Gah! Talk about technical hiccups. Sorry readers – for some reason my transfer of posts from the other blog to this one automatically did not go as planned. But the good news is, this means there are many new posts to come! This one is based on a lecture about gender difference given to students on my module Contemporary Issues in Management.
We often think about difference as something natural. ‘We’re all different from each other,’ we like to think, ‘everyone is special in some way.’ Yet we rarely think about how collective (and individual) difference is something that is a careful production of regular maintenance work and activity. Women are often more aware of this than men, because there are certain unspoken rules we are explicitly taught by each other about ‘correct’ or ‘good’ appearances – (unintentionally) smudged eyeliner or mascara is a definite faux pas, and not wearing makeup is itself sometimes a political statement.
But this work of emphasising similarity or difference is not only evident in women’s makeup, but also in a wide number of other everyday actions and activities. Standing in a queue quietly, with upright stance and facing forward, for instance, signifies something different to standing in a queue while slouching at an angle and talking to a friend nearby. The second type of behaviour conveys the message; ‘I’m in this queue, but it’s not terribly important to me. I can get along just fine without keeping my place in it or getting to the front as quickly as possible’. The second type of behaviour might be seen as a mark of status, or of aggression and control. It may indicate the person’s confidence of being able to get the item or service they are queuing for by other means, or at another time.
Although a contemporary issue, you might be surprised to find out that the notion of the performance of difference (in studies of gender, at least), was widely popularised in an article by West and Zimmerman (1987) entitled ‘Doing Gender‘. If you follow this link and scroll down you will see the large number of articles this publication influenced, which include a large variety of topics on business and organization as well as sociology in general.
At the time of West and Zimmerman’s (1987) writing, there was already a clear divide in the study of gender which distinguished between ‘natural difference’ or sex, and ‘constructed difference’ or gender. The subtleties of this distinction for the study of gender were hotly debated at the time and continue to be discussed as key principles of the study of gender. West and Zimmerman argued that we can think about gender as a performed accomplishment, an outcome of continuous ongoing work and performance of everyday activities in ways which align with (and reinforce) expectations about ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’. But what happens when some of these characteristics are more valued than others? Or when performing activity in a certain way is a job requirement? Based on research in Manchester, Dr Darren Nixon explored how the huge shift in the UK economy towards service sector work, which often requires subservient (‘feminized’) behaviour, disadvantages working class men looking for work, as throughout their lives they have developed everyday patterns of behaviour based on masculine expectations which are not compatible with this type of work. Having learned to be brash, confident in their skills, aggressively independent and plainspoken, work in department stores and perfume counters simply does not ‘fit’.
This approach is important when you think about how frequently most research is interested only in the business case for diversity in organizations. The ‘business case’ approach often assumes that our identities are fixed by our own decisions, a result of choices freely made throughout our lifetime. What the performative approach emphasises is that many of these decisions might have slipped by unnoticed in our everyday practices of getting by in the workplace and fitting in. As such, small things such as an organizational dress code, or recruitment policies looking for the ‘proper look’ for an organization, neglect to realise that these practices are learned and performed through association with certain communities. It also attempts to rationalise people’s complex lives and connections to each other as the choices of individual ’employment applicants’, thereby justifying ongoing practices of exclusion or even harassment.
When thinking about your own expectations in gendered roles, you might want to consider the sorts of things you might list as measures of ‘appropriate behaviour’ among your own group of friends or acquaintances, and how those expectations might change for people who were work colleagues. Consider what you might consider a challenge to your identity practices. You might find this discussion of ‘policing’ of appropriate behaviour in an American high school informative. Such behaviour in school might influence what sort of further education or training you might be likely to consider a good prospect. You could also consider what occupations you find least attractive, or even distasteful, and why.
Seriously Learned 