Taking Women Professionals Out of the Office

Abstract

Many women professionals traverse settings beyond the office in their work, but research on women professionals rarely follows them out of the office. Using a large, archived data set of focus groups with sales professionals, the authors ask how work in out-of-the-office settings affects women's careers. The authors distinguish between two types of settings. In "heterosocial" settings, interaction rules are traditionally and normatively gendered; women and men are understood by others as heterosexually linked pairs, women (and men) become targets of gossip, and some women report sexual advances and sexual harassment. In "homosocial" settings such as golf courses and strip clubs, women's disadvantage takes the form of exclusion. D uring the past 30 years, women have made substantial inroads into previously men's fields (Morgan 2005). However, case studies of single professions or organizations present a mixed picture, with some showing gains for women (Morgan 1998; Petersen and Saporta 2004) and others showing women continuing to lag behind similar men (Morgan and Arthur 2005; Noonan, Corcoran, and Courant forthcoming). Critiquing Acker's (1990) "gendered organizations" approach, Britton (2000) argues for research explaining why women's progress (pay, promotion) is better in some organizations or professions than in others. Britton writes, "Conceptualizing bureaucratic organizations as inherently gendered may keep us from seeing settings in which gender is less salient and can thus obscure 108 AUTHORS' NOTE: The authors thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions.

Gendered Organizations in the New Economy

“…Often these are organized around golf or hunting (Morgan and Martin 2006). The women we interviewed provided classic accounts of exclusion from these groups.…”

Gender inequalities in the City of London advertising industry

“…In part this is due to the unconventional and anti-social working hours discussed above. As long as potential women leaders and managers are excluded from (or constrained in their participation in) networked forms of male sociality both in the work-place and, crucially, beyond it at the margins of the clock (breakfast meetings, after-work drinks, parties), so they will be less likely to gain access to prestigious clients, projects and promotions (Cockburn, 1991;Hennig and Jardim, 1979;Morgan andMartin, 2006, Wajcman, 1988). The advertising sector is keenly aware of the disjuncture between its audience, its structure and its gendered occupational segregation: "It's 2016.…”

Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment

“…Other examples of informal settings that are common in the business world and from which women are excluded, or where their presence is at least highly unusual, would be men-only golf courses or, more evident still, strip clubs. The fact that such informal arenas have gendered effects on the business opportunities of men and women has recently been highlighted in the literature (Jeffreys 2008, Morgan andMartin 2006).…”

“…Morgan and Martin distinguish between heterosocial informal settings, in which women and men alike are subject to gendered societal norms, and homosocial informal settings, from which women are de facto excluded (Morgan and Martin 2006).…”