‘A Blinding Lack of Progress’:

‘A Blinding Lack of Progress’:

In this study we explore how versions of organizational reality and gender
are constructed in management discourse and whether such patterns
change over time. Specifically, we examine management explanations and
accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations through their commentaries
on their affirmative action programmes. In Australia private
sector organizations with 100 or more employees are required to report to
government on their affirmative action programmes for women. In these
documents, management representatives outline objectives for the coming
year and report on their progress in reducing employment-related barriers
for women. In doing so they account for the ‘problem’ of gender-based
discrimination that affirmative action is designed to address, justify their
actions (or lack of action) and reproduce versions of gendered identity.
Thus we use affirmative action reporting as cases of management rhetoric
to explore how aspects of gender and organization are constructed, taken
for granted, challenged or problematized. Comparing reports from the
hospitality sector over a 14-year period, we explore whether there is any
evidence of discursive change in management accounts of the gendered
nature of their organizations.
Keywords: gender, equality, management, affirmation action, rhetoric
Introduction
Since its inception in 1986, Australia’s equal employment opportunity
(EEO) legislation has precipitated considerable discussion and analysis.
The rationale underpinning the legislation was based on the disadvantaged
position of women in the workforce, primarily because of systemic
Address for correspondence: *Department ofManagement and Marketing, Faculty of Economics
and Commerce, 198 Berkeley Street, University of Melbourne VIC 3010, Australia, e-mail:
susanaa@unimelb.edu.au
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doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2009.00479.x
© 2009 The Author(s)
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Blackwell Publishing Ltd
discrimination (Ostenfeld and Strachan, 1999). Indeed, the then Prime
Minister, Bob Hawke, stated that ‘sustained economic recovery requires a
skilled and flexible workforce…. To date, women’s skills and talents have not
been utilised in our workforce to the fullest extent possible’ (Department of
the Prime Minister and Cabinet 1984, vol. 1, foreword cited in Ostenfeld and
Strachan, 1999, p. 21). The principles of EEO encompass the understanding
that women’s potential and working capacity has been needlessly hindered
by social, structural and systemic impediments. Hence, the purpose of EEO
legislation was to remove the impediments that confronted women in
employment.
Research examining EEO in Australian workplaces has focused largely on
analysing whether women’s employment opportunities have expanded or
improved as a result of the EEO legislation (for example, French and Strachan,
2007; Sheridan, 1998; Strachan, 1987; Strachan and Burgess, 2000). Typically,
the findings regarding women’s progress have been disappointing: women’s
employment opportunities and outcomes have not improved significantly,
despite the existence of EEO legislation (French and Strachan, 2007; Ostenfeld
and Strachan, 1999; Preston and Burgess, 2003; Sheridan, 1998; Strachan and
Burgess, 2000). To understand why so little progress has been made, Probert
(2002, p. 9) argues that we need more ‘evidence about the way people have …
experienced these changes, and the sense they have made of them’.
This study seeks to explore this phenomenon by examining employers’
explanations regarding women’s slow progress in the workplace and how
they account for gendered workforce differences. That is to say, we seek to
explore the question of how employers and managers understand and make
sense of EEO as a concept and whether this has changed over time. To date,
researchers have neglected to examine employers’ understanding of EEO in
the Australian work context and we suggest that this could contribute to a
critical evaluation of equal opportunity interventions.
After reviewing current literature on EEO in Australia we discuss the
contribution discursive approaches have made to understanding the perpetuation
of gender inequality. We then outline how we conducted the empirical
research. Using management reports from the hospitality sector submitted to
government in 1990 and 2004, our results and discussion focus on the extent
to which we can detect any changes in the discursive patterns in management
rhetoric over this 14-year period. Based on this analysis we argue that little
has changed in management accounts of affirmative action, their understanding
of EEO and their constructions of gender.
EEO and affirmative action in Australia
Much of the Australian literature on EEO focuses on its legislative content
and its impact (for example, Bacchi, 2000; Maddox, 1999; Ostenfeld and
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Strachan, 1999; Strachan and Burgess, 2000). In Australia at a federal level,
efforts to ensure equal opportunity for women and to promote affirmative
action are codified in the Equal Opportunity forWomen in theWorkplaceAct
1999, which replaced the affirmative action (Equal Opportunity for Women)
Act 1986. The 1986 Act defined affirmative action programmes as
appropriate action [that] is taken to eliminate discrimination by the relevant
employer against women in relation to employment matters … [and] …
measures [that] are taken by the relevant employer to promote equal opportunity
for women in relation to employment matters. (cited in Strachan and
Burgess, 2000, p. 47)
While the legislation draws on formal equality (or equality of treatment) as
well as difference concepts, that is, that women require different treatment
and remedial measures to promote equality in outcomes (see Guerrina, 2001,
Liff and Cameron, 1997 and also Scott, 1988), the notion of merit has been
particularly central to legislative and policy interventions in Australia. This
notion assumes that men and women are fundamentally the same and that
equality is best achieved by evaluating individuals ‘on their particular merits
against the same standards’ (Liff and Dickens, 2000, p. 87).
Under the 1999 Act (and the preceding Act) all privately owned firms,
community organizations, higher education institutions, group training
schemes, trade unions and non-government schools with at least 100 employees
are required to submit an annual report detailing their affirmative action
programme to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency
(EOWA). The report encourages employers to analyse the position of women
in their firm by examining employment statistics and human resource management
policies and practices, which can involve consultation with trade
unions and female employees. Based upon this analysis, employers must
devise a programme to address problems identified and to set targets against
which their future progress can be assessed (Strachan, 1987; Strachan and
Burgess, 2000). This mechanism is underpinned by the notion that ‘the barriers
in the workplace which restrict employment and promotion opportunities
for women have to be systematically eliminated’ (Affirmative Action
Agency, 1990, p. 1). However, authors such as Sheridan (1998) argue that the
most common workplace programmes fail to address the complexity of the
underlying causes of inequality such as women’s greater family and caring
responsibilities, which may restrict their labour market opportunities, as well
as the disadvantages that stem from being judged against a male norm in
organizations. Similarly, Strachan and Burgess (2000) reported that between
1994 and 1996 many industries did not progress far or actually went backwards.
Further to this, the authors suggested that approximately one-quarter
of employers complied with the law by submitting a report but in reality they
did little or nothing to advance EEO (Strachan and Burgess, 2000).
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An analysis of 106 workplace programmes in the finance industry
in 2003 revealed that most employers (over 90 per cent) were doing no
more than merely meeting the minimum requirements of the Act
(French and Strachan, 2007). Moreover, French and Strachan (2007)
argue that most of the workplace policies do not display any understanding
of EEO issues. A similar analysis of workplace programmes in a small
sample of retail organizations in 2003 produced consistent results (Burgess
et al., 2005). While employers acknowledged gender-based differences in
pay and occupations, few developed comprehensive programmes to
address these issues. One firm was attempting to increase the number of
women in management and in non-traditional occupations. Another offered
2 weeks’ paid maternity leave, which is not required by law (Burgess et al.,
2005).
Based on such findings, it is perhaps unsurprising that the gender wage
gap (at an aggregate level) has remained relatively unchanged inAustralia. In
1984 the ratio of total earnings of women to men was 77.7 per cent, by mid
2003 the ratio was 81 per cent (Preston and Burgess, 2003). At the same time,
there has been very little change in the level of occupational segregation, with
women disproportionately employed in certain jobs, mainly clerical, sales and
service occupations (Preston and Burgess, 2003).
Numerous academics (French and Strachan, 2007; Ostenfeld and
Strachan, 1999; Strachan and Burgess, 2000; Strachan et al., 2007; Thornton,
2001) argue that women’s situation is unlikely to improve because
of the legislative amendments that occurred in 1999. As part of this legislative
review the terms of reference stated that the legislation should be
retained, providing that the benefits to the community as a whole outweighed
the costs. Critics have suggested that this simultaneously reduced
the costs to business and made workplace monitoring more difficult with
respect to EEO and affirmative action (French and Strachan, 2007; Ostenfeld
and Strachan, 1999; Strachan and Burgess, 2000; Strachan et al., 2007). In a
similar vein, Bacchi (2000) suggests that the power to enforce affirmative
action in the workplace is being eroded as regulation makes way for volunteerism.
At the same time, she believes that affirmative action is being
substituted by a growth in the implementation of workplace diversity initiatives,
which require ‘a good deal less of employers’ (Bacchi, 2000, p. 64).
Moreover, workplace diversity programmes tend to shift our focus to individual
differences and away from equity for groups such as women.
According to Bacchi (2000), these two developments are intertwined and
are designed by the government to free up competition and reduce regulatory
intervention as well as government scrutiny of management policies
and practices. More controversially, Thornton (2001) suggests that ‘the minimalist
interpretations [of EEO and affirmative action] currently in vogue in
official discourses are designed to instantiate inequality for women at work’
(p. 78).
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Perpetuating inequality: discourse and the gendered subtext
of organizations
Such trends are not confined to Australia. Similar assessments have been
made about the lack of progress on equal opportunity in European countries
(Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998), the problematic nature of a shift from
affirmative action to diversity (Cox, 1994) and the need for a more critical
examination as well as a ‘subtler understanding’ (Liff and Wacjman, 1996,
p. 92) of equal opportunity theory and practice (Guerrina, 2001; Liff and
Cameron, 1997). Such understanding could be enhanced by more research
that explores how gender divisions are maintained and reproduced in organizations
(Gherardi, 1994) not just through overt practices of gender discrimination
but through the gender subtext (Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998), the
implicit power processes (Stobbe, 2005) expressed in, for example, commonsense
statements or taken-for-granted organizational arrangements that function
to perpetuate gender inequality.
Such implicit power processes include gender blindness and gender suppression.
Wilson (1996) has argued that gender blindness has been endemic
in organizational theory and in her historical review she shows how the
major schools of thought have assumed a male norm and that gender has
remained largely invisible. She further argues that this gender blindness is
responsible for an absence of recognition that women’s work experience may
differ from that of men’s (largely due to differential power relations) so that
women as employees are perceived as indistinguishable from men in all
respects at work. This ‘blindness’ has meant that gender divisions have been
invisible, contributing to the formidable barriers preventing the advancement
of women (as well as the alleged shortcomings of the organizational theory/
organizational behaviour). However, in his response to Wilson, Linstead
(2000, p. 302) has argued that it is gender suppression rather than gender
blindness that has been more prevalent in organizational theory. Moreover,
he contends that gender blindness is ‘just a phase we went through’ and no
longer an option. In other words, it is no longer possible for people to be
unaware of gender (that is, gender blind) although they may actively work to
suppress their awareness of gender difference. Accordingly, Linstead (2000)
argues that gender suppression involves an awareness of gender coupled
with ‘active suppression of gender difference’ (p. 300). He contends that
[i]ts very awareness of the messiness of organizational reality creates the
need to suppress those variables — individual characteristics, collective
consciousness, uneven distribution of task knowledge, and gender — that
contribute to this messiness, and to impose the principles that control and
regulate it (Linstead, 2000, pp. 298–99).
In addition, other writers have argued that contemporary norms about
gender and ethnic/racial discrimination have merely driven bias further
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underground and that those involved in researching and practicing diversity
management have not taken sufficient notice of the ‘white male backlash’
(Dick and Cassell, 2002, p. 954; Prasad and Mills, 1997). People may now be
more reluctant to make discriminatory remarks and risk being seen as sexist
or racist but that does not mean that dominant ideologies have changed. This
phenomenon has been explored by studies in discursive psychology that
show how people can both voice support for equality and explain or justify
continued inequality. Benschop and Doorewaard (1998, p. 800) refer to this as
the duality of gender: ‘the simultaneous existence of the practices of gender
inequality and the impression of equality’.
For example, in an important early study, Wetherell et al. (1987) explored
final year university students’ explanations of inequality, including their conceptualization
of the process of social change. They found that accounts of
equality were characterized by contradictions that functioned to perpetuate
the status quo, even when respondents were presenting themselves as being in
favour of gender equality in employment. Equal opportunities were broadly
understood by respondents as denoting liberal values, such as freedom of
individual choice and egalitarianism. However this ideal of equality coincided
with contradictory explanations of the practical constraints of employing
women that drew on notions of women’s greater ‘risk’ of reproduction
and their ‘natural’ role of women in child rearing.
In addition, the respondents relied on explanations of gender inequality
that emphasized individual differences; that is, differences in achievement
and career success were attributed to differences in individuals’ abilities,
potential and personal qualities (such as their aspirations), rather than on
social or structural factors. Conceptions of social change conformed to a
simple ideal of inevitable and gradual progression in gender equality; explanations
which Wetherell et al. (1987) argue functioned to rationalize inaction
and avoid responsibility.
The findings of this earlier study have been confirmed and extended
through subsequent discursive studies of gender inequality and affirmative
action. For example, Gill (1993) examined how radio broadcasters justified
the lack of women presenters using a range of contradictory and flexible
explanations. Riley’s (2002) study of professional men’s talk about gender
inequality found individualizing explanations of merit particularly central,
with women being required to ‘prove themselves’ to be as worthy as men,
whereas social and structural explanations of gender-based discrimination
were largely absent. Men’s discourse failed to acknowledge differences in
men’s and women’s historical positions and the subsequent privileges held
by men and the disadvantages faced by women.
Individualizing explanations of merit have also been central to studies
of accounts of inequality in diverse industrial contexts such as banking
(Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998; Benschop et al., 2001) and the auto parts
industry in Argentina (Stobbe, 2005). In the context of explicit organizational
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support for gender equality, respondents in the banking industry accounted
for the ‘gender inequality that cannot be’ (Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998, p.
802) by attributing it to other causes such as the history of the industry, the
greater qualifications of men, women’s lesser career ambition and sheer coincidence.
In a very different context, Stobbe (2005) found that denials of gender
discrimination and claims of gender neutrality occurred alongside recurring
rationalizations for the continued exclusion of women from the auto parts
industry in Argentina: women were not suited to the work because of their
different ‘natural’ characteristics, they were not as freely available to work as
men and they were more emotional than men as well as competitive with
other women.
Other studies have shown how gender inequality persists even in workplace
programmes, organizational statements and policies that seek to
address and alleviate gender discrimination. For example, using deconstruction
to study organizational policy and statements about worker’s pregnancy
and maternity leave, Martin (1990) and Peterson and Albrecht (1999) reveal
how more subtle forms of discrimination against women are manifested.
Based on her analysis of a chief executive officer’s speech about an
employee’s pregnancy, Martin (1990) demonstrates how ‘myths of harmony,
unity and caring … conceal the opposite’ (p. 340). Organizational power is
manifested as corporate paternalism that seeks to control maternity and the
organizational taboos associated with pregnancy, including the visible
swollen belly, intimacy, intercourse and nurturing. These ‘private’ concepts
are alien to the male-dominated public domain.As such, Martin (1990) argues
that family-related issues confronted by ‘working mothers are defined as
private problems that must be solved individually; the corporation is not
responsible’ (p. 344). The creation of a public/private dichotomy is therefore
the linchpin supporting discrimination against women.
Building on Martin’s (1990) work, Peterson andAlbrecht (1999) also explore
the ideology that operates in an organization’s maternity leave policy. The
policy text constructs an ‘unsettledness’ with maternity leave as the female
body is problematized and women’s reproduction is subjected to organizational
control (Peterson and Albrecht, 1999). The policy reveals a distinct
division in which oppositional traits of female/male, disability/ability and
affected/unaffected subordinate and disempower female employees. Notably,
there is an absence of reference in the policy to the child and the father as they
belong in the private sphere. According to Peterson and Albrecht (1999), this
dichotomy between public and private spheres sustains the sexual division of
labour in procreation (in the private sphere) and production (in the public
sphere). Both of these studies demonstrate how suppressed assumptions
about gender perpetuate discrimination and inequality through discourse
even at the same time as they are explicitly directed at ‘helping’ women.
These illustrative studies of affirmative action and equality show how
discursive approaches can help to identify and unpack the gendered subtext
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of organizations, particularly the ways in which discrimination can persist
covertly while being denied overtly. We seek to contribute to this body of
research by focusing on managers’ understandings and explanations of affirmation
action, EEO and gender equality in Australia, and whether these have
changed over time. We regard accounts and explanations as resources for
understanding how managers make sense of gender and employment and
thus how gender ideology operates in particular discursive contexts: in
explaining organizational practice, managers will also be constructing versions
of the gendered identity of their workforce. As such accounts and
explanations provide a
starting point for understanding how social relations are conceived, and
therefore — because understanding how they are conceived means understanding
how they work — how institutions are organized, how relations
of production are experienced, and how collective identity is established.
(Scott, 1988, p. 34)
Examining arguments, explanations and accounts provides oneway of understanding
the construction of gender as well as the ways in which people make
sense of their social environment including the fairness of existing arrangements
(Gherardi, 1994) and hence the need for change. In particular, they
allow researchers to explore how people make sense of the contradictions
and ideological dilemmas (Benschop et al., 2001; Billig et al., 1988) surrounding
their experience of inequality and affirmative action. Specifically we aim
to explore whether and how the lack of substantive progress on EEO and
affirmative action for women is reflected in managers’ sense-making and
rhetoric. In the following section we outline how we undertook the research
before presenting our findings.
Methods
The research was undertaken from a critical discursive perspective as we
were focusing on the ‘role of discourse in the production and reproduction of
power abuse or domination’ (van Dijk, 2001, p. 96) in relation to gender. Our
methodological approach can be characterized as rhetorical criticism which
involves exploring the interaction between a text and its context as it attempts
to act upon its audience’s understandings of the social world (Gill and
Whedbee, 1997). Rhetoric was an appropriate way of studying managers’
understandings of EEO and affirmative action at different points in time,
because their rhetoric both reflects and frames their understandings: ‘the way
…. we talk about the world affects how we understand or “see” it’ (Gill and
Whedbee, 1997, p. 159). We were particularly interested in their argumentation
schemes (van Eemeren et al., 1997), that is to say, whether we could
identify any patterns or trends in their claims, reasoning, justifications and
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conclusions in relation to their own organization’s progress (or lack of
progress) with affirmative action for women and what that indicated in terms
of how they viewed women. AsWodak (2001) has shown, arguments for and
against discrimination explicitly and implicitly rely on discursive strategies
that construct and label social actors and in relation to our study, we were
interested in identifying how the managers’ understandings of EEO and
affirmative action also reflected their characterizations of women.
Our data consisted of employer reports on affirmative action lodged with
the federal government. Hence the texts are directed at a particular audience
and attempt to influence their understanding of the organization’s actions,
that is to say, to persuade the relevant government agency that the organization
was taking measures to improve the position of their female employees.
The first year in which firms covered by affirmative action legislation were
required to submit reports was 1990 and requirements for annual reporting
have continued since that time.1 The template report contains a range of
specific questions while also enabling the respondent to include as much
detail about their programmes as they elect to provide. Subsequently, the
reports provide descriptions of workplace programmes and evaluation processes,
as well as the associated managerial accounts and explanations of the
firm’s activity and progress.
These explanations provide us with a rich source of data for examining
managers’ sense-making and understanding regarding affirmative action and
EEO. More importantly, the longitudinal nature of the reporting requirements
allows us to analyse potential changes in managers’ explanations and arguments.
By analysing managers’ rhetoric, reasoning and explanations regarding
affirmative action and EEO across time periods (1990 and 2004) we can
assess whether their understanding of gender equality has changed. We
acknowledge that the affirmative action reports are not necessarily the work
of a single author and that managers may have engaged the services of
external consultants and EEO ‘experts’ in compiling the reports. However, at
the same time, the reports bear the imprimatur of particular managers as
authorized representatives of their organizations who are responsible for the
veracity of the report. Thus we would expect that at the very least, these
managers gave the reports their approval before officially signing off and
submitting them to the agency.
The focus of this study is restricted to analysing affirmative action reports
from workplaces in the accommodation, café and restaurant (hospitality)
sector. The hospitality sector is classified as a mixed-gender industry,
as opposed to being female-dominated (such as the community services
industry) or male-dominated (such as the road, rail and air travel industry)
(Affirmative Action Agency, 1998). As such, the hospitality sector provides a
suitable context for examining employers’ efforts to promote affirmative
action in a segment of the labour market that has experienced tremendous
growth since the early 1980s. Moreover, there is good reason to expect that
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affirmative action policies and programmes would be especially pertinent in
this industry because of persistent gender segregation in its workforce. In all
sectors in the hospitality industry, male employees are more likely than
women to be employed in permanent full-time work (ABS, 2001, 2005a,
2005b). In the accommodation sector, for instance, male employees are predominantly
working on a permanent full-time basis (52.9 per cent) whereas
women are more likely to be employed on a temporary or part-time basis
(64.8 per cent) (ABS, 2005a). These patterns are partly explained by gendered
occupational divisions common in the industry (Barnes and Fieldes, 2000).
While women dominate in semi-skilled and unskilled areas, such as cleaning
and waitressing, men are employed in skilled areas, working as managers
and chefs, (Timo, 1999). Thus, we could expect that organizations in the
hospitality industry would at the very least have to explain and account for
their progress in addressing the gendered divisions in their workforce.
Our sampling of affirmative action reports consisted of all workplaces
within the hospitality sector with over 400 employees. These larger workplaces
were selected in order to control for the impact of size and to examine
affirmative action policies in firms that were inclined to be the most progressive
in Australia. The reports were sampled at two specific time periods,
namely 1990 and 2004. These years correspond with the first and most recent
reporting periods respectively at the time of writing, thereby enabling us to
analyse the extent of change in managers’ argumentation schemes since the
inception of EEO legislation. The sample of reports consists of 43 for 1990 and
41 for 2004. Obviously, this is not an entirely matched sample, however 11
reports were matched. The remainder can be accounted for by firm closures,
changes in name or ownership and the establishment of new firms. Matched
observations are not essential for the purposes of this research since we seek
to examine managers’ understanding of affirmative action and EEO as it
existed in firms at that point in time.
Our process of analysis drew on the multidimensional approaches of Gill
andWhedbee (1997),Wodak (2001), and van Dijk (2001). Firstly we identified
the topics or macro-propositions contained in the texts as well as the rhetorical
strategies used by managers to assert their explanation or account of their
organization’s progress on affirmative action. Secondly, we examined these
accounts and arguments for the characteristics and traits that managers attributed
to women and thirdly, we analysed how the arguments and characterizations
of women were discursively realized in the text, for example,
through syntax and word choice.
On the basis of our initial reading of the reports we discovered that much
of the management commentary involved explaining why women had not
made more progress to senior management levels or into non-traditional
areas of employment and justifying why the organization should not be held
responsible for this lack of progress. We then coded the reports for the range
of reasons or arguments used to justify or account for the organization’s
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record in affirmative action. On this basis we were able to identify the reasons
or arguments most frequently used in 1990 and 2004. These were then compared
and contrasted in order to determine whether the dominant patterns of
sense-making had altered between 1990 and 2004 and what functions such
accounts served in relation to the specific context of the reporting.
Results and analysis
Much of the management commentary related to explaining why the organization
had not made more progress in breaking down gender segregation
in their workforces. In particular, in commenting on statistical data about
their workforces, they were involved in explaining why women had not
made more progress to senior management levels and into non-traditional
areas of employment. Comparing the findings in 1990 and 2004 we found
similar explanations justifying this situation that deflected responsibility
away from the organization. In both 1990 and 2004 the most frequent explanations
positioned the organizations as blameless because they had genderneutral
employment practices and EEO policies in place. For example, in the
commentary sections accompanying the statistics, managers explicitly stated
that there was equal access to employment opportunities and information
about opportunities, in other words, all employees, regardless of gender,
were able to apply for jobs, promotion and transfer, training and development
and so on and decisions were based on merit and qualifications. The
explanations stressed that there was a lack of gender or sex bias in job-related
criteria (such as job advertisments, job descriptions, selection and promotion
criteria). In 1990 managers cited their monitoring of women’s progress
through statistical analysis of employment data and implementation of career
development opportunities as additional justifications for why the organization
was not to blame for a lack of progress. In 2004 the second and third most
frequent justifications featured references to organizational compliance with
legislative requirements and the availability of flexible working arrangements
to explain why a lack of progress in affirmative action was not the fault of the
organization.
Our analysis also revealed a consistent discursive pattern in the management
accounts of the 1990 and 2004 reports. Firstly, employers argued that
gender was an irrelevant or insignificant factor; in other words, being a man
or a woman did not make any difference in their organizations. There was
both similarity and variation in the form this discursive pattern took in 1990
and 2004 and we discuss each in turn, using selected quotations from the
reports to illustrate broader patterns in argumentation.
Management accounts in the 1990 reports consistently denied that gender
was a relevant or significant factor in employment. In the context of EOWA
reporting, such denial of gender served the rhetorical function of challenging
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the relevance of affirmative action, at least for their own organization. Managers
constructed their employment policies and practices as merit-based
and ‘gender blind’ by arguing that they were already being applied equally
and that there was no difference in the treatment of male and female staff:
‘we do not treat female employees any differently to males’. They cited the
absence of reference to sex or gender in employment criteria as evidence of
this gender neutrality; for example: ‘policy firmly states the selection of staff
external or internal be exempt from criteria of sex’. Such gender-blindness in
employment was represented positively as a form of inclusiveness, indicated
by the repetition of the phrases ‘all employees’, ‘all staff’, ‘all employees,
including women’. Such inclusion and equality was implicitly contrasted
with affirmative action, which was associated with differential treatment for
women that risked disadvantaging men: ‘As this is our first report we will
find it much easier to report in the coming year. My major concern is not to
discriminate against men’.
However, this denial of the significance of gender coexisted with other
accounts that reconstructed versions of gendered difference, and thus the
significance of gender, as a way of explaining organizational reality. The
characteristics attributed to female employees were consistent with the maintenance
of current employment arrangements. Women were constructed as
being ‘happy’ with their current jobs and work arrangements, which inhibited
the ability of the organization to ‘make progress’ with affirmative action
initiatives: ‘With regard to any problems, if it could be classified as such, is
that a vast majority of women personnel are quite happy in the positions
presently’. Management cited the absence of complaints from female staff
and unions as evidence of female satisfaction. Where there was a lack of
progress in improving women’s representation at management and supervisory
levels and non-traditional employment, managers frequently deployed
externalizing explanations that protected the organization from taking
responsibility. On the one hand, barriers to women’s progress in this area
were attributed to broader social and labour market causes such as the
apprenticeship system, which ‘appeared to discriminate against women’ and
the ‘natural’ affinity of women and men to different types of jobs:
women are encouraged to take up non-traditional roles in areas such as
kitchens, security, engineering and top executive roles…. [However], men
have traditionally been given these roles due to the at times heavy lifting
and strenuous nature of the work
and ‘[o]ur traditionally predominantly female workforce obviates the need
for efforts to increase women workers in any way other than the natural
demands of our business’. References to ‘tradition’ and ‘nature’ were used as
commonsense reasons for gender-based occupational segregation that did not
appear to warrant any further explanation or justification in the management
accounts.
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The availability of female labour was also cited as a factor explaining the
high representation of women in the service sector, but it was an availability
thatwas constrained by women’s families: ‘There are a high number of female
casual employees [due to the] restrictions placed on [married women] by
family commitments’. The concentration of women in casual jobs was thus
attributed to external issues of labour supply and care responsibilities, which
fell within the private domain, absolving the organization of responsibility for
resolution.
On the other hand, explanations for continued gender-based occupational
segregation attributed the causes as originating in women themselves.
Women lacked the appropriate initiative, ambition, skills and qualifications
needed to progress to non-traditional and management roles, for example, a
‘large number [of women] are not interested in permanent positions or
higher duties’. Women who were considered appropriate for promotion or
career development were singled out by the addition of qualifying adjectives
— ‘interested women’, ‘promotable women’ and ‘suitably qualified women’
— suggesting that women in general were not interested in or suitable for
careers. Consistent with this construction of general female deficit, organizations
favoured training and development and skills-based initiatives targeted
at women in their affirmative action plans.
More fundamentally, management explanations and accounts conceptualized
attaining equal opportunity as the responsibility of women, rather than
that of the organization: ‘women especially are urged to look for ways to
create equal opportunity’ and ‘we encourage [female] staff to strive to attain
management supervisory positions in the hotel’. However, on the basis of the
constructions of gendered difference in management rhetoric, such achievement
was unlikely: women were constructed as satisfied, compliant, lacking
initiative, non-ambitious and family oriented. Their ‘sensitive issues’ needed
to be discussed in private among female personnel in contrast to the ‘open
door’ approach of masculine management:
the majority of our human resource development management are females
thus allowing consultation over potentially sensitive issues easier for our
female employees. We encourage all our management to adopt an ‘open
door’ policy to encourage employees to discuss and consult management
on any employment issues, particularly in the area of equal opportunities.
Thus the dominant construction of gendered difference in the 1990 EOWA
reports has an implicit circularity—women were constructed as responsible
for achieving equality, yet unlikely to affect such change because of their
‘feminine’ characteristics.
Gender blindness and lack of gender bias also featured in the management
accounts of the 2004 EOWA reports. There were similar assertions that gender
was not relevant in employment-related decisions, for example, ‘[g]ender
is not a selection criteria [sic]. Promotions and transfer are based on
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competency and performance’. There was also a similar stress on inclusiveness,
which extended to all employees, as opposed to the divisiveness of
affirmative action measures just aimed at women ‘[a]ll training and development
opportunities are offered to all employees and selection is not gender
based’ and that promotion was based on merit and personal characteristics,
rather than social category: ‘All employees progress according to aspiration,
aptitude and the real acquisition of knowledge and skill’.
Explanations of gender-based occupational segregation in the 2004 reports
were also broadly consistent with those in 1990. After denying the relevance
of gender in employment, women were depicted as being satisfied with the
status quo, because of their ‘other commitments’ in the private sphere: ‘There
is a high proportion of female staff working in casual positions and as a result
of family and other commitments are happy to continue in this arrangement’.
They were constructed as uninterested in entering male-dominated occupations
or working the unsociable hours that are part of the ‘reality’ of the
hospitality industry: ‘24-hour shift work remains the major reason why many
women leave our organization’. Accounts also appealed to commonsense
understandings of gender norms that reduced the responsibility of management
for the concentration of women in certain occupations:
There is no deliberate typecasting or gendercasting for employment positions.
However by the nature of women’s maturity developing at an earlier
point than males, young women are primarily positioned as sales staff.
Similarly, management continued to use the concepts of tradition and lack of
female interest as a rationale for gender-based occupational segregation that
required no further explanation: ‘All secretarial positions are occupied by
female employees … traditionally these roles are occupied by women’;
‘Female : male ratio is low in the kitchen, engineering, safety and security and
purchasing departments however, the number of applicants applying for
these jobs is predominantly male’. Women were considered suitable to take
on management roles but not in a way that was equivalent to their male
counterparts. For example, one report indicated that two women would be
taking over the management job done by one previous man: ‘The two managers
we have in mind to replace him are females and they are twins. It is a
possibility they may share the role’.
However, there were some features of the management accounts in the
2004 EOWA reports that diverged from the patterns identified earlier. The
relevance of affirmative action was disputed not only by asserting the gender
neutrality of employment practices and the absence of discrimination-related
complaints but by the avoidance and deferral of reference to gender and
affirmative action.Accounts in the 2004 reports devoted considerable space to
discussion of the business imperatives of the organizations, even in response
to questions that specifically referred to affirmative action. For example,
one report devoted three paragraphs to discussing the business before
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mentioning gender. Another began by mentioning women in the workplace
but then shifted to stressing that all employees, not just women, could discuss
issues with management; issues that would lead to business-related improvements,
rather than gender equality:
There are several issues for women in the workplace that is often highlighted
through communication and our workplace profile. The [hotel
name] is committed to the philosophy of an Open Door Policy whereby all
employees are invited to discuss any matter with the senior management in
regards to improving customer service, job satisfaction and productivity
issues.
Such business rhetoric functioned to undermine the significance of affirmative
action by placing it in the background, even when it was designed to be
the focus of the report.
The other key difference between the reports from the two time periods
was the commentary on pregnancy and maternity. To some extent this was
a result of a change in the reporting requirements — additional questions
were included that required management to comment directly on provisions
for pregnancy, maternity leave, flexible work arrangements, childcare
and breastfeeding. Such issues challenged the gender blindness of employment
as they call for special measures to accommodate the physical process
of pregnancy and child rearing. In management rhetoric in the 2004 reports,
maternity intruded into the organization in ways that were not evident in
earlier accounts. Consistent with the 1990 accounts, there were the existing
mothers who were content with casual and part-time employment but there
were also other female employees and female managers in the process of
child bearing. Senior managers were singled out for specific comment: ‘We
currently have two very senior managers on maternity leave’; ‘In light of
more senior employees taking maternity leave, we are exploring the option
of a compressed working week’; ‘Pregnancy is on the rise particularly in
senior management positions’. Pregnancy and maternity were thus constructed
as more visible and noteworthy when experienced by ‘senior
employees’ and ‘senior managers’. In the last example, an agentless passive
form of sentence construction was used (see Fowler, 1991) with the effect
that the female person was completely absent: pregnancy was the subject or
topic of the sentence but, instead of women who were pregnant, it was
‘senior management positions’ that were experiencing this increase in pregnancy.
This sentence structure functioned to emphasize the impact of pregnancy
on senior management.
In these explanations, managers were forced to consider the female procreating
body at work. Maternal bodies create problems for organizations —
managers have difficulties ‘fitting return to work mothers into the workplace’
after they have been stretched by pregnancy. Breastfeeding was depicted as
presenting particular challenges to the operations of hotels and restaurants. In
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one account the reasons given for not providing breastfeeding facilities
related to problems of ‘food hygiene requirements’. In another, while the
report asked about breastfeeding facilities for employees, the account only
discussed the possibility that guests or customers may breastfeed, a possibility
about which employees needed to be forewarned: ‘Employees are advised
that guests may choose to breastfeed in public and to try and accommodate
the guest wherever possible’. Children were rarely mentioned in these
accounts, thus the object of breastfeeding (or reason for breastfeeding) was
never present — breastfeeding thus became a ‘choice’ made by women that
was separated from its purpose. ‘Mothers can leave work to go to the childcare
centre to breastfeed without interrupting their work’.Where children do
appear, they were constructed as problematic: ‘Counselling is offered including
dealing with children with learning or behavioural difficulties’.
Discussion and conclusion
Given the legislative and policy measures directed to affirmative action over
the period 1990–2004, the characterization of women in management rhetoric
remained remarkably constant.When we compared management accounts in
the 1990 and 2004 EOWA reports we found that little had changed in how
women were conceptualized. In both periods the same general pattern was
evident: after initially denying that gender was relevant or significant in
explaining organizational reality, managers reconstructed versions of gendered
difference to account for the lack of progress in the representation of
women among male-dominated occupations.
On closer analysis we found there were both similarities and variations in
these patterns between the two time periods. The dominant construction of
women in the 1990 reports was of a passive, compliant, satisfied employee
who combined work with family commitments and was content with the
status quo. This was also a construction of feminine ‘deficit’, as these women
lacked the ambition, interest, initiative, skills and knowledge associated with
career progression (cf. Riley, 2002). In this respect, they can also be considered
to be lacking merit, a view that disempowers women (Peterson and Albrecht,
1999). As affirmative action in Australia is based on the merit principle these
discursive constructions of working women were also implicit explanations
for women’s lack of progress that allowed managers and organizations to
avoid responsibility for EEO. Thus the implicit circularity in management
reasoning about affirmative action and EEO that allowed them to avoid
taking responsibilitywas based on the versions of gendered identity apparent
in their commentary in the reports.
This construction was also present in the 2004 reports; however it occurred
alongside another construction of working women as ambitious, careeroriented
managers who were in the process of having children. Unlike the
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‘unambitious’, compliant, satisfied female employee, this other feminine
construction included characteristics consistent with merit: she worked fulltime,
and was a career-oriented, ‘high potential/high-flyer’, highly visible,
white-collar, professional or senior manager. However she also actively took
up opportunities for flexible work and maternity leave, which created problems
for management to fit her in to the workplace (cf. Martin, 1990; Peterson
and Albrecht, 1999). She required more tailored work circumstances to suit
her ‘particular situation’ and her maternity intruded in ways that created
more risk and complexity for the organization (cf. Wetherell et al., 1987).
Discursively, she required management to engage in more explanatory work
and accordingly, in the 2004 reports there were a greater number and diversity
of types of explanations.
Discursive constructions of affirmative action and EEO in the reports were
connected with constructions of working women and organizations in significant
ways. In the 1990 reports, affirmative action was constructed as preferential
treatment for women (cf. Bacchi, 2004) and potentially divisive and
discriminatory. This was contrasted with a more positive inclusiveness of
organizational policies that apply uniformly to all employees regardless of
gender. The organization’s role in relation to affirmative action and EEO was
obscured by management explanations that cast women as those responsible
for achieving equality. Similarly, women’s satisfaction with the status quo was
one of the reasons given for the organizations’ lack of progress with affirmative
action. Implicitly, women’s advancement was their own responsibility. In
the 2004 reports affirmative action was positioned clearly in the background:
organizations prefaced reporting on EEO with discussion of their ‘business
concerns’, even where this appeared to be irrelevant to the questions. Rhetorically,
this pattern constructed affirmative action as having minor or lesser
significance, with business priorities being given informational prominence.
Thus we identified a shift in rhetorical patterns between the 1990 and 2004
reports: rather than overtly disputing the relevance of affirmative action and
EEO to their organization as some had done in 1990, in 2004 this was discursively
realized through the choice and order of topics in management
commentary.
Our findings also suggest that perhaps Linstead’s (2000) assertion that
gender blindness is no longer an option is somewhat premature. Assertions
of the neutrality of organizational policies and systems and selection and
promotion on merit frequently drew on gender blindness as a justification
and defence of organizations’ lack of progress in affirmative action. However,
in making this comment,we need to acknowledge the different meanings that
Wilson (1996) and Linstead (2000) attach to this term. Whereas Wilson (1996)
views gender blindness as stemming from the unstated male norm operating
in organizations, Linstead (2000) sees it as a lack of awareness of gender.
Given the nature and structure of the reports we studied, it would be difficult
for managers to maintain a position of gender blindness in the sense of being
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unaware of gender (cf. Linstead, 2000). However, if we take Wilson’s (1996)
view of gender blindness as the perpetuation of an unstated male norm, both
gender blindness and gender suppression seemed to be operating in management
rhetoric. Managers seemed to be selectively engaging in both gender
blindness and suppression in different contexts and for different reasons.
While gender blindness tended to be associated with managers’ efforts to
portray the organization as fair and equitable, gender suppression was drawn
on by managers to argue that the organization was not to blame for persistent
gender inequalities. Managers first recognized gender differences, then suppressed
their significance by arguing that it was not problematic — women
were ‘happy’ with their difference situations, which were based on ‘tradition’
and ‘natural’ differences. In doing this, managers absolved themselves of
responsibility for taking further action.
However both gender blindness and gender suppression became more
difficult for managers to sustain when faced with questions about pregnancy,
maternity leave and breastfeeding. Like Martin (1990) and Peterson and
Albrecht (1999) we suggest that future research could usefully explore organizational
rhetoric and policy about these practices because they seem to
exacerbate the gender contradictions and tensions already present and so
could tell us more about the gendered subtext of organizations.
To some extent, the patterns in management rhetoric in our study resonate
with those of previous studies: like Benschop et al. (2001) and Stobbe (2005),
here gender denial or neutrality, natural differences and availability to work
were frequent justifications given to make sense of the gendered nature of the
organization. Consistent with Martin (1990) and Peterson and Albrecht
(1999), women were disempowered and problematized and a public–private
dichotomy was used to absolve the organization of responsibility. In addition,
we found that the constructions of gender identity inherent in management
rhetoric were central to their justifications for the lack of organizational
progress in affirmative action and these constructions had a circular dynamic:
women were represented as responsible for achieving equality, but, given the
version of gendered identity constructed in the accounts, such an outcome
was unlikely.
In light of this circularity, it is perhaps unsurprising that so little change is
observable in managers’ sense-making about their role and responsibilities in
relation to implementing affirmative action and EEO. Our findings suggest
that, despite 20 years of legislative and policy interventions, managers’
understanding of the purpose of affirmative action and EEO and the social or
structural causes of disadvantage experienced by women remained largely
constant. To this extent, managers typically still see EEO as formal equality,
allowing women to participate in paid forms of employment alongside men.
This lack of a discursive change in managers’ knowledge and understanding
of EEO appears to be consistent with the lack of substantive progress in EEO
in Australia.
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Note
1. In 1996 the option of waiving employers’ requirements to submit reports was
introduced. In order to take up this option, employers’ are required to have
previously submitted a comprehensive programme meeting the requirements of
the Act over a period of three years.
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