‘Belonging’ and ‘Otherness’: Sex Equality in Banking in Turkey and Britain

Abstract

The struggle for sex equality at work has largely been achieved in the developed world, it is claimed. The number of well-qualified young women entering white-collar employment and achieving promotion to first-line and middle management positions now matches or exceeds their male peers. Many young women have high career aspirations and argue that sex discrimination no longer exists. However, this perception is overoptimistic. Major sex inequalities persist at senior management level in the salaries and benefits offered to female and male staff and in access to certain favoured occupations and sectors of employment. Questionnaires, interviews and documentary evidence from three Turkish and six British banks and high street financial organizations showed that their claimed commitment to equal opportunities by sex was not matched by their practices. Members of managerial elites (who were almost exclusively male) held firm views about the characteristics of 'the ideal worker', which informed organizational ideologies, including human resource policies and practices concerning recruitment and promotion. They also permeated organizational cultures, which affected employees' working practices and experiences. The outcome of these internal negotiation processes was to differentiate between a favoured group of staff seen as fully committed to the companies' values, who were promoted and rewarded, and an 'out' group, whose members were denied these privileges. This distinction between 'belonging' and 'otherness' is gendered not only along the traditional lines of class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but also along the new dimensions of marriage, networking, safety, mobility and space. Despite local and cross-cultural differences in the significance of these factors, the cumulative disadvantage suffered by women staff seeking career development in the industry was remarkably similar.

Promoting women to MD in investment banking: multi-level influences

“…Relationships, however, are affected by the very bi-polar and, arguably, macro conceptions of gender and leader prevalent in these organizations, which in turn can be said to be influenced and perpetuated by their demographic composition (Ely, 1995). Despite much research showing how difficult it can be for women to be a part of informal networks (e.g Özbilgin and Woodward, 2004), our findings echoed those of Ely et al (2011) that those women who had already become MDs had overcome this with good relationships with male or female seniors.…”

“…MDs, in particular, are seen as the banking elite. These senior banking positions are characterised by intensive work practices and high levels of financial reward (Özbilgin and Woodward, 2004) and negotiating access to them can be difficult. Access to the sample populations here was gained via contacts made with senior Diversity and Human Resource practitioners, interested in senior-level gender imbalance in their organizations; in both studies the projects were supported by senior operational managers.…”

Variation in labor market participation of married women in Turkey

“…As a result, female employment in light manufacturing could increase, as had been the case in other countries following such a strategy (Standing, 1999;Tansel, 2002;Ross, 2006). (Özbilgin & Woodward, 2004).…”

Women Leaders and Social Performance: Evidence from Financial Cooperatives in Senegal

“…On the one hand, the financial sector is male-dominated and plagued by gender stereotypes (Ogden et al, 2006;Petit, 2007); and women access hardly any leadership positions in banks (Özbilgin and Woodward, 2004). On the other hand, organizations benefitting from internal democracy are more open-minded toward female leaders.…”