“You’ve come a long way, baby” was the answer that my boss gave me when I inquired about my career development. I was asking for professional growth within the company, and instead I was receiving the Philip Morris Tobacco Company’s slogan. Certainly it was not the best answer to my questions, but I sought to believe my boss’s good intentions towards me, and I interpreted his response as an attempt to flatter me. However, the professional growth that I was seeking actually translated into additional work, no raise, more exclusion from social and professional gatherings, and a low-to average year-end review. I was stunned. It took a lot of self-control to avoid shouting to him. The stress I felt reached levels never attained before. I was miserable. At first, I was not able to explain what was happening, but then I realized that I was dealing with a form of discrimination that researchers refer as the glass ceiling and/or labyrinth of leaderships’ effect (Lang, 2010; Eagly & Carli, 2007).
Before all this happened, I thought that no one would be able to stop the advancement of a qualified person within the hierarchy of an organization because the work would speak for itself. My university education and previous work experiences made me believe that employees are evaluated only on merit and that gender is no longer part of the key assessment criteria (Wilkinson, 2009). But what I have learned lately is that in some organizations “the good old boys’ club” is still going strong and very much alive. In 2009 a large percentage of women, approximately 60 percent, were in the labor force (Labor Statistics, 2009). However, in spite of these higher numbers of women in the labor market, women employees are still disadvantaged, especially considering pay inequality, as they earn less than men, and they are still confronting different forms of discriminatory barriers in making it into the C-suite (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Kelly, 2007). This is very evident if we consider that up to today only 15 Fortune 500 companies are run by women, and a mere 28 Fortune 1000 companies have women in the top job (Fortune 500, 2009).
A number of researchers have identified the underlying reasons that impede women from flourishing in the workplace. Foremost among these casual factors is gender discrimination. Accordingly, this research focuses on two of the major forms of gender discrimination used predominantly by male decision-makers within the workplace—strong rhetoric of gender equality and bullying—both of which consciously or unconsciously hinder women’s professional advancement. Women who are working in organizations that are dominated by long-standing traditional, conventional and established practices are rarely able overcome the different forms of discrimination that female workers face, as these practices are disguised under the appearances of daily work activities that the decision-makers perfectly document, explain, and justify. These different types of discrimination are integrated within the daily work activities, and, as such, they superficially appear normal. Hence, it takes some digging to notice that these “invisible diseases” are used to control females’ advancement within the workplace (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Corby & Stanworth 2009).
Articulating the dangerousness of these invisible diseases becomes very difficult. In fact, by being covert, these forms of discriminations are not noticeable in either the inside or outside work environment, and they make achieving gender equality a formidable task indeed (Lang, 2010). According to Kelan (2009), the evolution of gender equality within organizations remains painfully slow, despite decades of diversity training, equal-opportunity legislation, and affirmative action initiatives. A strong rhetoric of gender equality, although merely lip service, masks these inequalities and allows these disparities to survive. This strong rhetoric has flourished dramatically in today’s work environment because organizations, in order to avoid legal repercussions, want to be seen as part of the solution and not as part of the problem. This strong rhetoric of gender equality has been touted by numerous organizations, especially considering that the objective of gender equality has been supported by state-of-the-art ridesharing programs designed by both the Human Resources and Legal Departments. Unfortunately, these programs are merely pro-forma, and corporations use them only as a way to protect themselves from lawsuits (McLaurin, 2008). In other words, management has mastered the art of rhetoric and has surrounded itself with people who possess knowledge of the laws and can instruct them on what to say, how to behave, and when to let people go in order to avoid unpleasant gender discrimination issues.
Put differently, management has mastered new and legal ways to keep alive a corporate culture that favors men and perpetuates the general stereotypes / preconceptions and sexism that long have women in the workplace (Lang, 2010; Eagly & Carli, 2007; Kelan, 2009). I have overheard comments from male managers stating “I can destroy her, if I want to.” This form of power is beyond doubt distressing. Most of these forms of destructive behavior are inflicted upon female workers through a psychological approach, causing them to believe that they are not personally, professionally, and technically competent enough to survive and flourish in a male-dominated work environment. These psychological games are taking conscious life form through repetitive behaviors in which women’s contributions are not recognized or valued and where females are excluded, especially from informal networks (Knowles, 2009; Anonymous, 2010). [See table one].
This inhospitable corporate culture faced by women frequently involves evidence of bullying behavior in the workplace. The typical bullying behavior that is very well known comes from open verbal or physical attacks, but over time the concept of bullying has evolved into more subtle levels of conduct. Bullied people are the recipient of persistent negative behavior from one or more persons over a prolonged period of time (Knowles, 2009; Olender-Russo, 2009). Bullying consists of repeated and persistent negative acts, including social isolation, silent treatment, constant criticism, attacking a person’s private life or attitudes, blaming, disparaging, withholding information, depriving responsibility, and verbal aggression (Knowles, 2009; Kelly, 2007; Olender-Russo, 2009). [See table one]. In some cases, the bullies are fully aware of the negative effects of their behavior; in others cases, they are not. But in any case, the bullying continues (Knowles, 2009; Kelly, 2007; Olender-Russo, 2009).
Women in particular are vulnerable to this abusive workplace conduct. To illustrate, the Workplace Bullying Institute claimed that 57 percent of those who reported being targets of bullying were women (Kelly, 2007). This is not a surprising conclusion, especially considering that social exclusion is more common toward female workers than toward males. Strong rhetoric of gender equality not withstanding, whenever managers make female workers feel unwelcome and exclude them from joining in their networks by behaving cliquishly, snobbishly, and elitist-like, these actions show that the bullying behaviors are continuing rather than ameliorating (Knowles, 2009; Kelly, 2007).
Two forms of bullying that are widely used in the workplace are social exclusion and negative assessments in performance reviews. Scholars have tried to explain how gender inequalities are accentuated in the workplace by social networks. Social network functions are not necessarily limited to formal events, but frequently include hallway conversations, friendly lunches, and politicking (Gray, Kurihara, Hommen, & Feldman, 2007; Eagly & Carli, 2007). One study pointed out that managers who advanced rapidly in hierarchical organizations spent relatively more time and effort socializing, politicking, and interacting with senior managers than did their less successful counterparts (Gray et al., 2007). In short, social network functions enable access to information and knowledge and create job opportunities, but at the same time, these network activities prevents others from gaining access to such privileges (Gray et al., 2007; Eagly & Carli, 2007; Anonymous, 2010).
Based on my experience in corporate America, I can confirm that female workers are usually divorced from both formal and informal social networks, and from discussions about promotion, job opportunities, mentors, knowledge of the firm and of the technology (Gray et al., 2007; Eagly & Carli, 2007). At the beginning of my professional experience, I was not even aware that such strong networks existed within organizations, but once I became aware of them, I was incapable of accessing them, with the exception of one time when a rare event opened the door for networking, and I became a member of a clique. Due to language barriers, I helped the daughter of a Vice President, of the company where I was working, and subsequent to this assistance, I started getting invited to all social activities. Shortly thereafter, I received a promotion. This shows the importance of networking for career advancement and how the informal nature of information exchange is grafted onto the organization’s formal system of promotion (Gray et al., 2007). This was a significant moment in my professional career, but I was completely distraught because I realized that my promotion was solely based on pure perceptions. During the promotion process my technical skills were not even mentioned once. It did not matter if I had increased the company’s operating income, streamlined and introduced new business processes, trained new employees, provided financial analysis to senior level management, reached a very high percentage of projection and budget accuracy, built and provided guidance to a very enthusiastic team, and spent hours and hours working at the office. The traditional management activities of planning, decision making, controlling, motivating and reinforcing, staffing, training and developing, and managing conflict did not get much attention. Rather, what was considered during the promotion decision-making process was only the perception of weather I was good fit within the organization. My personal experience thus corroborates the research suggesting that social capital is even more necessary to managers’ advancement than skillful performance of traditional managerial tasks (Gray et al., 2007).
This form of social exclusion is also noticeable during work assignments and career-development opportunities. This type of gender discrimination often takes the form of negative labeling (stereotyping) that results in females frequently being considered unfit for certain jobs. Managers allocating projects with high visibility to their male subordinates, even if these direct-reports do not possess the necessary technical skills and experiences, or managers selecting male subordinates over female direct reports to attend career-development training represent common examples of social exclusion. But what makes all this even worse is the answer usually provided by some managers when female direct reports ask to be a part of such training. The typical claim is that there are no more funds available in the budget to cover any monetarily additional training expenses for that year (Gray et al., 2007). Maybe the lack of funds is genuine, but it is actually used as a pretext to provide standard training opportunities to one gender and not to the other. This seemingly simple act of being excluded has a major psychological impact on women. They feel undervalued, isolated, and not taken seriously (Knowles, 2009; Anonymous, 2010). Therefore, they feel not satisfied with their job and not committed to the organization, and consequently they leave the workplace (Knowles, 2009). This turnover has serious costs to the organization, the employee, and his or her family. The serious costs to the organizations are associated with recruiting and retraining replacements that usually are very high (Knowles, 2009; Anonymous, 2010).
Beside social exclusion, the other form of bullying that is widely used in the workplace in order to control someone’s advancement is negative assessments in performance reviews. Written evaluations are becoming the highest legalized form of discrimination used by managers. Organizations use written evaluations as evidence for defending employment promotions and raises. This is true not only in the U.S., where lawsuits by employees against current and former employers have been on the upswing, but also in countries where national law requires “just cause” or a “justified motive” for termination (Woodford & Maes, 2002).
Throughout the evaluation process, employees are rated on their abilities to accomplish specific goals, but when an employee does not agree with the manager’s assessment, this disagreement is viewed as the employee’s inability to accept honest and constructive feedback. Hence, an employee’s attempt to overturn a final evaluation becomes virtually impossible (Woodford & Maes, 2002). Following my most recent year-end performance review assessment, in which my abilities, skills, and technicality were not reflected, I was able to find out through the grapevine that all the women in my department received “average” to “low-average” evaluations; our male colleagues, in contrast, received “consistently effective” to “highly effective” evaluations. Unfortunately, due to the proprietary rights and confidentiality agreements, the information included in the year-end reviews are not easily accessible as evidence to support claims gender-discrimination within the workplace. Ironically, since organizations can use evaluations as after-the-fact evidence for defending employment decisions, this becomes the supreme form of evidence used by male managers to illegitimately justify higher wages and faster promotions for females’ male counterparts (Kelan, 2009; Lang, 2010; Eagly & Carli, 2007). This incongruity has repercussions that extend far beyond legal considerations. More importantly, a negative assessment in performance reviews is psychologically devastating for employees, especially if it falsely accuses them of errors and of not performing well, when the reality is actually much different (Woodford & Maes, 2002).
Many people still believe that a promotion is based totally on merit: among other things having the skills and knowledge to excel in the workplace. I am not denying that these are important. Of course these attributes are necessary, but the scholarly research and my professional experience suggest that it is easier to attain a promotion if network activities are cultivated in the workplace (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Anonymous, 2010; Gray et al., 2007; Lang, 2010). Networking interactions are usually fertilized by drinks after work, office conversations, hallway gabbing, trips to the casino, and many other social activities. Since women are often left out of social events, job-growth opportunities, and projects, they miss out on advancements, despite their good work records. This lack of recognition for employee performance accompanied by negative assessments in performance reviews that in many cases are false or misleading makes people wonder what kind of record the people who achieved promotion really have. The glass ceiling or labyrinth effect is still alive and affecting women’s professional growth and causing women to leave the workplace (Anonymous, 2010). To eliminate such gender discrimination will require more than strong gender rhetoric. Instead an overhauling of corporate culture will be necessary. The atmosphere of a workplace needs to change, but this is only possible if people within an organization are willing to shift gears. A strong, honest message from the executive team that such a change is desirable can help with the paradigm shifts. However, changing corporate culture is possible only if individuals across every level of the organizational hierarchy embrace and support that change (Knowles, 2009). Therefore, an active participation and support of individuals across every level is required to ameliorate gender discrimination within the workplace.
TABLE 1: THE SPECTRUM OF BULLYING BEHAVIOR (Knowles, 2009)
Verbal Behavior
Non-Verbal Behavior
a) Direct
Yelling
Screaming
Explosive outbursts of anger/tantrums
Using derogatory names/cursing
Badgering
Public ridiculing of another/belittlement
Discounting feelings, thoughts, ideas
Nastiness, rudeness, hostility
Accusations of wrongdoing, blaming for errors
Threat of job loss
Personal criticism of features irrelevant to the job (e.g., the target’s family)
Sarcasm
Unfair performance evaluation
The silent treatment
Aggressive eye contract
Withholding necessary information
Ignoring the target
Isolating the target
Excluding the target from discussions or decisions
Stalking
Coercing the target into resignation or retirement
Denying opportunities
b) Indirect
Spreading untrue rumors or gossip
Undermining through vindictive words or acts
Breaching the confidentiality of the target
Assigning meaningless or dirty tasks as punishment
Making unreasonable demands regarding work
Taking credit for the target’s work
Excessive supervision (e.g., scrutinizing or timing the target on breaks)
Setting up the target for failure
Sabotaging
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