Premium
‘You Can Stand on Your Head and Still End Up with Lower Pay’: Gliding Segregation and Gendered Work Practices in Danish ‘Family‐friendly’ Workplaces
Author(s) -
Holt Helle,
Lewis Suzan
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
gender, work and organization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.159
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0432
pISSN - 0968-6673
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0432.2009.00501.x
Subject(s) - entitlement (fair division) , danish , work (physics) , family friendly , perspective (graphical) , sociology , process (computing) , public relations , social psychology , gender studies , psychology , political science , engineering , economics , computer science , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , mathematical economics , artificial intelligence , operating system
This article explores the process of gliding segregation in two Danish workplaces. We address the questions of how and why women and men at the same workplace, with the same levels of education, often end up doing different work tasks. Drawing on a gendered organization perspective and sense of entitlement theory we illustrate the processes whereby structural and cultural expectations place women in predictable and routine work, and men in more developmental work. We also show that the level of education makes a difference to women's sense of entitlement to developmental work, but that the discourse of family friendliness disadvantages women in the allocation of interesting and valued work tasks. The findings illustrate the resilience of gendered work practices and the importance of focusing on workplace interactions to explain this.