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Do women favor structural or meritocratic explanations for how they reach corporate success?
By Alison Wynn on Monday, November 5, 2012 1:54pm The Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research is committed to empowering womens voices and leadership on the Stanford campus and beyond. To promote this goal, the Clayman Institute is publishing profiles of our Advisory Council, women and men who have volunteered their time and energy to creating greater gender equality. Over the course of the year, student writers will interview council members-- representing many communities, including financial, legal, non-profit, and entrepreneurial. We hope these profiles will inspire, as well as begin a dialogue with our readers about what it takes to exercise voice and influence in the areas that matter to you. We will ask each of the council members to share their histories, paths to success, and career advice. From Marissa Mayers rise to top dog at Yahoo! to Sheryl Sandbergs closely-watched leadership at Facebook, women tech executives create quite a stir roads traveled some, the rise of a female Early in Silicon Valley. For leader especially in a male-dominated field seems to tip the scale in favor of equality. Others worry that these superstar women make the glass ceiling seem more impenetrable to those with fewer In the 1960s, inspired by travel abroad, Heck pursued a resources or connections. masters degree in Italian literature. While she loved But do women who break through the metaphorical barrier actually see the glass ceilings so often documented in social student magazine. On weekends and afterscience research? Or are these glass ceilings somehow invisible to them? It turns out the answers to these questions are more Heck wante A turning When it became time to leave Texas,complicated than you might think. They also have far-reaching consequences: high-achieving womens beliefs about glass ceilings can affect whether they help to implement policies that bolster up-and-coming womens success. To better understand the issues at play, sociologists Erin Cech (Rice University) and Mary Blair-Loy (University of California San Diego) conducted a research study to examine which factors impact women leaders perceptions of the glass ceiling.
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The researchers found that work and family factors affect whether women recognize glass ceilings. Women who are most likely to encounter powerful barriers due to their work and family circumstances (long hours, being the family breadwinner, having young children) are also most likely to recognize how structural factors affect their own and other womens success. In other words, these women are more likely to see the glass ceiling.
In contrast, the most successful women, and women with strong connections to certain institutions such as graduate business school, are more likely to believe that individual actions drive success. Put differently, these women do not see the glass ceiling. The implications of Cech and Blair-Loys research extend beyond womens views of the glass ceiling and could implicate how work is designed in the future. Whether leaders (men and women) recognize the glass ceiling and whether they believe that organizational or individual factors led to success may affect how these leaders design future organizational structures and promotion opportunities for upcoming generations of women.
Women who are most likely to encounter powerful barriers due to their work and family circumstances are also most likely to recognize how structural factors affect their own and other womens success.
...If I am working 85 hours a week, and my male colleague is working 80 hours a week, and he is earning 20 percent more than I do, Im going to start to question whether the advancement system that I am in is fair.
40% of high-achieving women sampled favor meritocratic explanations for success. 60% of the sample favor structural explanations for success Cech and Blair-Loy learned that womens family roles impact whether they recognize barriers to their success. Women who work more hours, serve as primary breadwinners in their families, or have young children are more likely to perceive the glass ceiling. Cech and Blair-Loy hypothesize that such women encounter visible and persistent barriers that activate their awareness of structural causes of inequality. Thus, 60 percent of the respondents in the study favored structural explanations. For example, women may see their promotion opportunities dwindle once they have a young child, and they may struggle to counter bosses and coworkers stereotypes that they are less committed to their work. If I am working 85 hours a week, and my male colleague is working 80 hours a week, and he is earning 20 percent more than I do, Im going to start to question whether the advancement system that I am in is fair, Cech said. When peoples daily experiences challenge the legitimacy of meritocratic explanations, they begin to look for alternative ways to account for their realities, such as structural explanations.
minority women marry minority men, who are themselves more likely than white men to encounter structural discrimination, then women of color may be more likely to recognize structural inequalities.
However, rather than blame these high-achieving women, we should seek to educate them and their male colleagues on the ways structural barriers create gender inequality. One of the take-home policy messages of this [study] is that we cant assume that anybody understands the basis of inequality, Cech said. It has to be something that people are taught to see and understand, or else Image of cracked glass (source: Wikimedia) they [may] behave in a way that reproduces that very structure. Policymakers must actively work to raise awareness about the drivers of inequality, explains Cech. Women at the top are in great position to create new policies, and she contends that we must equip them, as well as male leaders, with an understanding of how organizations create obstacles for workers. We must enlist their help in creating policies that enable workers to break through enduring glass ceilings.
Not all women executives see the glass ceiling even though they very may well have experienced it.
--Erin Cech is a former postdoctoral fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and is currently anassistant professor of sociology at Rice University. Cechs research examines the cultural mechanisms of inequality reproductionspecifically, how inequality is reproduced through processes that are not overtly discriminatory or coercive, but rather those that are built into seemingly innocuous cultural beliefs and practices.
Mary Blair-Loy is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies & Founding Director at the Center for Research on Gender in the Professions at the University of California San Diego. She uses multiple methods to study gender, the economy, work, and family. BlairLoy explicitly analyzes broadly shared, cultural models of a worthwhile life, such as the work devotion schema and the family devotion schema. These cultural schemas help shape workplace and family structures. She is a member of the Clayman Institute Redesigning and Redefining Work Project.
Alison Wynn is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stanford and a member of the Clayman Institute Student Writing Team.
Founded in 1974, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University creates knowledge and seeks to implement change that promotes gender equality at Stanford, nationally, and internationally.
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