Disappearing Acts

Abstract

Joyce Fletcher's research shows that emotional intelligence and relational behavior are often viewed as inappropriate because they collide with powerful, gender-linked images. This study of female design engineers has profound implications for attempts to change organizational culture. Joyce Fletcher's research shows that emotional intelligence and relational behavior are often viewed as inappropriate because they collide with powerful, gender-linked images. Fletcher describes how organizations say they need such behavior and yet ignore it, thus undermining the possibility of radical change. She shows why the "female advantage" does not seem to be benefit women employees or organizations. She offers ways that individuals and organizations can make visible the invisible work.

Disabling the Able: Stereotype Threat and Women's Work Performance

“…This news does not bode well for organizations. Given the rapidly shifting business environment in which they operate, organizations need the interpersonal skills usually associated with women (Fletcher, 1999). These skills may provide an organization with a competitive advantage (Rosener, 1997).…”

Beyond Gender and Negotiation to Gendered Negotiations

“…Fletcher (1999) describes the invisible work—extra work that does not get noticed or recognized—of women engineers who try to anticipate problems before they happen, seek to integrate the work of others, and try to build a team (see Mumby & Putnam, 1992). She shows how this work gets “disappeared.” While these engineers’ actions could be seen as signaling innovation in how to accomplish the work, instead they may be discounted as just women being nice or wanting to be liked.…”

“…Second generation gender issues appear neutral and natural on their face, but they result in different experiences for and treatment of women and men (Sturm, 2001). Distinct from first generation gender discrimination involving intentional acts of bias, second generation gender practices seem unbiased in isolation, but they reflect masculine values and the life situations of men who have dominated in the public domain of work (Flax, 1990; Fletcher, 1999). As a result, the negotiated order of most organizations privileges masculine and discounts feminine practices and assumptions.…”

Are We Becoming Part of the Problem? Gender Stereotypes in Negotiation Research

“…It is typical in experiments to instruct a negotiating subject to be competitive or accommodating or to act agentically or communally. By dichotomizing these choices of style, we implicitly draw on “separate spheres ideology” (private v public) that equates accommodation, community, selflessness, and an ethic of care to women (the values of the private sphere) and public sphere competencies, such as competition, agency, and self‐interest with masculinity (Fletcher, 1999; Williams, 2010). In so doing, we create a hierarchy of competencies that implicitly devalue feminine skills in workplace negotiation simulations.…”

“…Fletcher’s work (Fletcher, 1999, 2010) helps us make some of these important distinctions. In her work on relational practice and leadership, she talks about how agentic behavior gets conflated with assertiveness and communal behavior or accommodation with being nice and liked.…”