According to gendered organization theorists, there are many ways that bureaucracies do not treat all workers—especially women workers—equally. Provide two of the reasons that the text presents to support this assertion.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Correct answer varies but could include that work is designed for an idealized worker, but women are also responsible for childrearing, and this is difficult to fit into the idealized worker model. This is called “competing devotions.” Organizations may also discriminate with or without knowing they are doing it by hiring and promoting mainly white men over minorities and women because they are the people they are used to seeing in high-level positions within bureaucratic hierarchies. This limitation for women is called “the glass ceiling” where they cannot get promoted to a higher level. By contrast, men ride the “glass escalator” to the top because invisible forces work in their favor to propel them past equally competent candidates. There is the “double-paned” glass ceiling in which women face difficulty getting placed in a company’s foreign-based offices. The “glass cage” is the idea that women are horizontally segregated—in other words, they have a more difficult time moving across segregated parts of an organization. There is also the “glass cliff” in which women get promoted in hard times, but the economic situation after a quick rise may create a precarious position to hold onto.