specific application of ergonomics principles were studied in the process of designing of work related equipment of local fruit processing units, as well as in tea industry, covering 180 subjects selected purposively. Ergonomic risk factors prevailed among the workers associates productivity and relevant health issues were quantified using QEC, RULA. NMQ was used to gather data on prevalence of CTDs among the workers. Pineapple peeling, tea leaves plucking were found highly labour intensive, done manually. Postures scores found were very high. WRMSDs were prevalent among the workers. Scope for ergonomic design intervention was observed to improve productivity and occupational health.

Women, the Radical Left, and the Fight Against the Ravages of the Great Depression

At the heart of Mary E. Triece' s monograph lies a burning desire to explore and analyze the reactions of working-class women to the problems that they encountered during the tumultuous decade of the Great Depression. Triece believes that the economic and social problems of this era gave greater emphasis to the paradoxical situation confronting females. The reality facing the large number of women who were part of the waged labor force was that not only were most of them confined to particular jobs but also to clearly defined female roles within them. Away from the workplace women had always provided unpaid domestic labor in the home and contributed largely unrecognized managerial skills, which were more than ever necessary to run households when the curse of unemployment devastated family income. However, when the public thought of who might perform the role of breadwinner, or considered the term head of household, or union organizer the presumption was that only men could perform these roles, and that manliness was the essential quality for a successful discharge of the responsibilities that were attached to each.

‘The other woman’ and the question of equal opportunity in Australian organizations

The present equal opportunity discourse in Australia, with its focus on ‘the mainstream woman’, i.e. the white Anglo-Celtic woman, overlooks the multiracial feminist perspectives of ‘the other woman’, the minority ethnic woman. As a result of the intersection of her sexual, ethnic and/or religious identities, ‘the other woman’ remains dually disadvantaged within Australian society and organizations; largely deprived of the opportunities available to her ‘mainstream’ sister. This paper discusses the complexity of intersections and of how the interaction of systems of stratification constructs specific social locations for minority ethnic women in Australian organizations. The paper draws on critical race and feminist theories with respect to intersectionality of race and gender, and offers quantitative and qualitative data to exemplify issues that surround representation and (in)equality within Australian organizations. The data include an empirical analysis of complaints filed under the federal legislation over a five-year period to determine how minority ethnic women's workplace experiences differ from those of their mainstream counterparts. The analysis reflects the ongoing nature of multiple discriminations faced by minority ethnic women.

The Emergence of Organized Feminist Resistance to Sexual Harassment in the United States in the 1970s

The first organized resistance to sexual harassment grew out of the women's movement, emerging at the intersection of activism against employment discrimination and feminist opposition to violence against women. The issue of sexual harassment brought together women's workplace concerns with resistance to male sexual aggression. In the mid-1970s two organizations formed to focus primarily on sexual harassment—Working Women United in Ithaca, New York, and the Alliance Against Sexual Coercion in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Based on archival materials and interviews, this article documents the early movement against sexual harassment, focusing particularly on the feminist activists who founded these organizations—who they were and how they shaped the movement against sexual harassment. These women made significant contributions to the public understanding of sexual harassment and the development of legal prohibitions against it.

Environmental pollutants, diet, physical activity, body size, and breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most common invasive cancer in women worldwide and the leading cause of death in US women in mid-life. Treatment has adverse effects, adding to the importance of finding modifiable risk factors. At the invitation of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, we reviewed studies of breast cancer and environmental pollutants, diet (assessed prospectively), body size, and physical activity, and animal studies that identify chemicals as potential mammary carcinogens. Databases developed in the review include information on 216 chemicals that increased mammary gland tumors in animal studies and 450 epidemiologic studies (accessible at www.silentspring.org/sciencereview and www.komen.org/environment). Exposure to potential mammary carcinogens is widespread from chemicals found in consumer products, air and drinking water pollution, food, and women's workplaces. Epidemiologic studies have included only a small number of chemicals identified as mammary carcinogens or as hormone disruptors, which may have implications for breast cancer; however, evidence is emerging for associations between breast cancer and polychlorinated biphenyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and organic solvents. Prospective diet studies have not revealed consistent associations with breast cancer. Improved exposure assessment methods will help advance future human studies of both diet and environmental pollutants. Studies of physical activity show that it is protective. In the same vein as evidence-based medicine, messages for patients, policymakers, and the public should support decision-making based on the strength of current evidence; such messages might address exposure reduction for some pollutants. Investments in research on environmental factors in breast cancer have potentially large public health benefits.