Blue-Collar Women at Work with Men: Negotiating the Hostile Environment

Blue-Collar Women at Work with Men: Negotiating the Hostile Environment Jeanie Ahearn Greene PRAEGER Blue-Collar Wom...

Author: Jeanie Ahearn Greene

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Blue-Collar Women at Work with Men: Negotiating the Hostile Environment

Jeanie Ahearn Greene

PRAEGER

Blue-Collar Women at Work with Men

BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN AT WORK WITH MEN Negotiating the Hostile Environment

Jeanie Ahearn Greene

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Greene, Jeanie Ahearn. Blue-collar women at work with men : negotiating the hostile environment / Jeanie Ahearn Greene. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–97736–6 (alk. paper) 1. Sex discrimination in employment—Law and legislation—United States. 2. Working class women—Legal status, laws, etc.—United States. 3. Sex role in the work environment—United States. I. Title. KF3467.G734 2006 344.7301'4133—dc22 2006002746 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2006 by Jeanie Ahearn Greene All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006002746 ISBN: 0–275–97736–6 First published in 2006 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

Preface

vii

1. Equal Employment Opportunity for Women: An Introduction and Overview

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2. Seventeen Blue-Collar Women: The Collective Voice

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3. United States Employment-Discrimination Law: An Analysis of Social Policy

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4. Pathways to Employment: Early Preparation for Traditionally Male Blue-Collar Jobs

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5. The Hiring Process: Women’s Entry into Traditionally Male Blue-Collar Occupations

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6. On the Job, Doing the Job: Reconsidering Job Descriptions, Performance, and Evaluation

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7. Walls and Doorways: Employers’ Barriers and Supports to Job Performance

93

8. Gatekeepers to Opportunity and Protectors against Discrimination: Management, Supervisors, and Unions

115

9. Good Guys/Bad Guys: How to Determine What Is Reasonable

129

10. How Men Treat Women: “Working” Relationships between the Sexes

145

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CONTENTS

11.Negotiating the Hostile Work Environment: Strategies for Women to Alleviate Employment Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment

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12. Mitigating the Hostile Work Environment: Conclusions and Recommendations

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Appendix: Nontraditional Occupations for Women in 2001

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

203

PREFACE

The purpose of this book is to “define the hostile work environment” based on a “reasonable woman standard” in the context of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) has had an enormous impact on all of our lives in the United States. Equal employment opportunity speaks to each of us about what jobs we can and will choose and about how we conduct ourselves at work. No worker has been without reminders of how Title VII has changed their options in life and the way they do their jobs. Its impact spans across our work lives from hiring to day-to-day work, to the termination process, and into retirement. Title VII and the granting of equal opportunity have changed the way we plan for our futures as adults, how we organize families, and the messages we give as a culture. It is at once personal, political, and economic for each of us as individuals and for us as a society and culture. Title VII has changed our education and training, the choice of jobs we apply for, the hiring process, employer-employee relationships, the way we do our jobs, the way we treat each other at work, the way we leave our jobs, and even the way we raise our children. These are the themes discussed in this book. This book places women’s work lives directly in the context of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and ancillary supporting U.S. employment policies. The act was purposely written to be broad and vague. It is only through decades of interpretation and case law that it has been given definition. Understanding the act, its interpretation, and its implications is complicated and complex, and the understanding changes with time.

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PREFACE

We are still working to understand, clarify, and define the intent of the act, its coverage, and provisions. Yet we are responsible for compliance, and many of us are liable for violations. Moreover, day-to-day work is governed by the often misinformed and informal interpretations of coworkers, friends, and family members, based on their variable understandings of the provisions and protections of the law. I found that on the one hand, business as usual is not necessarily legal. And on the other hand, something can be hostile, seemingly intolerable, or inhumane without necessarily being illegal. By placing women’s work experiences in a policy context, we can understand what is legal and illegal. In this book I first provide an overview of the rights afforded women workers under Title VII and supporting employment policies. I then provide an interpretation and understanding of Title VII based on the experiences and insights of 17 women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. This book places women’s experiences and insights as central to understanding employment discrimination. I chose to interview women working in blue-collar, traditionally male jobs because compared to women working in other jobs, these women have been found to experience the most enduring and adverse discrimination at work. These are women who just want to do their jobs, but doing the job goes beyond performing the skills of the trade to include enduring harassment, hostility, and abuse. These are women who have endured, persevered, suffered, and overcome discrimination and harassment in order to work and earn a living and perform jobs that have been at once challenging and rewarding. You will not find a list of “research” or “survey” questions in this book or in this study. My interviews were open-ended and may be best thought of as a conversation that was led by the interviewee and guided by me. The women talked about their work lives both based on their personal experiences and through reflective interviewing. I asked the women about their experiences working with men in traditionally male bluecollar jobs and then asked them to compare their experiences to the experiences and insights of other women I interviewed, creating a conversational style between women who did not ever meet each other. The result was hundreds of pages of transcriptions and months of reading, rereading, thematically sorting, and analyzing the interviews in the context of Title VII. The first writing of this study was a dissertation. I am privileged to have had artisans of practice, methods, and theory guiding and supporting me while requiring the rigor and quality of scholarship that I trust this work represents. Special thanks to Robert C. Bogdan, Sari Knopp Biklen, and Diane Lyden Murphy.

PREFACE

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It has always been a concern of mine that the audience who would be most eager for and would benefit most from the insights and experiences of the women interviewed are women workers, policy makers, employers, and coworkers. I was concerned that this study would be lost and shelved with academic writings, and this book represents my sought-after opportunity to reach out to the broader audience. Special thanks to Mildred Vasan for contacting me and making the connection with Praeger Publishers for the publication of this book. This book is intended for anyone who wants to understand employment discrimination and workplace hostility from the perspective of women who are known to endure the most constant and widespread discrimination and hostility. This book is written for the legislature; legal counsel; judges; mental health and social workers; employers, managers, and supervisors; unions; concerned citizens who become social activists and advocates; and individual workers advocating on their own behalf or reaching out to help others. My aim is that this book will help all of us to rethink our work lives and how we treat our coworkers and will prompt policies that reduce discrimination and hostility at work. I hope that these women’s experiences and insights prompt the legislature and the courts to design, implement, and direct policy that supports workers and creates a more welcoming workplace, particularly for women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. The courts have coined the phrase “hostile environment” to describe the pervasive and often-invisible discrimination that denies workers equal opportunity at work. We cannot rely on the courts to protect workers from discrimination and harassment. It is instead a personal responsibility shared by all workers and employers. I hope that this book will reach employers and coworkers and help them to design policies and treat women workers as welcome, valued, and respected members of the workplace community. Overall, each of us can contribute to a more humane and welcoming workplace. By reading this book and taking in these women’s stories, we can all gain personal insights and take increased personal responsibility for both overt and covert discrimination, particularly those well-intentioned actions or misunderstandings that limit or arrest women’s ability to perform and succeed at work. And thank you most of all to the women who participated in this study. Your faces are etched in my mind, and your words are printed on these pages. May your stories be heard and your strategies bring action for you and other workers experiencing pain, harassment, and discrimination at work.

Chapter 1

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN: AN INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Traditionally male blue-collar jobs offer the women who desire them challenge, excitement, security, and economic rewards that often surpass what is available in traditionally female jobs. Women who entered the workforce prior to 1960 knew that unacceptable discrimination and harassment existed, but solutions had to be self-devised, and women stood to lose their jobs if they asserted themselves. With the passing of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination and harassment became not only unacceptable but also illegal. Title VII expanded women’s opportunities to pursue and retain challenging jobs that paid better than traditionally female jobs. Women were aware of their right to equal employment opportunities; many were unaware, however, of the extent or relationship of EEO protections in their own jobs. Often, women viewed employment practices as simply unfair or unjust when in fact they were illegal. The experiences of women in traditionally male bluecollar jobs, as described through the stories in this book, clearly demonstrate that workers, employers, legislators, feminists, researchers, friends, and families can contribute to a more accessible, welcoming, and productive workplace. Equal employment opportunity (EEO) policy and practices seek to end job segregation and employment discrimination. Women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs often have found themselves in the most constant and pervasively hostile male-dominated workplaces. Nevertheless, they have proved themselves as capable, eager employees and coworkers. Their insights and experiences suggest strategies and policies to increase

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BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN AT WORK WITH MEN

opportunity and reduce discrimination and harassment, and these changes promise improvements in worker satisfaction, production, retention, and safety and improvements in workplace relationships. Ending sexual harassment and discrimination against women at work requires reform on all levels. These same recommendations promise a more welcoming and productive workplace for all workers. EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION AS A POLICY ISSUE In the United States, legislation is entrusted to elected representatives and reflects the will of the populous. Legislation and case law set up what is permissible and acceptable. U.S. employment policy has historically sought to protect women from harm and exploitation at work and currently grants equal employment opportunity for women in hiring, promotion, training, pay, and benefits. Equal employment opportunity legislation and case law are the political and social-policy interventions for employment discrimination. They aim to open doors for women in employment and seek to equalize pay and compensation. These policies provide a common context for women workers in the United States. Furthermore, such policies are intended to bring about “the structural changes that would make the nontraditional sector of the labor force more attractive to women” (Cherry, McIntyre, & Jaggernathsingh, 1991). The central policy for this book is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on sex. This act does not stand alone in this prohibition. In addition to Title VII protections, women are protected against employment discrimination under the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Family Leave Act, the Violence Against Women’s Act, E.O. 11246, and other labor and employment laws. An understanding of women’s employment issues can be aided by an understanding of this broader perspective of interdependent policies. After passage of a law in the United States, the courts interpret the law. Since the passage of Title VII, more than 100 U.S. Supreme Court cases have interpreted the intent of the law. Subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have attempted to clarify and define Title VII protections and the law’s relation to the ancillary policies. At its inception, Title VII was purposely left broad and vague, particularly with regard to sex, but whether the laws are vague or specific, the courts decide as to the intent and fairness of the laws.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN

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As employment discrimination against women has been litigated, the definition of discrimination has been expanded to include a continuum of behaviors and practices that result in what is now defined as employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and a “pervasively hostile environment.” This book is centered on two key court decisions regarding Title VII. First, the courts have struggled as to whether behaviors and actions are considered discrimination and harassment based on what “a reasonable person” or on what “a reasonable woman” would find objectionable. The courts have directly recognized the absence of, need for, and value of women’s input into EEO policy and practice. In Ellison v. Brady, 924 F.2d 872 (9th Cir. 1991), the decision states, We believe that in evaluating the severity and pervasiveness of sexual harassment, we should focus on the perspective of the victim. If we only examined whether a reasonable person would engage in allegedly harassing conduct, we would run the risk of reinforcing the prevailing level of discrimination. Harassers could continue to harass merely because a particular discriminatory practice was common, and victims of harassment would have no remedy. . . . A complete understanding of the victim’s view requires, among other things, an analysis of the different perspectives of men and women. Conduct that many men consider unobjectionable may offend many women. . . . We realize that there is a broad range of viewpoints among women as a group, but we believe that many women share common concerns which men do not necessarily share. . . . We adopt the perspective of a reasonable woman primarily because we believe that sex-blind reasonable person standard tends to be male-biased and tends to systematically ignore the experiences of women.1

The findings of this study are based on interviews with 17 women in a variety of traditionally male blue-collar occupations, therefore, this book is based on a reasonable-woman standard. Second, the U.S. Supreme Court coined the phrase “a pervasively hostile environment” to describe more general, persistent, and encompassing sexbased harassment and discrimination. In 1986 (Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 S.Ct. 57) the Court decided that sexual harassment was in fact employment discrimination, and sexual harassment was then defined as either “quid pro quo” (this for that) or a “pervasively hostile environment.” Since then, more than 100 court cases and federal guidelines have defined the differences between a welcoming workplace and a hostile workplace for women. According to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Harris v. Forklift (1993), the test for “whether an environment is ‘hostile’ or ‘abusive’” is determined by: (1) looking at all the circumstances of the discriminatory conduct and (2) by considering whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance. Yet, in that decision, Justice Scalia stated,

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“We have yet to define what is meant by a hostile environment” (Harris v. Forklift [1993]). In response to standing case law regarding employment discrimination and sexual harassment against women and regarding women’s equal employment opportunity, I am concerned with two key questions: 1. What is a hostile environment, and what differentiates a hostile from a welcoming workplace? 2. Is the determination based on a reasonable-woman or a reasonable-person standard?

In order to shed light on these two questions, I interviewed women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN IN TRADITIONALLY MALE JOBS Definitions of “equal,” “equality,” “reasonable,” “hostile,” and “usual and customary practice” in the workplace remain vague and unclear, and workplace definitions are often different from those described by the women the policies are designed to protect. Particularly salient in socialpolicy development and implementation is the designing of policy and practices that are responsive to the needs, resources, and capabilities of disenfranchised, underserved, and marginalized populations. Women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs are one such group, yet historically they have had little input in the shaping of their workers’ rights and the laws that govern their work lives. The perspectives and experiences of women who are employed in blue-collar, traditionally male jobs define and extend our understanding of equal employment opportunity for women and sex-based employment discrimination. These women’s experiences and insights provide a perspective that incorporates a reasonablewoman standard toward defining a pervasively hostile work environment. Mansfield, Koch, Henderson, Vicary, Cohn, & Young (1991) found, Women in traditionally male occupations encountered significantly more adverse working conditions than did their traditional counterparts, and, in addition, reported significantly less satisfaction and more stress at work. Tradeswomen were the most likely to experience sexual harassment and sex discrimination suggesting them as an appropriate focus for policy recommendations as well as to provide help for women working in these jobs.

By focusing on the perspective of these women, we “reconstruct knowledge” from the viewpoint of those who have previously been excluded


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from policy discussions. “‘Reconstructing knowledge’ requires a shift in thinking that includes those that have previously been excluded, challenging our assumptions about those groups” (Anderson & Collins, 1998, p. 4). The dominant group can best be understood from the viewpoint of the marginalized, those who are on the outside or outer edges of the experience. “Marginal lives are determinate, objective locations in the social structure. Such locations are not just accidentally outside the center of power and prestige, but necessarily so. It is the . . . existence of such oppositional margins that keep the center in place” (Harding, 1992a, p. 581). Analyzing narratives of blue-collar women working in traditionally male jobs challenges us to restructure our thinking, which is grounded in the existing political, economic, and social structures of the United States. These structures dominate our court litigation, employment policy, and market economy (MacKinnon, 1979, 1991; Hartsock, 1985). The women in male-dominated blue-collar workplaces exist on the margin and are visible because they “look different.” Yet they are paradoxically invisible and silent as noted by their minority employment status and their minimal presence in the literature, leadership roles, and positions of authority. Through interviewing these women and then developing an understanding of their work lives based on those interviews, I uncovered relationships, organizational structures, and systems that guide the choices these women make regarding work. This realization provides an opportunity to restructure our knowledge and understanding not only of these women but also of hostile work environments in general. Each woman’s experience is different from those of men and from those of other women. Through considering women’s varied experiences while examining existing policy and case law, we can begin to reconstruct our knowledge of hostility, domination, power, and empowerment. Based on our understandings, we can develop new strategies, redirect work organizations and relationships with coworkers, and ultimately effect the changes necessary to move toward equal employment opportunity for women. These women provide us with a reasonable-woman standard of equal employment opportunity and employment discrimination. Through exploring the experiences and insights of blue-collar women working in traditionally male jobs, we can directly address the concerns and the mandate of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, more particularly, of Ellison v. Brady (1991) and Harris v. Forklift (1993). SEVENTEEN BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN In order to understand employment opportunity and employment discrimination based on sex, I decided to interview the women who were known to

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experience the most pervasively hostile workplace discrimination—women in blue-collar, traditionally male jobs. Interviews with 17 women in a variety of such occupations revealed well-trained, well-paid employees who just wanted to do their jobs. Among the women I interviewed were two police officers, a longshore worker, a truck driver, a meter reader, a security officer, an electrician, an auto assembly-line worker, a painter, a postal worker, and a carpentry laborer. Beyond the skills of their trade, their “work” has included degrading cartoons, shared bathroom facilities, propositions for sex, lack of recognition for a job well done, discrimination in hiring, inaccessible training, denied promotions, social and physical isolation, and sexual assault. The women reported that pervasive and defined sex-based employment discrimination and harassment disrupted their work experiences, work satisfaction, and career decisions. Day-to-day work lives were difficult, adversarial, and hostile for these women who looked different and often did the job differently than the men they worked with. Yet they wanted to do the jobs and felt they would be able and capable, if just given the chance and support that the men they worked with were given. OCCUPATIONAL DESCRIPTIONS OF WOMEN INTERVIEWED Pseudonym

Occupation

Peg Chris Cassey Sandy Nancy Joyce Sonja Sally Angela Beth Cathy Iris Carol Valerie Mary Claire Gretchen

Police Officer State Highway-Maintenance Crew Nuclear Firewatch Community Police Officer Industrial Hygienist Security Guard Meter Reader Truck Driver Construction-Union President Electric Planner Public Utility Customer-Service Representative Longshore Worker/Commercial Fisher Postal Worker Electrician Automotive Assembly-Line Worker Commercial Painter Laborer/Carpenter


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These interviews began in the mid-1990s with continuous contact through the final writing of this book. The women I met differed in their family lifestyles and sexual orientation. They varied by age, race, and ethnicity.2 Their birth years ranged from 1940 to 1969. They worked at different jobs, and some had been employed in more than one traditionally male job during their career. The women worked in companies across the nation in various states, including Washington, Alaska, California, Maryland, Kansas, and New York. They had different education levels and family backgrounds. They received different pay, benefits, and compensation. There was no one “typical” blue-collar woman. The differences among the women and the comparative similarities gave meaning to their work, thus contributing to the findings of this book. I learned of these women by word of mouth and personal referral. Finding them was the result of “a referral chain through which the interviewer locates some respondents who in turn locate others” (Harkness & Warren, 1993, p. 335). My goal was to talk to as many women as necessary to provide enough insights, experiences, and questions to define and understand the sex-based hostile work environment. I began to interview women in many workplaces, seeking women with different experiences and backgrounds, including training, family, and education. The women were selected because they held various blue-collar or skilled-trade jobs that are traditionally performed by men. Because I was focused on these women’s understanding of blue-collar work, I depended on them to label their jobs as “blue-collar” and “traditionally male.” I found that what is traditionally male or blue-collar in one company or at one point in time may be otherwise elsewhere. I did not have predetermined “eligibility criteria,” but the women were keenly aware of how and why they qualified to contribute to this topic. I was looking for difference and was concerned with “experience” (Scott, 1991). After months of interviews, extensive conversations, and detailed analysis, I was impressed by the dedication, commitment, excitement, and pain that characterized these women’s work experiences. Overall, this excitement about work and the pain that work brought to them was the unifying thread or commonality among the women I interviewed. Unjust acts and personal assaults did not deter them. In some cases it arrested them temporarily or caused them to shift directions, but most of all, it made them stronger, more determined, and better leaders and team players—better workers. Although it is a natural tendency and interest to get to know the women interviewed, I have purposely not provided a comparative table of demographic information regarding the women interviewed. As explained earlier, I purposely sought women with a range of experiences from varied

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backgrounds, but in this study their family backgrounds, physical attributes, and sexualities were only important as they related to the data. By omitting detailed comparative information on the women, this study focuses on the collective situation and experience of these women’s work lives. This is a study of 17 women’s work experiences. What this study offers to women, policy makers, and employers is the collective voice of these women in a confidential format not available in the courtroom or public-policy arena.3 The personal stories and perspectives of these 17 women offer explanations and strategies for entry into traditionally male blue-collar jobs, for remaining on the job, and for choosing to leave the jobs. These women’s experiences and insights go further by offering suggestions for all workers on how to make the workplace more welcoming, particularly to women. Finally, these stories provide evidence and suggestions for policies and practices that would move us further toward achieving the legislative intent of equal opportunities in employment for women.

Chapter 2

SEVENTEEN BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN: THE COLLECTIVE VOICE

Seventeen women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs sat down with me, individually, and described what work was like with men when they were employed in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. In listening to their stories, I was struck by the common thread of strength, determination, compassion, and wisdom about dealing with and overcoming adversity. Through them I came to know and understand what work was like for women working with men in blue-collar jobs. I introduce you to the women here so that in the subsequent chapters you can better understand and be part of their “conversations” about the hostility, harassment, and discrimination they experienced at work. They never met as a group during these interviews, but as individuals they each contributed to the collective voice of this study. BETH (ELECTRIC PLANNER) When I met Beth, she was looking for relief from the way she was being treated at work by the men with whom she worked. Her head was low, and she was tearful. An Irish woman with long, curly auburn hair, bright eyes, and a round face and freckles, she was in her mid-thirties, single, and living with an elderly relative. Beth had been with the company for years, working her way up from an entry-level position as a security guard to what she described as the best job in the company, electric planner. Although she loved her job, she found the behavior of her coworkers hurtful and intolerable early in her career.

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Beth was determined to resolve the problems with her coworkers and stay on the job, which she did. Beth was one of many women I met whose treatment by coworkers was making work difficult or even impossible to perform on a daily basis. I was struck by the personal pain and fear that many women, like Beth, were experiencing and enduring because they either didn’t want to leave or depended on their jobs. Beth’s experiences, determination, and candor contributed to this book as a checkpoint for me not only in the interviewing but also in the writing and rewriting of this collective story. JOYCE (SECURITY GUARD) Joyce was a security guard posted at the building entrance of a publicutility office, and when I met her, she was clad in her blue uniform and black leather shoes with a shining silver badge at her breast. A woman short in stature (about 5’2”), Joyce’s body and expression were firm and stern, and I noticed her bright, lively eyes. She had short blonde hair, and heavy mascara accentuated a perceptive and intense stare—always observing, always on alert. I knew that the security department of the company was all men except for two women. Joyce was one of those two. Although I had passed Joyce on many occasions with a nod and hello, I knew nothing about her family or her job before meeting her for the interview. She was another of the many visible women in a man’s job with an invisible life. Ironically, her job was to observe me, and she was intrigued with this project and eager to be interviewed. However, during the interview she was as full of questions about what other women were experiencing as she was with insights about her own work life. Of all the women I interviewed, she was the most guarded and cautious. SONJA (METER READER) I met Sonja at her place of work. She worked with about 30 men and two women in a “barn”—slang for a garage where utility workers reported daily to be dispatched to the field. Sonja was around 30 years old and 5’5” tall and had thick, dark short hair and a soft body. She wore khaki work pants and a cotton shirt. Like most of the women I interviewed, she wore no makeup or nail polish and only understated jewelry. Perhaps her appearance would best be described as practical. When I called her, I described the focus of what I was writing and explained that I was interviewing women in nontraditional jobs. She quickly agreed to a meeting, and we decided on the location and time. I met her in the “gang room” where the workers congregated before and after shifts or

SEVENTEEN BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN

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on rainy days. The walls of the room were plastered with pictures of scantily dressed women advertising beer. This, ironically, was her choice of a safe place to talk with me about working with men in a man’s workplace. CATHY (PUBLIC UTILITY CUSTOMER-SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE/UNION EXECUTIVE BOARD) Toward the end of Beth’s interview, as we talked about the impact of the union on her work, she volunteered that if I wanted to know more about the union and how women were treated in the union, I should talk to Cathy. Like Beth, Cathy had been stressed and distressed because of the way male coworkers treated her, which was obstructing her ability to do her job. These men were affecting her personal esteem and mental health (in other words, her happiness). Although both Beth and Cathy found such treatment intolerable, Cathy’s reaction contained more indignation, outrage, and anger than did Beth’s. Cathy did not see the problem as something that she should have to fix or her coworkers as people she should have to accommodate. She felt they needed to be held accountable. Cathy worked as a customer-service representative, meaning she represented the company in dealings with contractors and field crews installing utilities. More important for my study, she was the only woman on the executive board of the “brotherhood” (the union). This interview was conducted at my home at Cathy’s choosing; she did not want to be seen coming to my office. She was eager to help me with my research but wanted to keep the interaction separate and private from her coworkers and supervisors. Cathy was strong and imposing in stature and affect. In her mid-40s, she was about 5’7” with red hair. She presented as loud, as at-times imposing and even intimidating, as full of quick wit, and above all as compassionate and friendly. She was a woman’s woman and an advocate for social justice. PEG (POLICE OFFICER) In the community where I practiced as a mental-health therapist, I was asked to voluntarily join a new team for critical-incident–stress debriefing. This meant a three-day intensive training seminar with other mental-health counselors and emergency personnel in the community (fire, police, and emergency medical technicians). Among the professionals was Peg, a city police officer. Peg was vibrant, assertive, compassionate, and strongwilled. She was tall, slim, and of Italian background with long, thick, shoulder-length curly brown hair. Her prominent eyes were intense as she scanned the room or focused on individuals with whom she was conversing.

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She often referred to herself by her Italian last name, particularly when speaking as a police officer at work. Part of joining a team is getting to know the team members. Peg learned of my research project and was quick to assure me that harassment and discrimination were rampant in the police force. She cited examples and stories. My interactions with many of these interviewed women began with their showing me how they “qualified” for my research. They told me what they did for work, explained that they knew what I was talking about, and indicated that they saw this as important work. The preliminary tales they told me to explain how they could relate affirmed the validity of my project. Peg was in her late 30s and had recently married a fellow officer. On the force she had positioned herself as a leader and feminist among her peers by befriending other women, confronting men, and keeping gender central to her work identity. She wanted to know about my study and was eager to schedule an interview. SANDY (COMMUNITY POLICE OFFICER) I met Sandy when I stopped by the office of a psychiatrist I worked with as a colleague. Sandy, a police officer, was dressed in her uniform. Sandy and I had been enlisted as a team to escort a couple, in separate vehicles, along with the doctor to the hospital for an emergency psychiatric commitment. While we were waiting at the hospital, Sandy said she had gone into police work because she liked the law and wanted to help people. I told her about what I was studying, and she quickly agreed to be interviewed. She then spent the rest of our day together talking about work. She talked for a while about how “it’s who you know” in the police force that determines where you go. She also talked about how she was going through a divorce and indicated that “they” treated women officers very differently than men by accommodating the men and feeling sorry for them. As with most of the other women, her eagerness to talk about work and relationships with men at work, about how she felt about her work, and about why she chose that job was striking to me. Particularly important about this interview was that Sandy is African American, and was offering insights into working not only as a woman but also as an African American woman in a white male workforce. She was physically fit, and though she did not seem aggressive, she displayed an air and look of assertiveness, self-assurance, and confidence. She was direct yet relaxed in her speech, glance, and stance. Later she would describe this stance as learned and as part of police work: “You stand


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flat-footed, cross your arms, and then [you have] the uniform. You don’t smile and it shows you mean business.” ANGELA (CONSTRUCTION-UNION PRESIDENT) Angela was a new union president who was dedicated to improving services and working conditions for her members. At the time of the interview, she was already facing challenges as the only woman local president for the predominant construction union in the United States. Angela was a pioneering woman working to improve union relations among all the members. She came into her job because her predecessor had been corrupt and had sold out the workers for his own gain. Angela was there because she was honest, committed, and caring. She wanted “things to be set right.” When I contacted Angela, I was struck by her eagerness and commitment to my project. Angela cleared her calendar for a two-hour interview at my convenience, displaying a concern I was finding in all the women I interviewed. This universal concern was for women workers as a group and, for each woman, her personal identification as a member of that group. Angela was in her mid- to late forties, and when we met, she was wearing a very feminine, stylish blouse, tailored black slacks, and low heels. Her hair was long and full. She stood tall with a look that was at once soft, strong, and assured. SALLY (TRUCK DRIVER) Angela was excited about the interview, the research, and my work. An hour into the interview, she paused and said, “You need to talk to Sally. She loves to talk. She is a truck driver for the union and has just filed a discrimination suit with the National Labor Relations Board and EEOC.” Sally was quick to set an appointment with me. She said that she was laid off from work and available anytime. She was married with two adult children, neither of whom would be home. When we set a morning interview, she said she would not make any plans for the rest of the day, reinforcing for me the importance of this project for her and her excitement about participation in this project. Sally was a petite, slender woman with short blonde hair and a bronze skin tone that indicated years of basking in the sun. The interview lasted almost three hours and included her telling of her experiences in multiple nontraditional jobs for women, including accounting, school-bus driving, welding, and truck driving.

14


VALERIE (ELECTRICIAN) Valerie was a licensed electrician and seasoned feminist. Nationally known, she was an activist for women in the trades in her community. I was interested in the local tradeswomen group she was a member of. When I contacted her, she invited me without hesitation to their monthly board and membership meeting. I rode to the meeting with Valerie and Laura, all the way learning of the two women’s work as electricians, but moreover, of their commitment to fighting for equal opportunity for women and minorities in the trades. They were advocates for women and girls. They understood the issues not only from their own work experiences, but also from the experiences of the collective of women that surrounded them in this group. They were also going further and taking up the additional obstacles faced by racial and ethnic minorities entering blue-collar trades. They both saw themselves as activists, and both were involved in research projects, at the master’s and doctoral levels, that specifically addressed employment discrimination in the trades. They worked in the trades by day and for the trades by night. MARY (AUTOMOTIVE ASSEMBLY-LINE WORKER) Mary was about 5’4” tall and of medium weight and build with a healthy, athletic look. Her mannerisms seemed to bridge the masculine and feminine. Mary worked on the auto assembly line and had been transferred to Baltimore when a plant closed in New York. She had worked for the auto manufacturer for almost 20 years. Mary was a veteran of working with men in traditionally male trades and in the military. She had confidence, courage, and resilience that I wanted to understand and capture since these qualities came in the face of tolerating harassment by men at work. Mary was having a difficult time on the job in Baltimore, despite her years of experience. I asked her if she would consider an interview, and she eagerly agreed. Like many of the women, she was motivated to help me with my research so that other women could benefit from her experiences and so that she could learn about theirs. In the interview, we quickly focused the conversation on Mary and her job. CHRIS (STATE HIGHWAY-MAINTENANCE CREW) When I met Chris, she shared her interest based on her years working on a state road crew. Chris was single and in her early 30s. She had no


15

children and was self-supporting, living in rural upstate New York. Chris was about 5’5” and usually wore flannel shirts and blue jeans. She had long, straight, unrestrained strawberry blonde hair and clear blue eyes. She had recently returned to school to obtain the credentials necessary to legitimate her appointment at work as the crew’s Employee Assistance Program representative. She not only wanted to share her experiences, but she also wanted to support other women working in male-dominated workplaces, and I was eager to learn about her insights and experience. Although on educational leave, she was still employed by the state and was working on the crew during breaks and vacations. CLAIRE (COMMERCIAL PAINTER) Claire had been working as a commercial painter and was continuing to support herself with painting while she attended college to become a dental hygienist. Claire was shyer than many of the women I interviewed. She was also younger, in her late 20s. Claire was average in stature, slim but physically fit, and strong in appearance. She had short dark hair. She had the sparkle in her eyes of Santa Claus and the smile of an innocent child. When I called her, she wanted to meet but was concerned that she wouldn’t have anything to say. I knew this interview would not happen if we were both shy, so I assured her that I was eager to talk to her and learn about her work. I told her about some of the other women, and she became eager to find out more about them. She met me at a shopping center. Claire and I sat in the middle of the food court with the tape recorder. Before we knew it, an hour and a half had elapsed and the tape had run out. There was still so much more to say. CASSEY (NUCLEAR FIREWATCH) Cassey’s job at the nuclear plant as a “firewatch” required her to work long hours and weekends. Therefore, she was not present at the gatherings of her family, to which I was regularly invited. I knew the family was proud of her because they often talked about her in her absence. She had a relatively secure job in a rural community that had high unemployment rates and limited opportunity for young workers entering the labor force. She was making a lot of money but was enduring long hours with difficult work conditions. When we met at a family event, she inquired about my research. Her family was proud of the work she was doing, particularly because of the high income and the independence it afforded her. However, family members were unaware of the specific difficulties of her work beyond the

16


scheduling. Cassey wanted to be interviewed. Like many of the women, she was very excited that she was to be included in this study and that I thought what she had to say was valuable to a topic that she herself finds important. Cassey was single and in her mid-20s, the youngest of four children. She had gone to work in a nuclear plant in a rural area when she was unable to find a job in business management after graduating from college. NANCY (INDUSTRIAL HYGIENIST) A woman politically active in her community, Nancy was one of three names a local politician gave me; the women were the politician’s personal friends who worked in blue-collar male jobs and who were active in local unions. Nancy, I was told, inspected carnival rides. She was part of a network of feminist women in her community with decades of experience advocating for women and social justice. She had aligned herself and worked in the women’s movement from the 1960s to the present. When I talked with her to set the interview, she described her job as that of an electrician by training who was working for the state. When I called her, she was home on disability, and she invited me to her home for a taped interview. Nancy was older than most of the women I had interviewed, being in her late 50s or early 60s. She was the mother of three grown sons and lived with her husband. She was home on disability because she had fallen on ice while at work, and she was considering retirement. Her current job title was “industrial hygienist,” which meant “safety inspector.” She was particularly interested in electricity, but her responsibilities were broadly defined as those necessary for ensuring construction safety. She did inspect carnival rides, but that was only part of her job as a safety inspector for multiple work sites. Her work involved climbing and crawling into, over, and under structures in order to assure that safety standards were met. Most of the inspections took place on work sites run by men with male workers, and most of her coworkers were men. She had worked with men and for men for decades and was eager to share her years of experiences, particularly as they had changed over time. IRIS (LONGSHORE WORKER/COMMERCIAL FISHER) Iris appeared taller than her 5’3” stature, perhaps because she was very thin and stood erect with shoulders back and head high. Her waist-length, free-flowing blonde hair, high forehead, and prominent, poignant blue


17

eyes were reflective of her dual United States and Netherlands citizenship and heritage. During our meeting, her interest in my research and her experiences in labor-intensive male jobs on the waterfront dominated our conversation. Her employment history included work in the seasonal Christmas tree industry, longshoring on the docks loading timber, and life as a commercial Alaskan fisherwoman, followed by her employment in an engineering firm. She not only talked about traditionally male blue-collar jobs, but she also made some comparisons to traditionally male white-collar jobs. This gave yet another perspective to the study as she compared multiple experiences working with men in traditionally male jobs. CAROL (POSTAL WORKER) By the time I met Carol, she was making plans to leave her job in the post office. She had started on the post-office floor more than 20 years before, had been promoted to a position in the garage, and had worked her way up to postmaster and was now looking for a change. While working as postmaster, she had completed her bachelor’s degree and defined herself as a feminist and now wanted to focus on teaching and women’s studies. She was a single mother. She had raised her daughter, taken care of her parents, and gone to school while working and remaining self-supporting. Her decision to leave the post office was delayed by the death of her mother, and so was our interview. Having worked her way up from a position on the post-office floor to postmaster in a small community, she was able to talk about differences between being a craftworker (and being part of a union) and being a management worker within the evolving and automating postal service. GRETCHEN (LABORER/CARPENTER) Gretchen was single and in her late 20s and had dyed her dramatically short hair red. She had large green eyes and was deliberate and demonstrative in her speech. She was slim and tomboyish in her dress. Most of all, she was very friendly, open, and candid with a quick sense of humor. Gretchen wrote me a long note after being asked to review the preliminary report from which this book evolved. She was disturbed by the way I was defining the women in this study as “blue-collar skilled tradeswomen.” She didn’t think that “blue-collar” and “skilled” necessarily described the women I was including in the study. Gretchen’s doubts were based on her experiences in a job her employer classified as unskilled

18


blue-collar, traditionally male job. When not attending classes, she worked seasonally as a laborer in a historic park. She said, “I mean, they [say they] don’t require any skills, and yet I’m expected to know carpentry as well as historic carpentry and be able to do framing, roofing, vehicle maintenance, plumbing, electrical, and brick work.” She was the only woman in her work environment. Seasonal labor was nonunion, and fulltime employees were union-represented. Gretchen was from California and had started working at a national historic park at the age of 18. She had worked there for nine years while going to school. My response to Gretchen’s interest and her challenge of my research was to interview her. She was eager to do the interview. PERSONAL COMMENT Though I have tried to give you an introduction to the women who contributed to this study, I have purposely not provided a comparative demographic description of them. I have shared a description that I hope allows you to join with them and see them as the unique individuals that they are. There is not one type of woman in these traditionally male bluecollar jobs, and what these women do and don’t have in common does not correlate to what their experiences are. Each woman is unique, and each experience is unique. That is what makes their contribution all the more valuable. This sample was purposive in providing a range of experiences of women from varied backgrounds. Their family backgrounds, physical attributes, and sexual orientations were only important to note in this study when they contributed to an understanding of employment discrimination and workplace harassment. By omitting this information, I have attempted to focus the reader on the womens’ experience, not their attributes. This is a study of 17 women’s work experiences.

Chapter 3

UNITED STATES EMPLOYMENTDISCRIMINATION LAW: AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL POLICY

Social policy is one way to unify and bring together workers, such as the women interviewed in this book, who are living in different geographic locations and doing different jobs at different times—social policy becomes the common thread. I have selected to analyze U.S. employment policies since they provide a context for workers in the United States, and more particularly, blue-collar women working in traditionally male jobs. I have found that many women endure illegal conditions and accept them as business as usual. In my interviews I found that although women workers know they are not being “treated right” or are being treated differently than the men they work with, they may or may not be aware of what is actually illegal. Through a comparison of the rights afforded them in the policies presented here, we can contextually analyze their situations and differentiate what is illegal from what is only considered unfair or unjust. This allows us to differentiate legal justice from social justice. We can then extend the analysis as to whether the policies are in fact providing the protections they were intended to provide. Since the interviewed women worked in different jobs, for different employers, at different times, and in different localities, federal policies are the ones that provide a unifying context. Many policies contribute to providing equal employment opportunity and to protecting women at work. For the purposes of this book, the dominant EEO legislation in the United States is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended. This act prohibits employment discrimination based on sex and provides for equal opportunity in employment for women.

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In addition to Title VII protections, women are protected against employment discrimination both directly and indirectly by many other interdependent legislative and court actions. These include, but are not limited to, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Americans With Disabilities Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Family Leave Act, the Violence Against Women’s Act, E.O. 11246, and other labor and employment laws. Though these policies are independent acts, they inform and set boundaries for Title VII. In order to understand the dynamics of women and work in the United States, and more particularly, work for women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, it is important to understand these policies, their protections, their limits, and their interrelationship. ANCILLARY CONTEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT LEGISLATION Contemporary women’s equal employment opportunity is provided through an aggregate of federal employment-legislation. The combined focus and key provisions of these employment laws provide a contemporary context for understanding and framing Title VII, the subsequent case law, and most of all, women’s experiences at work. • National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) (29 U.S.C. 151–169)—This act guarantees employees the right to organize, bargain collectively, and select a bargaining agreement. It protects employees from discipline or discharge for exercising these rights. It prohibits employers from discriminating in hiring or in deciding tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment for the purpose of encouraging or discouraging membership in a labor organization. A violation of the NLRA may be sufficiently established if an employee’s discharge interferes or coincides with the employee’s concerted activity as part of the union to procure mutual aid and protection. Furthermore, the agreements that are entered into by unions and collectives are upheld in Title VII, including practices “pursuant to a bona fide seniority . . . system . . . provided that such differences are not the result of an intention to discriminate” (Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 354 n. 39 [1977]). Jobs performed by the women who participated in this study were traditionally union-represented. The union provided both barriers and supports to their job performance. • Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938 (FLSA)— The purpose of this act is to regulate the wages and hours of those who work. In reaction to the economic depression of the 1930s, this legislation aims to allow employees to negotiate fairly with employers for jobs. The United States Department of Labor, as an administrative agency, oversees the minimum wage, compensatory time, migrant workers,

UNITED STATES EMPLOYMENT-DISCRIMINATION LAW

21

and child labor.1 Women are not a special class in this legislation but are covered in the general context of all employees. The compensation for jobs held by the women in this study tended to exceed minimum-wage standards. This act excludes certain types of employees: farmers; workers at small retail and service establishments; professional employees and executives; severely physically handicapped persons; trainees; persons who do work at home; domestic workers; waiters, waitresses, and bartenders; nonresident employees; and, truckers, cab drivers, and some common carrier drivers. The women in this study were hourly employees covered by the FLSA. • Equal Pay Act Of 1963 (EPA)— The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was enacted in order to address the issue of sex in regard to employment discrimination. It requires employers not to discriminate between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions except where such payment is made pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex: Provided, that an employer who is paying a wage rate differential in violation of this subsection shall not, in order to comply with the provisions of this subsection, reduce the wage rate of any employee. (Equal Pay Act 1963, Section 3) The Equal Pay Act requires equal pay only for substantially the same work. This legislation was believed to sufficiently address sex-based discrimination, and thus, sex was not included in Title VII in 1964. This allows for further exploration into the meaning of “equal work.” • Executive Order 11246 (E.O. 11246), 1965— Executive Order 11246 prohibits federal contractors and subcontractors from discriminating in employment and requires that a nondiscrimination clause be placed in all government contracts. It includes a provision that “employers take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” This requires that employers prepare an “affirmative action plan,” and involuntary plans may be required to rectify past discriminatory practices as defined by Title VII. Affirmative action may include recruiting underrepresented groups, changing management attitudes, removing discriminatory obstacles, and providing preferential treatment. Some of the women in this study were hired or promoted based on E.O. 11246. • Occupational Safety and Health Act, 1970 (OSHA) (29 U.S.C. 651 et seq.)— OSHA mandates that all employers provide employees with a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm. This

22

•

•

•

•


duty includes a responsibility to recognize and abate hazards of workplace violence. This act is aimed at prevention and has resulted in written industry-wide occupational standards. Failure to provide a safe and healthy workplace can result in citations and cash fines. For the women in this study, unsafe situations evolved as a result of generally lax occupational practices, the neglect of coworkers to advise or protect them, and malicious acts perpetrated because the women were unwelcome as workers. Title IX, Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX)— Under Title IX, educational institutions receiving federal funds may not use sex of students as a classifying tool or criterion for decisions regarding admissions, benefits, or participation in programs, or use other bases of classification that disproportionately disadvantage one sex or the other. Although there are some exclusions, Title IX includes admission to vocational and professional education. In 1981 the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that Title IX prohibits only intentional sex discrimination. During the decade, federal guidelines were issued on the prevention of sexual harassment of students. “To alter beliefs about equal opportunity, one available route is education” (Gelb & Palley, 1996, p. 93). Title IX has resulted in the education of women in traditionally male skills such as industrial arts and automotive repairs. For the women in this study, the absence of this early training and orientation placed them at a disadvantage when applying for jobs and learning new skills and in training programs. Civil Rights Act Of 1991 (PL 102–166)—In response to interpretation, ambiguities, and loopholes, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 significantly amended Title VII. The purpose of this act is to “strengthen and improve civil rights laws, to provide for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination, to clarify provisions regarding disparate impact actions.” It provides for monetary punitive and compensatory damages and trial by jury. Further, it set up the “Glass Ceiling Commission” to focus attention on, and complete a study of, the artificial barriers to the advancement of women and minorities in the workforce. Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations Act, 1992 (WANTO) (PL 102–530)—The purpose of WANTO is to provide technical assistance to employers and labor unions in order to encourage employment of women in apprenticeable occupations and nontraditional occupations. The law was a response to the increasing number of women in the labor force and the changing nature of the labor force. It provides technical assistance and grants to community-based organizations, and it commissioned a comprehensive study to examine barriers to women’s participation in the targeted occupations. The results of this qualitative study of women’s experience in such occupations identify barriers and suggest strategies for increasing the number of women in these occupations. Violence Against Women’s Act, 1994 (VAWA)— VAWA provides for civil action by women who are victims of domestic violence or sexual assault. Employers are prohibited from taking any adverse job-action based on the employee’s status


23

as a victim of domestic violence, assault, battery, sexual assault, or stalking, including status as a victim of threats of these crimes. Employers must reasonably accommodate victims, with efforts including job restructuring, making adjustments to existing facilities, and authorizing reasonable leave to seek medical or legal help, counseling, or safety planning. Victims can sue both the individual perpetrator and the employer if the assault occurs at the workplace. The harassment experienced by the women in this study included sexual assault, and many of the women were victims of threats of these crimes, threats that continued to go unreported. • States’ Fair Employment Practice Laws— Most states have laws on fair employment practices, prohibiting discrimination based on sex. State statutes may include additional protected classes that address familial status and sexual orientation and may include employers who are not covered by Title VII. These laws, or state human-rights laws, may be more or less restrictive than Title VII and provide different remedies and compensation. Title VII encourages pursuit of individual rights through state courts by extending times for filing federal complaints if the plaintiff is pursuing state remedies. Since the women in this study were pursuing remedies for the discrimination and problems they faced at work outside the formal legislative channels, state laws did not play an overt role. However, since the women worked in different states, their protections varied. • Workers’ Compensation— All states have workers’ compensation laws tied to employers’ responsibility to provide a safe workplace for workers. These laws require employers to compensate employees for job-related physical and mental injuries and illnesses that occur on the job or that are job-related. Compensation laws vary by state, including in the amounts paid and in employer-coverage requirements (i.e., self-insured, private insurance, and state insurance programs). Compensation includes coverage for income loss resulting from partial disability, medical expenses, rehabilitation expenses (including education and retraining), and income loss from death (Ledvinka & Scarpello, 1992). Also covered under workers’ compensation would be injuries and illnesses that result from on-the-job harassment or injuries that result from worker-caused injuries, especially if workers are un(der)trained and un(der)skilled. • Family Medical Leave Act (1994)—All workers, regardless of gender, are provided up to 12 weeks unpaid leave for certain medical and family situations (e.g., care for a sick child, eldercare, adoption) for either the employee or a member of the covered and eligible employee’s immediate family; however, in many instances unpaid leave may be substituted for paid FMLA leave. This bill was enacted to provide job security for workers with serious illnesses or who are responsible for family members with serious illnesses; though lawmakers recognized that women are disproportionately responsible for family caretaking, they knew that enacting employment standards applicable to only one gender could lead to employment discrimination against that gender, therefore, the act provides for leave for both men and women.

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• Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (1996)—this act replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Job Opportunities Act. It combined limited short-term financial benefits and job training, requiring mothers to work to support their families. It does not, however, target living wages or employment for women in higher-paying jobs.

TITLE VII OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 (PL 88-352) WITH REGARD TO WOMEN Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides for “nondiscrimination in employment” on the bases of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The substantive and procedural civil rights and protections of Title VII provide a unifying context for employment discrimination in the United States and for the comparison of the work experiences of individual women. They serve as a framework for the resulting recommendations for employment practices generated from the narratives of women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. The Problem: Lower Pay and Job Segregation for Women The combined effects of the social, political, and economic history of U.S. women’s employment are pay inequity, job segregation, and employment discrimination against women. Women overall earn less than men do, are segregated into jobs that pay less than traditionally male jobs, and are underrepresented in higher-paying traditionally male occupations. Since 1950 there has been a significant shift in women’s participation in the labor force, with most of the change happening after 1970. More than 65 million jobs for women were added from 1964 to 1997, more than doubling the 1964 figure. This represents a rise in rates of 43 percent of the labor force in 1970 to 60 percent in 1999 (Bureau Labor Statistics, 2005). Though women represent more than half of the labor force,2 they are overall paid less than men, earning 76.5 cents for every dollar a man makes (IWPR, 2005). This problem is compounded by the fact that women are disproportionately represented in lower-paying service and clerical jobs. Beyond an overall consideration of pay equity is the concern for employment opportunities for women in higher-paying traditionally male occupations. The Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) defines women’s nontraditional occupations as those occupations in which women comprise 25 percent or less of the total workers in that occupation. In 2001 more than 80 nontraditional occupations for women were listed by the DOL (see Appendix). “These


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skilled jobs are attractive because they offer entry level wages between $7 and $9 per hour, and a career ladder with pay between $20 and $30 per hour (DOL, 2002 (a)).” Yet women have historically been employed and continue to disproportionately be employed in traditional areas of clerical, sales, and service work. Pay equity and occupational representation indicate quantitatively that men and women do not have equal employment status and infer that opportunity is not equal. Moreover, the higher the pay in the job, the more likely that women will be underrepresented; and the lower the pay, the more likely that women will be employed in that occupation. Higher-paying blue-collar, nontraditional jobs represent a way out of poverty for some women (Kissman, 1990). But though the wage gap is narrowing and women are increasingly participating in the labor force, their participation in higherpaying, traditionally male blue-collar occupations continues to be low. Inequality in pay and occupational segregation for women result in economic disadvantages that extend to the women workers and to their families, who live in communities where they have less purchasing power and less economic independence than men. The impact spans the life cycle since the disadvantages extend to denial of promotions to jobs that pay more, and the result is lower pensions, social security, and benefits over the life cycle. In addition to economic inequality at work, there is social inequality. Workers gain a sense of self, personal power, and prestige from the work “organization” (Kanter, 1993). Work is a “social institution” where employers provide for the basic needs and welfare of the worker through pay and benefits including health care, family support, and retirement benefits and through ensuring worker safety. Yet for women, traditionally male blue-collar jobs have tended to be incompatible with women’s

Table 1. 2002 EEO Occupational Employment for Private Industry by Sex

Sex

Total

Officials & Managers

Professionals

Technicians

Sales Workers

Office & Clerical Workers

Craft Workers

Operatives

Laborers

Service Workers

Participation Rate

Male Female

52.5 47.5

65.3 34.7

47.9 52.1

53.2 46.8

44.3 55.7

20.2 79.8

87.0 13.0

72.2 27.8

65.3 34.7

42.6 57.4

Total

100.0 100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

Source: EEOC, 2004, Employer Information Report EEO-1.

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

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qualifications and their needs regarding safety, hours, and scheduling (Lillydahl, 1986, p. 314). Equal employment opportunity policy and practices seek to rectify the tangible problems of sex-based disparate compensation and job segregation and the social inequalities of low-paying unskilled jobs—key indicators of the less tangible “pervasively hostile work environment.” These indicators serve as markers for the continued existence of and change in sex-based employment discrimination. These indicators show that discrimination continues over time and across workplaces and occupations. But they do not explain why or how women are discriminated against and harassed. Historical and Legislative Development of Title VII Since the 1800s, legislation has been enacted in the United States for the protection of women’s employment rights. In some cases these laws promoted women’s employment rights, and in other cases they purposely restricted rights through what has been termed “protective legislation.” Employment legislation builds on the rights afforded to men that were denied to women dating back to the Constitution. Various forms of women’s-rights legislation since the Constitution have denied or extended to women basic rights already afforded white men, including the rights to vote and own property. With regard to work, legal rights have historically taken two stances. Prior to the 1960s, women’s employment rights were principally protective. “Protective legislation” included sex-based differential limitations on work hours and physical-labor restrictions that led to job segregation in the late 1800s and early 1900s (Hill, 1979). These laws were designed to protect women from employers’ exploitation and oppression in terms of the labor that they were required to perform in order to remain employed. Though many of these laws have been repealed, employment policies, discrimination, and sex stereotyping of jobs continue to reflect these “protective” interests. Protective legislation demonstrates how the seemingly well-intentioned assertion of women’s rights can in fact reinforce dominant structures and further discrimination. The 1960s represented two significant shifts in employment policy for women. These shifts were (1) from protective legislation to equal-rights legislation and (2) from the tradition of men writing policy for women to a renewed movement by women advocating for policy for themselves through a visible, organized, national multiapproach campaign. The 1960s was a time of recognition and policy initiatives to eradicate both inequality in opportunity and discriminatory treatment as experienced by individuals and society as a whole. The focus included but was not limited to the


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employment rights and opportunities afforded to women. Three policy initiatives were integral: the Equal Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964 with sex included as a protected class, thus extending equal employment opportunity to women. Not until the debate was drawing to a close in the House of Representatives did Rep. Smith of Virginia offer the amendment to the Civil Rights Bill that would add sex to the other protected classes of race, color, creed, and national origin. There was little discussion in the House of Representatives or in the Congressional Record of the act’s intent or of definitions of discrimination or other guiding concepts and terms as related to women. Therefore, policy analysis is largely dependent on case law, reference to other ancillary employment laws, legislative amendments, and interpretation of and inference from application and intent with regard to the other protected classes. The application of this legislation and protections afforded by it do vary from one class to another. Sex as a protected class has been particularly complicated and differs from race and national origin because of inherent biological differences between men and women (e.g., pregnancy and actuarial death rates). But gender has challenged presumptions about employment practices that had been deemed to be based on biology, practices that are, in fact, socially constructed and that lead to discriminatory practices (examples of such practices are height and weight requirements). Underlying Values and Assumptions: Equal, Employment, and Opportunity Underlying the written rights and provisions of employment policy are the values and assumptions on which they are based. In analyzing equal employment opportunity, I have identified three dominant social values that underlie U.S. equal employment policy by simply breaking down the words “equal employment opportunity”: 1. employment as embodied in the value for work; 2. equal as valued in equality; and 3. opportunity as contraindicated in individualism.

A discussion of these three underlying values serves to provide a foundation for a social policy analysis of Title VII as a text and legal mandate. Employment policy is first reliant on the value of work. Work is valued and organized in formal organizations that are hierarchical and efficient and that contribute to the maintenance and advancement of the larger society (Hartmann, 1976).

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Work is performed by the labor force, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition of the labor force further illustrates what type of work is valued; the bureau officially defines the labor force as all persons age 16 or over who work at least one hour for pay or profit during the week, those who work at least 15 hours as unpaid workers in a family business, and those who are unemployed and looking for work. In order to be “unemployed,” you have to have been previously employed, and this previous employment does not include unpaid work such as household or volunteer work. Employment policy is designed to support the larger value of work and the goals of the workplace as a social institution. These formal sources of support are more important to women, and the informal sources are more important to men (Lambert & Hopkins, 1995). As an institution, the employer provides for the social needs of those employed in that particular workplace. The social institution of work and the employer, as the representative of the particular workplace, are responsible for providing for the welfare of the workers (Gilbert & Terrell, 2002). This responsibility includes providing compensation and benefits and protecting workers’ personal safety. Socially and legally, the employer is held responsible for workplace discrimination and harassment. It is the employer that sets the employment policies and that polices the workplace with respect to fair employment practices aimed at efficient and effective productivity. Work also contributes to a person’s sense of self-worth; our occupations or jobs contribute to our sense of self-worth and value, and occupations are ranked and provide status. Well-designed jobs and supportive workplace relationships and policies are important in mutual commitment between employers and employees. Equal versus Equality In order to understand Title VII, it is necessary to address the limited nature of “equality” the law intends to extend. Title VII recognizes that all people are not afforded equal opportunity when it comes to employment and sets out to level the playing field for men and women workers. Title VII specifically addresses and provides for equal opportunity, not equality, in employment. How men and women can be equal in the workplace when they are biologically different is an ongoing question. Individual responses to and choices regarding work have been attributed to social, psychological, and biological differences between men and women. In EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 628 F. Supp. 1264 (N.D. Ill. 1986), it was decided that women were biologically different from men and socialized differently from men; therefore, the majority opinion reasoned, women’s choices of


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occupations may be the result of individual choices, not denial of opportunity. Equal opportunity allows for and recognizes that the sexes are different and allows for individuals to be different if they choose to be. Women are not guaranteed equal jobs or the same jobs, pay, or benefits. “Equal” is only guaranteed in regard to opportunity. Opportunity versus Individual Choice Finally, building on the previous two values and assumptions is the concept of opportunity as related to individualism. In the United States, individualism has served as a foundation for policy and programs and generally for how we limit, judge, and protect each other. The United States is founded on freedoms that value individuals’ rights to be different from one another. Individualism values freedom of choice and inner direction. Individualism when applied to employment purposely rejects social control of the workforce, “leaving it up to the individual to make up his own mind as to how to proceed” (Tropman, 1989, x). In keeping with the tenets of individualism, Title VII and related employment policy protect individual choice and, at times, hide behind assumptions inherent in individualism. It is within the concept of opportunity and the protection of individual choice that policy analysis and interpretation have centered with regard to sex. Equal employment opportunity legislation attempts to grant rights to those who are experiencing discrimination and those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to attain the economic and social benefits of work in this society. In terms of employment, this means granting equal opportunity to compete in the labor market and derive the economic advantages of work, including pay and benefits. Legislation acknowledges that equal opportunity does not exist without government intervention. It is the legitimate role of the government to intercede on the behalf of those who are discriminated against by the capitalist economic system. The decision regarding how much to intercede takes into account the desire to balance between a free economy and one that actively protects the civil rights of the citizens. TITLE VII RIGHTS AND PROTECTIONS Who Is Covered: The Allocation of Sex-Based Equal Employment Opportunity The act protects all employees from employment discrimination, with an “employee” defined as an employed individual working for an employer.

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Subject to 1974 Title VII amendments, “employers” are defined as being engaged in an industry affecting commerce and employing 15 or more employees. Employment is defined as either a formal or informal contractual relationship. Once a contractual relationship of employment is established, the provisions of Title VII attach and govern certain aspects of that relationship. . . . The contract of employment may be written or oral, formal or informal; an informal contract of employment may arise by the simple act of handing a job applicant a shovel and providing a workplace. (Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69 [1984])

In addition to covering traditional employers, the law also applies to educational institutions, state and local governments, some parts of the federal government, labor organizations, employment agencies, and job training and apprenticeship programs. Title VII protects individuals and does not include “the protection of the minority group as a whole” (Connecticut v. Teall, 457 U.S. 440 [1982]). Although all individuals who are discriminated against are entitled to these protections, they must protect their own individual rights, filing complaints on their own within the guidelines prescribed in the later “Service Delivery” section of this chapter. Individuals who do not file within the prescribed time, individuals who are not included in a class action, or individuals who were unaware of the discrimination in time to file a complaint are not eligible for the benefits negotiated by others who experienced the same discriminatory employment practices. What Is Provided: The Provision of Equal Employment Opportunity Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (PL 88-352) provides for equal opportunity in employment for women (and six other protected classes) by making discrimination illegal. The provisions apply to all six protected classes; however, additional provisions and limits apply specifically to women. These distinctions have developed from the original act, subsequent court decisions, and amendments that have interpreted and revised the act. Further, although not part of the act itself, the EEOC Guidelines for Employers (1980) provide information as to what and how protections are provided. The act provides for employee rights in the following ways. A. It is unlawful for an employer (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms,


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conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or, (2) limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. (Section 703 (a))

Further, the law makes it illegal for employment agencies “to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, or to classify or refer for employment any individual on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” (Section 703(b)). It is also unlawful for a labor organization (1) to exclude or to expel from its membership, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (2) to limit, segregate, or classify its membership or applicants for membership or to classify or fail or refuse to refer for employment any individual, in any way would deprive or tend to deprive any individual or employment opportunities, or would limit such employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee or as an applicant for employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, ex, or national origin; or, (3) to cause or attempt to cause an employer to discriminate against an individual in violation of this section. (Section 703 (c))

In the matter of training programs, the act makes it unlawful for any employer, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee controlling apprenticeship or other training or retraining, including on-the-job programs to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in admission to, or employment in, any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training. (Section 703 (d))

There are two exceptions to these Title VII provisions. The first exception deals with bona fide occupational qualifications (BFOQ): (1) it shall not be unlawful employment practice for an employer to hire and employ employees, for an employment agency to classify, or refer for employment any individual, for a labor organization to classify its membership or to classify or refer for employment any individual, or for an employer, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee controlling apprenticeship or other training or retraining programs to admit or

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BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN AT WORK WITH MEN employ any individual in any such program, on the basis of his religion, sex, or national origin in those certain instances where religion, sex, or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business enterprise. (Section 703 (e))

It is also not unlawful for a religious educational institution to discriminate on the basis of religion. Second, the act allows seniority, merit, and productivity systems to exist, provided the intention is not to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (Section 703 (h)). This is in keeping with the protections established under NLRA and FSLA. Professional ability tests are allowed if it can be proven that requirements are job-related. Further, the act allows employers to differentiate between employees upon the basis of sex in determining the amount of wages or compensation to pay employees, as long as such differentiation is in keeping with section 06(d) of Title 29 of the Equal Pay Act. The act also prohibits interpretation of the act as granting preferential treatment in employment to any of the protected classes. This was debated in the Congressional hearings, where it was made clear that the act is aimed at “equal opportunity,” not preferred opportunity. In their interpretations, the courts also have been clear in pointing out that this is not a law granting equity in employment. The law does not grant or intend for the protected classes to be given preferential treatment although employers could implement policies that sought to eradicate past discriminatory practices as long as those policies did not disadvantage any other group, including the majority, in the process (United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 192 [1979]).3 This was further clarified in McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co., 427 U.S. 273 (1976), establishing that the law protected white as well as nonwhite employees. Employment discrimination has been categorized into two forms: disparate treatment and disparate impact. Disparate treatment refers to discriminatory acts or behaviors directed toward an individual or group in terms of employment. Disparate impact refers to policies and procedures that may appear neutral but that result in unfair or unequal employment opportunities for a protected group. Discrimination may be in the form of actual policies or behaviors (treatment) or in the form of the impact of those policies and behaviors on the protected applicants’ or workers’ ability to obtain, compete, and perform in those jobs. For example, Griggs et al. v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 429 (1971) found that requiring a high school education when one was not needed for the job had a disparate impact on African American males and was in violation of the act.


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Demonstrating disparate impact is complicated and requires statistical and enumerative evidence based on labor-force availability (Hazelwood School District. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299 [1977]) and must show causality between the statistics and the employer’s practices (Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642 [1989]). Objecting to the requirements of Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 overtly amended this decision, redefining disparate impact from the more general test of causality to the more specific test of job-related and business necessity. This means that plaintiffs are required to demonstrate that a particular practice is discriminatory, not just the general practice of an employer.

Sex-Based Provisions for Equal Employment Opportunity Beyond the more general protections of Title VII are the specifics regarding women and gender. The issues that women have brought to the courts, in many cases, have varied from those of the other classes. The courts have interpreted application of the law differently when discrimination is based on sex versus other protected classes. For example, sex was included in the BFOQ category whereas race was not. It was found that employers could discriminate on the basis of pregnancy benefits because this was not based on sex, although only one sex could get pregnant (Holthaus v. Compton & Sons, Inc., 514 F.2d 651 [8th Cir. 1975]).4 Marital status was found not to be a BFOQ (Sprogis v. United Air Lines, Inc., 444 F.2d 1194 [7th Cir. 1971]), but it was decided that a marriage policy that applied to all employees regardless of sex was legal (Harper v. Trans World Airlines, 525 F 2d 409 [8th Cir. 1975]). Women’s rights in the workplace have impacted women’s safety, pay, and the administration of benefits. Women cannot be subject to differing benefit plans based on gender (City of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power v. Manhart, 435 U.S. 702 [1978]) or subject to insurance programs that provide different benefits based on actuarial tables or that distinguish by gender (Arizona Governing Committee for Tax Deferred Annuity & Deferred Compensation Plan v. Norris, 463 U.S. 1073 [1983]). One important consideration is the differentiation between comparable worth and equal pay. Historically, men and women have performed different jobs, resulting in what is referred to as job segregation. The different jobs pay different rates, with traditionally male jobs paying higher wages than traditionally female jobs, even when the jobs require similar skills. Thus, workers performing jobs of comparable worth often do not receive comparable pay, and the courts have considered whether employees doing

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jobs of comparable worth should be paid the same if the work is deemed to be of the same value. Courts have made it clear that the intention of Title VII is to provide equal opportunity, not consider comparable worth. Simply, the legal question was whether the Equal Pay Act (1963) sufficiently addressed the pay issue, or whether Title VII extended equal opportunity across occupations. In the County of Washington v. Gunther (452 U.S. 161 [1981]) and AFSCME v. State (770 F.2d 1401 [9th Cir. 1985]), the relationship of the Equal Pay Act to Title VII was clarified. Incorporating the Bennett Amendment into the discussion, the courts made clear that Title VII was intended to complement and not supersede the Equal Pay Act, which purposely said “equal pay for equal work,” and the courts rejected the comparable-worth theory and arguments.5 The courts were clear in their interpretation that disparities in compensation for women exist but that it is not the intention of Title VII to eradicate the disparities (McCarthy, 1986). Perhaps the most public and prominent issue for women regarding benefits from Title VII is in the realm of sexual harassment. In 1980, when the EEOC issued guidelines declaring sexual harassment to be a form of sex discrimination and in violation of Title VII, the courts had yet to decide if sexual harassment was a form of employment discrimination based on sex.6 The Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment is a violation of Title VII in 1986 (Meritor Saving Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57 [1986]). There are two types of sexual harassment: “quid pro quo” and “hostile environment.” Quid pro quo is employment compensation in exchange for sexual “favors.” What defines a hostile environment is much harder to articulate. In 1998 (Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 118S.Ct. 2257, 1998), the Court delineated a distinction “between quid pro quo and hostile environment as a distinction between cases involving a threat which is carried out and offensive conduct in general.” Proof of a hostile environment requires that five criteria be met: (1) the employee belongs to a protected group; (2) the employee is subject to unwelcome harassment; (3) the harassment affected a term, condition, or privilege of employment; (4) the harassment was based on sex; and (5) the employer knew or should have known about the situation (Lee & Greenlaw, 1995). Prevalence rates of sexual harassment of women by men at work range from 25 percent to 80 percent.7 The meaning of hostile environment continues to evolve in the courts. One key issue is whether harassment is determined based on the reasonable-person standard adopted in Bennett v. Corroon & Black Corp, 845 F.2d 105 (5th Cir. 1988), or the reasonable-woman standard (Ellison v.


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Brady [1991]). The reasonable-woman standard is applied not only to whether the behavior is offensive but also to whether it reasonably could interfere with a woman’s ability to perform the job (Paetzold & Shaw, 1994). Gutek and O’Connor (1995) reviewed research on the two standards and concluded that there is little difference between the standards but that, in general, women define sexual harassment more broadly and inclusively than do men. In Harris v. Forklift System (1993), the Supreme Court decided that a woman did not have to prove psychological damage in order to prevail in a sexual harassment lawsuit. The decision states, Whether an environment is “hostile” or “abusive” can be determined only by looking at all the circumstances, which may include the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere . . . offensive utterance; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance. The effect on the employee’s psychological wellbeing is relevant in determining whether the plaintiff actually found the environment abusive. But while psychological harm, like any other relevant factor, may be taken into account, no single factor is required.

In 1998, in Oncale V. Sundowner Offshore Services, 523 U.S. 75 (1998), the Supreme Court found that same-sex discrimination is actionable under Title VII and that same-sex sexual harassment charges must continue to meet the previously described tests of the reasonable-person standard, quid pro quo, and hostile environment. The Supreme Court decision went on to clarify that this did not transform Title VII protections into a “general civility code for the American workplace.” In both Harris v. Forklift (1993) and Oncale V. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., the Court upheld the reasonable-person standard. Title VII includes protections for employees from employers who retaliate in response to individuals’ exercising their rights under Title VII. Protections of Title VII are extended not only to the victim of the discrimination or harassment, but also to others who experience employment discrimination in retaliation for supporting, assisting, or protecting victims. Acts of retaliation against which employees are protected include those against an individual for filing a charge of discrimination, participating in an investigation, or opposing discriminatory practices. Further, the protections continue after discharge, particularly with regard to negative and retaliatory employment references (Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337 [1997]). Benefits are available to those whose civil rights are violated. These are granted either by court order following litigation or upon agreement by

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the parties in an out-of-court settlement. The delivery of these benefits is discussed in the next section. Such benefits are called remedies, and remedies are granted both in kind and in cash. The amount of the benefits is commensurate with the severity and pervasiveness of the violation if the case is settled in court. The parties involved may also agree upon remedies outside of court. Ignorance of the acts’ protections is no defense for an employer; however, if employers were unaware of the disparate impact, they are usually only responsible for corrective actions (in-kind benefits). Legal remedies for employment discrimination are (1) reinstatement and promotion; (2) back pay and benefits; (3) monetary damages—limited by size of employer and extent of personal injuries; (4) injunctive relief—courtordered changes in company policies; and (5) attorney’s fees—all or a portion of the complainant’s fees. Distribution is based on the variable parties and entities involved in the action (i.e., the individual, the employer, the court, the EEOC). Provisions are granted on two levels. The individual receives personal benefits based on personal damages. Employers may be required to (1) post notices to all employees addressing the violations of a specific charge and advising the employees of their rights under the laws that EEOC enforces and of their right to be free from retaliation; (2) take corrective or preventive actions to cure the source of the identified discrimination and minimize the chance of its recurrence; and (3) discontinue the specific discriminatory practices involved in the case. It is implied that as a result of the remedies and the efforts of the individuals, all persons in that workplace will benefit and the employer will change the practices. Asserting Civil Rights and Contesting Violations: Service Delivery The purpose of this description of the service-delivery system is to demonstrate the complexity, inaccessibility, and prohibitive time and expertise necessary for pursuing action against violations.8 Service delivery of the rights provided by Title VII operates at the private, state, and federal levels. Employees with complaints can seek resolution from their employer, State Fair Employment Practices Administrations (FEPAs), or the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Litigation is pursued through both the state and federal court systems. One of the most significant factors in the court interpretation of Title VII is determining the party responsible for denial of opportunity and for hostile work environments. It is the responsibility of employers and supervisors, or those in authority, to uphold protections of Title VII. Remedies are


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sought against the corporation, employer, or union. Individuals are only responsible for providing remedies if they are officers of the corporation: An employer . . . is responsible for its acts and those of its agents and supervisory employees with respect to sexual harassment regardless of whether the specific acts complained of were authorized or even forbidden by the employer and regardless of whether the employer knew or should have known of their occurrence. The Commission will examine the circumstances of the particular employment relationship and the job functions performed by the individual in determining whether an individual acts in either a supervisory or agency capacity. (EEOC, 1980)

If an employee files a complaint, employers must then accommodate the employee, investigate the charges, and take tangible employment action. If the employee does not reach a resolution with the employer, he or she can proceed with a formal action. The first step in a formal action is to file a complaint with the EEOC.9 The EEOC then investigates the claim and seeks reconciliation between the employer and employee(s). If reconciliation is not reached, the EEOC can make a finding of “no cause” or issue a “right to sue” letter, or the EEOC itself can sue the employer . In most cases the “right to sue” letter is issued. This letter allows persons to file in federal or state courts (Yellow Freight System v. Donnelly, 494 U.S. 820 [1990]) since states offer similar protections against employment discrimination. The responsibility for providing proof of discrimination lies with the complainant. At this time the complainant must obtain an attorney, and access to legal counsel is a privilege that limits the protection of the individual’s rights granted in Title VII. Access to attorneys willing and qualified to handle these cases varies, and sometimes the most discriminated-against persons have the least access to legal counsel for reasons including not knowing how or where to contact them and not being able to afford them. The court then hands down a decision and assesses remedies. Decisions may be appealed, and often, employers appeal to seek reduction in monetary awards. If the decision is continually appealed, the last step could potentially be the U.S. Supreme Court, which would make the final decision on the case. It is not unusual for the complaint and litigation process to take from 5 to 10 years. Gates (1976) proposes that “unfortunately asserting one’s legal rights through litigation can be expensive, time consuming, and difficult. Plaintiffs in suits against employers are sometimes ostracized, harassed, and branded troublemakers” (p. 73).

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WHO PAYS AND HOW IS PAYMENT TENDERED? FINANCING OF TITLE VII PROTECTIONS The financing of Title VII cases and remedies are paid by federal and state governments, employers, and employees. The federal government funds the EEOC, the federal administrative agency established to enforce Title VII. EEOC’s fiscal-year budget appropriation for 1998 was $242 million, including $27.5 million for payments to the FEPAs.10 The EEOC services are available to employees free of charge, and federal dollars pay for investigations. This includes the expenses for issuing the right-to-sue letter, for EEOC mediation, and for EEOC’s pursuing the suit, if the agency decides to do so. With extensive and expanding complaints and case loads, the time frame for EEOC investigations and resolutions is forever increasing, often making it necessary for plaintiffs to pursue their cases in the courts. Both individuals and employers are responsible for retaining their own legal services; however, the plaintiffs can seek reimbursement for legal fees as part of the remedies. These private expenses are often prohibitive, particularly for individual employees. Attorneys take cases on retainer or on hourly or contingency fees. Attorneys may establish fees and the payment schedule for cases based on the merits of the case. In determining fees, attorneys may assess the facts of the case, the strength of the employer’s resources, and the plaintiff’s ability to endure the disruptive, lengthy, and complex proceedings. Regardless of the payment structure, plaintiffs are routinely required to pay unpredictable out-of-pocket court fees and expenses for depositions, often mounting to tens of thousands of dollars. In addition to these formal legal costs to employees are other personal, career, and financial costs. Prolonged litigation can leave plaintiffs doubtful of their competence and career goals, disrupting career potential, and costs of lengthy litigation can lead to adverse credit ratings, including bankruptcy. Personal emotional tensions may also result in family disruption and even divorce (Lenhart & Shrier, 1996). Employers are responsible for paying their own legal costs for defending employee lawsuits. These costs are not reimbursable by the employee should the court decide in favor of the employer. Employers, however, if found guilty of discrimination or sexual harassment, pay the casesettlement costs as described in this chapter’s section on remedies. The average cost of a discrimination lawsuit to employers is upwards of $250,000. Additionally, employers bear the costs of retraining and rehiring, absenteeism, workers’ compensation, health care, and loss of productivity.


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SUMMARY OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS AT WORK EEO policy aims to open doors for women in employment, protect them from discrimination and harassment, and equalize pay and compensation between men and women. Under the reviewed current legislation and Supreme Court decisions, women are afforded the following equal employment rights and protections: • Women are entitled to equal employment opportunity protections, including those that apply to hiring, training, promotion, and discharge; • Women are protected against workplace policies and practices that result in sexbased disparate treatment or have a disparate impact on their employment; • Women have the right to equal pay for equal work, but not to equal pay for comparable work; • Women cannot be subjected to differential benefits; • Sexual harassment is a form of employment discrimination, and the two recognized types of sexual harassment are “quid pro quo” harassment and harassment created by a pervasively “hostile environment”; • Employees are protected from acts of retaliation by employers and coworkers for filing or supporting charges of discrimination; • Employees have the right to organize, form, and join unions; • Seniority, merit, and productivity systems are exempt from the provisions of Title VII, provided their intention is not to discriminate; • Workers have the right to receive a fair and minimum wage and to be compensated for hours worked; • Women have the right to receive the necessary training and education regardless of their sex or the sex-role stereotyping of jobs; • Federal contractors must take affirmative action to employ women, including such actions as recruitment of underrepresented groups, changing management attitudes, removing discriminatory obstacles, and enacting preferential treatment; • Women have a right to education that does not use sex as a classifying tool or criterion for decisions and that is free from sexual harassment; • Women’s inclusion in apprenticeship and training programs in nontraditional occupations is a strategy to increase their participation in those occupations; • Workers’ compensation provides compensation for job-related physical and mental-health injuries, including those resulting from employment discrimination and sexual harassment; • Employers must provide employees with workplaces free from recognized health and safety hazards, including workplace violence. • It is each employee’s responsibility to know her rights under Title VII and to file a claim on her own behalf should she be discriminate against.

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These protections provide the common context for women’s employment in the United States. The scope of coverage and protections granted to women under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and ancillary employment policy is broad, providing an umbrella of economic, social, and personal protections, and at the same time, the scope limits the guarantee of opportunity. The substantive rights and protections address the range of behaviors and practices that include overt, covert, and institutionalized discrimination. All of these policies represent basic assumptions about women, work, and women’s place in society. The reviewed legislation and case law have provided a context for the values and limits of social responsibility of employers and employees with regard to providing a safe and welcoming workplace. Yet ambiguities and discriminatory practices prevail in women’s experiences at work. Procedural rights are inadequate and largely inaccessible and prohibit the implementation of the policies. When women do exercise their rights, the costs are high, and the time and resources expended by both employer and employee often exceed the rewards (Lenhart & Shrier, 1996). The courts currently are seeking opportunities to clarify issues with regard to gender, particularly with regard to defining “hostile environment” (Harris v. Forklift [1993]). The best way to understand, articulate, and define the hostile environment is by talking to the persons—the women—who encounter it. Individual women’s work experiences and perspectives form the basis for responding to the court’s question. It is the inclusion of the women’s experiences and insights that shifts this study from the functional social-policy analysis provided in this chapter to a qualitative, feminist social-policy analysis. It further allows us to reconsider, through a gender-first lens (Hartmann, 1976), the implications of EEO policy as it stands. The functional social-policy analysis legitimates the women’s experiences and perspective, but what is missing from this analysis is the perspective of the constituency the social policy is designed to serve. Without the gender-first policy lens, these are just stories and strategies for dealing with discrimination and men at work. With the gender-first policy lens, the stories and insights clarify what is and is not just or illegal. The subtleties of women’s work experiences and insights help us to organize our thoughts about what is and is not discrimination. It moves us toward defining the “pervasively hostile work environment.”

Chapter 4

PATHWAYS TO EMPLOYMENT: EARLY PREPARATION FOR TRADITIONALLY MALE BLUE-COLLAR JOBS

The decision to enter a male-dominated blue-collar workplace is part of an intertwined matrix of social, economic, and personal needs and capabilities. It is a result of the distinctive cultural messages each woman is given and the personal resources and assets she attains. Each woman’s family, school, neighborhood, and community encourage or discourage her pursuit of male-dominated workplaces. The women I interviewed had embarked on their journeys toward their blue-collar, traditionally male jobs long before applying for the jobs. The women I interviewed were clear about why they entered their occupations and what attracted them to their jobs. For each woman, reasons for entry into a male-dominated position were complex and involved her relationships with her family of origin and current family, the communities and circumstances in which she lived and had grown up, and her expressed needs at the time of employment. The themes that emerged during the interviews were family members’ influence, year of birth, age upon entering the job, the women’s formal education and training, their informal preparedness for the job, and their occupational tract. These themes are dealt with sequentially in this chapter. FAMILY MEMBERS’ INFLUENCE Most of the women identified family members who influenced their decisions to enter male-dominated trade jobs. The women interpreted family as a dominant occupational motivator or inhibitor. They pointed to relatives

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from their childhood and youth who had had an impact on their choice of jobs. Family members may have attempted to deter them or encourage them or, more often, may have simply served as a role model. Family members shaped their understanding of what work was like and what working with men would be like. Angela’s grandmother was an Italian immigrant who had worked in a sweatshop as a seamstress. Angela credited her grandmother with spurring her own interest in unions and with inspiring her toward her position as the president of a local for one of the United States’ strongest and largest male-dominated trade unions. In Angela’s words, I come from a very union-oriented background. As a little girl, I remember my grandmother talking about the union. She came to this country from Italy. And the conditions that she worked in, in a tailor shop, were horrendous. Conditions like you see in the movies—with all the electricity cords. They used to lock ‘em in. They were allowed to go to the bathroom like once a day. No windows. Fires all the time. And people used to get into a lot of fights. They were dying or just passing out and yet—“you’re not working fast enough.” They would give them hard candy about two o’clock in the afternoon because they’d be lethargic, the poor things. And forget who’s got diabetes or anything else— you’ve got to have this candy ‘cause you have the sugar high in order to finish up the remainder of your day. My grandmother spoke about how when the union came in, things got better for them. And that always played a very, very important role in my formulating my opinion of unions and [my decision] to be a participant.

Although Angela entered the union in a traditionally female job of sales agent, she became the only female union president representing the construction industry in a dominant national union. She went on to say that her sister supported her and that her mother, although long since deceased, would have been proud and surprised at Angela’s accomplishments. For Angela it was the women in her family who had instilled in her a commitment to her employment path. Mary had mixed stories to tell about her family’s influence on her choosing to work on the male-dominated assembly line of an automotive factory: My father was a factory worker and was very involved in the union. He was a safetyman. I remember, when I was very young, they would be out on strike and picketing. There were large fights all over the country for “silly little things” like medical benefits and retirement. All the men pulled together. Of course, there weren’t women then, although they took care of the factory during the war. Yes, the togetherness. I just thought it was so cool. I just had to do this.

PATHWAYS TO EMPLOYMENT

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However, Mary’s family was not supportive of her entering the maledominated world of manufacturing. My father forbid me to work in a factory. I was offered a job at the manufacturing plant where my father worked. He said he would quit, and he had 33 years seniority. They didn’t hire me. My father told me I’d have been very sorry. My mother is still of the firm belief that women go to factories and work in factories to find men.

Both Angela and Mary cited their families’ commitment to and investment in the union as the main reason they chose to enter male-dominated blue-collar work. The organizational structure of the workplace with unions, or the “brotherhood,” contesting oppressive and unjust workplace conditions attracted the women to the jobs. Sally drives tractor-trailers. She identified her father’s influence as leading to her interest in trucking: My dad brought me up right [laughs]. I was the oldest of four, and my dad always needed a helping hand. We had a small farm. He taught me how to cut wood. He taught me how to work on cars. He said, “If you’re gonna drive, you’re gonna know how to change a tire. And you’re gonna know, if something breaks on a car, how to fix it.” I guess he kind of brought me up like the son he didn’t have first. I mean, he had two boys after that but I was like my dad’s right-hand man.

Her family supported her decision to pursue a career in truck driving. And I had always wanted to be a trucker. I mean, it’s been a dream of mine for years. My one son is a trucker now, and his big thing was, when he was growing up, “My mom and I are gonna buy a truck and we’re gonna drive trucks together.”

For Sally the skills that she saw her father practice and that he taught to her were the determinant of her occupational choice, not the camaraderie and benefits of participating in organized labor. Further, her son, husband, and brother all supported her ambition to drive trucks. Sally wanted to master the skills and perform the physical labor required to handle driving an 18-wheeler. She wanted the challenge. Some women did not cite their fathers as influencing or preparing them for the skills of the job. Rather, they attributed their childhood homes as preparing them to combat the male-dominated relationships in their chosen traditionally male professions. These women were quick to identify the connection between their relationships with their fathers and their lack of apprehension in entering a hostile workplace. Both Carol

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and Cathy left female-dominated secretarial positions to take jobs in male-dominated workplaces. Carol sorted mail for the post office, and Cathy worked as a customer-service representative for a utility. They believe that their alcoholic homes and dominant, abusive fathers attracted them to male-dominated workplaces and prepared them to work with men. Since they had dealt with their fathers and witnessed their fathers’ domination of women, they felt they could handle the anticipated difficulties in working with men. Both of these women worked in jobs that were less physically labor-intensive than the jobs of other women interviewed, yet men still dominated their work relationships and traditionally performed their jobs. The women came from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Two of the women’s fathers were doctors. The influence of these women’s fathers resulted in the women’s feeling of entitlement to be in the job. Iris indicated that the sense of having an “inalienable right” to pursue and perform the job came from her family background. Having gone to private schools with a father who was a self-employed “prominent doctor” gave her a different outlook from Mary. Mary had seen the union as the paternal organization that protected her father’s constantly contested right to keep his job, work in a safe environment, and support his family. Peg’s father was a neurosurgeon. She has a sister who is a doctor and a brother who dances professionally. Both of her parents, particularly her father, influenced and reinforced her choice of a career in law enforcement. He’s a surgeon. And my mom’s a social worker. So they know what’s out there in the real world. My mother grew up in South Philly, so she knows what life’s all about. We were raised pretty much to go for whatever we can. My mom is a feminist, so much so that she could not live with my father anymore because my father’s an Old World Italian. He’s Old World Italian, but he’s screwy in that his girls can do anything. I mean, we were brought up that you go out there and get your college degrees. You get jobs. You make money. We weren’t raised to grow up, get married, and have kids. That wasn’t our foremost goal in life, even though that’s what we all want as part of our lives. But we all went for careers first. For me getting into the police academy came from [the] same drive as my sister getting into medical school.

Peg’s mother, on the other hand, both shaped and discouraged her pursuit of law enforcement as a career. My mom’ s a social worker in Philly. So, she’s aware—but she told me I’d never last in the police department. She said that it’s not that I wouldn’t be capable. She said, “You’ll learn. Cops, they’re tough. They’re sexist. You won’t fit in.” And she was right.


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The women did not cite only persons from earlier generations. Sandy, a community police officer, grew up in the housing project with five brothers. She talked of her brothers’ role in preparing her for her career choice: I think a lot had to do with my background growing up—growing up with eight kids, rough neighborhood, and five brothers. You learn that if you get beat up, punched in the face, get scratched up, or even shot in the leg, you don’t run. I’m the fifth child. I’d get out there and just play football and they’d tackle me because I wanted to be tough. I think that it goes back to my childhood. I just wanted everybody’s approval. People liked you when you were tough. They respected you.

Sandy’s family background of physical confrontation and of being surrounded by men prepared her for both the skills of the job and the people with whom she would have to work. Her job in law enforcement reinforced her desire to be tough, caring, and respected. Her desires and abilities to achieve these goals started at home. For all the women, family background gave meaning to their jobs and reinforced their choices of occupation. Their fathers, brothers, and sons were the family members they most often cited as propelling them into their jobs, and the women in their lives provided impetus and determination. Family members also offered words of caution and warning that the women sought to defy. The significant person or persons may have been generations older or younger, and the impact may have been more or less significant; however, these family relationships did shape the women’s subsequent job choices. Their families’ influence included preparation for the organizational structure of the workplace, the skills of the trade, the confidence to enter the workplace, and the ability to face and deal with male coworkers. YEAR OF BIRTH Pathways to employment are directly related to and must be viewed in the context of year of birth, particularly with regard to corresponding employment laws, education laws, and the labor market. The women I interviewed were born between 1938 and 1969. Employment options, training opportunities, degree of automation, and the environment of workplaces were different based on each woman’s year of birth. Workplace stereotypes, cultures, practices, demands, and policies have varied greatly over time. Nancy, born in the late 1930s, had been working for almost a decade before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. During her school years, women had worked in factories in traditionally male jobs but were replaced by men when World War II was over. Mary, born in the mid 1950s, talked of women working in factories during World War II as part

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of the history of her occupation as an automotive assembly-line worker, but not as part of her personal experience. In the mid-1970s, Carol entered the labor force. She had just completed high school, where she had received secretarial training. Her entry into the post office coincided with a push toward hiring women and the automation of the U.S. mail system that reduced the physical demands of the job. Cassey, born in 1969, began life in an era in which the school system and workplace were charged with efforts toward equality in education (Title IX) and employment (Title VII) and affirmative action. By the time Cassey was 20 years old, sexual harassment had been ruled to constitute sex discrimination in the workplace (Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson [1986]). In contrast, Nancy was 48 and a grandmother in 1986. When drawing comparisons of women’s work choices and experiences, year of birth must be taken into consideration as it relates to a woman’s personal placement in history. AGE The women I talked with ranged in age from 26 to 57 years. The age of entry into nontraditional skilled jobs ranged from 18 to 50. Age discrimination represents an additional employment barrier and protection for women. As with race and ethnicity, the greater the number of protected classes that a woman belongs to, the less likely she will be to occupy a traditionally male job. Age is complicated by the fact that the process of aging has been ruled a legitimate occupational qualification since the aging process has been documented to limit physical and mental abilities (Usery v. Tamaimi Trail Tours, Inc., 531 F.2d 224 [5th Cir. 1976]). Considering women’s experiences at different ages can help identify what determines women’s occupational choices as they get older. Chris, Cassey, Mary, Carol, and Gretchen entered their male-dominated jobs in their early 20s. Iris and Claire were in their teens, just out of high school. Beth, Peg, Sonja, Joyce, and Sandy were in their mid-20s. Cathy and Nancy were in their late 20s or early 30s. Angela was in her 40s, and Sally was 50. Sally passed the test for her Class A commercial driver’s license on her 50th birthday. Though she had held other traditional and nontraditional jobs previously, driving tractor-trailers had been her lifelong dream. And I turned 50 the day I got my license. I just passed my 50th birthday, and it was like, “I did it all!” It was my dream that I wanted. And I said, “It may have taken me 50 years to do it, but I finally did it.”

The women did not describe age as hindering their decisions to enter a job (although it may have been an eligibility factor or may have influenced


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the person hiring them). For Sally age made her accomplishment more noteworthy and heightened her determination. The women entered their respective jobs when they became aware of the opportunity or the opportunity was made available. There was no relationship between the women’s ages and their physical ability and limitations in pursuing their chosen occupations. This resulted in a variation in age of the women included in this study. However, since all the women interviewed were selected because they were indeed employed in traditionally male bluecollar jobs, no assumptions about job choice can be drawn regarding women who were interested in such jobs but were excluded because of age or maturation. Unfortunately, if these women were excluded from the jobs, they were also excluded from these interviews of women employed in the jobs. MARITAL STATUS Women’s work has been studied largely in relation to women’s paid and unpaid labor and to the relationship between work inside and outside the home. At the time of entry into their jobs, the women varied in marital status and sexual orientation. Blue-collar, traditionally male jobs do not attract one “type” of woman—married, divorced, lesbian, heterosexual, single, or single mother. All of the women did attribute their particular familial and marital status as impacting and complementing their choice of blue-collar, male-dominated jobs. There was no single path or indicator linked to choosing a maledominated job as related to marital status or sexual orientation. There were as many stories as there were women interviewed. Peg was single when she decided to become a police officer. She had been raised to pursue a career first and then get married and have a family. Mary’s being a lesbian was a direct contradiction to her mother’s belief that women took factory jobs to find a husband. Iris lived with her boyfriend, but they were not considering a life commitment to each other. They both worked casual labor jobs and were jointly piecing together enough money for food, living expenses, and drugs. The casual labor status of longshoring was compatible with her needs and lifestyle at that time. Carol had married right out of high school and became pregnant. She was focused on supporting her daughter when she applied for her job at the post office, where her husband also worked. Cassey was engaged to be married when she began her job, and she lived with her boyfriend in a home where they split household responsibilities and expenses. Claire, a lesbian, had been introduced to her profession by a girlfriend who was a painter and

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with whom she had lived off and on. Chris was single, a couple years out of college, and on her own: I didn’t have any kids to support or anything, and I could just do it like a personal mission and—the money was real good.

Sally had two children, one in high school and one working. She was divorced, remarried, widowed, and remarried. At various times, she had financially supported herself, her children, and her husbands or had been supported by husbands. I was using it as a way of setting up a lifestyle. I thought I would eventually be on my own, and I wanted to make good money to raise my kids.

Prior to entry into male-dominated blue-collar workplaces, the different women in this study were mothers, wives, girlfriends, single, gay, and combinations thereof. All of these aspects of the women’s identities factored into their finding these jobs suitable, attractive, and opportune. In combination, family status, marital status, and sexual orientation directly affected the women’s choice of employment, the risks taken in pursuit of the work, and the benefits they sought to derive from work. OCCUPATIONAL TRACT Each woman had been following a career path and had already had one or more jobs when she began her traditionally male blue-collar job that is the focus of this study. For some this job was one of many traditionally male occupations they pursued. Others had previously been in traditionally female jobs and predominantly female workplaces. Some of their previous jobs required skills, training, or education that directly and indirectly led the women to the male-dominated workplace. Others entered the maledominated blue-collar workplace through unskilled jobs or jobs for which training was obtained on the job. For each woman, this study focuses on only one of the traditionally male blue-collar jobs she has performed. During Iris’s last year of high school, she had strayed from the strict academic curriculum and had apprenticed in a boat yard. After high school she supported herself with seasonal jobs, namely repairing boats and bailing Christmas trees. When she started to work on the docks in Washington State as a longshore laborer, she was young, strong, petite, and blonde. Most of all, she was adventurous and hardworking. Out of high school I went to work at a little ranch that was operated by a city park department. I was one of the horse wranglers. We saddled the horses up and took


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kids on rides. My responsibilities were taking care of the horses and taking the kids out on trail rides, but that was actually just a summer job. The next thing I did was I worked in Olympia in the Christmas-tree industry. I loaded trees on trucks. I had a boyfriend at the time, and his family had been in the Christmas-tree industry for years, and so he knew the industry. We did that for four years. The first season, it was just him and me, and we worked as contract labor operating a bailer. We got paid by the tree, and the faster we bailed, the more money we made. We worked late October through a couple days before Christmas. The following years, we put together a gang of people with six on a crew and loaded the trucks and once again got paid piecework to load the trucks. A truck would come in. The yard boss would hand us a sheet of paper that said these are the trees you have to put on this truck. One of the yard crews would bring us the trees, and we would load them and stack them on the truck. We made a reasonable amount then, but the rest of the year we were unemployed. That’s when we started longshoring. I found out about that gig and started doing it.

Mary was 18 and just out of high school when she entered the military, another male-dominated occupation and culture. Certain that she wanted to work in a manufacturing plant, Mary entered the service to fill time because the plants were slow and not hiring at the time. When she got out of the military, she continued to apply “every day” at manufacturing plants. Beth graduated from high school and went to work as a telephone operator at a local utility company. She was a temporary employee, meaning she could not bid for other union jobs in the company. After one layoff and the threat of a second, Beth took her civil-service test and applied for a job at the local police department. She wanted excitement. At the age of 23, she became a police officer, but after three years and the filing of a successful sex-discrimination suit, she moved on to become a security guard at a public utility company. She is quick to say that she “got excitement in law enforcement, but not the kind [she] had planned.” She now works for a utility as an electric planner, continuing to be a woman in a traditionally male job. For most of these women, their entry into the traditionally male, skilled jobs followed work in a traditionally female job. Carol had graduated from high school and chosen to start a family, passing up the college scholarship she had been offered. She became a secretary but applied to the post office when she heard the pay and benefits were significantly greater than what she could earn as a secretary. I was administrative assistant for a chairman of a small computer company. I always worked office work. I worked for an engineering firm for two or three years when Rachel was a baby. Then I went to this computer-staffing place, and I worked there a couple of years. Then I started PO. And I went in as a market clerk, which

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is computer input—that’s all you do all day is sit and type codes for mail, forwarding mail. . . . So I went from Ten Main Center, which was downtown and very high-class, to the PO on the floor, which was real blue-collar. So you go from being the chairman’s secretary to one of a hundred input operators. And of course, I made so much more money at the PO.

Cathy had worked for years as a secretary. She worked in a maledominated utility office and, as a secretary, was represented by the union, another male-dominated organization. She had accrued seniority and wanted to advance. She applied for a job as a customer-service representative working with commercial customers, representing the company on construction projects and expansion of utility services. It was a man’s job that required working with men both within the company and in the field. Sandy had worked at a bank in accounting, alongside mostly women. Then she became a school-bus driver while pursuing her interest in tractortrailer driving. Angela was working as a sales representative for a carrental company when she was recruited to be president of the local of the construction union. Chris had worked as a social worker, a female occupation, prior to working on the state highway crew as a light equipment operator. Peg and Cassey had both worked part-time as clerks and waitresses while in school and college. After earning bachelor’s degrees, Peg and Cassey chose the male-dominated blue-collar jobs of law enforcement and firewatch, respectively, for their first full-time occupations. Mary’s career path took her into the military, which was followed by entry into other male-dominated workplaces. Some of the women seemed to follow occupational paths that led from female jobs to traditionally male-dominated jobs. Others chose more direct paths from one traditionally male job to another. Once in a traditionally male job, the women did seem to move from one traditionally male job to a traditionally female job. However, for all the women the lure and occupational decision to change to and pursue traditionally male jobs reflected the desire for excitement, status, security, money, and challenge. PREEMPLOYMENT EDUCATION AND TRAINING Specific education for blue-collar jobs is often not a requirement. In fact, this has traditionally been one of the defining characteristics of blue-collar work—the need for on-the-job training and a lack of formal-education requirements.1 However, the women in this study all entered their jobs with educational backgrounds that met or exceeded the requirements of their positions. The women cited educational background and experience as influencing their decisions to enter blue-collar, male occupations.


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All the women were educated and all valued education; this was consistent. A few had received formal training in preparation for their maledominated jobs prior to being hired; however, all had acquired occupational skills and education unrelated to the male-dominated jobs they entered. All of the women were high school graduates. Through formal education, many of the women had acquired secretarial and bookkeeping skills. Some were working on college degrees. Some of the women had earned bachelor’s degrees prior to entering male-dominated blue-collar workplaces. One was in law school. For Chris, her education was crucial in providing the confidence to apply for a traditionally male blue-collar job. Chris had graduated from college with a degree in social work. She then worked in corrections. After a few years of minimal pay and budget cuts, she found herself unemployed. She attributes her education to giving her the impetus to apply for a job with the state highway crew. She had heard about the job and knew that hiring a woman was a mandate and, further, that the boss was going to do whatever he could to discourage any women from applying for the job. She wanted and needed the job, so she applied. It pissed me off, so I figured I’d call his bluff because I felt that a lot of women that were applying for that job wouldn’t take it because if they couldn’t hack it, then they would be unemployed. And I felt very employable because I had a degree. I felt like I had an edge because I came from a social-work background and I’m just a defiant feminist anyway.

Some women regretted preparing for the careers on which they had focused their education. Sandy was working at the university and pursuing a degree in nursing when she applied to the police department. Three of the women earned a bachelor’s degree prior to entering their blue-collar jobs. Sonja had completed her second year of law school by the time she realized that she wanted to pursue a completely different career, and she then took a job as a meter reader in her hometown, walking from house to house, reading meters and talking with customers. She now drives a truck, wears a uniform, and works with men. I was in the beginning of my third year. And I went for all the wrong reasons . . . It was one of those—I want to be a great lawyer. Your parents would love to have a lawyer in the family. So you do it. And then while you’re in there you think, “Wow, this is like a bad marriage.” I’ve got to wake up to it every day. I went to sleep with it every night and I hated it. I hated the idea of doing it. I hated the idea of being in this for the rest of my life, and I went so far as researching every possible thing I could do with a law degree. And it all came out the same. It all came out to, I don’t like it; I don’t want it. I don’t want to be thinking this way. I don’t want to be acting

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this way. And I won’t do it. I’ve always been a pencil pusher. I’ve always been behind books and in school, so to become secure I took this job.

Sandy, Cathy, Carol, and Sally had formal training in secretarial and bookkeeping skills beginning in high school. Iris came the closest to obtaining formal training through her public education with her highschool apprenticeship in the boat yard being related to her job as a longshore worker, but it only provided her a familiarity with the vessel, not training in the specific work of longshoring. Some traditionally male blue-collar jobs do require training or education for hiring. This was true for Valerie, who completed an apprenticeship program, the historical route to employment in the trades. Sally received formal training at “tractor-trailer school” prior to getting her license. She had previously driven a school bus for years without any formal training in trucking. For other women who had received formal training, this training was specific and required for entry into their jobs. Blue-collar jobs are often specific to and defined by the skills necessary for entry. Women seeking these jobs must find out what these requirements are and specifically get that training to qualify. All of the women were educated or trained, yet few of the women were directly applying their formal education at either the high school or college level to the traditionally male jobs that they were pursuing. Far from the stereotype of blue-collar workers as the uneducated proletariat, these were women with options who had choices and made choices based on educational experiences, not work experience. Prior education was an important component of their career paths although it was rarely required or directly applied on the job. These women chose to abandon their previous training and education to pursue dreams and learn new skills and trades. For these women education and training provided fortification and determination for entry into male-dominated blue-collar jobs. INFORMAL PREPARATION FOR THE JOB Many of the women talked about their acquisition of the skills necessary for their jobs. Much of the informal training happened after they were hired and was dependent on relationships with coworkers, but the degree of training prior to hiring did vary. Formal criteria and requirements for preparedness and eligibility included certification, licensing, or a civilservice test. The women generally felt that they were less prepared to perform their jobs than the men they worked with, even though they met the stated qualifications. As the electric planner pointed out, “Men are exposed to have construction and industrial skills from high school and at home—it


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becomes second nature.” The basics may not be ingrained or may even be discouraged in women. Regarding tools and materials of the trade (i.e., different types of ladders, lumber, and so on), the women cited being less familiar than their male coworkers with what the items looked like, what they were used for, and how to carry and transport them. The women mentioned ways that they compensated for and obtained this informal training in order to compete with men for traditionally male jobs. Claire was young and unemployed and had a girlfriend who was a painter. Painting wasn’t something she had planned to do. She had no plan, only an opportunity. I learned how to paint from a friend of mine who had a painting business. She had her own business. I didn’t have a job at the time so I started with her and she taught me. I caught on real quick. For about two or three years, we painted together, until she moved out of town. After that I went and worked for two established painting contractors with all men for about a year for each company.

Chris needed the job with the state highway crew but realized that she had never done anything like this before. Knowing that they had to hire a woman, she applied, however: So being a female, I would have liked to have been twice as qualified, but I was like not even mildly qualified—but I was the only female that applied.

When Gretchen applied for her carpentry job, she knew that she did not have the experience they were looking for yet, but she noted, My dad had been a carpenter, and I figured I was kind of handy with stuff. So I figured that just sounded like much more of a challenge, and I correctly figured out right from the beginning that that job would be something that was pretty much different everyday . . . Probably they could have gotten somebody more skilled that was a guy.

Sally was her father’s “right-hand man—the son he had wanted.” Nancy’s father owned a machine shop. Her mother would dress her in fancy clothes and send her off to school, but on the way home she would stop at her father’s shop for the afternoon. There she was eager to learn about machinery and particularly electricity. This provided her with the background and understanding for her future as an electrical and machinery safety inspector. For those jobs requiring skills, it is often difficult for women (and maybe for any person) to obtain the training and experience. Sally explained, My brother owns a trucking company. He worked with me when I was getting my Class 1 license. He took me out on weekends. I drove to Buffalo, and I went with

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some of his drivers and with him, and I drove his rigs. The only thing is to hire me without five years of logged-over-the-road driving, the insurance company would triple his insurance on the most expensive rig that he owns. He says, “Right now I can’t afford to do that, but I’ll help you out in any way I can.” And he keeps me in touch with the big rigs, and I could call him up today and say, “Can we go out this afternoon?”

Many of the women obtained informal training for their jobs. They had acquired minimal skills through friends and family. For others the absence of informal training and family socialization into traditionally male jobs emphasized the importance of training in a women’s perception of her qualifications for the job. Many of the women did not perceive that their families had socialized or taught them the minimal skills and knowledge that men obtain in childhood. Preparation for the job is important for women since they are often excluded from entry-level jobs because of their self-professed perceptions about being unqualified due to gender, even when there are no skills necessary. SUMMARY Women receive messages in childhood and preemployment that guide and direct their work choices throughout life. Occupational choice is influenced by individual aptitudes and attitudes, socialization, and presented opportunities. Particularly influential are the messages, relationships, and training they receive from family and schools. Women are attracted to blue-collar, traditionally male jobs because of the challenge and intrigue of the tasks of the job and the higher pay and compensation afforded offered through these jobs. Even before entering a discussion of the workplace, we begin to see, through these women’s experiences, that traditionally male jobs pay more and that women need proactive channeling and mentoring to consider pursuing traditionally male jobs. They are discouraged from pursuing these jobs because family and their communities give them the message that they are entering workplaces where they will not be welcome or qualified and the message that generally the workplace will be hostile to them. However, when families and schools support and train women for these jobs and the adversity they will face, some women seek out these jobs and are empowered to pursue the greater economic rewards and perceived job satisfaction of these jobs. These women transcend the established economic and labor-force structures and pursue the challenge, intrigue, and economic rewards of traditionally male blue-collar jobs. They perform jobs they were unsure they were capable of and get higher pay and more


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benefits than they did or would in traditionally female jobs with similar training. The same people, places, and things that discourage or inhibit women’s pursuit of traditionally male blue-collar jobs can also encourage and empower women’s choices. The overriding message that women received as to whether they were capable of performing the job was integral to their decision regarding whether to even seek out or apply for the job and whether to then assert their abilities, capabilities, and aptitudes in the job interview. Even before they apply, women are given the message that jobs in male-dominated occupations involve working in hostile workplaces for women and that although they have the right to be there, they are not necessarily welcome. This prevents some women from even going the next step of pursuing the job opportunity. The next chapter will look at the experiences of the women who did have the interest and courage to take the next step, getting hired into traditionally male blue-collar jobs.

Chapter 5

THE HIRING PROCESS: WOMEN’S ENTRY INTO TRADITIONALLY MALE BLUE-COLLAR OCCUPATIONS

The hiring process is the beginning of women’s discovery of the workplace realities regarding apparently gender-neutral or affirmative policies and procedures that encourage, discourage, or deny employment to women. The preemployment process of hiring is the women’s initiation to the workplace they will enter if hired. They usually meet some of the men they will be working with and for. It is here that women receive their first indications as to how welcoming or how hostile the particular workplace they are pursuing will be. Becoming employed in traditionally male blue-collar jobs was a process for the women. First, the women had to become aware of the job’s availability; this required an awareness of the occupation in general as well as of the particular job. The women considered job opportunity broadly to include not only a vacancy in a position, but also the perceived rewards and compensation. They then had to determine if they had a chance of being hired, while considering the roles of affirmative action and nepotism. The next step was applying for the job and going through the interview process. And finally, they had to be hired and accept the terms of the job. This chapter considers this process and these factors. JOB OPPORTUNITIES The initial challenge for women who enter traditionally male blue-collar jobs is finding out about job availability, eligibility requirements, and application procedures and policies. These jobs are often not posted in places

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where women look for jobs. In advertisements the jobs are not outlined in language that describes the skills and capabilities of the women who are interested in them. Overall, employment counselors, friends, and family didn’t routinely tell women about these jobs and encourage them to apply because they didn’t think these were jobs for women or of interest to women. Generally, the women came to find out about nontraditional jobs in seemingly nontraditional ways. Gretchen had visited the national historic park with her family before returning several times that summer, fascinated. After several visits and countless questions of the staff, she attracted the attention of one of the rangers. As Gretchen describes herself, she was young with long blonde dreadlocks, and she was energetic and most of all inquisitive. I was a college student, and I had done all this reading about the historic park, and for some reason I kept running into the same park ranger, who turned out to be the park historian. He is like this old hippie and he is great. He is the coolest ranger. I kept asking him all these questions, and my questions were not just the regular questions like you get a hundred people every day asking you. I asked him really specific questions, and so he remembered me. And finally after seeing me a bunch of times, he said, “You keep coming back here. You should get a job here.” And I said, “You can do that?” So he said, “Oh yeah, you can do visitors’ services or maintenance. He said, “You can do maintenance work.” Maintenance work meant fixing everything that was broken or rundown in the historic park. You have to clean all the toilets in the outhouses, and you have to take out the trash. And I didn’t think that sounded like too much of a problem.

Carol’s husband was working for the post office when she heard that they were hiring, and hearing also that they were going to hire women, she applied. I don’t know, back then, it was predominately male. The group that I was hired with was predominately female. And the reason we were was that up until 1978, when I was hired, all mail was forwarded by hand. In 1978 they decided as part of this long-term automation plan to start automating the forwarding mail. So they had a hundred computers . . . So who are they going to hire to do computer work, data input? Women. I think there were three hundred of us hired at once, and that was national. There was a large influx of women at the postal service just by the fact of the automation plan, but we worked with the men on the floor.

Claire had learned to paint from her friend, so she applied for jobs with painting contractors. Sally had her Class A license, so she contacted the Teamsters and trucking companies. Iris had experience with boats, so when she heard that the longshore workers’ union was taking day laborers, she showed up at the union office. Cassey’s boyfriend’s aunt was in human

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resources at the power plant in their community and told her that there were openings for temporary employees as “firewatch.” Beth’s father and brother were with the sheriff’s department and told her the police department was hiring. Iris remembers being in the back seat of a car with some friends. They were trying to figure out the best way to “work, earn money, and party on.” Her friend told her about the openings for casual laborers with the longshore union. But what happened was that there was somebody who wasn’t somebody’s son who kept showing up to the hiring hall every morning, day after day after day, and of course he never got picked. And he got kind of pissed off about it and filed suit. The union lost the suit. It was obviously discrimination in hiring. And so then the whole system got switched around, and all the sudden it was wide open. They had the state employment security department do the picking from then on. And so anyone that wanted to could show up at employment security in the morning and write your name on a piece of paper. It would all go in a hat. The union hall would call into employment security and say, “We need ten people.” They’d pull ten names. Those people would get hired for the day. I heard about it just a few weeks after that started—“Wow, man you can make a hundred and twenty bucks a day doing this shit! Pretty cool.” So I started showing up at employment security because it’s totally touch and go. It’s totally by chance. You can work five days in a row. You can work not at all.

Another group of women, though not included in this study, cannot be overlooked in a consideration of women’s access and entry into traditionally male blue-collar jobs. These are women who have been trained in a skilled trade or who have completed apprenticeships, obtained licenses, or otherwise received formal training to perform male-dominated skilled trades and yet cannot find work. Valerie said, On the other hand, I have met a lot of disenchanted women who felt like they had worked in the trades and learned a trade and couldn’t find work. This is especially true for non-electricians or operating engineers, in trades where networks count for everything, and where the work is brutal to men as well as women. It could hold that there are niches for certain minority men, depending on hiring networks in different cities, both union and non.

Although the women in this study did relay indicators of this problem and were affected by it, they did not experience it directly. Carol was aware that she was hired for a job that had been de-skilled due to automation and that the de-skilling was the reason women were hired. Mary wanted to work in a manufacturing plant but joined the military while she waited for positions to open up. Mary was also aware that the company was offering

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fewer apprenticeships in the mid-1990s than in the past because there were many unemployed electricians and qualified tradespersons out of work and readily available. Increased automation and a decline in the demand for skilled labor have had a differential effect on the sex segregation of occupations and on opportunities to enter these jobs. Some of the women had already chosen their specific trade before hearing about the job opening. Some had chosen the community in which they wanted to live. Some were expanding their careers or just wanted a change. However, most heard about the job through a personal contact who was aware that there was a job opportunity in a traditionally male position that required hiring a woman. Learning about the job opportunity went beyond learning that there was a job opening, to learning that the job opportunity was for women in particular. The women learned how the hiring was going to be done and what the job required as far as skills for entry and tasks when hired. The women’s next steps were dependent on the time frame during which the interest was piqued and the determination that emerged to proceed and apply. PAY AND BENEFITS As was indicated in the previous chapter, many of the women pursued a job because of the excitement, intrigue, and skills of the work. But pay and benefits were also consistently part of the attraction to male-dominated jobs. Most of the jobs were perceived as offering good pay, benefits, and security. Pay and benefits were the part of the job opportunity that resulted in future security. When the women learned of a specific job opportunity, information regarding the increased benefits and compensation afforded traditionally male jobs was given out in real numbers and dollars. Chris had pursued her social-work profession after completing her bachelor’s degree. After starting at $9,700 a year in the early 1980s, she was up to just over $11,000 in a few years. But instead of then going to $11,500, she was going to have her pay cut back to $10,000. So she applied to her state’s department of transportation. Then when I went to DOT, I got $14,700 the first week. And the next week there was a union raise. I went to $15,500 so I went from $10,000 to $15,500 in twoweeks time.

Cassey had earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in the early 1990s when she was twenty-two. She graduated with good grades, limited experience, and optimism. She lived in a rural community with few job opportunities, and when she applied for jobs in her field, she received

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offers for entry-level office work at or near minimum wage. But the nuclear plant in her area was hiring, the pay was better than what she could earn in business management, and the job required no special training or skills. I made $15.75 an hour, and everybody that came in when I did made that rate. The people I work with—most of them have a high school education, that’s it. Most of them are very happy being in firewatch. They are never going to make this money again in their lives. I mean, they don’t have the education or knowledge to ever get a job making $16.00 an hour. They don’t want anything better. They don’t want responsibility.

Carol had previously worked in an office. She wore fancy clothes and looked good, but she was always struggling to make ends meet. When she heard that there was a job at the post office, she applied. After leaving her secretarial job to work for the post office, she took a cut in pay the first year; however, the future income potential was better than the potential in her secretarial job and was a decisive factor in her decision to pursue the job at the post office. Initially, I think I took like an $800 a year cut to go to the PO, but I knew in the long run I would make so much more money than I would being a secretary.

Beyond the pay, she was attracted to the benefits of the post office for her daughter and herself. Rachel’s dad had been a letter carrier for years. He had insurance, two- or threeweeks’ [or] four-weeks’ leave every year. And as a secretary, you got your two weeks.

Gretchen’s job at the state historical park was a different situation. Contrary to most male-dominated construction jobs, the pay was minimal. I am just getting paid six dollars an hour, lousy wage. They used to give us housing, but now we have to pay rent. So why do I do it? I love it.

All the women indicated that these jobs were offered at the same pay for men and women. For most of them, the money was considerably more than they had made previously in female dominated occupations or unskilled opportunities. In the United States, women make 76 cents on the dollar as compared to men. These jobs, however, offer equal pay and benefits, regardless of sex. The pay, though it may not have been the precipitating factor in the women’s decision to seek this employment, was attractive and offered freedom and security the women had not previously known. They anticipated

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and sought both long-term and immediate financial rewards from the male-dominated occupations. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Although few of the women attributed the job opportunity and availability in their cases directly to affirmative action, or Executive Order 11246, most of the women were aware that their being hired was directly because of the employer’s need to have women in that job in that workforce. The women described affirmative-action hiring practices in the following ways: • So I think they needed another woman probably. —Joyce • They didn’t want to hire me. I was a quota. They had to hire a girl in the state’s park system. —Gretchen • And the one reason why the one chief practically begged me to come to work for him is that they don’t have any women, and they wanted a female as a member of this police force. I’m the only woman. —Peg

Chris had been working in a social-service position at the local correctional facility since her graduation from college. Funding was diminishing and along with funding went her salary and benefits. When she heard that the state’s department of transportation would be hiring, she was eager to apply. At the time when we had to take a pay cut, I was dating somebody who worked at the DOT. He told me that he had to hire a woman. The head engineer who runs the county had been there for twenty years, and he swore that he would never hire a woman for the road crew. I always wanted to work outside and do blue-collar work, but I had never really had an opportunity. So that was like a downside because I didn’t have any experience. I didn’t want to back off just for that. Actually I was discouraged because of that. My boyfriend said, “Look, people who get hired there [are] basically, political appointees, and a lot of them come in with no restraints and no clout. But they’re somebody’s nephew or whatever so they just learn on the job. You won’t be any different in that regard.”

The involvement of affirmative action does not mean that the women did not have to meet the qualifications to perform the job. Women went through the same application procedures as the male applicants, and the women were concerned about their ability to do the job and whether they had the necessary skills. But the effectiveness and future of affirmative action has remained tenuous. There has been much confusion, particularly regarding quotas. The women in this study attribute their hiring in many cases to employers’ having

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mandates, and they generally believe that men are hired for all nonmandated positions. Gretchen explains, This last year, we had more maintenance workers because we got more money, and next year we’ll have more again. There will still be only one woman. They’re not hiring any other women because they don’t want to. They didn’t want to hire me. I was a quota. They had to hire a girl to work for the state park system. The state has districts that have to have so many women in these jobs. So the district headquarters said, “OK, well you are going to have to have one in the historic park.” . . . So they had two positions. One for anybody—could have been a woman. And one for a woman only. So I interviewed and I got the job. I don’t know who those men interviewed, but they probably could have gotten somebody that was more skilled that was a guy. I know they thought they could have done better if they didn’t have to hire a girl.

Affirmative action did result in the hiring of many of the women in this study. Affirmative action goes beyond equal opportunity and mandates the hiring of minorities, and it provided a twofold benefit for these particular women: (1) it encouraged the women to apply for jobs because they knew that they would receive preferential treatment in hiring, and (2) it forced employers to hire women when they would have preferred to hire a man. The women that were hired into affirmative-action positions felt that without affirmative action, they would not have had a chance of being hired. NEPOTISM Regardless of affirmative action and legal obligations for employment opportunities for women, the existence of nepotism1 and similar informal means for determining hiring and promotion practices predominate in the hiring process. Nepotism is an “affirmative action” for those with status and a previous relationship with an insider in the hiring process. It is an affirmative action of privilege. The privilege of knowing someone or being related to someone worked both to the benefit and to the detriment of the women in this study. Though nepotism is defined as a familial relationship, usually within two generations, this study will use the word to refer to similar connected bonds that result in hiring not based on the person’s ability to perform the job, but based on that relationship. Legally and according to dictionaries, nepotism relates to family as defined in a traditional contractual and genetic framework that does not necessarily represent the divergent family structures and familial relationships represented in this study or in the contemporary United States.

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More than one woman referred to the fact that hiring access and decisions were based on family, friends, and sexual relationships. Some of the women admitted to being a part of the privileged group that had an advantage in hiring based on connections to the workplace. For Beth, her first nontraditional job was in the police department. Her father and brother, who worked in law enforcement, had “put in a good word for her.” Mary, however, wanted to work where her father worked, but he interceded at the workplace to prevent her employment. On the other hand, Peg was from out of town and knew no one. The city police department’s decision to hire her was based solely on her civil-service test and the application process. It was this civil-service requirement in hiring that provided her the opportunity in a department where sons and nephews were traditionally given preferential treatment. Nepotism and preferential hiring practices for family members have been litigated and in many cases have resulted in court-ordered and supervised hiring practices that have opened the doors to women. Most states have laws that restrict and define hiring practices in public employment with respect to nepotism. As described by Iris, a case filed by a man contesting nepotism provided her with equal opportunity for a job through a daily lottery on the docks. These casual laborers in turn qualified for union membership and full employment after tenure as casual laborers, changing the present and future opportunities for employment in that workplace. Valerie’s opportunity to join the electrical trades was through a major court decision addressing long-term discrimination in employment, housing, and business opportunity in a metropolitan inner-city community. Although many of these women knew someone in their prospective workplace, it was usually not the person making the hiring decision, but often it was someone with influence over or connected to the person making the hiring decision. Chris used her association with local politicians developed in a previous social-service position as a mechanism to ensure her hiring when the employer, the supervisor of the state department of transportation, made it clear that he did not want to hire a woman for the job. Claire’s first painting job and training came from her lesbian partner, who had her own business and hired Claire. Claire has attributed her subsequently being hired at a “male” painting company to the fact that a previous coworker had attested to her abilities prior to her interview; Claire’s situation defines “knowing someone,” by having a positive reference as to her abilities even before she had applied. The following quote from Claire also demonstrates the difficulty and fine lines between “nepotism,” “knowing someone,” and just having a “personal reference”: The main reason was, one of the guys, in fact the old guy—he used to work for the guy I used to work for previously. And he said if I lasted on the job for a year with

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that other guy, then I could definitely paint ‘cause he wouldn’t keep anybody for more than a few weeks if they couldn’t paint. He would get his men to harass ’em or something until they left. And so that was pretty much what he went on. He said, “I’ll give you a try, I’ll give you a try.”

Nepotism is not the use of a reference to testify as to your experience and capabilities. Nepotism, as defined here, exists along a continuum based on the strength of the relationships. These women more often benefited from situations where equal hiring practices were implemented and the reform of nepotistic practice was court-mandated and supervised. However, a combination of nepotism, strong references, community ties, and affirmative action provided a central counteraction to long-standing discriminatory hiring practices. APPLYING FOR THE JOB The final hurdle for these women’s path to employment was the application and job interview. For many of these women, the job interview was their exposure to the politics and the adversarial situations that they would encounter at work. Interviews were with men, many of whom had sworn they would never hire a woman. At the interview, Gretchen described her assessment of how and why she was hired: It was kind of weird. I couldn’t really tell. Apparently there was a bunch of other people who were supposed to interview, and apparently they didn’t show up. It was really cold and it was snowing. The maintenance mechanic and his boss— those two men hated each other—were there. They were both interviewing me because the big boss wouldn’t let the one guy do it because he didn’t trust him and because he hated him. So there was a really bad sort of dynamic in the room to begin with. Plus, I had padded my job application considerably because I wanted the job so badly. I sort of exaggerated a good deal, and it turned out I was later found out, years later. Actually four people had interviewed for the job I’m doing today, and I always thought I got it because I was the only one who showed. The interview was just stupid. They didn’t hardly ask any questions, and I try really not to remember much about it.

Mary knew she wanted to work in the automotive plant in her hometown. After being discharged from the military, she applied repeatedly until she was hired. Iris just showed up one morning at the union office for longshoring and filled out a tax form and a next-of-kin emergency form. She had entered the casual labor pool and was immediately eligible to work under the imposed lottery system. Claire did not talk about the interview conversation, but she did talk about what she wore and about her assessment of her performance in the

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interview. She was hired immediately, which she attributed to handling the interview process well. However, she did have experience as a painter, and this was the second male-operated and male-staffed company she had worked for. So unlike Chris and Gretchen, she applied with skills and experience. When I went for my interview, I dressed in khaki-colored dress pants. I didn’t overdress because of the type of work. I didn’t want to dress in a skirt or anything where I’m going to apply for a painter. But I dressed in shoes like I’m wearing [bucks]. I was neat and clean but not dressed up as if I was going for an interview for an office job. You know, I thought that was most appropriate, just clean, neat . . . but I didn’t overdress because I felt like it wasn’t appropriate. They were going to think that I was some little secretary type, tweedle-dee or something, and that I can’t hold my own painting on a construction site. So that’s why I did that. But I got hired right off, right away.

Angela had been a member of the union, working in customer relations in the car- and truck-rental industry. She had worked with men and women but in a traditionally female job. She had been active in the union as a member for decades. Her first job in the male-dominated work world was as the president of the local for construction. She described her job “interview” as follows: As a matter of fact, I was renting cars one day, [and] that evening I come to a union meeting. The next thing I know, I’m taking my notes. The next thing I know, I’m nominated and seconded and it’s unanimous, and I’m the new president. I say, “Oh, my gosh.” Now where do I go to work tomorrow?

The application and interviewing process for entry into traditionally male jobs did not simply involve responding to an ad in the paper, writing a resume, showing up for the interview, or providing references. The jobapplication and interview process was the culmination of preparation (mostly informal), determination, planning, creativity (to the point of deceit), and sometimes just plain luck. The interview was often the women’s first contact with the supervisor or boss, and there were numerous references to the bosses’ resistance to hiring women. The interview was the final hurdle and preparation for the entry into the male-dominated workplaces that the women sought. SUMMARY Each woman overcame multiple and different obstacles in procuring her traditionally male blue-collar job. Hostile and unwelcoming characteristics of the workplace and employment were apparent to the women pursuing

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male-dominated workplaces even before they began their jobs. Before women are hired—and in many cases, before they are even aware that a job opportunity exists—the environment of work is already hostile and dominated by men. Contemporary employment rights and protections include requirements for equality and opportunity in hiring practices that precede employment. Social and policy factors point to the political or policy concerns that inhibit and encourage women’s entry into traditionally male blue-collar jobs. The stories and insights of the women interviewed indicate that these rights and protections are directly responsive to the factors that encouraged or inhibited their entry into male-dominated blue-collar jobs. The obstacles and concerns that the women encountered prior to employment were precursors to the adversity and problems they faced once on the job. The next chapter begins to demonstrate the capabilities of these women; the obstacles they face in performing their jobs; the environments in which they have worked; the skills they have acquired; and what is required to perform their jobs. The next chapter starts where the women’s preemployment preparation and hiring for the job leave off.

Chapter 6

ON THE JOB, DOING THE JOB: RECONSIDERING JOB DESCRIPTIONS, PERFORMANCE, AND EVALUATION

Blue-collar, traditionally male jobs are historically characterized by physical labor, routine, concrete performance requirements, and limited job mobility, and they generally require training rather than education. As stated in the previous chapters, the women I interviewed came to their jobs with varying qualifications, levels of expertise, and ability to perform the work. Many of the women chose the jobs because of the perceived tasks involved in doing the job. Truck driving, policing, carpentry, painting, electrical contracting, automotive assembly, and loading ships were some of the labors that attracted the women. However, once in the workplace, the women found that doing the job was more complicated than simply using skills and performing tasks. The jobs were dangerous and challenging and required innovations. This chapter examines job performance for blue-collar workers and describes (1) what the women were supposed to do, (2) what they did, (3) how they did it, and (4) how they evaluated their own competency. THE JOB DESCRIPTION Written descriptions of jobs set the standards for doing, measuring, and assessing performance. But the job descriptions given by the workers performing those jobs included a wider range of issues and concerns than did the written job descriptions. The workers’ own job descriptions reveal the meaning and language that the women give to doing the job. When descriptions of what is involved and necessary in doing the job are

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considered, work can be redefined, and a broader range of workers and individual talents can be utilized to benefit workers and employers. Reviewing open-ended interviews with women in traditionally male bluecollar jobs allows us to move beyond both the written descriptions, which are designed for men performing the jobs, and our own assumptions, which are grounded in male constructs, to what “doing the job” means for the women workers. Written Job Descriptions For the purposes of this study, the “written job description” is the official administrative written description of the required tasks and responsibilities of a job. Both individual workplace and nationally accepted standards exist. The workplace-specific job descriptions for the women in the study were in two forms: (1) company descriptions and (2) union descriptions. The company and union descriptions were not available for analysis and were not an intended part of this study; however, the women were aware of those descriptions and referred to them as markers for assessing their personal job performance, which is further discussed later in this chapter. The Occupational Outlook Handbook (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002), published biannually by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides descriptions of nationally recognized jobs, and descriptions are broken up into the following categories: (1) the nature of the work; (2) working conditions; (3) employment rates; (4) training, other qualifications, and advancement; (5) job outlook; and (6) earnings. The standard characteristics listed for particular jobs in this publication were consistent with the jobs that the women described in the interviews. The handbook identifies national norms, or standards, and projects occupational trends and laborforce demand in the coming decade. The women in this study engaged in 16 different occupations, and the Occupational Outlook Handbook included descriptions of all the occupations. In some cases, the handbook used different names for the jobs than the women did or than their employers did, but the tasks these women performed were included in and consistent with occupations listed in the book. According to the handbook, the jobs these women described as bluecollar had the following similar characteristics: 1. None of the jobs require an education beyond high school; 2. All require the ability to read and write; 3. All are characterized by hazardous physical demands involving a level of strenuous activity;

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4. Skills are developed primarily from experience, on-the-job training, and apprenticeship, with most instruction coming from experienced coworkers; and 5. Workers are responsible for very expensive materials and equipment (e.g., machinery, trucks, and cars).

Since the jobs held by the women interviewed are usually performed by men, the handbook’s occupational descriptions provide a standard for comparison across workplaces as to whether the jobs described by the women in the interview are similar to the male standard of the occupation.1 Workers’ Job Descriptions This study focuses on the jobs as described by the women during the interviews—the workers’ job descriptions. I cannot fully convey the pride, enthusiasm, and excitement that accompanied the women’s verbal descriptions of their work. As they proceeded to describe the jobs, task-by-task, step-by-step, down to the fine details, their speech quickened, their eyes widened, and my attention was captured. It was often as if, through their descriptions, I could picture myself performing the jobs. These descriptions were quite different from the dry occupational-handbook profiles described previously. The women described jobs that were challenging, dangerous, and exciting—much as they had anticipated in choosing to enter these fields. Claire (commercial painter): “I loved it with all my heart. Days would just whip right by. I’d do a job right alongside that old guy, and we’d completely prime and paint a whole entire house, ceilings and walls, in a ten-hour day.” Chris (state highway crew): “I always wanted to work outside and do bluecollar work. I went out on the road and did my six-month urinal scrubbing. We had snow and ice in the winter. On the days we were not out plowing, we could do maintenance on the facility or maintenance on the vehicles.” Beth (electric planner): “It’s the best job in the company, and I knew it. As a guard, I sat there and watched people, and I knew that someday electric planning was the job for me. It’s an interesting job. You go in the field a couple days a week. You’re drawing a few days a week. And you’re on the computer a couple days a week. There’s a lot of diversity. There’s a lot to learn. And you never stop learning.” Cassey (nuclear firewatch): “You go in and sit there for one hour at a time. Then you go down the rotation one post at a time—the relay run. You are sitting there because the cardox system, the fire-prevention system, is inoperable. If a fire were to break out, the cardox would dump and put out the fire. Well, the cardox is not working, so if a fire breaks out, there is nothing there to put out the fire—that’s why we’re there.”

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BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN AT WORK WITH MEN Mary (automotive assembly): “1600 degrees. That’s hot. You wear fireproof clothes. You stand back just far enough not to get burned. When the aluminum goes into the machines and it’s compressed, sometimes it blows out on you and it burns you, but then when the machine opens up, the part falls into a pit of water and comes up cool, somewhat cool.” Sonja (meter reader): “It’s physical; you’re tired. You need to look for people to get you through the day. I make a point of getting to know the customers. If I didn’t, the job would be extremely boring and tedious. I really think that you can affect them positively.”

These are jobs that are physically demanding yet personally rewarding, skilled yet independent, hazardous yet safe, and routine yet exciting. They prove wrong the stereotypes of blue-collar workers punching a time clock and collecting a paycheck. For these women, the time on the job passes quickly and the demands vary through the course of the day. In their interviews the women characterized blue-collar jobs as • • • • • • • • •

being dirty, being physically strenuous and dangerous, including responsibility for ensuring personal and public safety, requiring complex interpersonal skills, involving measurement of individual work in hours and units produced, requiring active involvement rather than sitting behind a desk, featuring casual and utilitarian attire and uniforms, including them as “one-of-a-hundred” doing the job, and providing ongoing learning and skill development.

Additionally, these women compared their ability to do the job to their male coworkers’ job performance; they wanted to make sure they were doing the job as well or better than the men did. The women entered the jobs thinking that they had to be stronger, smarter, and more skillful than the men and be able to look like and act like the men they worked with. JOB SKILLS Beyond the description of the job itself is the description of how the job is done. This is the utilization of required skills for accomplishing the job. The job description does not reveal what is required to do the job. These women’s job skills are both physical and mental, and they began their positions with some skills and acquired others on the job.2 The women expressed varied prowess in the requisite skills at any one time. But above all, they had the ability to integrate the skills they did have into a workplace for


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which they were often unprepared or underprepared. They were also innovative in situations in which they were unable to perform in the traditional male style. The women compensated for personal inadequacies with assets they did have in order to perform the job. Each woman described varied skills that were important and representative of her job. Among these skills described were hauling, lifting, climbing ladders, and working at heights. More intangible skills included negotiating, protecting, planning, caring, providing customer service, and assuring safety of coworkers. The jobs require strong mental abilities in order to solve problems, often under stressful physical conditions and time constraints. In some situations recalled by the women, a woman’s strength was relied on to ensure the safety and protect the lives of male coworkers. Iris described skills that resulted from the combination of strength, mental ability, and experience. I was damn good at what I did. We were in a situation for two or three years where there were new people on the waterfront every day. They needed people who had some experience and who had some smarts because handling logs not only takes a tremendous amount of strength, but it also takes a reasonable amount of skill to make it all work right.

Iris also described her understanding and constant awareness of how dangerous the job was and the results of the risks of working with unskilled laborers. And the scary part is that when a log is not loaded right, not only does the log come down at you, and you have to scatter, it comes down with so much force, and the water’s shallow enough, that it goes down and hits the bottom. That changes its trajectory, and it comes back up, and you don’t know where it’s going to come up from. So you could be thinking you’re perfectly safe because you’re far enough away from where it lands, but then it comes back up and nails you. And I did see people get killed down there, by accident. I saw guys get killed due to accidents.

The required skills for performing each job were indicated by the women during their interviews in the categories of physical strength, safety assurance, mental acuity, emotional empathy, customer relations, independence, leadership, and physical appearance. Having all these combined skills rendered a woman capable of doing the specific job. Physical Strength The jobs held by these women are characterized by some level of strenuous activity (BLS, 2002). The Supreme Court has reviewed whether

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protected classes, including women, can be required to have minimum levels of physical strength for certain jobs and how these levels would be determined, particularly with regard to disparate impact of such requirements. The Court has determined that women do need to meet the physical requirements of the job, but that these requirements need to be directly tied to the performance of the tasks of the job, not based on arbitrary standards. Having physical strength served four functions for the women I interviewed: (1) it was required for performance of their jobs; (2) it demonstrated that the women were part of a gender-neutral workforce, both equal and capable; (3) it earned them higher wages; and (4) it led to acceptance by coworkers. These factors combined to give women the right to stay on the job. Gretchen reported, When the lumber came, it was my partner’s Friday day-off, so I ended up working three days on this four-day project with Bob, the supervisor. I mean, I just got the shaft. It just fell out badly for me. . . . So what ended up happening was he would barely let me stop to pee. We would just work. By the second day, I realized I wasn’t going to get to take lunch, so I put protein powder in a bottle of juice, and every time he would stop to scratch his head and think about what he wanted to put where, I’d stop and gulp down some of this stuff because I knew I’d be going crazy from lack of nutrition. I just knew this was going to be kind of a make-it-orbreak-it thing. He didn’t trust me at all, and he didn’t trust my skills, and one of the really key things in this job is to show that you’re strong.

The women were not all strong enough to perform all the physical tasks required. Because they were being judged and evaluated based on their ability to perform as the men performed, at times the women demonstrated other capabilities to compensate for their lack of strength. For Gretchen, although her objective was to show that she was strong, the way to compensate for lack of physical strength or skills was to be prepared and helpful. So half of the load was on my shoulders because the other half was being lifted by Bob. I suppose that’s why I was tired [laughs], but that is what it took initially to get respect from him—to work hard, to work just as hard as him, to keep up— because he is very strong. Maybe I didn’t have to do that, but that was what I perceived, and that really set the pace. Whatever he does, I do it. I try and do it just as well, even though I’m not as skilled. In terms of strength, he is obviously stronger than I am. In terms of lifting, I never back away from lifting anything or carrying anything. I usually carry a much heavier nail bag than Bob because he expects me to have stuff: “Gretchen, give me your crescent wrench”; if I don’t have it, then it’s “Gretchen, run to the barn and get the crescent wrench.” Then I have to go at 90 miles an hour, half a mile across town to get something—so I usually carry like 20 to 30 pounds of tools so that whatever he asks for, I have, because I’m the


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helper, I’m his employee. Like the nurse to the doctor, I have to have everything. That’s what he expects from me. I can’t be any slower than Steve or Bob. A lot of the time, we have to work with hand-tools. I can’t be any slower. One way that I have gotten a lot of respect from them is that I just never drop from exhaustion or fail because of strength. One perception is that women are not strong, and so I’ve made myself physically very strong. That’s something that has really built up over the years. I am much, much stronger now than I was nine years ago.

For Sally, compensating for less strength involved asking for help and thanking male coworkers for stepping in. They’ve seen me fight with the tailgate on my truck . . . Till I finally say, “I can’t; there’s something hung up. Will you please help me?” I might need help changing a tire. I cannot change a truck tire. I can take the lug nuts off. I can release it. There’s no way I can lift it. And I’ve seen some men who can’t lift it. But two of them will do it for me. And I thank them. I’m always there with “thank you.” I’m always there with “please.”

Since most of these women’s jobs required physical strength, the women anticipated that displaying physical ability would be the way to prove themselves on the job. Sandy described new police officers who received broken noses and back injuries as they learned to wield nightsticks and assert themselves physically. However, for Chris, the need to prove herself and display job skills that rely on physical strength when she entered her workplace was a misconception. To show I could pull my weight, I worked. I really had to prove myself and work twice as hard to be half as good, because of being female, because I didn’t know what I was doing. This is a state job. My expectation when I took this job was of physical labor. I could quit my gym membership, and I’d get in the best shape of my life. Instead, I had to prove I could take breaks when they did and work [only] as hard as they did, not harder.

The amount of physical strength required varied, but more important, the expectations of coworkers and their supervisors varied with the workplace and had to be learned. Ultimately, it was important to perform and prove oneself in the manner appropriate to the specific workplace. This often meant more than carrying one’s share of the workload, but it took time for the women to determine what that load was and what was expected in order to prove themselves. Mental Acuity The women acknowledged that in some cases they had less physical strength than the men they worked with or less physical strength than was

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required to perform the job. It is important to note that these are two different factors. Whereas the women often described themselves as less capable or strong physically, they usually described themselves as more capable and clever mentally. Perhaps because the jobs were difficult for them if done in the traditional way, they often used self-devised strategies divergent from the male tactics for accomplishing the work. Some of these strategies were valued by the employer and coworkers, and some were discouraged or prohibited. Most of all, the women saw their solutions as different and innovative. Regardless of whether they were strong enough to do the job, they did figure out ways to accomplish the tasks. Physical strength often was combined with quick thinking and assessment of situations that, according to the women, compensated for their lesser size and strength. According to Peg, I’m the female there. I get sent across the line of fire. The kidnapper’s standing there, and you can see him standing up in the window with a shotgun. So everybody’s behind protection. I’m walking across the yard. I’m like, “great, this is great.” The hostage is released, and I go to latch on to her because she came out the door. Then I couldn’t get her to come with me. She was big. She was young, but big. I was standing there with her, and everybody’s behind barricades trees, cars, and houses. Everybody’s safe except the girl and me. We’re out in the front yard, and he’s up in the window with a gun. And he pulls the trigger and I hear this shot—I’ll never forget this. Then the captain was behind another captain and me, and I was sent to talk to the guy. I was a rookie. They let me keep talking to him because I had him. Two hours I talked to this guy. It’s amazing what you just do—what goes on in your head when you’re trying to keep someone from killing themselves. And so I did that although I had never trained to do that—just did it. So when the gate was secure, they gave us the go-ahead. Two captains kicked the door, and I was the littlest one, and I went through. We rushed him, grabbed, and wrestled him on the bed.

Women in these jobs are often asked to perform tasks that rely on skills and knowledge that men often acquired before entering the job. Many of the women were not familiar with standard sizes of lumber, tools, and ladders. They had to measure. They were not familiar with ways to move or store materials and equipment. But when a woman has to do something differently or expose her lack of skills, she risks ridicule from coworkers instead of recognition of her ability to devise solutions to problems. Many of the women talked about whether their jobs brought excitement and boredom. Whereas some of the jobs included challenges that made the days pass quickly, other jobs were routine and tedious. The women entered the jobs looking for work that was exciting and stimulating. Sonja became familiar with the residents on her meter-reading route as a way to fight the


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boredom. A secondary gain to developing these relationships was improved public relations for the company. Claire worked hard, harder than the men did, because she loved the work and wanted to stay busy: I was there. The painting had to get done, and I wanted to get out of there. So usually, I just pumped it out. I didn’t care. I don’t mind working. I’d rather stay busy than stand around. That makes the day go by a lot faster.

For two of the women, their jobs were to monitor or “watch.” The jobs were monotonous and isolated in that the women had minimal contact with coworkers. Rotations to different sites or shifts broke the tedium. Cassey described her nuclear firewatch job as boring, tedious, and monotonous. She would sit in concrete block rooms watching in case a fire broke out. Cassey saw the importance of the job to insure the safety of the nuclear plant from impending danger of fire; however, there was no challenge, and there were no skills to be developed. The room is probably 60 feet long by 20 feet wide, and I just look up and down, and up and down and up and down, and that’s about it. You can sit down. I feel useless, absolutely useless, because I do nothing, and I don’t feel good about what I do. It’s important because it’s a nuclear power plant, and if something did happen, if a fire were to break out, it could cause devastating damage if it wasn’t put out. So from that aspect, they tell you, you are important, but it’s hard to believe you are important.

Although the women reported that many jobs required physically strenuous skills and abilities, often much of the time was spent monitoring and preventing situations requiring such tasks and challenges. For some of the women, such jobs give them time to think. “Boredom” could be perceived as time for oneself and as a positive. Sally describes her hours alone driving a truck: I do a lot of thinking when I’m driving truck. I think I can put my whole life in perspective when I’m driving truck. Problems, you can solve them. It’s not that your mind is not on your work. It’s that you have the peace and quiet. You have time to think. I don’t really know how to explain it. It just gives you a totally different outlook on life.

The women welcomed diversification and change in order to break monotony. Cassey’ s task of measuring and recording the room temperature at 15-minute intervals gave her a sense of personal responsibility that relieved her boredom. Joyce, working as a security guard, told me about her job of monitoring: We’re just there to monitor alarm systems, to monitor people coming and going. They move you around all the time. Every nine weeks, you’ll see us at the different

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locations. Right now, I’m at the gate. Next week, I’ll be the rover at the evening shift. Then on the night shift, I’ll be down at the core. It breaks up the monotony as much as it can.

Some attempts to break the monotony were gender-stereotyped in the workplaces and/or by the women themselves as “women’s” activities. For Sally, these activities included reading, sunbathing, and doing crafts while she waited for her truck to be readied to return to the road. For Cassey, this meant “gossiping” on the phone with other firewatchers. Many of the women identified activities to fill time and break the monotony that were forbidden and grounds for dismissal, but they did these things anyway and without consequence. In describing what attracted them to the jobs, the 17 women did not describe mental challenges or their innovation and strategic abilities. However, throughout the interviews, they identified these attributes as essential to doing the jobs once they were on the jobs. Further, these were capabilities that in many situations distinguished them from males at work. By utilizing the women’s abilities and ingenuity, the women and their employers could benefit. Those innovations often required diverging from established work practices and universal standards. However, because these innovations, even though they worked, were different from business as usual, the women ended up questioning whether they just did not fit in. Safety Assurance Safety was important in the performance of blue-collar jobs in three ways: (1) personal safety, (2) coworker safety, and (3) public safety. Safety was accomplished (1) by acquiring the needed skills and expertise to do the job, (2) by speaking up and refusing to do jobs that were unsafe, and (3) by learning the required safety procedures and insisting on adherence to them. The women became visible among their male coworkers because they asserted adherence to safety procedures and standards. This demand for adherence was often confused with a presumption that the women were unable to perform the job because of their gender. The women more often viewed this as their responsibility in caring for their coworkers and in some instances insisted on safety measures even at the cost of losing their jobs. Claire tells this story: I got laid off because I chose not to go shovel roofs. I did it for two days, and I found that it was dangerous. The roofs are all ice. They’re slippery. I was the only one who really had a choice not to go because I was a female. And I didn’t go. And boy, they got on me for that. But I wasn’t about to go. I said, “I’m a painter. I’m not a roofshoveler.” I wouldn’t stand in zero-degree weather shoveling roofs, dangerous roofs.


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I didn’t have the boots to begin with. I was wearing one of the guys’ pair of fireman’s boots that were heavy as can be. And I was wearing ’em over my boots because they were that big.

Insistence on safety standards was something the women did because they were outsiders. Although the men saw this as evidence of them being the “weaker” sex in need of accommodation, the women saw themselves as taking on a caretaking or maternal role, providing for the welfare of others and themselves. Dangerous and risky work conditions were characteristic of the women’s jobs. The women did not say that the work was hazardous because they were women; it was just hazardous for anyone. There were work-site safety manuals and procedures as well as state, national, and union safety protocols. In some cases the introduction of women on the work site resulted in existing standards being implemented or enforced, and other workplaces even introduced new measures and facilities to accommodate women, often benefiting the general workforce of both genders. The women were aware that their introduction in some cases had simply resulted in cleaner and more comfortable work sites. This was particularly true at the post office. According to Carol, It is an industrial workplace, even though what I was doing was computer work. There was carpeting on the floor where they were doing the computerized forwarding of the mail—it was in a separate room. They had just constructed a special room that was cleaner. You walked out of the room that we worked in, and it was a work floor. There were bags of mail. It was dirty. I had gone from a really fancy office building downtown. It was just a whole different thing. That was really hard to get use to.

Some of the women capitalized on their visibility as the only women by blatantly insisting on adherence to safety procedures. Nancy, as an electricalsafety inspector, noticed that most of the male inspectors no longer disconnected and tagged electrical boxes prior to testing the electric service. She prides herself on insisting on adherence to codes and procedures, including citations and disciplinary actions levied against coworkers who violate the requirements. As a result of her reporting of violations, public, coworker, and personal safety was increased. For women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, concerns about hazardous work conditions are easily confused with gender-related constraints to performance. This is particularly true when the standards are male standards, and the only available comparisons are to men. The question is, Are women less capable due to their size and physical attributes, or are they less likely to subject themselves to the risks of unsafe situations due to

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their gender? As described in the previous section on physical strength, the women often felt they had to demonstrate that they were as strong as or stronger than men, yet once this was proven, they often refused to subject themselves to situations that they deemed unsafe for both genders. Some of the work sites, although not hazardous, were simply unwelcoming or unpleasant. Sanitation and the availability of toilets on work sites serve as a concrete indicator of the welcomeness of women to a workplace. In the mid to late 1990s, when these interviews first were conducted, there was great variation in the availability of private sanitation facilities for women when at work. Where work sites included both secretarial and blue-collar workers, separate restrooms were provided for men and women, usually adjacent to each other with adequate toilet and wash facilities. In some sites where the blue-collar laborers’ work areas were physically separate from the office staff, the only convenient restroom facilities were for men. One interview was held in a work garage, where I observed that there was only a men’s shower and toilet facility, which the women also had to use. This door was labeled “Men,” and the backs of the toilet stalls were decorated with full-length posters of women dressed in bikinis, advertising beer. Some of the women were aware that the introduction of restrooms and toilet facilities for women was the direct result of Title VII, OSHA regulations, and union negotiations. More often, the strongest credit was given to the influence and insistence by unions. Additionally, the introduction of facilities for women often resulted in the introduction or improvement of facilities for men. When the needs of women at work are met, the work lives of men are often simultaneously improved. Some accommodations are expensive and require redefining workspace and activities, whereas others are inexpensive and simple to implement. Although this is not the focus of this study, during informal conversation, men at the same maledominated blue-collar work sites acknowledged that many of these changes in facilities and procedures had benefited them and were welcome changes addressing concerns they had had for years. Physical Appearance and Clothing The interviews indicated that clothing on the job was directly linked to the performance of the job. These jobs were characterized by uniforms, boots, pants, and protective wear. Learning what to wear and how to wear it was a skill acquired by the women over time. Clothing and appearance served to (1) accommodate the tasks of the job, (2) make all workers look the same in order to project a unified workforce, and (3) separate work lives from personal lives. Although the specific clothing was different for


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different jobs (e.g., blue uniforms for security and police and white painter’s pants for the painter), over time all the women adopted a male standard of clothing that was both self- and workplace-imposed. The clothing in many jobs was prescriptive, serving purposes of safety and utility. Protective clothing included steel toes, heat- and chemicalresistant outerwear, or heavy belts for back protection. Perhaps the most common characteristic of the clothes was their compatibility with dirt and grease. Clothing designed to promote safety and to get dirty was associated with male attire, as compared to skirts, high heels, and stockings associated with female work attire. To this stereotype, Mary retorted, I’d like to know what feminine means—we are all in dirty work clothes, and we are all greasy and dirty.

In some cases prescriptive work clothing was not required but was made available by the company, as in rented wear for state highway workers. Choosing what to wear was developed like other skills of doing the job and evolved over time. According to Chris, Deciding what to wear to work was actually pretty easy. I started out just wearing jeans. But they had this uniform-rental service with some kind of polyester pants, and a lot of the guys rented those. So I rented those because I wanted to look like them for two reasons—one is stay the same, and the second reason is you worked around grease and oil a lot, and I didn’t want to ruin all my clothes. And this stuff—you just wear them, throw them in a box, they take them out and clean them and bring them back—it was really inexpensive. At first I rented the shoes, then these blue pants and the shirt. There was a blue cotton button-down shirt, and at first I wore that a lot. I’d wear a tee shirt under it. I looked bad, really unattractive, but it worked. It worked because you go in the morning and everyone looked the same. Pretty much everyone would wear either jeans and flannel shirts or the rental clothes, and I didn’t want to deal with the grease and stuff. I just went with the uniform, and that way I could fit in—because I really wanted to blend in. I didn’t want to stand out anymore than I needed to.

In other cases clothing was practical, distinguishing the blue-collar women from the women in pink-collar secretarial positions. Claire noted that she wore a tee shirt and jeans or painter’s pants while the secretaries and office staff wore “high heels, the sexy leather-skirt type.” Carol distinguished her prior work as a secretary wearing heels and dresses from her life at the post office, where she wore jeans. Uniforms and blue-collar clothes in general were perceived as less expensive and more comfortable. At the post office it didn’t matter how you dressed. That was really hard getting used to. I went from a really white-collar atmosphere to a really blue-collar atmosphere.

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Further, hairstyle, nail-care, and amount of makeup, if any, were significant components of job appearance. In some workplaces there were strict rules and regulations requiring woman to take on traditionally male physical attributes. In other workplaces women did this by choice. In the women’s estimation, blue-collar jobs were best done with short nails and tied-back or short hair. Chris described her dilemma: If I really wanted to, I could have cut my hair, but I didn’t do that. I might put my hair in a ponytail, under a cap. At first it was like, if I was doing some job where it really was in my way, but for the most part, I would just leave my hair long and down.

When women looked the same as men in terms of clothes, they increased their solidarity with coworkers and their self-concept as a blue-collar worker in general. Sandy describes the changes and benefits of adopting the police department’s requirements: We couldn’t wear makeup, no fingernail polish. I normally do my fingers every Friday. You can’t use that; it’s against the rules and regulations—because the whole time, you are not supposed to be distinguished. The guys should not know that you are a woman. You have to wear your hair under [your] hats. It was funny because all the women would cut their hair when they came in, but now it’s not like that because you just braid it and flip it over—because it can’t [be longer than collar-length because if] you ever fight somebody . . . they [could] grab your hair, pull your hair, choke you.

Clothing is a visual representation. It distinguishes workers performing different jobs, and it distinguishes workers form the public. Gretchen explained, We all wear uniforms so we all look like rangers, and the public doesn’t distinguish a maintenance person from a visitors’ services person, except we are allowed to wear dirty clothes, and they’re not. And our clothes can be torn and really shabby, or partly shabby. So you can’t really tell us apart.

By wearing the same clothing as the men, a woman becomes less noticeable as a woman doing the job and is seen more as a person doing the job. For example, hats allowed the women to wear their hair up. As Sandy said, “The guys should not know that you are a woman.” And this blending-in was accomplished in part for the women I met through dress and physical appearance. Clothing, particularly in the form of uniforms, also can become the symbol or boundary to the women as to whether they are working or not. Clothing becomes the sign of “woman at work.” These women did not wear these


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work clothes in their out-of-work lives. For Sandy the uniform had such a strong effect on her behavior and demeanor that she insisted on changing her clothes before leaving work, leaving her work clothes in her locker. In the uniform, I was bringing it all home. You get so caught up in your job to where my one rule is to always change my uniform. My locker is for hanging the clothes, and I go to work and change. You are never off duty in your uniform. So I’m still on duty when I get home. I’m still dictating. My children even gave me a nickname at home. It’s called Barracuda.

None of the women indicated that they did not want to wear the prescribed or ascribed clothing or that it encumbered their ability to do the job. Though some women had a neutral attitude toward the clothes, most saw the clothing as facilitating their ability to do the work. Clothing and physical appearance served to let the women look like the men and present themselves as able and ready to perform their jobs: specific clothing, outof-the-way hair, and lack of make-up enhanced their ability to perform required tasks that were often physically demanding, hazardous, and dirty. Wearing the clothes clarified to coworkers, to their families, and to the public that they were on the job. The clothing was designed, however, for men and by men. Clothes were carefully designed visually to project the image of strength and practicality and protect the body of a blue-collar male worker. All of the women adopted the male standards of dress for the job, wearing pants, boots, and uniforms and shedding makeup, nail polish, and unrestrained long hair. Some of the women described the clothing as increasing and some as decreasing their individual choices, but they all conformed and felt that the clothing was advantageous for both themselves and the performance of the job. Independence and Autonomy In the women’s different jobs, the amount of physical and verbal contact the women had with coworkers (the degree of their independence) and how much control they had over their schedules and the execution of their work (the degree of their autonomy) varied. The amount of independence the women wanted varied, as did their need for autonomy. These two aspects of work were often interconnected and related to job satisfaction. Independence for the women came in physical, mental, and emotional forms. It was often associated with being outside and having uninterrupted work. Sally describes what working independently meant to her: I’ve always loved outdoor work. I liked the freedom of not being closed up. I do a lot of thinking when I’m driving truck. I think I can put my whole life in perspective

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when I’m driving truck. Problems, you can solve them. It’s not that your mind is not on your work. It’s that you have the peace and quiet.

For the women independence was desirable and even a solution to the tensions of working with and being harassed by men. Beth told me, It’s easier in the field because I’m out there on my own now. You come into the office, and it’s a different story because there are people watching. There’s always someone watching.

This distinction is illustrated by Claire’s further statement: Days would just whip right by. Like when I was painting that whole house by myself—I was in heaven. That’s why I didn’t need to take breaks. I just loved to do it, to work, to go at it.

Beyond and different from independence is autonomy. Being autonomous means being responsible for completing a job or task and being able to determine how best to accomplish it, being able to problem-solve independently, and being permitted to organize a workload in an efficient manner consistent with personal style and ability. Autonomy can be measured by a person’s ability to make choices about how or when work is accomplished, autonomy allowed these particular women to develop and apply innovative and appropriate solutions to problems and constraints posed in a male-structured work environment. A lack of autonomy was characteristic of some women’s blue-collar, traditionally male jobs. As a result, the women were denied personal choices, and the jobs demanded conformity to mandatory, unpredictable job conditions. This led to personal conflicts that restricted their ability to do their jobs as they faced multiple and competing responsibilities. Carol compared the differences between pink-collar and blue-collar work and the effects on women as follows: There was no choice [in blue-collar work]. If at four o’clock in the morning, when they decided they wanted you to stay a mandatory two hours, it didn’t matter. “Well, I don’t have a baby-sitter.” “Well you better call somebody and get somebody lined up because it’s mandatory.” Mandatory meant mandatory. If you didn’t stay and work, then there were going to be repercussions. You could be suspended or get a letter of warning. You didn’t have a choice.

Carol’s problem with childcare and mandatory overtime crosses the continuum of independence to become an issue of autonomy when she is denied the choice of how to accommodate her multiple responsibilities.


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Now all of a sudden, I’m a line worker and it was like, you go in and hit the clock to go to work. You had leeway of three or four minutes, and if you didn’t hit in within that three or four minutes, they would come and talk to you about why you were late. You know, it’s like all this stuff—“Why are you bothering me about something so ridiculous?” It was really a different mindset.

The women’s desire to work independently combined with their desire to be autonomous was complicated by their desire to be part of a work crew and employee of the organization. Mary chose her job in the assembly line because of the camaraderie. All of the women described positive relationships and the necessity of dependence on coworkers at varied times in their work lives. The women did not want to eliminate these relationships; they just wanted the relationships to facilitate their performance on the job instead of encumber it. Autonomy was a way to restructure the work to facilitate or accommodate individual capabilities. Independence, on the other hand, was valued as a way to negotiate relationships and unencumbered job performance. Independence and autonomy allow the women to “just do their jobs.”

Representing the Company and Customer Relations Many of these jobs required direct contact with the public. The women felt that they were particularly adept, as compared to men, at serving the public, and they saw this skill as compensating for any lack of physical strength or of the traditionally male skills of the job. Interpersonal-relations skills are apparent job skills when the women talk about their tasks, but reference to these skills is absent from the formal job description in many cases. These skills were not characteristic of traditionally male blue-collar jobs described in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Sandy, the community police officer, described her compassion for the children of families that she was forced to evict. Alternatively, she described her responsibilities with enforcing parking violations: They will kill you for a ticket. I have seen people with suit and ties come down ready for a showdown over a ticket. But you learn how to talk to people. It’s yes, no, and how to keep everything in control here. I also got a taste of how much authority you really have.

Peg, the police officer, described her negotiating skills as highly valued in domestic violence and hostage situations. The meter reader described her attention and friendliness to the elderly and homebound on her route. Beth, the electric planner, noted,

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Because there’s customer interaction, and we interact with the different departments, too, we interact a lot, which is very rewarding and interesting, too—a lot of personalities. And I find that some of the girls are better at that than the guys.

For some of the jobs public-contact experiences were the opposite. Interpersonal skills of caring, negotiating, and being friendly are seen as unnecessary and inefficient in performing the job. Workers are supposed to be working. Many jobs require being friendly, but many others require avoiding or ignoring the public, and yet others require being “tough.” Being tough is understood as able to endure adversity and perform their jobs in the public eye for long periods of time and maintain a position or perform tasks and requirements of the job without faltering. For some of the women this idea of being tough contradicts their first response of caring and empathy. For other women, presenting themselves this way is the next step after demonstrating the physical strength and mental acuity required. Sandy explained, When I walk in, what do kids see? They hear police radios. They see you are in uniform. Then I realize I have to be tough. I was standing my stance. There is a stance. People don’t mess with you when you are standing in a stance. You know you stand flat-footed, cross your arms, and then the uniform, and you don’t smile, and it shows you’re pissed. You mean business.

For Sandy, dealing with customers required combined compassion, diplomacy, and assertiveness. For the meter reader, customer representative, police officers, electric planner, industrial hygienist, carpenter, and commercial painter. customer contact was part of doing the job. It required assessing what the customers needed but with the realization that they, the workers, were representing their company and occupation to the public; with this latter realization, the women had to disregard or moderate tendencies toward being caring and interpersonal, relating only as needed to accomplish the tasks of the work. The women did see themselves as relating to the public differently than men performing the same job. They felt that they generally had more concern for the needs of the public than the men, and this enhanced their job performance. Ultimately, each woman had to be able to assess situations and react in the manner appropriate for a person representing the company and doing her particular job. JOB PERFORMANCE EVALUATION Job performance is often related to evaluation. Once again, there is the formal job evaluation conducted by superiors and the self-evaluations disclosed by the women in the interviews. Job evaluation reveals the difference


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between what is expected and what is done. For the most part, the women did not talk of the company evaluation process as the way they themselves determined if they were able to do the job. In fact, they evaluated their ability to perform the skills and complete the requirements of the job by comparing their abilities to (1) other women’s ability to perform the job or a similar job, (2) men’s ability to perform the job, (3) their own assessment of their ability, and (4) their own self-appraised improvements in their performance over time. Job performance assesses how they do the job and their ability to do the job. There was a strong and overriding feeling among the women that they were always under scrutiny, that they had to constantly prove they were capable, and that regardless of company and legislated protections, they were not secure in their jobs. Each woman admitted that she did not enter the job capable of performing all the required tasks. All the women felt that they were not equipped with the same skills that the men had, and they told of strategies they developed and learned on the job in order to perform the job—ways that they developed the necessary skills. Since men traditionally performed the jobs, and many of the women worked only with men, the ability to do the job and the assessment of women’s ability to perform the job was based on the male standard. This comparison was perceived as a separate standard and did not seem to be integrated with their interpersonal relationships with the men. The women evaluated the outcome—their ability to produce the good or service. As previously discussed, they recognized that their methods were often different than the men’s, making comparability of the end product even more critical. Although the Occupational Outlook Handbook posits that jobs are gender-neutral, the women were acutely aware of their gender and felt the need to overtly address gender concerns in describing their ability to do the job. They accomplished this by comparing their ability to perform the job to the abilities and performance of men, including predecessors and the men that they worked alongside. Claire indicated that she was able to compare her performance to another painter’s performance by how much painting each of them accomplished in the same amount of time. I was a good painter. I could keep up with the best of ’em. I remember going down this hall one day, painting this university dorm. One of their best painters was cutting in on one side of the hallway, and I was cutting in the other. And don’t you know, I met him right at the very end. It was neck and neck all the way.

This comparison of output or piecework is easily accomplished in bluecollar jobs since the products or services are often defined in tangible units

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(e.g., number of pieces assembled, numbers of pieces of mail processed, number of logs or bags loaded, numbers of meters read, and amount of surface painted). For others, including those in policing, customer relations, planning, laboring, and union-leading, the tasks were less defined and more varied and therefore had more varied outcomes. For women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, there is the perception that their performance is always suspect and being watched. It is easy to “watch” them because they stand out physically—as women. They are visible. Further, their performance is being compared to men’s. Sonja explained, I think they kind of have a tendency to believe that somebody put me here. I said, “I earned this position. Nobody put me here. I earned this position.” I said, “I worked my way up.” “Well, you’re a woman.” “Well, yes, I’m a woman. Yes, granted this is a nontraditional position for a woman that I hold. But who’s doing the job? Who’s getting it done? So . . . ” “You are.” Okay.

Angela replaced a man as union president. When she walked into the job as the first and only woman in her position, her gender was visible and suspect. I just want them to know gender has nothing to do with it. It’s who gets the job done—and my predecessors sat here for 20 years and they weren’t getting it done. And when I look through the files, and I see the various deals (and I use the terminology loosely) that were cut, I’m appalled. And now I try and undo the wrong that was done.

Companies may base hiring, firing, and promotion on formal evaluations to be discussed in the next chapter. Women base their own estimation of job performance on direct comparisons to coworkers. For women in nontraditional jobs, the day-to-day recognition for their contribution and ability was more critical than the formal evaluations stored in personnel files. These accomplishments of the women were often in direct contradiction to the credit that they were given. Claire explained her frustration: And we’d get back and they’d say, “Oh, great job, Ed. Great job. You know, you really earned us the money today.” I cut in the whole thing, and he rolled the whole thing, so we did equal parts of the whole job, and he’s the one that got all the credit for it. I’d be like . . . “What do you mean ‘Ed’? ‘Congratulations, Ed?’ What about me?” I helped him all the way through, and they just didn’t take me seriously.

In some workplaces awards for excellence or exceptional performance are made. The women perceive these as not being gender-neutral and as being tainted by interpersonal relationships and politics. Recognition


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through such acknowledgments is important to and sought by women as an indicator of their full participation and acceptance in the workplace. Peg described, I was written up for a commendation, which is an award. It’s just this little stroke job. And I was so thrilled to be written up, but it was denied. It was all in the line of duty, which is what they said. Everything you do as a cop is in the line of duty. It was a real slap in the—it was a real slap. The sergeant took all this trouble to write a commendation. It cost them no money to give a commendation. It’s just a piece of paper that says ‘Nice job.’ But the request for me to get commendation was denied. I just started thinking, what’s going on here?

Once a woman is in the job and is noticed within the work group, workplace, or larger community, the gender composition of the workplace can begin to change. Although the visibility is a challenge for the first woman, it becomes easier for subsequent women. This shift in gender composition often results in changes in assessment of job performance in several areas: (1) woman can compare their ability to do the job to other women’s ability; (2) the women on the job have reduced visibility and reduced constant scrutiny; (3) the male standard is challenged by the performance of the women as a group, not by an individual’s performance; and (4) seeing women do the job affirms other women’s decision to enter and perform these jobs. Not only do the men realize that women can perform the job, but other women do also. The women in this study could not trust the evaluations of their supervisors due to overriding interpersonal sex-based harassment, hostility, and discrimination between them. These interpersonal relationships, when adversarial, clouded the evaluation. The employers’ written job descriptions, however, were a starting point for performance self-assessments in light of criticisms brought by supervisors in evaluations. Written descriptions provided a tangible reality check. As with most jobs, many needed skills and tasks to be performed were not mentioned in the written descriptions. Nevertheless, the descriptions gave the women a marker and negotiating standard to use in advocating for themselves. In light of what was written, the women would often refer to discrepancies in bosses’ and coworkers’ expectations and criticisms of their abilities and of them as women performing the jobs . Sonja explained, As a matter of fact, one day I got off the phone with my supervisor, and I was brought to tears—which doesn’t happen too often. I was shaken up. I don’t even remember what conversation that was. It was just one of these, “You’re getting paid good money to do your job and I don’t think you’re doing your job.” And I said, “Well, name something that I’m not doing. Maybe I don’t know what I’m

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supposed to be doing. Tell me what it is.” “Well, I can’t think of anything right now, but I know. I have a notebook on you. I’m watching you, and I think you’re not doing your job.”

Each woman’s own personal assessment of her job performance was unwritten and informal. The examples were concrete but undocumented. They were proud of the work they did, aware of times their performance fell short of requirements or expectations, and eager to improve or compensate. However, the performance descriptions and evaluations they described to me were not documented and not available to repudiate supervisors’ written documentation. For the women, establishing that they were doing the job and deserved to stay was a daily chore. Being assessed as competent necessitated performing the job, but beyond that it included eliciting recognition, over-functioning, and not rocking the boat. The greatest frustration expressed by the women was not in their ability to do the job, but in the fact that they were not even given the chance to try. The women were either steered away from or simply excluded from performing the job in its entirety. Three of the women expressed their frustration as follows: • I feel good about all the work I’ve done because I know I do a good job. It’s just getting a chance to do it. • When somebody gives me a chance on the job, once they see that I can do it, then it’s okay. But as long as they don’t give me that chance, it’s like, I don’t have the opportunity to do it. • I didn’t have any disappointments in the job, not in the job itself. There were disappointments in how I was treated. I wasn’t afforded the same opportunities for advancement as men were.

SUMMARY The women’s “just wanting to do the job” includes doing the tasks of the job they were hired to do, developing and using skills that result in strong performance of the work, being able to perform and do the work, and demonstrating that ability in keeping with standards and in comparison to coworkers doing the same job. Though the desired product, service, or outcome of doing the job is the same for men and women, how that job is done and what personal assets and accommodations are required are often different for women than for the men in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. “Just doing the job” involves the ability to perform tasks and provide services, ensure personal safety, and manipulate the work environment under challenging and often adversarial conditions. When the women have these


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abilities, they can perform jobs that are personally and organizationally rewarding both in terms of recognition and compensation and in terms of production of goods and services. The next chapter looks at the compensation and benefits that the women receive for performing these jobs. Organizational policies and compensation combine with job performance to provide the infrastructure of the work environment.

Chapter 7

WALLS AND DOORWAYS: EMPLOYERS’ BARRIERS AND SUPPORTS TO JOB PERFORMANCE

Workplace policies and the organizational structure at once impose barriers and provide supports to job performance for blue-collar women. Though not static, workplace policies and procedures are designed to govern and organize all workers and frame the work environment. Workplace policies include written agreements and policies on compensation and benefits, and they outline the organizational structure of supervision, power, promotion, and discipline that governs work. For the women I interviewed, each workplace had policies and procedures that applied to all workers, regardless of sex. These policies were designed to be gender-neutral and comply with Title VII and the ancillary state and federal laws. Part of work or “doing the job” was operating within the confines of the organization. In this chapter I present some components (e.g., policies and compensation) of the workplace that blue-collar women identify as critical in their decisions to stay or leave jobs. As they talked, the individual women cited many of the same factors as being pivotal in their decisions to stay with the job. However, what was supportive for one woman may have posed a barrier for another. The differences were based on individual needs and the varied workplaces. For this reason, this chapter looks at the themes that emerged in the interviews but does not attempt to classify those themes as strictly beneficial or detrimental. Instead, a continuum is presented. The themes presented are pay and wages, job security and seniority, employee benefits, training and apprenticeships, promotions, nepotism, and affirmative action.

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PAY AND WAGES All the women were attracted to the jobs because of the pay and stayed in the jobs, at least in part, because of the pay. No one said that she was underpaid or unfairly paid, whether in general or in comparison to the men who performed the same jobs as the women did. Because the jobs were rigidly defined, the tasks to be performed were prescribed, and the women were working in the same positions as the men, the accompanying pay was the same for men and women. None of the women complained of pay inequities for doing the same job as a man. The women did not indicate any violations of the Equal Pay Act. The interviews did reinforce the fact that women often make more money and receive more compensation from male jobs than traditionally female jobs. This is even more disconcerting since many of the women possessed advanced skills and experience in traditionally female jobs as compared to an admitted lack of skills in the traditionally male occupations they were entering. The women in this study were well aware that if they left their traditionally male occupations and returned to the female labor force, which in many cases featured jobs for which the women had training and education, they would receive lower pay. Comparable worth is the quantification of the comparison of jobs requiring different skills. But the interviews revealed that there was not comparable worth between the traditionally male jobs and the traditionally female jobs. The traditionally male jobs would be evaluated as providing equal pay for equal work under the Equal Pay Act requirements because when the women did the same job as a man, they received the same pay as a man. Although the pay was the same for men and women doing the same job, there were still indications of pay inequities in overall annual income of men and women doing the same job. This is, in effect, the impact of distribution of overtime and holiday time. Supervisors are routinely responsible for the day-to-day distribution of work assignments. Through the assignment of overtime, men could in fact be paid more than women for the same job. Sonja provided this example of discriminatory overtime distribution: I said, “I really would like to be able to come in on Saturday for a few hours and clean up my meter rereads.” My supervisor said, “No, I can’t afford to give you any overtime. I’m not going to give you that overtime. You’re gonna have to find a way to get those done.” When I came in on Monday, one of the guys I worked with was filling out an overtime form. I said, “Oh, when did you work overtime?” Then I looked, and all the rereads I had were done. And I said, “Did you do those rereads?” And he kind of hemmed and hawed. Well, what happened was two guys had been told on Friday, “You know, if you want some overtime tomorrow, you can come and do Sonja’s rereads.”

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Beyond the matters of discrepancy in pay and the women’s worth in the female job market as compared to the male job market, another concern was their monetary value within their families. The women were paid the same as the men they worked with; however, the pay was compared to and in the context of the women’s family economic situation. When Angela became union president, her pay increased significantly from her previous female occupation’s salary. She said her husband liked the income but did not like the cost to the family since she was no longer home as much to perform her roles as housekeeper and cook. When Sandy’s husband threatened to leave her and the children, she could depend on her salary to prevent his threats of ruining her financially. For Joyce, when her family had to decide on childcare responsibilities, her income was twice that of her husband (also a security guard); hence, more of the responsibility for childcare fell on him. For the three women who were married and who mentioned the effect of their pay on their husbands, the husbands felt threatened and questioned their adequacy when their wives’ income exceeded theirs, particularly since their wives performed men’s jobs. BENEFITS Employee benefits are compensation afforded workers beyond their monetary pay. The benefits most often cited and valued by the women in this study were health care, paid leave, education, and retirement. Benefits have assigned monetary value. They are computed and included when determining the total monetary rewards of a job (e.g., in Title VII lawsuits). Additionally, employers’ ability to “bundle” benefits brings them discounts based on the volume they purchase, making employerprovided benefits of greater value to an employee, considering how much more it would cost the employee to have to go and purchase the benefit services independently. For the individual employee, this makes the value of the benefits greater than the actual cost to the employer purchasing them. As with pay, the women indicated that the benefits in traditionally male blue-collar jobs were superior to those they received in secretarial and socialservice jobs. EEO law guarantees women the same employee benefits as men in the jobs, in the same way it guarantees equal pay. However, what these benefits mean to women is not necessarily the same as what they mean to men. The Supreme Court has decided that discrimination in health-care benefits, retirement, or leave is forbidden under Title VII, in that such benefits must be equal. In some cases providing the “same” benefit results in a negative disparate impact.

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Health Care All the women considered health-insurance coverage essential and of great value to them personally and to their families. Two of the women specifically cited health insurance as the benefit that attracted them to their jobs. For most of the women, the insurance offered by blue-collar employers exceeded coverage that was offered through previous employment or their spouses’ employers. Larger and union-represented businesses offered health insurance to employees at little or no cost to employees. Often the plans offered more and better coverage than what smaller companies and agencies offered employees. This was true of the social-service agency Chris had worked for and the law office where Carol had worked. For Carol, a single parent, health insurance at the post office was a financial benefit providing security from possible and feared catastrophic illnesses for her and her daughter. Chris described the difference in health coverage as follows: I had very little health insurance [at the social service agency]. They just couldn’t. They just didn’t have it. When I went to the state, I had dental, eyeglass, and a prescription card.

Further, health insurance kept women from leaving their jobs since they saw it as an essential provision. For Cathy, this was the tie that bound her to the job despite persistent harassment and hostility at work. Although she had considered starting her own dog-grooming business, Cathy indicated that she felt bound to stay at the public utility because she could not afford health insurance on her own. Another characteristic of blue-collar health care in the larger companies is the on-site company nurse or doctor. Although these services were conveniently accessed at the workplace during work hours (at no cost), women approached these health-care services with suspicion. Company medical staff were regarded as agents of the company charged with assuring productivity, promoting return-to-work, and policing disability and worker’s compensation claims. The women did not think that the company medical staff held the women’s personal health and safety as primary concerns. They felt that company medical staff’s treatment of women was disparate— and in some cases even intrusive and harassing. Women preferred to separate their health-care practitioners from the company. However, if they were hurt on the job, their health care was subject to company policies, which often required them to report to company medical staff. For example, Mary hurt her back at work and reported the following experience: I’d say it’s different with women; [the medical staff] think, “it’s more like they’re lazy and they want to get out of work and go home.” For example, I hurt my back

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at work. I got to the emergency room because the medical department, the nurse, sent me. When I got back to the plant, the doctor said, “Why did you go to the emergency room?” I said, “Because the medical department sent me.” “Well I can’t understand how your back could be so bad you had to go to the emergency room.” Then he said, “Can you bend over?” I said, “Yes, I can bend over. That hasn’t been a problem. It’s getting back up that’s the problem.” He said, “Let me see you bend over.” So I bent over. Then a man that worked for the company came in. He sent me to a transitional work site not doing my regular job. When I was at the transitional site, a man that had a back problem came in to the site Friday. He had been out for eight weeks. I was off for four days. Do you think that there’s a difference there? A man gets hurt at work and it’s, “Oh, wow, he got hurt.” When I got hurt that night, they were all walking around mocking me, out saying, “Oh, was all your vacation time used up?”

The women suspected company medical staff of gender bias and gendered assumptions about women’s ability to do men’s work as well as about the women’s motivation for seeking care for injuries. This led to reported differential medical treatment, with staff saying different things to men and women and providing different work assignments to accommodate illness and injuries, depending upon whether the ill or injured employee was a woman or a man. Though the health benefit was equally provided to both genders, the practitioners were suspected of engaging in the same discriminatory and discriminate practices as supervisors and coworkers and of contributing to the overall sex-based hostility in the company environment. Education Education was an employee benefit for some. Employers paid tuition and, in some cases, accommodated class schedules in work schedules. Some of the employers offered tuition reimbursement regardless of whether the course was directly related to the employee’s job. Many of the women were pursuing and continuing their formal education while in their jobs. Moreover, the women used education as a support for job security. Education represented a way to increase job security. Job security, however, did mean security in the job a woman was currently performing and most often did not even mean security with the same employer in a different job. Education provided the future security that the women could get a job that (1) would provide an acceptable income level regardless of employer and (2) would not require them to endure the hostility or physical and mental stress that they experienced in male-dominated blue-collar workplaces. Mary did not want to be trapped in the hostile environment she was experiencing at the auto-assembly plant. Pay and benefits combined with payment of school costs meant she could remain self-supporting while she worked toward personal career goals at her employer’s expense.

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And I can go to school. I guess now it’s okay; I’ll get even. You pay for my education, and you pay my paycheck and you pay my benefits, and when I get my degree, I can walk out and say “stick it.”

The women utilized education benefits for a variety of pursuits. Claire, a painter, was studying to be a dental hygienist and completing the requirements for an associate’s degree. Beth, an electrical planner, was completing her bachelor’s in social work and was anticipating the completion of her master’s degree. Sonja, a meter reader, wanted to stay with the company but was interested in the fields of employee counseling and consumer advocacy, for which she needed a master’s degree. Mary, an assembly-line worker, was taking courses on weekends toward her associate of arts degree and certification as a substance-abuse counselor. The automotive company and union Mary worked for offered college-level labor-relations courses for employees and accommodated attendance in their work schedules. Cathy, a customer-service representative and executive board member in a union, was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business. She was enrolled in an alternative bachelor’s-level university that gave credit for work experience and offered most courses through correspondence and independent study. Gretchen, a construction laborer, was a doctoral candidate, having worked in traditionally male blue-collar jobs throughout her educational pursuits. After completing their education goals, all of these women would be qualified for jobs outside those defined as blue-collar or skilled trades, jobs that proffered similar compensation to that offered by the traditionally male jobs they were presently working. For some of the women, education meant taking courses necessary for advanced certifications or licenses in the traditionally blue-collar male occupations. Education is different from apprenticeship and training, as it is not conducted on the job or directly related to increasing skills used in the trades. Nancy, a safety inspector, completed courses in electrical engineering in order to advance in her job. Sally was pursuing advanced trucking licensing because of the economic and occupational opportunities this would provide. I got a class A license, so I can drive a tractor-trailer. I took a refresher course because I had already had prior experience in driving the tractor-trailer trucks, and I took a 20-hour refresher course, went and got my license, and I now hold a class A trucking license. That’s a two-part system—a tractor and a trailer that connects to it. Or I can haul triples and doubles, which you will find on the thruway. I already had my class B license, so I could drive dump trucks up to 55,000 pounds and school buses. To drive school buses you have to have a license that states you can carry passengers. And not very many people have that. And so when the union found out I had it, they said they have been looking for Teamsters that had the

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class B with the 2 license on it because they needed drivers for the pipeline for buses and they couldn’t find anybody. The job working the pipeline pays $25.00 an hour. I have lots of options.

Retirement Retirement pensions were another benefit offered by employers to the workers I interviewed. It was an incentive to remain on the job and endure otherwise adversarial work conditions. Other benefits were of equal value once they were granted, but retirement accrued in value based on length of service and wages earned. Retirement benefits were perhaps the most powerful incentive for ensuring that women would endure adverse work conditions for long periods of time. Further, the longer they endured, the greater the incentive to stay, making the situation increasingly oppressive. Women would risk personal harm, family stability, and their own mental health for years into the future for the promise of increasing retirement benefits. Cathy said, September 30, it will be 10 years. This division, everything has changed so much—so I’m trying. I’d like to ride it out here. I have 10 more years to get 20 in, but I’m vested now so, I just take it one day at a time now.

Some women were concerned about the physical demands of the job as they aged, largely based on their observations of men’s deteriorating physical capabilities over time. A further differential impact on women with regard to pensions was the fact that they had less opportunity for promotions into jobs with more supervisory and administrative responsibility, jobs that were less labor-intensive. Additionally, in order to reap the long-term rewards of retirement, women could not take extended leaves for child-rearing or family-care responsibilities beyond the lengths of time set out by the Family Leave Act or the individual employer’s family-leave policies. Women elected to stay or were trapped in lower-paying jobs, as discussed in this chapter, which effected their access to alternative schedules, training, and promotions and retirement benefits that are based on wages and seniority. Retirement systems, though apparently neutral, did not allow for or compensate women’s traditional family roles, late entry into traditionally male blue-collar jobs, physical limitations, and limited access to promotions. ALTERNATIVE SCHEDULES Work hours were far from routine for the women. Most of the jobs required flexibility within the women’s home schedules and families for

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the women to meet the demands of the jobs. Although the pay was hourly, the individuals’ hours varied. This meant swing shifts, evening and night shifts, mandatory overtime and holidays, rotating days off, and seasonal lay-offs. What was not flexible was the workplace accommodation (or lack of accommodation) for the inconvenience that these variations imposed on the women who were often the primary caretakers for children and family members or who had other social responsibilities. However, for some women variable schedules were one of the attractions of the jobs. Mandatory Overtime The work schedules of these women were often in direct conflict to the traditional family responsibilities that they had as caretakers prior to taking the jobs. When Carol first came to work at the post office sorting mail, she was required to come to work early or stay late with advance notice of only a few hours, making childcare for a preschool-aged child complicated and difficult. Prior to taking her job as union president, Angela advised her family that she would have evening responsibilities and would no longer be able to meet her family responsibility of meal provision. For women with personal and family responsibilities, the cost of overtime often exceeded the compensation. So in fact, it not only zeroed out overtime but in some cases also cut the pay the women realized from their regular pay. For example, overtime meant having to pay for childcare or other services necessary to provide for the care of family members they were responsible for. Overtime and increased pay are perceived as a benefit of blue-collar jobs. For some workers, and women in particular, this may not be the case. When overtime is mandatory, it becomes a problem and may have a disparate impact on women. Seasonal Work Work schedules fluctuated in response to seasonal or workload fluctuations, and seasonal fluctuations and variable workloads are characteristic of some blue-collar jobs. When I interviewed Sally, she was laid off until spring, based on the seasonal nature of the construction industry. Her high income during the work season made her lay-off a welcome opportunity to rest, attend to her children and husband, and complete household remodeling projects. Gretchen’s job as a construction laborer in a state park coordinated perfectly with her availability while in school full-time. She worked full-time at the park seasonally while in school for more than nine years. As a full-time seasonal employee, she accrued benefits and seniority.

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As union president, Angela promoted the seasonal layoffs of the construction industry as a benefit for women to have time to prepare for the holidays and spend large amounts of time with their children while maintaining benefits and seniority. Leaves of Absence Most workplaces offered “leaves of absence.” These leaves were unpaid but allowed the women to take 1 to 12 months of leave while retaining their benefits and seniority. Beth used a leave of absence to go to school full-time and complete her bachelor’s degree after years of part-time studies. Chris was granted two one-year leaves of absence from the highway crew while she pursued her master’s degree. These leaves also made it possible for the women to try an alternative career and have the option of returning to their current positions. Leaves of absence are particularly attractive because they are not stigmatizing like sick leaves are, and the employee’s time is not accountable to the company, as in disability or worker’s-compensation leave. In many cases the leaves were valued breaks from the work routine. Whether to return to work at the end of the leave is the employee’s decision, with no consequences for resignation other than loss of the job. Although there is no pay, the nonstigmatic nature and job security of the leave override the loss of income in many cases. For some of the women, a leave of absence was requested but not available. Although leaves of absence defined as such may be granted for a restricted list of reasons, there are other policies and protections in some workplaces that guarantee reemployment after an employee chooses to leave a position. Peggy wanted a leave when she took a job as a teacher. She was not sure she would prefer teaching to police work; she really loved police work. I tried to get a leave of absence, and they wouldn’t grant me one. They had rules. A leave of absence was for a sick child or family member or having a newborn at home. And that was it . . . so I didn’t fit the criteria. So I’ve been told they’d take me back in a year. That’s civil service. So I left on my own volition.

Leave policies varied from employer to employer. The broader and more open the policy, the greater the benefit for women. Leave was a way that women could individually deal with many problems of the hostility at work without involving the employer. They were helpful in resolving, testing, or completing family, education, alternative-employment, mentalhealth, and health issues.

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Rotating Shifts Many of the women, particularly in their early years on the jobs, were required to work rotating shifts. These were prescribed hours (usually eight a day) that allowed for advanced planning and family accommodation but were still difficult to balance with personal and family needs and responsibilities. According to Sandy, When I first started, I worked five days on, two days off—the next week, six days straight, two days off. It’s called the wheel. Nothing was stable, and it takes a lot out of you. You wonder, “What day is it?” And I have to work 11 to 7—midnights. You know, you have no stability. You do what they want you to, when they want you to. You are just like a little bouncing ball, and that’s what they do to you.

This is not to be confused with mandatory overtime, or being on call. This was a routine and predicated schedule. However, it was mandatory in most cases with the most inconvenient schedules assigned to the newer workers, since choice regarding shifts and schedules came with seniority. Once again, this has a greater impact on women since they are relatively new to the male labor-force and are more likely to hold a disproportionate number of the lower-seniority jobs. For some women I interviewed, the alternative schedules were a benefit. Jobs lower in the hierarchy were characterized by less conformity to the nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday norms of the business world. In some cases the attraction to the variations kept women in lower-paying and skilled jobs in order to benefit from the family accommodations and financial relief of the alternative schedules. For Joyce, working evenings and nights meant saving money on childcare. I considered taking a meter-reading job just to get out for a while and to get a day job. A day job means to pay the babysitter $400 a month, and the baby’s at the babysitter nine hours a day, so I’m not sure that’s the right way to go either.

TRAINING AND APPRENTICESHIPS Job skills in blue-collar jobs are learned and developed over time through informal training by coworkers, formal employer-sponsored training, and apprenticeship programs. The women acknowledged a sex-based lack of preemployment job skills, making on-the-job skill development even more critical. The women expected and needed to be provided with training and apprenticeships in order to acquire the necessary skill levels for performing the job.

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Informal Training Informal training in occupations nontraditional for women is dependent on women’s relationships with male coworkers. One way for coworkers to limit women’s ability to succeed was to deny or limit the quality of the informal coworker training. As Beth said about her coworkers, “If they don’t train me, I won’t make it.” The quality of the training was in the hands of coworkers, and the quality for women being trained by men is often different from the quality of training for men being trained by men. Beth further explained, We’re very dependent on these guys. We go through a two-year training program, and we’re assigned to different guys throughout the two years. Some guys are very helpful. Some guys are very resistant to having women with them at all.

Formal Training and Apprenticeships The women felt that formal training afforded them better opportunities for on-the-job skill development than did relying on coworker training. The results were acquired skills with certifications, resulting in opportunities for promotion and advancement. Chris described the training for the state highway crew as incremental, understandable, and accessible: I was working my way up. I got my license, and I was promoted to driver to drive large trucks and haul hazardous materials. They bring trainers in from the central office, and they would train all the new people who didn’t have a license, and I fit in that program. I wasn’t blocked as far as that goes.

Formal training and apprenticeships were afforded based on prior job performance, passing of tests, and affirmative action. Mary explained her decision to apply for an apprenticeship as an electrician. Every so often, they have applications for it, and I always put it off because I thought that I wasn’t smart enough. The test is real hard, and they only take the top third of the test for the interview. Then there’s four years of school and working on the floor as an apprentice. But when you’re done, it’s a national certification, and you end up a journeyman. So I decided to take the test and apply.

Additionally, Mary’s decision to apply was based on her assessment of her likelihood of being accepted. The apprenticeship was included in the

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company’s affirmative-action plan. She described her assessment of the selection process as follows: There will be 15 hired. Out of that, so many have to be a minority. There are no blacks that applied. There are three GM women from other plants who put in for the apprenticeship. And I don’t know what the national affirmative-action plan is—I can’t remember what the numbers are—but I would say it would be pretty good that all three of the women would be chosen.

Alternative Training Strategies Although the initial effects of inadequate training were indicative of the hostility of the workplace and gendered socialization, women devised ways to obtain the skills required to do the jobs. For the women who did not receive training from the company or male coworkers, two strategies for obtaining needed training were cited. One strategy was for the women to teach themselves. Angela went back to the basics to learn about construction. Then there’s construction. There’s so much that you have to know. I even bought a kid’s videotape about heavy equipment and everything. I just wanted to learn. I said, “I want to know everything that there is to know.”

Cathy determined that the company was not providing the training necessary for her to do her job. She was expected to rely on informal on-the-job training. She also stated that coworkers, although sometimes unavailable and unwilling to train her anyway, were often no better trained than she was. She described her technique for teaching herself on the job. I have to know an awful lot of things, and I was thrown into this job with absolutely no training. I can do anything I put my mind to. If I’ve got something in writing or someone credible to get information from, I’ll take notes two or three times, and I’ve got it. I’m all set.

Beth, on the other hand, devised a different strategy by relying on female coworkers for training. When she came to the department, she was the first woman; however, within a few years there were five women. As a group, they would all ask each other questions first, and then go to the men if none of the other women were knowledgeable. The long-term results of acquiring training were the development not only of skills but also of self-confidence and resiliency. Male coworkers were resistant to training women to do their jobs. In order to compensate for this, women taught themselves, relied on other women, and used formal training and apprenticeships.

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PROMOTIONS AND TRANSFERS Most of the women aspired to promotions and transfers within their company. Such opportunities were attractive because they usually resulted in increased pay, authority, autonomy, regularity in hours, skill development, job security, or a combination of these things. Seeking this advancement involved finding out that positions were available, fulfilling the requirements for the qualifications, and being recommended for the positions. Promotions and transfers were based on employee requests, job performance and completion of training programs, supervisor recommendations, seniority, civil-service tests, and employer exams. The women perceived that they were at a distinct disadvantage for consideration for promotions and in many cases were unable to overcome the multiple obstacles. Whether or not women applied for promotions depended on their finding out what the job entailed, believing that they were capable of doing it, and deciding that it was a job they wanted to do. Information that factored into their decisions came from observation of others doing the job, conversations with coworkers, or direction from human resources offices. In order to get promoted, the women had to know about the job and be interested in the job. Many of the promotions and transfer were not in direct, progressive job lines but required bidding for jobs in other departments and performing different types of work than the women were performing in their current jobs. For Beth this meant going from a security guard to a meter-repair worker to an electric planner. For Cathy this meant moving from a secretarial position to a position as a customer representative. Joyce, a security guard, was considering applying for grounds maintenance. Carol went from mail-sorting to working in the garage to serving as postmaster. Sandy went from being a parking-meter attendant to joining criminal investigations to working in code enforcement. Coworkers and employers often discouraged the women from applying for traditionally male jobs by stressing the negatives of the job, particularly the physical and environmental impediments. Women were even encouraged to go from traditionally male jobs back into female jobs, devaluing or contradicting the women’s achievements and satisfaction with their present positions. The personnel office warned Carol away from being a letter carrier. I was warned away from being a letter carrier by personnel saying, “You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to be that. You better take the clerk test. You’ll be a lot happier inside as clerk. You don’t want to go out in all kinds of weather.” Because you took a clerk exam, the exam you took covered clerk or carrier, so you could be hired as a clerk/carrier and then go in to “figure out” what your job was going to be when you got there. They would tell you what you were going to be

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doing based on the openings at the time. If you had a choice, they would say, “You can do that, but why would you want to? You have those dogs, and the snow and the cold. You can be in here and it’s warm.”

The problem did not seem to be that the women were unable to meet the qualifications, but more often that they did not even try or apply. As women were promoted into nontraditional positions, their example prompted other women to apply for those same jobs. However, once they decided they were interested in the promotion, the women did not have the same opportunities or qualifications for promotion as the men. Beth described the long-term benefits of having women as role models who can encourage other women to pursue promotions into jobs within the company that traditionally are exclusively male. I think I mentioned the difficulty of the standards. They were all men in the department. The girls started to realize that’s a good job and started taking their training, all their technical classes, and then all of a sudden, there are five jobs left, and the only ones qualified were the girls. Then I think like the next five people in were all girls. And that really hit them squarely between the eyes.

Promotional jobs involve multitasking and higher-level skills. In order to demonstrate capabilities to perform tasks, workers must be given the opportunity to (1) develop the skills required and (2) show they have the aptitude or ability to perform the work. Women were given less challenging work assignments and less variety in work than men in similar jobs or at the same level jobs, making the women less qualified and visible for promotions. Peggy described her disadvantage for promotion as follows: Before I was eligible for the civil service test in the years—there’s a certain number of years you have to put in before you take the test—I saw a lot of movement, and they transferred the men to criminal investigations, drugs, other areas of the police department to get a more well-rounded work experience and career opportunities. I saw that they would ignore my transfer request. I would feel they . . . ignored [me] because I would see men with less time go to these places where I had requests in for consistently.

Whereas transfers and skill development were largely dependent on supervisory recommendations, promotions in blue-collar skilled jobs usually relied on set standards, requirements, and procedures. The more objective and clear the criteria and process, the more equal the opportunity for promotion. The process for meeting these requirements went beyond becoming aware of the requirements (e.g., civil-service test, seniority) to finding out what the male standards were and meeting or beating the

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standards (e.g., completing the required years of service, taking the test). Peg described the situation at the police department: The promotion to sergeant, lieutenant, and captain were all civil-service tests, so that’s open, competitive tests. The first promotion test I took I aced. I placed very high among the men, so then they couldn’t deny me a promotion the way they had denied transfers.

More often, it was the combination of tests and recommendations that led to nominations. The women reported that their relationships with their supervisors often controlled their access to promotions, whether the control was through processing the requests or making recommendations. Peggy stated that the way to get the promotion is by not rocking the boat. I did my job. I didn’t challenge them, and I didn’t challenge them when I saw my transfer requests were ignored. But I did the job I was assigned to do, and I put my whole heart and soul into it, and I worked very hard.

Overall, the women felt that getting promoted and transferred was more difficult and less likely for them than for men. They felt that their best chances were through understanding and working within the existing system, which preferenced males. They could do their job differently than men to meet performance standards, but when it came to promotions and transfers, they not only had to do what the men did, but they also had to do it the male way and meet or exceed the male standard. UNION BARGAINING AGREEMENT The unions provided the women with a written bargaining agreement, prescribed policies and benefits, and procedures and support for grievances against the employer. Women in this study preferred union jobs to management positions because, overall, the policies and protections afforded by their union status benefited them as employees and as women. Though the bargaining agreement was exhaustive in covering a range of rights and protections for covered workers, there were two key benefits that the women noted in the interviews. The grievance process and seniority were benefits of the union afforded both men and women that helped women to counter sex-based discrimination. Grievances For women in traditionally male jobs and in male-dominated workplaces, the union grievance process provided a significant workplace protection

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against discrimination and harassment. The courts have clarified that Title VII only protects against sex-based harassment and is not a general civility code protecting against harassment between coworkers (Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Serv. [1998]). The union grievance process is a general civility code. It is not the purpose of this book to debate the oppression and harassment of coworkers in general, but for women experiencing sex-based discrimination, there is often stigma attached to asserting their Title VII and equal employment opportunity protections. The grievance process allows women to make claims without having to demonstrate the sexual nature of the offensive action. Sonja had questioned whether the supervisor was harassing and targeting her because of her gender or just because he didn’t like her for some other reason. When she asked the union for help, underlying understanding in the conversation was that there were sex-based violations but that the complaint did not need to be addressed under Title VII protections. Because she was represented by the union, Sonja could pursue a union grievance as an alternative to an EEO claim or in addition to an EEO claim. I just told one of my union representatives, “You have to do something—‘cause if you don’t do something, I’m going to take care of it on my own. I’ll get a lawyer because this guy has made it impossible for me to work.”

The grievance procedure offers an additional protection to Title VII. Sally filed both a grievance and an EEO complaint. Sonja wanted to avoid the stigma of being a “man-hater” and filed a grievance. The protections of the NLRA and Title VII are complementary and when coordinated extend equal employment opportunity for women. Filing any formal complaint was stressful for the women and placed them in adversarial positions with supervisors and the company and often with coworkers. The women avoided these formal procedures as pursuing them compromised the women’s primary desire to just do their jobs. Seniority Seniority is a defining characteristic of blue-collar union work. Seniority is “a privileged status attained by a continuous length of service” (Webster’s , 1969). The women often cited the seniority system as protecting them once they were in the job, thus allowing them to compete fairly for traditionally male positions in the company. Sonja, Beth, Mary, and Sandy directly attributed their job positions to the protections of the union seniority system. For Sandy, seniority had an added benefit: although she did not change jobs, seniority allowed her to attain a work schedule that accommodated her socially and physically.

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Right now, I have my seniority in. When I first started, I worked . . . the wheel. . . . Nothing was stable, and it takes a lot out of you . . . You do what they want, when they want you to. You know, you are just like a little bouncing ball . . . With seniority, I think I’m settled in a Monday-through-Fridays, weekends-off [schedule]. When I used to work the wheel, I used to have to take a day just to rest, so I actually would end up with one day off to do something with the kids. Your body is constantly rolling. It affects you mentally and physically when you are on the wheel. And they do that when you first start.

Seniority is a system that is excluded from equal employment opportunity protections under Title VII. Many of the women started their jobs at entry-level positions with the intention of working their way up in the company. Policy on seniority was the mechanism that made this possible and predictable. However, day-to-day life on the job still involved interpersonal competitiveness. Sonja explained, I mean, in meter reading, everybody’s trying to scratch and paw to stay in the company.

The seniority system provided confirmation and confidence that, in fact, women deserved to be there when supervisors and coworkers challenged their ability based on gender. The seniority system meant that a woman was on the job because she continued to perform the job and had done it long enough that she was qualified to stay. This was particularly important when companies faced layoffs and downsizing. The fact that a woman was in a position because of seniority meant she had reached a status equal or comparable to the men, even if she had originally gotten the job due to preferential hiring or affirmative action. The women had to have performed the job at the same standard for performance as any man and had to be eligible for the job based on seniority to avoid layoffs. Having seniority combined with having met performance standards outweighed any concern the women had over the fact that there were fewer women on the job and they had less seniority than the majority of men they worked with. In this regard, in the context of Title VII protection, the equal treatment that seniority provided overrode any concern over the disparate impact on women that preferencing seniority in employment decisions might impose on them. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Many of the women were hired because of affirmative-action mandates. Once they were in their jobs, affirmative action gave them access to training and increased job security. Such benefits of affirmative action far

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exceeded the protections of Title VII. Affirmative action notified the women that they were in demand for jobs and countered the informal messages and steering by coworkers and supervisors that discouraged them from pursuing promotions and more highly skilled and paying jobs within the company. Mary, however, described affirmative action in promotions as a “catch 22” for women. Regardless of an edge because of affirmative action, I’m really proud of the work that I can do and that I know that I’m smart enough to achieve other things. I talk to other people that have come up. They say, “Oh I hear you had an interview. Well, there’s a couple of women here doing this job, and there is actually one of them that isn’t bad.” I think that’s where I think affirmative action’s a Catch 22, you’re letting people in that shouldn’t be in or that are not capable of doing the job, but you put them in there anyway to fill a statistic. And then there are capable people that belong in a program, but they get mistreated once they’re in that program because everyone treats them like they are only filling that statistic. The fact is that they actually have filled a statistic. As a woman, you know you’ re a number, and you are filling what needs to be filled. Often you don’t know anything. The attitude is that you’re not going to know anything, so we’re not going to bother with you. And what I see what happens a lot is that they don’t put the energy or time into a woman, or in this case women or black or Hispanic, because they don’t have quite the reading ability or previous skills that someone else does, even though they may be just as intelligent in every other way. They might be more mechanically inclined than someone else might be, and they tend to help the others out.

Although affirmative action had a positive effect on women being promoted, there was an unintended backlash once the women were in their higher positions. Once again reliant on coworkers for the informal training once in the new positions, they faced possibly being further ostracized and denied the on-the-job training characteristic of and necessary in blue-collar jobs. This cyclical process is ongoing as women aspire to climb the ladder within companies into increasingly complex, skilled, and technical positions. NEPOTISM AND “THE GOOD-OLD-BOY NETWORK” The women felt that nepotism and the “good-old-boy network” provided more access to promotions, transfers, and better work assignments. These relationships were even more important once women were on the job than they were when the women were procuring their jobs. Though many of the women, as previously described, had known someone and had benefited from this during the hiring process, this was not the case during their

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employment. Sandy compared the on-the-job situation for men versus women as community police officers as follows: It’s who you know. If you know somebody, you get an inside job. If you don’t, you’re on the road training . . . We know. We have some women like I said that have their Masters degree and teach and this and that but they still want you to put your time in on the road and see like it takes them longer to get up. For most guys—they put six months on the road and if they know somebody, you know, especially if they think you are smart and they like you, they pull you in and they put you inside and you get a Monday-through-Friday, nine-to-five. That’s called a cushiony job. They [the men] get it a lot quicker.

Knowing someone was important for both men and women. What was disparate was that men were more likely to know someone. However, it seems that the experience for men and women who did not know someone was similar. Peg met her husband on the job. He was a police officer of the same rank as she was. I’m not from this area. I have no family here. And there are a lot of family lines in the city police department. So they take care of their own and they intermarry. So my husband and I are pretty much out in left field. We don’t have a lot of connections. So I couldn’t really be guaranteed that they would make accommodations for us.

Nepotism and politics, as Peg described them, did not tend to result in blatant violations of the formal organizational policies. These factors more often resulted in opportunities and accommodations so that employees could accumulate experience and meet family and personal needs—and subsequently enhance job opportunities. This was particularly critical for women as they attempted to coordinate work and family demands. While in the workplace, some women did make inroads into the good-old-boy network. The person the women often connected to was their direct supervisor or “boss.” But even when bosses were supportive, they often appropriated themselves as father figures for the women and assumed the role of protector instead of promoter. Sandy described her relationship with her sergeant: My sergeant personally thinks I belong to him. Men—they captivate and are territorial. My sergeant reminds me of my father figure. They think you are personally theirs. And I told him, “I need to get out of here.” He said, “You don’t,” and I think he said to me [that] I really don’t know what I need. But I know what I need.

The women indicated that their supervisors enjoyed this protective, paternal role. This made promotions and transfers even more threatening

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to a woman’s supervisor. A transfer, promotion, or even development of skills that might exceed the supervisor’s capabilities would result in a sense of loss for the supervisor. If the woman were to rise to the same level as or a higher level than the supervisor, the relationship would change from a father-daughter dynamic to a relationship between peers. Over time, for women, knowing a supervisor or someone in control of promotions could end up being more detrimental than helpful, underscoring a disparate impact on women. On the other hand, women described not being connected and not being related as an unrecognized or undervalued disadvantage that could lead to sex-based discrimination. Those employees who were not connected and could not rely on “favors” for advancement were qualified and promoted based solely on their ability and were forced to meet or exceed the standards set for male coworkers. However, the women felt that the strength of nepotism usually overshadowed any recognition or consideration of an employee who had gotten there on her own and who was not bound by politics and nepotism. An exception was Angela, who was promoted to union president specifically because she was not related or connected. She replaced predecessors who had for decades indulged in corrupt union practices of nepotism and returning of favors between contractors and union officials. I don’t have that. Okay, everybody in my family is gainfully employed outside of the construction industry. So I don’t have palms that I have to grease. Or I don’t have to massage anybody. You know what I’m saying? There’s none of that.

SUMMARY The women stayed in blue-collar, traditionally male jobs because of the challenges, security, and opportunities that the jobs offer. There was no question that the women wanted to do the job and perform the work. Once they were doing the job, it was often the security that tied them to the particular occupation and, moreover, to the particular employer and workplace. Security included the pay, health care, retirement, seniority, and union representation. Security increased with time on the job, since in most cases the longer a woman worked at that job, the greater the pay, benefits, and seniority. Opportunities included alternative schedules, education, training, apprenticeships, promotions, and union membership. These same factors, when not flexible or sensitive to women workers’ complex and multiple family, work, and community responsibilities, become reasons that women leave the jobs.

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These women’s greatest concern regarding disparate employer policies and practices was with regard to promotions. Promotions were tied to training, tests and standards, job performance, and relationships with supervisors and coworkers. The women were at a disadvantage as compared to men with regard to all of these factors. The disadvantages were both subtle and overt, but nonetheless, they all pointed to the need for affirmative action and personal advocacy in order to counter the systemic barriers.

Chapter 8

GATEKEEPERS TO OPPORTUNITY AND PROTECTORS AGAINST DISCRIMINATION: MANAGEMENT, SUPERVISORS, AND UNIONS

A bureaucratic hierarchical structure is characteristic of, but not peculiar to, blue-collar workplaces. Workers do the work and managers or supervisors assign and monitor production of goods and services—work. The hierarchical structure includes defined chains of command, promotion procedures, and complaint procedures. As such, some individuals are employed to perform tasks (i.e., the workers), and others are deployed to enforce completion of those tasks (i.e., the bosses). This chapter focuses on these gatekeepers who both formally and informally assure or deny compensation and opportunity: the managers, the supervisors, and the union. As policing agents, they are responsible for protecting employees from and helping them to fight discrimination, harassment, and abuse experienced at work. Yet these individuals are also in a position to instigate, ignore, or encourage discrimination and harassment at work. As gatekeepers, they are in a position to assure, promote, or block women’s access to equal opportunity. These are the persons the courts hold liable if violations of Title VII occur. THE SUPERVISOR According to the occupational handbook, “Blue-collar Worker Supervisor” is a distinct and distinctive job category. The “Blue-collar Worker Supervisor is responsible for getting the work done. . . . They organize the workers’ activities and make any necessary adjustments to ensure that work continues uninterrupted. Supervisors also train new workers and ensure the existence of a safe work environment” (BLS, 2002).

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The women I interviewed indicated that supervisors or “bosses” directly impacted the employees’ ability to perform the job, enjoy the job, and be transferred and promoted out of the job. The supervisors controlled extensive components of work, including the assignment of work, allocation and inspection of the equipment used, distribution of overtime hours, granting of vacation, approval of time sheets, reimbursement for expenses, and formulation of crew assignments. Because of the bureaucracy, which is based on a chain of command, the supervisor separated the worker from the upper management. The supervisor was the wall or doorway between “the company” and the worker. This shield was at times protective and supportive, and at other times it was a barrier. This largely depended on the interpersonal relationship between the supervisor and the individual woman. All of the organizations were hierarchical. Company employees not represented by the union or working in jobs not represented by the union were referred to as “management.” For most of the women, their boss or direct supervisor was a member of the union, although some supervisors were management. Regardless, the boss or supervisor was the direct representative of the company whom the women answered to and usually dealt with on a daily basis. The boss was the person who set the tone for the workplace. The boss has a lot of power. He sets a lot of the tone for what’s going to be tolerated and what’s not going to be tolerated. Even if he doesn’t have any direct dayto-day contact with you, they still have to report administratively to him. So he still has a lot to do with how our offices are run. It’s just night and day what your life is like if you’re in an office where they’re pretty much calm.

Women talked about bosses both as people with whom they had to interact on a personal level and as agents of the company. It was often difficult to separate the two roles; however, there was a distinction. As supervisors and bosses, they were agents of the company charged with assuring productivity and instituting company policies. As people, they were men complete with prejudices and personal styles that determined the way company policies and responsibilities were delivered and represented. (All of the women were supervised by men.) If the women got along with their supervisors, they excelled at work. For women whose supervisors had made it clear from the start that they did not want a woman in the job, it was an uphill battle from the onset of work, but at least the women could address and deal with the hostility and adversity from the start. For other women, the supervisor was not as forthcoming, and the supervisor’s distaste and disregard for women in men’s jobs was revealed and built over time, usually starting in a matter of a few days or weeks. Sonja said,

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I’ve found that there has been constant badgering from almost the second or third week that I was in the department, until it finally got to a head a few months ago.

Yet for others, the supervisor did not become adversarial until the woman’s abilities were proven. Once the women demonstrated that they had skill levels comparable or competitive to the supervisors’ skills, some supervisors curtailed the women’s ability to succeed and achieve on the job, thereby diminishing the likelihood of promotion or job status that would make them equal to the supervisor. Regardless of when the supervisors became problematic, the women described common characteristics of good and bad supervision. Good Supervisors During the interviews the women described qualifications, characteristics, attributes, and skills of good supervisors. Gretchen defined a good supervisor as one who is skilled and experienced in the job, who knows the job, and who previously did the job and came up through the same ranks as have the workers under his supervision. My boss comes from union. He is skilled. He is an 18-year journeyman machinist. He is unquestionably skilled. I just call him Mr. Blue-Collar America. He has his finger on the pulse of that whole group of people. He is the archetype of blue-collar guys. He started at GM and worked there as a machine repairman. He did a regular full apprenticeship at GM. He even worked the assembly line for a while. And then he worked for like 12 years at one place as a maintenance machinist.

Sonja describes a good supervisor as being secure in the fact that he belongs in the position, as acting from a position of authority, as knowing what he is doing, and as not being threatened when a worker questions him. This guy is in a management position. He has authority, knows what the hell he’s doing, and is very secure in the way he presents himself—he’s not threatened by me questioning him. If you question him, he’ll say, “Oh, let me look into that.”

For Sally a good supervisor monitors job performance. She describes good supervision as follows: If I’m not doing the job right, then take me aside and explain it to me. If I don’t do it right, or I do something wrong, take me aside and tell [me] if I don’t straighten up my act, I’m gonna lose my job. But don’t use this as a tool against me.

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The most critical role of the supervisor, as explained by the women, was to approve the quality of the work that was performed. This was a formal responsibility established through company guidelines and procedures for performance-based evaluations. However, this formal evaluation built on and was indicative of the day-to-day informal job-performance evaluations and feedback. The women indicated that because they were women, the supervisors evaluated their work differently than they did the men’s work. Joyce decided to be direct and seek gender feedback from her supervisor regarding her job performance. My supervisor is a real old fuddy-duddy. And he’s just set in his ways, and most of the guys are. Their wives are home with the kids. So he really is cautious when it comes to hiring women, and if it was up to him, I don’t think he would. As much of a sweetheart as he is, it’s just he thinks you’re going to call in sick all the time and thinks you’re going to be afraid to walk through the buildings. So actually about a year and a half after I was here, I finally said to him, “I’ve been here a year and a half; what do you think?” (At this point I wasn’t sick at all.) I said, “I had to prove myself, didn’t I?” He didn’t realize I knew what he was thinking. “Well, yeah, you’ve done good.” And he doesn’t like to give compliments. He said, “Yeah, we were watching you for awhile.”

Beth described two types of supervisors with good attitudes toward women: gentlemen and men welcoming of women. She described the “gentleman supervisor” as follows: He’s wonderful—perfect gentleman. And he’s a very professional person, and he works hard and expects us to work hard. And his problem is not so much with the girls. It’s the ones who don’t do the work, who are a couple of the guys with the biggest mouths in the office about the girls. I find I’m doing the best I can. And that’s what I keep saying: “I’m doing my best.” And I find that that’s good enough for me, and it’s good enough for my two bosses. The reviews that I’ve had from my supervisors have been not great, not terrible. They’ve been just very good. And that’s all I’ve ever asked because I’m doing my best. And they seem to know that. And I think they try to put away all their preconceived notions about us [women]. I think supervisors have really come around and given us a fair shot.

She described the “welcoming supervisor” who encouraged and recruited her into the meter-repair-and-assembly shop. There weren’t a lot of women . . . He felt that women were his best workers, and he recruited women. When I was a guard, I found him coming in and saying, “Have you taken your trig yet? Have you taken your electrical books? Because I think you’d like this job.” And he said, “Women are my best workers. I have


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no problem.” And that was the way he let us know we were welcome there. And I think that when a supervisor comes through and has that attitude, I find that filters down.

Good supervisors supported women in the workplace either by tolerating them and treating them the same as men or by welcoming them and encouraging them to participate. This is an informal application of the difference between equal opportunity and affirmative action. Bad Supervisors Problem or bad supervisors made a difficult job intolerable. The situation resulted in frustration, which over time often led the women to leave the job. The women did not single out any one coworker other than the supervisor as pivotal in their decisions about whether to continue on the job. When the women had to face a difficult supervisor, they often did not even want to go to work the next day. Sonja explained, If a supervisor knows his limits, then he can really get away with a lot of stuff, and if that happens, then it’s a very unfortunate situation, and unfortunately I’m in the damn situation. And it became a battle, and I’m very tired over it. Because now I’m thinking, “Oh, I have to go back in tomorrow.”

The women perceived that supervisors were more vigilant of the women’s work than they were of the men’s work. The women were particularly sensitive to supervisory vigilance over their sick and injury time. They were concerned that this built on stereotypes of women not being capable of doing the job and of being weak, being lazy, or preferring to stay home. Sonja’s supervisor called her at home when she fell on the job and was home on sick leave. Last year I fell, and I was home for a couple weeks. Two days after I fell, he called up and said, “When are you coming back to work?” I said, “I have to go for a test in a couple days, and I’ll know for sure.” He said, “You know, you get paid to read meters, not paid to stay home.” I said, “I fell. I hurt myself. I did not do it on purpose. I’m really sorry, and if you’re taking this personally, maybe you should talk to somebody because this isn’t personal. This is a business.”

Women frequently compared the supervisors’ vigilance of women to that of men. They cited multiple instances where supervisors called them at home to check on them, inspected their vehicles and equipment, or checked on them at work sites more often than they checked on the women’s male coworkers.

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Women felt that bad supervisors generally targeted certain employees. They were aware that bad supervisors targeted men as well as women, but the fact that bad supervisors also targeted men did not make their behavior less offensive or less disturbing. It only made it different. Regardless of whom else the supervisor targeted and harassed, the women described the humiliation they experienced as more far-reaching than the humiliation was for the men. When a woman was the target, it not only affected her relationship with her supervisor, but it also served to separate her further from her male coworkers, often making the women feel ostracized, inadequate, and inferior and opening her up to ridicule from her coworkers.

Title VII Liability Employers have a responsibility to know what is happening in their workplace and to intervene should they become aware of Title VII violations, regardless of the victim’s desire for reparation. The interviewed women’s supervisors were responsible for their own behavior, and they were responsible for the behavior of the people they supervised. The boss had the power to dictate either a gender-friendly or a gender-hostile workplace environment. Sonja explained, Things were bad before. He was picking on little things. He wouldn’t sign meal tickets. And what happened was a lot of the guys would purposely—not just the guys, there were two girls at the time in our department too—would ride me, you know, pick on me for little things, poke fun at me, and things like that in front of him. And you know why they’re doing it—“let’s jump on his bandwagon and do the same thing he’s doing, and he’ll know that we’re on his side.”

Beth noticed the influence of supervisors when after years of gender hostility and harassment of female workers by male coworkers, the introduction of a new supervisor led to quick and dramatic changes. It was only because Brian Johnson became our boss. He set the tone for, “It’s not going to happen any more.” The boss we had before didn’t say anything. He was one of the type of people that just didn’t get it. Brian came in and everything changed. He was very concerned as to why we felt uncomfortable. He could see it in our eyes. He could see it in our work because we weren’t progressing as we should have. And he wanted to get to the bottom if it. I think that is when the men realized that the girls aren’t going to go anywhere because now they got Brian on their side. And Brian wasn’t on our side just because we were girls. He was on our side because we were people, and he didn’t like the way we were being treated. He set the tone. He treats us all alike. He wants us all to get along and be happy.


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It was so refreshing for us to have a new boss that felt this way. We don’t have to leave now. We’re going to stay.

Supervisors both discriminated against women and sexually harassed them. The women differed in their opinions as to which of the two was more tolerable, although they all would have preferred neither. Carol preferred her boss’s disapproval of her doing a man’s job to quid pro quo sexual harassment. My boss came in one day and said, “Don’t you feel bad about taking some man’s job?” And I said, “Sam, what are you saying to me?” And he said, “Well, you know there’s some man with a family that doesn’t have a job, and here you are sitting here doing a man’s job.” I said, “Sam, I have a family, too. Would you rather me be on welfare than sitting here working for you? Because that’s where I’d be.” “Well, no,” and he chomped his cigar and turned around and went back in his office. He really was kind of an old-timer—women should stay home. He just didn’t understand them all going to work—although his wife worked as a higherlevel executive than he was actually. That’s probably why he felt that way. But in his favor, it was easier to deal with somebody who was blatantly, “why don’t you girls stay home” than it was, “ hey honey, let’s go have a drink after work.”

Iris, on the other hand, endured constant, daily sexual harassment by her supervisor. She tolerated the harassment as long as he appreciated her presence and performance on the job. A supervisor was in charge of the entire ship, and there was one that was particularly fond of me. One of the supervisors there really liked me a lot—both from the standpoint I was useful to have around and also he wanted to have sex with me. And he never stopped asking me to have sex with him. It’s not like that ever stopped. But I never took him serious anyway. That didn’t intimidate me; it gave us something to talk about.

Both Carol and Iris excused their supervisors’ gender bias or disregarded it and emphasized that the supervisor approved of their job performance. In keeping with the supervisors’ given responsibility for assuring and monitoring job performance, discrimination and harassment is less offensive if it does not threaten job security. However, when discrimination and harassment were linked to conditions of employment it became extremely threatening, offensive, and intimidating for the women. Carol said that she was surprised that the supervisor hired her when she applied for a promotion because the supervisor was known for not putting up with shenanigans. She explained that this meant that he would not put up with sexual jokes, and when there were no women, that meant less to deal with. Whether a supervisor is “good” or “bad,” the presence of women

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in a predominantly and traditionally male workplace adds one more responsibility to the supervisor’s job, the complexity of which cannot be underestimated.1 Solutions to Supervisory Problems The women were subject to discriminatory treatment by their supervisors. They did not describe the discriminatory treatment as necessarily sex-based; more often, they described it as a result of interpersonal conflicts. Because the women wanted to continue or advance in their jobs, they sought solutions to their problems with their supervisors. When faced with a difficult supervisor, the women cited many different ways to deal with the situation. Sonja attempted to deal with her problems with her supervisor by direct confrontation but was not sure this was the best or appropriate way to change the relationship. One day my truck broke down. And another meter reader came out, took my truck, and gave me his truck. The truck was disgusting. That’s because there was crud all over it—sticky gooey stuff everywhere, bags. It was disgusting. But I never had time to clean it out because I barely made in by 4:30, 5:00. [I] get in the next morning. My boss decided to do this spot inspection of the truck. Went right to my truck and started saying, “Look at this—this is disgusting. I can’t believe you’re like this,” and started throwing things out and saying, “Don’t ever have your trucks like this. I don’t want you people to ever have a truck like this. Sonja, I want you cleaning your truck right now.” And I said, “Time out. I just got this truck. It was somebody else’s. Lay off.” That was probably stupid on my part because I was told that this is the kind of guy that just kind of targets people and rides them and rides them. I don’t think it was a sexual thing. I think he’s done it with guys, [and] he’s done it with girls, but this is the only problem I’ve really ever had in the company as far as a supervisor never letting up. And if I see something wrong, I’ll say it. If I see that there’s been an injustice, like with the truck thing, I’ll say it. I’ll stick up for myself, or I’ll ask a question.

Nancy was proud too of her multiple ways of dealing with her supervisors. She used direct confrontation and humor and in some cases precipitated the termination or removal of supervisors. She saw this as a skill that she had. My first boss was all set to discredit me. I could tell by the things he did and the memos that he sent. I said, “You don’t know me, and I don’t really know you, but by the time I leave here, we’re going to know each other quite well.” And over time we became very good friends, and to this day we’re good friends. The one that I have now told someone, “She could fuck up anything.” And word got back to me almost at the time it was said. He said it when he had a few drinks in him. And we were going to be working together out of town for a week. So we were at


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the bar at the hotel and he said, “Can I buy you a drink?”—that’s the common thing. That’s the way they rallied, the way they unwind. I said, “Mark, I don’t know if you want to because I might fuck it up.” He just looked me. I said, “Sweetheart, my husband doesn’t talk to me that way or about me that way; what makes you think you can?” One would say things that were sexist like “I wouldn’t let my wife do that” or “I’ll have someone walk you to the car.” They assume you can’t handle yourself. And I was always saying, “We don’t do that anymore.” I got rid of him—well, let’s say he retired, and he should have retired.

Though the scope of the problem was pervasive and generalized to their overall work lives, the women would often assert themselves in one calculated aspect or situation when they were supported by policies, procedures, and documentation. One solution was to document their work and contest the situation with written evidence. Sally described her contest over her time sheet. I couldn’t do anything right for him. I could not please the man. If I back my truck up, I should have drove it down. If I drove it down, I should have backed it down. He told me I took too long going from one spot to the other. First day he told me that, he said, “You goofed off.” And he cut my time. I didn’t goof off any time. I said, “I’m not going to discuss it with you. I’ll take it up with the owner.” By the time I got into the shop, I had the owner right on my case, right out in the middle of the parking lot. And it’s like, “Wait a minute. I’ve got a time sheet shows exactly where I was every minute of today. No stops at any convenience stores, no lunches, and no breaks”—which, number one, as far as I’m concerned, is against the law. Two days later, I was turned in again to the office. This time the owner came out. Caught me in the parking lot. Same thing again. I mean, I’m out pumping gas where other people can hear a conversation going on, and he wanted to know what I’d done today. And I told him and I said, “You can look at my time sheet.” I said, “This man has done everything in his power to make me look bad on this job.” I’d never had a problem before and haven’t had a problem since.

After attempting direct resolution to problems with supervisors, women would devise and attempt methods of avoiding supervisors. Sonja requested a transfer to another site where she would not have to see her supervisor on a daily basis. Claire requested painting jobs where she was the only one on the job, and the supervisor would only be on site every three days. Although he was critical when he was there and questioned whether she was diligent in her work, he was happy with the quality and amount of work—just unsure about whether she was taking too many breaks. Another solution the women employed was to simply try to understand the supervisors’ perspective and go on with their work. This involved seeing the problem as the supervisors’, not as something wrong with them. They were aware that some supervisors, because of their own personal situation,

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attitudes, age, and family situations, would not respect them. They attributed some of the problem to differences in age that resulted in differences in socialization as to women’s expected roles. They would also juxtapose what they knew about the supervisors’ relationships with their wives and how they treated other women on the job. Based on their assessments, the women sometimes didn’t take the problem as seriously or personally. Carol disregarded her supervisor’s disapproval of her not staying at home to raise her daughter because she knew his wife was an executive. Sonja supposed that her supervisor treated her poorly because her supervisor’s wife belittled him. Joyce described her supervisor as “an old fuddyduddy” when excusing his bias against women on the job. Iris did not take her supervisor’s constantly asking her to go to bed seriously in part because “he was old.” But although these factors explained the supervisors’ gender hostility, they did not make that hostility welcome. Relationships with supervisors improved slowly and over time for some women. The women gained approval and respect from their supervisors over time by finding out what the supervisors valued in employees and by then meeting or exceeding those standards. This was done by showing up for work, demonstrating that they could do the job, and being a team player. Being a team player had two meanings for the women: one meaning was working well with the other men on the crew, and for Gretchen, being a team player meant showing interest in the leisure activities of her supervisor, whether this meant attending picnics or going to the shooting range to learn about his antique rifle hobby. The women had to prove themselves to the supervisors. In many cases that meant directly defying the supervisors’ presuppositions by demonstrating skills and abilities or by verbally confronting the supervisors’ misnomers about women’s ability to perform the job and be a member of the work crew. In the long run, the women either accommodated their supervisors’ work style and demands or removed themselves from the work crew. UNIONS Within workplaces, jobs were differentiated as to union and management jobs. Union jobs were referred to in different organizations as craft jobs or as represented, shop, or union jobs. Unions are organizations that are integrated into the workplace to represent the needs and interests of the workers. For the women interviewed, when referring to the union, they more often were referring to the persons who were elected or appointed to represent them, that advocated for them and that enforced the bargaining agreement. The women’s union representatives, like management, operated at two levels: (1) they represented the written policies and procedures of the


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bargaining agreement, and (2) they functioned as individuals, or coworkers, entrusted to represent workers’ interests in keeping those policies. Because the companies and jobs were all male-dominated and structured to meet male standards, so were the unions representing these jobs and workers. Although not all the women were members of the unions representing their jobs, all the jobs were union-represented. Temporary and casual laborers are exempt or excluded in some workplaces from union membership; however, the parameters of these workers’ employment are usually spelled out in union contracts, and they receive many if not all of the protections. Three women in this study were not members of unions: 1. Claire worked for a commercial painting company that did predominantly nonunion jobs; however, she did work on some union jobs for which her employer contracted. Painters can join the painters union, qualifying them to bid on and contract for better-paying union jobs. Claire was eligible for her union card and qualified to work on union jobs but did not purchase her card or union membership. 2. Cassey was a temporary employee at the nuclear power plant, and as a temporary employee, she was not a member of the union; however, she performed the same job as full-time union employees, and the union negotiated her pay and benefits. She did not pay dues, vote, or receive the protections of the bargaining agreement directly. She could not file a grievance, but she did receive union wages, and her schedule was set according to the bargaining agreement. 3. Iris provided casual labor for the longshore union. She was hired by the union and paid by the union but was not a member and did not receive the benefits of union membership. However, her time in casual labor qualified her for seniority for hiring into full-time positions.

Due to the way that the unions and the companies had structured their agreements, the women described themselves as either working for the union or working for the company. When employed by public utilities, the post office, or the police, the women primarily identified themselves as working for the company or organization and secondarily identified themselves as members of the union. In the cases of the truck driving and longshoring, the women were working for the union and were placed with employers. Some of the women identified their skills as defining their employability, therefore enabling them to work for either employers or unions, as in the case of the commercial painter and electrician. Union Stewards Within the union structure, the primary representative of the union with whom the women interacted was the union steward. The union steward

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mediates between coworkers, serves as an intermediary between the worker and the supervisor, and ensures that the workplace adheres to the bargaining agreement. Two of the women suffered more harassment and discriminatory treatment from the steward than from any other coworker. These women were extremely frustrated and felt blocked from any ability to take advantage of the union benefits they were provided. Cathy complained that her steward verbally harassed her on a daily basis and was the person who used the most profanity. This forced her into a difficult position of choosing between being loyal to the union, and therefore not taking grievances to management, and appealing to the management’s responsibility to provide a safe and “welcoming” work environment. Women credited the unions with advocating for their gender-specific workplace needs. Particularly, the union provided grievance processes to address unfair work policies and practices, negotiated maternity leaves and family leave, and demanded safety and sanitation facilities that made it convenient or possible for them to perform their jobs. All of the women were clear that they preferred to be represented by the union and resisted promotions into management positions where they would lose the protections afforded by union representation. SUMMARY The persons who controlled the women’s benefits, evaluated their performance, and policed interpersonal relations were the supervisors, managers, and union representatives. For these women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, the supervisor and union steward were the gatekeepers and ultimately had the greatest impact over providing equal opportunity and ameliorating or escalating discrimination and harassment. The most difficult and complex facet of the workplace for the women to negotiate was the day-to-day relationship with supervisors. This relationship with supervisors framed the women’s position in the organization because of supervisors’ control over distribution of pay, assignment of work, benefits, and performance evaluation. The supervisor, as overseer of both the men and the women in the work group, is also the person who sets the tone and standard for what is tolerated and what is not. Supervisors have the power to dictate whether a workplace is hostile or welcoming on a day-to-day frontline basis. The women have stayed or left because of these factors; therefore, supervisors serve as the gatekeeper and protector regarding retention of women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. Supervisors’ roles in the workplace environment are complicated and problematic because they combine organizational oversight and interpersonal relationships. Additionally, for


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women in blue-collar jobs, unions represent a welcome protection and organizational alternative to relying solely on supervisors and management for assuring equal employment opportunity. The next chapter looks in-depth at the interpersonal relationships between coworkers that confound work regardless of the tasks of the job and the workplace structures and benefits.

Chapter 9

GOOD GUYS/BAD GUYS: HOW TO DETERMINE WHAT IS REASONABLE

The performance of the job tasks, organization of the workplace, and worker responsibilities contribute to the work experience, and beyond these factors are the interpersonal relationships with others at work that facilitate, inhibit, or even prohibit job performance. “Work” does not exist in a vacuum. It is the day-to-day relationships with coworkers that are the most problematic, constant, and wearing, creating the hostile environment. For a situation to constitute a “hostile environment” as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, there must be a pervasive interference with the employee’s job performance caused by interpersonal relationships. This hostility must be sex-based. Differentiating between what is the “normal” and “usual” way all workers treat each other and what is sex-based hostility or discrimination is a major challenge in defining the “pervasively hostile environment.” This chapter presents some of the ways that women make this determination, and it attempts to provide “reasonable woman” methods for determining whether the workplace is welcoming or hostile and whether hostility is sex-based. THE PROBLEM Being the only woman or one of a few women working with men in a traditionally male job posed problems for the women and impeded their ability to do their jobs. They expressed that relationships with coworkers inhibited, interfered with, or facilitated their work. Regardless of whether the women were treated well or badly, the workplace environment was different because of their presence. It was different

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for the women, and it was different for the men. As Beth said, “It is just that they have been together so long—the men.” Sally and Sandy chose these jobs because they prefer working with men. Similarly, many of the men chose their jobs because they prefer working with men—and not women. Some women worked in crews of up to 50 men where they were the only women. Whether they were the only woman or one of a few women, they all agreed that they were extremely visible and that this visibility made the work relationships different. Why do I walk in here and cause such a big to-do? It’s so big that it’s always there. These guys have been together for so long. Can’t I just go in the back door, sit at my desk, and work or learn or function and be not such a big deal? I mean, they relate to each other fine. Why am I such a big show just because I’m a girl?

GOOD GUYS/BAD GUYS The women described the men they worked with as fitting into two categories: the women were quick to differentiate between “good guys” and “bad guys.” The words used to describe this dichotomy were simple but varied. As stated by Beth, “Some guys are very helpful. Some guys are very resistant to having women with them at all.” Sonja simply referred to them as a “good bunch of guys.” Often there was just one man that was a problem. During the interviews many women said, “There was this one guy . . .” Regardless of the words used or numbers involved, the men were perceived as distinctly positive or negative. After several interviews in which this dichotomy emerged, I asked Beth whether, if I gave her a list of all the men she worked with, she could go down the list and just check off and separate them into the two categories. She said yes without hesitation. A man was not categorized as bad based on one incident, thus making these categories characteristically “pervasive.” The women gave examples of situations with these men and ended their narrations with the following such statements: • So he would give me a hard time almost on a daily basis. • The man doesn’t like women, and he did everything in his power to hassle me from morning to night. • He had it out for me for a couple of years thereafter.

The women did indicate that an individual man could categorically shift from one side to the other side. But there was a distinct point of conversion; it was not a fluctuating state. For Claire, the old man who had taken her under his wing and taught her was “good.” However, he changed from good to bad when she no longer needed his tutorial and when she was able to do

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the job as well as or better than he could. He then started to take credit for her work when they did a job together. He would not tell her techniques that would make her job easier. On the other hand, a man Beth worked with went from bad to good. He refused to train her and had it out for her until she completed training with the help of another coworker. Beth concluded, “Now he’s fine because I’ve made it. I’ve made it on my own.” Good guys are caring, helpful, and nice to the women. They train and mentor the women. They treat them with respect. Bad guys go out of their way to make it clear that the women are not welcome or wanted or don’t belong on the job. Bad guys blame the women when the job goes wrong, do not recognize the women for doing a good job or being part of the team, devalue and criticize their skills and abilities, verbally abuse them, tell offensive jokes, talk about sex, proposition them sexually, place them in dangerous work situations, and physically or sexually assault them. COMPARISONS The women determined whether they were being treated as equals at work by their coworkers through comparison. Comparisons helped the women determine if unwelcome treatment was (1) pervasive and (2) sexbased. The women wanted to know if they were being treated the way they were because they were women, because they were coworkers, or just because of personal differences. Comparisons helped to give them this understanding, and these comparisons included those regarding (1) changes in treatment over time, (2) how the men treated male coworkers (3) how men treated other women in the same or similar jobs (4) how men treated the secretaries, and (5) how the men treated their wives and female coworkers outside of work. The women used these comparisons to formulate their own standards of “reasonable” treatment of women by men. The women used comparisons in order to make sense out of the everyday relationships and behaviors at work. Comparisons over Time One way the women determined whether the men were good guys or bad guys based on personal experience was to consider the experiences longitudinally. The way the men treated them over time was particularly helpful in determining the pervasiveness of the treatment. One instance did not constitute pervasive hostility or deem a man good or bad. There was no set number of times a behavior had to occur and no set length of time it had to persist, but the impact of the men’s treatment of the women was cumulative. The women found that over time the men could change or

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confirm the women’s experience. Not only could individual men shift over time, but also the general workplace treatment environment could change. Beth described her experience: Over the five years that I have been here, many of them have come around and some of them, the one I had so much trouble with, he’s our biggest fan now. You wonder.

Comparisons to Men The women compared how male coworkers treated them to how the male coworkers treated each other. Most of the women worked in groups composed of 10 to 50 men with one or two women. Comparisons were made as to (1) the way men talked and behaved with other men when women were around as opposed to when women weren’t around and (2) the way men treated women differently than men when they were all engaged in the same conversation or situation. When women were around, men sometimes used less offensive language, removed pornographic material, did not tell sexual jokes, or did not use sex-based humor. The women were aware that in their absence this language and behavior did occur, particularly since it would suddenly stop when they entered the room. When the behavior did stop because of their presence, the women considered this a sign of their being respected. Chris was aware that the men removed pornographic magazines from the truck when she was on the crew. Sonja knew that the men stopped using profanity and sexual language when she entered the break room. Joyce appreciated being left out of the gossip or discussion of the men’s extramarital affairs. This behavior, or abstinence from behavior, was welcome. All the workplaces’ policies, as provided under Title VII protections, prohibited sexual language; however, the expectation of the women in these blue-collar workplaces was that they still would be subjected to it although it was illegal and unwelcome. Good guys were able to restrict their sex-based language to situations when women were not present. Bad guys were indiscriminate in their conversations. Regardless, the women found that the men did understand the differences in and distinguish between talk that was appropriate among just men and talk that was appropriate between the sexes. The women also compared the way the men worked with men and the way the men worked with women. This was a comparison between the amount of assistance and help the men gave each other on the job and the amount they gave to female coworkers. Many of the women could directly observe men offering suggestions to each other, accommodating

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each other, and even doing each other’s jobs. When the women asked men for the same help, the women often did not receive it. These comparisons were direct sex-based differences between the way that the men treated the men and the way that the men treated the women. As stated before, in many cases this was only a comparison of one woman’s experiences—hers. If there were differences between the ways multiple women were treated, or if a woman was the only woman in the workplace, the women or woman needed to extend the comparisons in order to determine if the treatment was just personal or if it was sex-based. In order to understand the situation better, these women expanded the comparisons to include other women who were similarly related to the men and to these women’s work experience. Comparisons to Other Blue-Collar Women Because many of the women were the only woman or one of a few women working in the same work group, making comparisons to how men treated other female coworkers was difficult. In order to make such comparisons, the women compared their abilities and the way that they were treated by the men using standards of (1) the way that other women in their job were treated, (2) how women who had come before them in that job were or had been treated, and (3) how women they knew in similar jobs were treated. Some of the women did work with other women in their work crew or group. They had the same male coworkers and supervisors. This allowed for direct comparisons of individual men’s behavior toward individual women. The man who routinely dropped his pants and exposed his genitals to Mary on the assembly line did the same thing to another woman who worked down the line. The men Sonja worked with treated her very differently than they treated her female coworker “who was blonde and cute with the guys.” The women attributed the discrepancies to differences between the women involved. Mary and her coworker had discussed between themselves and made it clear to the men that the men’s behavior was unwelcome. They both individually and collectively generated the same message to the men and received the same treatment. Sonja thought that the men did not flirt with her because she had made it clear that she did not want it, whereas her coworker responded to flirting positively and encouraged it. Because the men’s behavior seemed to be in response to the actions and solicitations of other female coworkers, the women in this study were very critical of their female coworkers. The women had higher expectations of other women than of men to be nonsexual at work and perform their jobs.

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Sandy compared herself to other women she worked with in the police force and was critical of them. She compared their physical strength (one woman was not strong enough to shoot a gun), their physical appearance (some had gained weight and their uniforms were ill-fitting), and their expecting to be excused from doing the men’s work (they wanted to be treated like the “Queen of Sheba” and be “dainty,” according to Sandy). She thought the men treated the women differently because most of the women were weaker and deserved the treatment. She said that “the women bring it on themselves” and that the men treat women based on a perception of women’s intent, purposely acting differently because of the women’s behavior and intent. Some of the women were aware of other women who had previously worked with these men. Although they did not talk directly with these women, they asked the men for information, or in some cases the men volunteered information, about how those women were treated and about their personal attributes. Sonja was aware that she was coming into her work crew replacing a woman who had held the same job. She compared herself to that woman. This is her description of that woman and of how she, Sonja, was different from her predecessor: When she came in here, she had been married, and she had an affair with one of the guys here who’s also married. I thought that I was going to be coming in, and the guys would immediately think I was going to have an affair or be loose or be looking for a relationship. So I was very worried about them. She was a very hard worker. She was very nice to work with. However, following on the coattails of somebody like that, you think, “What are these guys going to think of me? Are these guys going to think that all the women in this department are like this or all the women in this company [are] like this?”

She postulated that the men treated the women differently because some of the women “were always acting cute, had all the right answers, and did all the right things.” Sonja couldn’t do that. This investigatory method of determining what was a “reasonable” expectation for men’s treatment and expectations of women was used by many of the women. They found out if any other women had worked in their jobs or in a traditionally male job in that workplace with those men. They then inquired and observed as to how other women were treated. Finally, by comparing themselves to the other woman or women who had done or had been doing the job, they evaluated their situation by comparison, developed an expectation of how they might be treated, and planned a course of action to protect, take care of, and assert themselves. A third way that women assessed how men treated women in nontraditional jobs was by talking with women in other blue-collar jobs in similar

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workplaces. Cathy talked with women in other departments in similar jobs in the same company. She and Beth worked for the same company and confided in each other, although they did not directly work together or with the same coworkers. Cathy’s sister worked in the automotive industry, and another relative worked for the telephone company. From all these women Cathy determined that men were difficult to work with and resistant to women performing blue-collar jobs. She concluded that women who were assertive like she was got treated like she did. Difficulties she was having—including harassment, verbal abuse, and men’s refusal to help train her—were the same problems other women were having in other similar jobs. Comparisons to Secretaries There were indications that the men treated the women differently based on the fact that the women were in blue-collar nontraditional jobs, doing traditionally male work. In order to validate this perception, the women would compare the way the men treated them to the way the men treated secretaries and office staff in traditionally female positions. This provided a standard as to how the same men treated women coworkers who were not doing the same job as the men were. It also provided a comparison of how men treated women who were performing sex-role stereotypical jobs as compared to nontraditional jobs. Claire said, I used to talk to the secretaries. We’d go back and forth about how they don’ t take women seriously—“typical men.” And they would agree that they got harassed because they were the sexy leather-skirt type of girls. One day I was standing around the corner, photocopying something, and a supervisor comes out of the office and says to the secretary, who’s real sweet, something real filthy. He would never say anything bad like that to me. He was the gentleman type. But I heard him around the corner, and she kind of laughs it off and says, “Oh, you’re disgusting.” And I come around the corner and wanted to say something, but then I turned the corner because I didn’t want to get into it.

Claire explained that the men did not talk filthy around her because she made it clear that it was not acceptable, whereas the secretaries “almost encouraged” it. However, the men did not obstruct or make it difficult for the secretaries to do their jobs as they did for Claire. For pink-collar women it was a matter of unwelcome behaviors, including domination, gender inappropriateness, and sexual advances, with a tendency toward quid pro quo harassment. This differed from the message to blue-collar women that they were not welcome; the harassment against them was intended to get them off the job and included a tendency toward a pervasively hostile environment.

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Comparisons to Wives Another dimension to women’s understanding of the way that the men treated them involved considering three aspects of treatment related to the men’s wives: (1) the way the men treated their wives, (2) the way the men treated the women in front of their wives, and (3) the way the wives treated the women. Women were conscious of which men were married or in committed relationships. Sometimes they knew of the men having extramarital affairs and relationships. They used this as an indication of the men’s general respect or disrespect for women sexually. If the men were committed to a woman and yet having affairs, they were seen as more generally hostile toward women than just in workplace situations. On the other hand, good guys were caring and respectful of their wives and did not have affairs. This allowed the women to accept their condolences and sympathy as caring when the women were upset about personal or work situations. The most significant or telling comparison regarding the men’s wives was the way the women were treated by the men in front of their wives as opposed to in their wives’ absence. At times the women encountered male coworkers at public places, or they participated in community activities and company events with the men and their families. They compared the way the men treated them in public in the presence of their wives to how the men treated them at work. The men who had harassed them at work, propositioned them, or disclosed extramarital relationships tended to ignore them in public. Sonja explains it as follows: The ones having relationships outside the marriage are the guys when you see them out with their wives, they ignore you. You get that feeling that either their wives are jealous, or they’ve done something that their wives should be jealous. You know there’s a difference between those areas and here. Those are the guys I’m not going to be joking with.

If the men ignored them when they were with their wives, the women were more likely to interpret sexual joking as unwelcome and intentional harassing. For Mary her whole understanding of the man who was exposing himself and badgering her for dates at work changed when she saw him at a shopping mall one evening with his wife. I had seen a guy that I had worked with in the mall. One of these men that would say, “You got time to give me a blow job?” Or he would expose himself. I saw him in the mall one night with his wife, and he looked right through me and did not speak. And I turned around, and I followed him, and I said, “Hey, Mike, how are you doing?”

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and made sure his wife saw me. . . . And I just said to myself, “I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy. This man out on the street won’t even acknowledge me.” There’s no way he wanted his wife to know that he worked with me, especially after the things he said to me. I knew then he knew what he was doing wasn’t right.

Sometimes it was the wives who discriminated against or interfered with the women’s work and did not want them on the job. Sally worked with men, was married, and worked for a woman-owned construction company, yet the wife of one of her coworkers did not want a woman on the job. She described the following interference by the man’s family regarding her job: One place I worked didn’t have a lot of trucking for me to do. They built decks and porches on houses. The owner of the company was a woman, but I was the only woman out working on the job. So they put me out, when I wasn’t driving, building decks and porches with the guys. And I tell you, I can saw and I can hammer a nail just as well as they can. But when one of the wives found out that I was out on the job, she got highly upset and called the owner and said, “You’re asking for trouble because you are putting a woman in with men.” It sounded to me like she can’t trust her husband.

Wives’ treatment of the women and reactions to the women were an indication of the men’s overall regard for women. The women did not trust men whose wives did not trust them or men who did not want their wives to meet their female coworkers. These men’s joking and advances were interpreted as not just unwelcome, but hostile. BUT IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE After categorizing men as good guys and bad guys based on how they treated women and comparing the way the men treated them to how the men treated other people, women then identified factors that explained or complicated their simplified categories and comparisons. The women cited additional characteristics beyond gender that seemed to make a difference in how they were treated by men. The key indicators of differential treatment were age of the men, differences in job status, and degree of intimacy in relationships between women and men on the job. Age The age of the women and the age of the men they worked with formed a matrix in explaining their relationships. Age complicated or influenced the way that men treated women (1) when men were older than the women and (2) when women were the same age as the men. One woman discussed

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working with a man younger than she was, and she described this situation as being the same experience as when the men were the same age as the women. Joyce was much younger than most of the male security guards she worked with at the public utility. The men were hired largely after their retirement from other law-enforcement branches and were in their late 40s to early 60s. Joyce was in her mid-30s when I interviewed her. She reported other employees’ reactions to her: It is nice to see a woman do that job. And younger, too, because for most part it’s been all older people.

Iris had an easier time working with older men for two reasons. She was only 18 when she started working on the waterfront. She thought that being so young meant the men “did not take me being there seriously” and that therefore, she was less threatening to them. The main difference she described between older and younger men was whether she found their sexual comments to her offensive or not. She did not take the sexual comments and invitations of older men seriously. However, her reaction to younger men “hooting and hollering” was that it was offensive and hostile. Gretchen and Beth also found the older men easier to work with. They attributed it to competition for jobs. The older men had been on the job and were secure in their positions due to skill, accomplishment, and seniority. Beth and some of the other women indicated that the older men assumed father roles. The women did not find this offensive, and in most cases it was beneficial. Younger men were threatened by the presence of women on the job. They directly competed for jobs and in some cases had been excluded from opportunities due to affirmative hiring practices. The women who were the same age as the men or who had entered the job at the same time as the men often had less experience. Beth went further to explain that the younger men were electric planners because it was the best job in the company. They were planning to retire from the job and would be working with Beth for the long haul. Gretchen stated that a male coworker of the same age felt his performance was being directly compared to hers. He did not want to be compared to a woman. For some men in blue-collar jobs, when a woman did the same job, especially if they were the same age, the men felt that they were being made fun of or that the job was less valuable because a woman too was doing it. Claire added another dimension to the consideration of age that initially confirmed and then contradicted the premise that older men treated women

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better than younger men did. She had an experience similar to Beth’s. An older man had assumed a role of father and mentor. Yet after she had reached a level of competency in job performance comparable to his, he became hostile, or a “bad guy.” She attributed this to the fact that both age and sex were bases for discrimination at their job site. Neither of them was protected by seniority. As Claire became a threat to the older man’s job security, his hostility toward her and his undermining of her work escalated. Both Claire and Carol attributed older men’s differential treatment of women in part to socialization. They thought older men believed that women belonged at home, particularly younger women who were of childbearing age, and that they did not belong in blue-collar, traditionally male jobs. Claire described older men as not wanting to work with women and younger men as being more open, in part because of the times in which they had grown up. Younger men may have been educated and socialized with different values and laws. I noticed when I worked with men, I had trouble with the older guys, but not the younger ones. The older guys just didn’t like the fact that women were working. They hated it. They just didn’t think it was right for a woman, and it was from older guys that I got this. So they would give me a hard time almost on a daily basis.

Age and gender combine to construct the ways that men treat women at work. Older men generally assume fatherly roles with the women. The women take older men’s sexual advances and harassment less seriously. Younger men typically are more competitive and more hostile in their harassment of the women because they may have similar occupational goals based on similarities in age. These goals are to stay on the job for a long time, develop skills, and accrue the economic rewards. Older men are established, have seniority, and their goal is marking time and doing the job until retirement. Job Level When a male coworker was in a position of authority or was a representative of the organization, the women were more threatened by sex-based discrimination and harassment. They also were less likely to make formal and informal complaints. Often this was because the person had leverage over the woman and controlled the woman’s access to higher managers at other levels in the organization. The women faced the possibility of being blocked from seeking assistance in resolving sex-based work problems. Depending on the comparative hierarchical job-level of the men and the women, men were in a position to affect the women’s job satisfaction, job performance, and occupational advancement. Men who were the women’s

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supervisors, union stewards, and managers, and those men’s roles as agents for the companies or unions, were discussed more in-depth in the previous chapter. These men represented the collective bargaining rights, or they controlled promotions and firing. The women had different standards for assessing men when they were acting for the company or the union than for when they were acting as individuals. The main difference, as seen by the women, between bosses and coworkers with regard to harassment and how they treated women was that the managers should have known better than to harass or discriminate against women. The women were more tolerant of the hostility from coworkers than they were of hostility from supervisors and managers. A second consideration with regard to job level was the differences in the ways that the men treated the women as the women climbed the job ladder at their workplace. Although there was often an initial period of “proving oneself” upon entering the workplace, the women experienced more pervasive hostility in higher-level, more skilled jobs than in entry-level jobs. When Mary was considering the apprenticeship, she was warned that there would be more fierce hostility and animosity toward her there than on the assembly line. Joyce said that in entry-level jobs, “the men seem to get along with the women as much as they get along with the men.” Beth, like Joyce, noted that when she entered the company as a guard, all the men greeted her and were welcoming. It was when she became an electric planner, a job she described as the best job in the company, that the hostility and competition between the genders became problematic. Husbands and Boyfriends The way that the men at work treated the women was different if male coworkers knew that the women had husbands and boyfriends within the same company. As discussed in the chapter about hiring and entry, some of the women applied for their jobs because they had husbands or boyfriends that worked there. Others began dating men they met at work once they were on the job. The presence of the women’s husbands and boyfriends impacted the way that coworkers treated the women, and work impacted the way that their husbands and boyfriends treated them. Some women worked directly with men with whom they were intimately involved; others were involved with men who were employees of the same company but working in different work groups from the woman. When husbands and boyfriends were either direct or indirect coworkers, relationships between the women and their male coworkers were different. The women were accepted more quickly and given more respect when they had a male partner at work. For Iris, being able to hang out with her boyfriend

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on the waterfront at work meant that she was not accused of being a lesbian, which was a common venue for harassment of women by the men. Further, it meant that when the men included her boyfriend in lunch and conversations, they would also include her. Sally drove a truck in a small company where her husband was the boss. When Sally’s coworkers learned that her husband was the boss, they stopped putting her down and degrading her ability as a woman to do the job. My husband worked at the company where I first drove truck. We did not tell anybody who I was when I came to work there because I was the only woman other than a secretary. And when they brought me in, I was just a truck driver. When I wasn’t driving truck, they brought me in the fabrication department, where they taught me how to weld. I was there two weeks, and a trucker came into the office with the secretary. He said, “Gee, who’s the broad out in the shop?” And the secretary said, “Why don’t you ask John? It’s his wife.” My husband was standing behind him. The guy could have buried himself under the carpet. And he turned around and looked at John. And John said, “That’s my wife and I’m proud of her.” . . . And at that time the word spread. The men did not want not to talk to me. They were afraid that I had been put in there to eavesdrop on their conversation. Yet they didn’t want to slight me for lunch. I had to eat by myself. My husband wanted me to filter in and be just another employee.

Many of the women separated and kept secret from coworkers their personal relationships with boyfriends and husbands. Mary advised keeping personal relationships a secret because the information might be used against you if you decided to confront harassment in the future. Mary told of a fellow woman on the assembly line who had dated a male coworker: She had had a relationship with a man that worked in the plant, and she was afraid that if she said anything about the harassment, [the past relationship] would be used against her. And she would be made out to be a whore, although she was single and had a right to date whoever she wanted. She felt that she couldn’t say anything.

However, when coworkers were aware of a relationship, things changed. Chris’s boyfriend helped her during the hiring process, but soon after she came to work, they stopped seeing each other. She describes the benefits of standing up to him at work: My boyfriend and I had had a rocky breakup. One night he had an assignment he was supposed to do, and he took a pickup truck, and he went to McDonalds. The boss came through and saw that job wasn’t being done and started screaming at another person and me. There was hell to pay for all of us. It was his last straw. My ex finally came back. He was just standing there with his hand on his hips,

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watching all of us working our butts off with our heads bowed and our tails between our legs. He said to somebody, “You missed a spot,” or something like that, and I just went off. He and I had a screaming fight in front of everyone. It was near the end of the day, so the day shift was arriving, and the night shift was still there. I was teased about that ever since. That was a big joke because I’m hottempered. But if anybody ever started to push me, somebody else would say, “You better be careful; you don’t want to have a lover’s quarrel with her.”

For women who worked with husbands and boyfriends, it impacted both their relationships with other coworkers and their relationships with their partners. For the most part these relationships reduced the amount of harassment the women experienced and earned the women respect more quickly from their coworkers. On the other hand, the situations usually complicated their personal relationships as they worked to differentiate and separate the two roles. They wanted to ensure that they did not receive preferential treatment at work and that they did not extend their personal emotions into work.

SUMMARY Relationships with male coworkers provide the personal and persistent context for hostility and discrimination for women working in nontraditional jobs. These women categorized men into a dichotomy of good guys and bad guys. When the women were asked about it, this dichotomy was so clear and divisive for them that they were able to classify male coworkers without hesitation into one of the two categories. Good guys were men who welcomed and supported women in nontraditional jobs. Bad guys were hostile and prohibited or inhibited women’s job performance. At any one time, a man was either a good guy or a bad guy; however, over time and as the women developed skills and relationships with their coworkers, individual men could shift from one category to the other. Comparisons made by the women indicate that men are aware, able, and capable of welcoming and nonoffensive behavior toward women at work. Comparisons by and among the women demonstrated that women come to understand men’s behaviors toward them and to identify who is a good guy and who is a bad guy within the context of gender and work. Categorizing is complicated, well thought-out, and methodical. These 17 women devised and set a reasonable-woman standard for determining if male coworkers were harassing them through a complex process of comparing how they treated other women coworkers, secretaries, and women in similar jobs and, when in public, their wives. There exists a difference in what men find offensive and what women find offensive. The

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cumulative results of the comparisons the women made regarding men’s treatment of both sexes provided an informal and self-devised reasonableperson or reasonable-woman standard for harassment and sex-based discrimination by male coworkers. These comparisons supported the use of a reasonable-woman standard.

Chapter 10

HOW MEN TREAT WOMEN: “WORKING” RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE SEXES

As stated by the U.S. Supreme Court, “we have yet to determine what is meant by a hostile environment” in terms of behaviors that unreasonably interfere with a woman’s ability to perform her job. Defining a “hostile environment” requires being able not only to describe the behaviors but also to distinguish what is desirable, acceptable, interfering, harassing, or dangerous. This chapter looks at interpersonal relationships at work between women and men and at what the women found helpful, acceptable, tolerable, and intolerable. The women described a continuum of ways that men treated them at work with regard to sex-based harassment. The continuum presented in this chapter applies to all relationships between women and the men in the workplace, including managers, supervisors, and coworkers. This continuum gives us a foundation for defining the sex-based pervasively hostile environment with regard to sexual harassment and behaviors that unreasonably interfere with job performance. HOW TO TREAT A WOMAN The manner in which coworkers treat each other occurs on a continuum of behaviors from bad to good. This continuum as described by the women flows as follows: • Assault • Job Interference

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Verbal Harassment Devaluing Competency Being Nice, Helpful, and Caring Mentoring Respect

Assault Assault includes physical assault and sexual assault. Assault is defined as a purposeful act of violence. In some cases assault involved direct physical contact with the women, and in other cases setting up work situations that threatened a woman’s safety, health, or life constituted assault. Assault was both covert and overt. At times it was illusive, and the women were unable to confirm or prove that it was in fact purposive and perpetrated by coworkers, as opposed to happenstance. Other times it was blatant and forthright. Iris described such a situation as it occurred in longshoring: They’d go out of their way to put us in difficult work situations. This happened on a number of occasions. They would simply make a point of dropping logs on us. And that’s not a small thing because if you think about an average log that’s maybe a couple feet in diameter and 40 feet long, it weighed a heck of a lot and was more than capable of killing people. Then hoist that log up about 20, 30 feet, and then release it one end first at somebody. They did this to intimidate us off the waterfront. It’s real clear. And then they could laugh and hoot and holler as we all ran for our lives, which of course we did. And the scary part is that not only does the log come down at you, and you have to scatter, but it comes down with so much force and the water is shallow enough, it goes down and hits the bottom. That changes its trajectory, and it comes back up, and you don’t know where it’s going to come up from. So you could be thinking you’re perfectly safe because you’re far enough away from where it lands, but then it comes back up and nails you. And I did see guys get killed down there by accident. I saw guys get killed due to accidents. It was beyond an intimidation tactic. They could have easily have killed somebody. It was just a harassment maneuver in hopes it would get us off the waterfront. They really didn’t like having us there. That was very, very clear.

Mary tolerated sexual harassment on the auto assembly line for years. Men would routinely walk by, drop their pants, and expose their genitals. This one just dropped his pants and walked down the main isle all the time . . . There was this guy who worked across the line from me. We used to see their penis more than we saw, like when I lived with a man.

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She described this as a daily occurrence. However, after years on the assembly line, this routine harassment escalated to sexual assault by a coworker. She was assembling a minivan one day, lying on her back under the dashboard, when a male coworker came up and lay down on top of her, placing his crotch on her face. This unreported sexual assault resulted in long-term psychological trauma and mental-health treatment for her. The women described acts of assault as infrequent but the threat and fear as being present constantly. The women perceived the men as physically bigger, stronger, and faster than they were. They were able to ascertain this as they observed the men performing the same jobs that they were performing. Additionally, because the men knew how to perform the job safely, they also know how to place coworkers in unsafe, threatening, and dangerous situations. Assault and the threat of assault was a way for the men to let the women know that they were vulnerable and unwanted on the job. Violence was pervasive as both a threat and a reality as these women sought to perform their jobs and go about business as usual. Job Interference Job interference includes coworkers’ actions that “unreasonably interfere with the women’s ability to perform the job” (Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson [1986]; Harris v. Forklift [1993]). Acts of job interference are blatant, irresponsible, or disrespectful actions toward coworkers. Interference often places women in dangerous situations with a disregard for their safety, health, or life. These acts are differentiated from violence and assault in that they are not intended to harm the other person, although harm may be the result. Job interference happens at three predominant levels: (1) inadequate, denied, or incorrect training; (2) inappropriate assignment of work; and (3) coworkers’ disregard for the capabilities and limitations of others in performing work. Because women in blue-collar jobs that are nontraditional for women characteristically depend on men to work with them in their jobs, job interference is particularly problematic. For the women I interviewed, this treatment sometimes made the job difficult or even impossible to do. At other times, the result of job interference was that the women were placed in dangerous and threatening situations. Claire described a situation where the coworker who was senior to her and able to solve the problem refused to help her. One time we were working in this really big, really nice house. It had a Jacuzzi tub, and it was situated under a cathedral ceiling—real high. And I had to get to the skylight that was in the ceiling. So I got this big, huge stepladder. And I put

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drop cloths down. And I’m trying to set it up so I can reach it. I couldn’t figure out how to set it up. He walks in. I say, “I can’t figure out how to do this. How am I supposed [to] set up the ladder to get to that wall?” And he said, “I don’t know. You’re a painter; figure it out.” You know, it’s just that kind of stuff on a daily basis. Always harassing me—trying to get me to quit or something.

Sometimes it was hard to differentiate between behavior intended to make the women miserable and behavior that crossed the line to create an unsafe work environment. Regardless, the women were aware that the motivation was hostility. Chris told me about such a situation from when she worked on the state road crew: Oh man, the way they treated me. There were some foremen and some operators that just treated me horribly. You wouldn’t believe the energy they would spend strategizing how to ruin my day. Like if the backhoe was on the road, and it came time for the 9:30 break, if somebody was flagging that they liked, they would pull the backhoe off the road. But if I was flagging, the foreman and the backhoe operator would go, “Well, we got this back hoe positioned just exactly the way we need it, so we’ll have to leave it on the road so you’ll just have to flag standing alone on the road during the break.”

Coworkers in blue-collar jobs are in a position to either support and keep their coworkers safe or endanger them. One of the reasons that the women were attracted to the jobs was that they were challenging and risky; however, job interference created imposed, unnecessary, and exacerbated risk. The differences between inadequacy, negligence, and interference are often very subtle, and the blame in these women’s experiences easily shifted, with male coworkers’ blaming the victim’s lack of skills and ability. The women knew the differences, particularly as they compared the way the men supported and protected each other as compared to the risks they imposed on the women. Verbal Harassment Verbal harassment encompasses spoken messages that let women know that they are not welcome in the workplace. Much of it is guised in joking, profanity, euphemisms, and the differential ways men talk to men and men talk to women. It ranges from blatant to subtle and is interpreted in the context of the situation, tone, and individuals involved. The results are hurtful and degrading messages that, over time, wear women down. These verbal assaults become harassment when, after being asked to stop, the men persist. Verbal harassment can be a component of or antecedent to other more destructive workplace hostility such as violence and interference.

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Compounding the pervasiveness of harassment, when other coworkers overhear it, they often join in. Verbally harassing a woman can quickly become the norm for how she is treated by the overall work group. Comments that these women found offensive were made directly by coworkers, often as a group, in the presence of the women as well as by coworkers in private and reported back to the women. Verbal harassment included requests for dates, invitations to have sex, and being called a lesbian (whether she was or not), as well as remarks about breasts and other sexualized body parts. Such comments and invitations persisted even after the men were rebuked or asked to stop. The men used degrading and sexual names such as “broad,” “baby,” “porcupine,” “dolly,” “queen-bee,” and “bitch.” Men made comments about how women “hoot, holler, and moan.” All of these verbal comments and referents were offensive, unwelcome, and considered intentionally hostile. Women were often harassed in the presence of other men, or the men would verbally harass women as a group, thereby increasing the intimidation and hostility experienced. Iris recounted the daily behavior of the men on the ship toward her and other women: We’d be walking across a ship or down the gangplank on the waterside, and there’d be six guys leaning over the rail, whistling and hooting and hollering at the “dollies” kind of a thing. And that was no fun for any of us.

Sometimes women would join in and emulate the men’s behaviors and language as a self-preservation strategy, to fit in or reduce their visibility and vulnerability. This could even lead to women verbally harassing each other with one particular woman as the object of the workplace abuse. Not just the guys, there were two girls at the time in our department too, would ride me, you know, pick on me for little things, poke fun at me, and things like that in front of him. And you know why they’re doing it—“let’s jump on his bandwagon and do the same thing he’s doing, and he’ll know that we’re on his side.”

Joking was one verbal communication form that ranged and escalated from acceptable to unacceptable to harassment to abusive. The critical determinant was whether the man or men stopped if the women found it objectionable and said so. The harassment was only considered pervasive and abusive if the men continued it after being told to stop. The difficulty was that because of the sheer numbers and the women’s need to blend in, it was often easier, if not necessary, for the women to say nothing and put up with it. Joking included telling jokes that degraded women, sexual “dirty” jokes, or just making fun of women as objects. Unfortunately, the courts require the women to put the men on notice that it is unacceptable,

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and this may make them more vulnerable and put them at risk for more hostile retaliation—it may not be worth it. Additionally, many of the jobs involved the women being out on the road with men. Particularly when in a truck on at a roadside work location, the men would make fun of women they passed or who passed them and would sexualize them. These comments were unwelcome and served to make the women feel uncomfortable and out of place. It not only was offensive to have to listen to it, but it also put the woman coworker on notice that the men indiscriminately treated women as sexual objects, that they felt free to harass women, and that they thought other women should have to listen to it and not be offended by it. This type of verbal harassment in many ways was even more difficult to object to, since it was not directed at the women personally. Sometimes the men would just outright say they didn’t want women on the job, sometimes directly to the women. Beth explained, We hear, “You’ll never make it. You don’t belong here.” They just say, “We can do better. You shouldn’t be here.” I hear that a lot.

In some cases, verbal harassment became so pervasive that men whom the women did not even know and might not see again, but who were part of the same company or workforce (strangers), came up to the women and verbally harassed or insulted them. The message of other men on the job was that they did not want women on the job. For Sally, being harassed about the way she did the job was connected to her being unwelcome by coworkers she didn’t even know. Then I had a private trucker come up to me and said, “How does it feel to be a woman working in a man’s world? Haven’t you got the drift? The man doesn’t like women.” Now here’s a complete stranger I don’t even know, just driving truck on the same job site I’m on. Not even one of our employees. And he tells me that. Two days later, I was turned in again to the office.

Sonja reported that after her supervisor denied her overtime and gave the overtime instead to other coworkers to complete her backlog of work, coworkers exacerbated the harassment and humiliation. And second of all, I had to take heat from this old guy who had no right to say anything anyway because he was another represented employee.

The women were also aware that the men talked about them when they were not there. Angela was told that the men were talking over the CB radio about her behind her back. Beth was aware that the men gossiped

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about her when she was not in the office. Nancy heard the men saying, “That one has very large boobs,” very loudly when she would likely overhear but was not in their presence. Peg described the duplicity of the private comments meant for women’s ears: They’re very open. They won’t say it to your face but they’re very open. They’ll say it like in roll call. They’ll say some comment where you can infer what they’re talking about.

The women did not know if the men wanted the women to hear the comments directly or hear about the comments. Regardless, the fact that men talked about the women’s bodies, told sexual jokes, and made it known that the women did not belong there made going to work and doing a job that requires team work difficult. Dealing with this was a challenge beyond the required skills of the job. The suggestions and the jokes and the little comments, I find that they don’t do it as much if you make a statement that you don’t like it. When you let people know, they’re more apt to leave you alone. But to me it’s still such a degrading thing when it happens. There are men out there that don’t do it, so it’s enjoyable to come to work. But every few hours or every few days, one just comes across and it’s like, “I didn’t need that.”

Devaluing Competency Devaluing competency transpires when a male coworker represents to the woman or to her coworkers that she can’t do the job or did not do the job she was supposed to do. It includes (1) not acknowledging when a women says something, (2) not giving a woman a chance to talk, (3) misrepresenting a woman’s job performance and abilities, and (4) not acknowledging her accomplishments, capabilities, and performance. Devaluing competency is always viewed in the context of whether men are treated the same way— because to some extent, put-downs are teasing, normal, and not sex-based in blue-collar culture. It is when men are listened to, encouraged to contribute to conversations, and commended on a job well done and women are not that the difference is problematic and contributes to a sex-based hostile work environment. The women questioned whether they were competent, capable, or adequately skilled to perform the jobs, as described in previous chapters. Ultimately, they feared that they would lose their jobs because of their inadequacies. The blaming, devaluing, and ignoring built on these doubts and fears.

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He just wouldn’t answer my questions if I asked questions. When I made a mistake, just before I called the boss, he, like, worked on me. “Oh, you’re in trouble. You’re this, you’re that.” He was always, like, putting me in a place where I felt threatened and my job felt threatened.

Being ignored was different for blue-collar women than what is described for white-collar women. Blue-collar women do get ignored when in meetings, but they are not in meetings very often. The only meetings the interviewed women were in were union meetings, and they did say that they were not called on. (In these instances they usually spoke up anyway.) But they were ignored on the job site if they suggested ways to do the job or criticized a male coworker, especially for violating safety procedures. Additionally, they were ignored in the truck to and from work sites and during breaks. Chris describes breaks with the work crew: If I would be with them at the break, they wouldn’t talk to me. They wouldn’t acknowledge me into the conversation. They would never initiate conversation with me, and if I tried to work my way into the conversation, they would look at me like I had three heads. In the truck would be this little silence and everybody would look away out the window like we can’t talk—she’s going to talk if we talk.

What this meant for the women was that if they wanted to be accepted, they always had to prove themselves. When they did prove themselves, it frequently was not acknowledged, and they often had to sit back while a male coworker took the credit. When they asked for help, they had to accept that they would often be ignored and denied the experience of their coworkers. This meant that the women were constantly being set up to fail. When they did something wrong, they had to take the blame and face termination. They were visible and vulnerable to losing their jobs. The male coworkers knew how to do the job, had been on the job, and had the ear of the bosses. They knew how to make it look like the women could not do the job. When there was a problem on the job site, Cathy’s male coworker requested that the supervisor come to the work site with him to take a look at the job. The supervisor and coworker went to the job and discussed solutions. Cathy was not invited to participate. Iris described her predicament as follows: They were the ones who were in a position to try and set me up to fail. Trying to set me up to fall into the water. “Here, give her that end of the load because that’s the one with the long log on it”—that kind of stuff. They were in the position to set us up for that.

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When possible, the failures would be arranged to occur with an audience, often in public or under the purview of the supervisor. When Claire and her male coworker returned to the office after a day of painting, the coworker boasted of the day’s accomplishments. Claire described her coworkers’ reaction: They’d say “Oh, great job, Ed. Great job. You know, you really earned us the money today.” And I had cut in the whole thing, and he rolled the whole thing, so we did equal parts of the whole job and he got credit for it. They just figured I wasn’t doing as much as he was or I wasn’t good as he was. He was constantly taking credit for my work.

The coworkers congratulated him on a job well done with no regard for or mention of Claire’s participation. Devaluing takes place when women are blamed, ignored, or disregarded by male coworkers for their contributions to the work. Unlike assault and job interference, devaluing does not risk the woman’s health or safety. It does restrict women’s job opportunities. It is disconcerting to the women because it affronts and excludes them from the general camaraderie between coworkers and from recognition for contributions that result in promotions, pay raises, and job recognition. Being Nice, Helpful, and Caring The women welcomed the help, concern, and consideration of their coworkers. What was confusing about this welcomed treatment was that it might come in the same forms as the behaviors and verbiage that were offensive and considered hostile or harassing. The difference was usually the perceived intent. Sonja described her coworkers as “a good bunch of guys.” When asked how she knew, she said, The way you can joke with people. I joke with them all the time. We’ll joke— there’re sexual jokes, family jokes. We’re always joking around, kidding. But you can tell by the way that they talk to you when they know there’s something wrong. Or case in point, when my aunt was sick, they knew that, and they would come and put their arms around you—in a nice caring manner!—as opposed to somebody who puts their arm around you and squeezes you a little bit too tight or you feel uncomfortable. This would be the fatherly or the brotherly way these guys are caring. You can feel it, sense that. And I think that here it depends on the way that you treat them back. I mean they can kid, anybody can kid . . . and you can kid back. There’s always bantering going on, friendly. And there’s only been maybe once that someone’s overstepped his or her bounds.

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What is confusing is that Sonja welcomes the jokes, the bantering, and the physical contact. She knows the difference, but the explanation can seem confusing, particularly if not read in its entirety. Other women described ways they liked to be treated. Descriptors included compliments and being called by name. Sally described the importance of being called by name: When I pulled up in my truck, when there were three or four trucks together, I felt strange. I was the new kid on the block. I didn’t know their names. The word spread very rapidly what my name was [laughs]—and who I was. But they introduced themselves. They told me that if I needed anything, let ’em know.

Just being women in predominantly male workplaces made the women visible, this calling-by-name was a positive recognition that they were there and were individual people, not just women. They knew that they were in male workplaces; thus, overt welcoming and acceptance increased in importance. Because the women initially were made to feel clearly not welcome, nice, caring, and appreciative behaviors were interpreted as conditional or suspect. The fact that the men were nice and caring did not necessarily mean that the women were welcome or accepted. It mostly meant that their jobs were easier and more pleasant. Iris described it as follows: I mean, even if they enjoyed having me around, and after a point they did enjoy having me around, it was still only enjoyment based on the fact that they had to have me there.

Though gossip among the guys and being left out of conversations was problematic when it was degrading to them as women, being left out of gossip about and between male coworkers was seen as good and nice. Joyce appreciated not being privy to gossip and not being drawn into “nitpicking” between the men. Sally and Joyce cited these as reasons that they preferred to work with men: they did not have to listen to gossip and nitpicking. Being left out of the gossip meant that they did not have to be involved in coworkers’ personal problems. Part of men’s caring was letting the women know that they were aware that the workplace was difficult for them just because they were women. The women appreciated it when men openly acknowledged that the women were being harassed, targeted, and badgered by supervisors and coworkers. It meant that the hostility in the workplace was not just offensive and intolerable for a “reasonable woman,” but that it was unacceptable for any “reasonable person.” Men also displayed a caring attitude by being sensitive to the personal problems of the women. Sonja appreciated the men’s concern when her

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aunt died. Sonja described a coworker’s empathy for her problems with the supervisor in this way: He came in and sat down with me and just put his arms around me. He said, “I wish I could just beat the shit out of that guy.” He said, “Because I’m really sick of seeing this kind of thing happen.” He said, “But its not you. It’s not you.” I said, “Thanks a lot.” But this is the kind of guy I’ve been working with.

Most of the women talked, by name, about one or two men whom they could confide in and who would ally with them when things got difficult. These were not the men that mentored them; they were friends and comrades. It was this camaraderie that the women sought. When the men were caring, helpful, and nice, the women felt accepted and like they belonged. Mentoring Mentors were coworkers who trained, supported, and assisted the women. They were coworkers the women could go to if they had questions or problems with work. They were also coworkers who would volunteer guidance and solutions. When asked, many of the women said that they had a mentor at work and that the person was a man. They also wished there had been women in a position to be their mentors, but that was not usually the case. The importance of the mentor underscores the importance of informal training by coworkers in blue-collar jobs. Because of the nontraditional status of women in the workplace and the fact that many of the men did not want them there, to find a mentor was extremely appreciated and esteemed by the women. Gretchen described her mentor as “patient and always showing me new stuff.” For the most part they simply gave the women the same training and insights that the men got. Because women realized that they came in with fewer skills than the men did, this meant that mentors had to answer their “dumb questions.” Mentors were coworkers who had been in the workplace long enough to know the nuances. Beyond teaching the women the skills, they would often protect the women from coworkers’ setting them up to fail, taking advantage of them, or insulting them. Mentors told them what was going on between the scenes. Chris described her mentor: On my first day, one of the like, crustiest, old-timers down there took me aside. He took me under his wing, and he said, “Look, the man in the front office is a really bad man. He is going to do terrible things to you, and you’re going to have to watch your back around him—but I’ll show you the ropes.” Well, he taught me the technical skills I needed to know, because I didn’t know anything. Well, actually at first, he told me who to go to. He told me to go to men who were friendly people

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that were sympathetic to the plight that I was in. And because the engineer managed by intimidation, there was, like, this whole underground network that ran itself all around him without him knowing what was going on. And that’s the way it worked.

The women found their mentors on their own. The assigned trainers were not always the most helpful. Ironically, sometimes the coworker they might have been warned about when they came to the job was in fact the most helpful person in the long run. Good mentors not only trained the women, but they also allowed the women to develop and expand their skills and capabilities. They were reassuring during the women’s occupational development. They helped the women to understand the politics and behaviors of male coworkers that made doing the job difficult. Mentors empowered the women by helping them to develop skills and confidence. Cathy recalled how her mentor helped her: I asked, “Well, why are they doing this? Why do I feel I’m being ostracized?” He said, “Cathy, think about it. How many men are in your local?” I said, “I don’t even know.” And John said to me, “You’ve threatened them. You could be a big shot in the union.” It just made me feel like I had more power. Empowerment is a wonderful thing to feel. John helped plant empowering thoughts in my mind; I can’t tell you how that lifted me.

However, as discussed earlier, in some cases, once the women became skilled and capable, the mentors turned from “good guys” to “bad guys.” The mentors in those cases became worried that the women would get or had gotten better at the job than they were. Having a mentor was still valued, but the individual man acting as the mentor would change when he no longer could or would provide training and guidance toward developing in the job and company. Respect Being treated with respect was what the women aspired to. Being respected is being recognized as a coworker capable of doing a good job, not a woman doing a good job. Respect meant being taken seriously. Some of the men treated me fine, but they didn’t take me seriously. I was just “girl painter” or whatever. But they treated me nice. They just didn’t take me real seriously. And I hated that. From the others, I got respect.

Respect was as simple as the men “not talking shit around you” (according to Claire). It was the absence of sexual harassment. It was not being set up

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to fail. Cathy described men who respected women as men who treated “women as people.” For Sandy respect meant being recognized as a woman who had “integrity.” Respect included but did not necessitate the men’s considering the women as an asset to the work crew. Respect meant that the women could go one step further than just doing the job and could excel. When respected, the women felt they had the support of their coworkers, were being recognized as being capable and skilled, and were visible as female coworkers, not as women. When men suggested that the women take leadership roles either in the work group or in the union, women felt they had earned the men’s respect. The men confided in them and empowered them; the men empowered and affirmed the women for asserting themselves and standing up to them and the management. When men treated the women with respect, the women no longer had to work in fear of harm, discrimination, harassment, or violence. The workplace was no longer hostile. They were welcome and secure at work, so they could just do their jobs. The women felt that respect was something earned over time. It was something that the men gave them after they had demonstrated that they could be trusted not to repeat what the men said about their wives and other personal secrets. It was given after the women demonstrated that they were capable of performing the job as well as or better than the male coworkers. Respect allowed the women to be part of the work crew or team, yet not dependent on the men to accommodate their personal problems or skill deficiencies. SUMMARY The women described a continuum of positive and negative behaviors and treatment that they received from male coworkers. The women just wanted to be able to do their jobs without interference from the men. Physical and sexual abuse, violence, verbal abuse, and job interference can create a hostile environment that precludes the women from performing their jobs. But when men are caring, helpful coworkers and mentors, the women can do their jobs and develop the same skills as men doing the job. Ultimately, the women I met aspired to being treated with respect. When men respect their female coworkers, the workplace offers equal opportunity for compensation and promotion, and most of all men and women work together as a “team.” In the final chapters, strategies for mitigating and providing a supportive workplace for women in nontraditional blue-collar jobs are presented.

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Coworkers are only one facet and problem in the larger picture of workplace hostility experienced by women. When these strategies are not enough and the workplace becomes intolerable, women leave. The conclusion offers recommendations for women, policy makers, employers, future researchers, and feminists for remedying the problems these women experience at work with men.

Chapter 11

NEGOTIATING THE HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT: STRATEGIES FOR WOMEN TO ALLEVIATE EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION AND SEX-BASED HARASSMENT

Women attempt to mitigate the hostile environment they experience as a result of sexual harassment by coworkers through both informal and formal means. This book has worked to define and understand the hostile work environment from the perspective of women employed in traditionally male blue-collar jobs in the context of Title VII. Pursuing Title VII protections and equal employment opportunity in the courts is costly (both in time and money), destructive (to the woman, the coworker, and the employer), and inaccessible. During the interviews, the women suggested strategies they used to mitigate discrimination, harassment, and denied employment opportunities. Most of these strategies are informal and not connected to exercising legal protections. Exercising these strategies builds a supportive workplace or allows the women to perform their jobs with diminished interference. This chapter highlights the strategies suggested by the women based on their experiences.

DRAWING THE LINE Women need to determine what male coworker behavior is acceptable and what behavior is unacceptable, what is reasonable and what is unreasonable. This can be done based on a woman’s own code of conduct developed in consultation with coworkers or in comparison with the standards of others. It is probably best to use a combination of determinants: personally devised determinants and coworkers’ suggested determinants. Women then need to draw that line and let coworkers know that the line

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exists. When the line is crossed, women need to be vocally clear that the line has been crossed and that the behavior is unwelcome. Direct communication is recommended, but the women who told me their stories cautioned that drawing the line is not without inherent risks of retaliation by the confronted. IGNORING Many of the women had tried telling men that their behavior was unacceptable, but it persisted. In some cases, drawing the line only made things worse because the men antagonized them and retaliated. The women were aware that although the company had sexual harassment policies, those policies were not enforced, and filing a claim only made things worse. In these cases, one option was just to ignore the comments and behaviors, no matter how offensive they were. We used to see their penis more than we saw, like, when I lived with a man. The woman who worked across from me, she said, “I have two sons at home I take care of. I see this guy’s penis more than I do my sons’.” So, we found the best way deal with it, the best thing to do, is to ignore it. Go about your own business.

The other side of ignoring is that it could be misconstrued, both informally by coworkers and in Title VII litigation, to mean that the behavior was not “unwelcome.” This fine line between ignoring and speaking out just reinforces the difficult situation women are placed in when they have to protect themselves both on a day-to-day basis with coworkers and in the long run if they need to exercise their Title VII rights. CHANGE OF ATTITUDE When women changed their attitude, work became more tolerable even though the men did not change. Much of changing an attitude had to do with accepting that the men were not necessarily ever going to change, want them there, or accept them. This often involved changing from an attitude of anger, victimization, and indignation to one of ignoring and disregarding discrimination and harassment. Iris explained, At first I thought, “Who are these men treating me like this?” I was really pissed, but I realized pretty quickly that being angry only gave them power. It didn’t do me any good. That the best thing I could do was simply not attach any significance or power to what they were saying. And then they were throwing words out into the empty air, and they go nowhere.

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BEING SMART/PLAYING DUMB Rather than confront or ignore harassing, demeaning, or sex-based comments, some women pretended not to understand them—they played dumb and naive. This was a calculated, conscious tactic to appear “dumb” when in fact they understood, were offended, and realized that they were being harassed. Because feigning naïveté was calculated, they were “being smart.” It was a way of not engaging or rewarding the harasser’s unwanted, disparaging comment or behavior. Paradoxically, the women felt empowered and like they had the upper hand because the harassers then became “the dumb one” since they thought the woman was dumb. GETTING MAD/BEING UNREASONABLE The women in this study found that to get angry, raise their voices, use strong language, and be confrontational to the point where coworkers found it unreasonable was sometimes the only way to get the attention of perpetrators of discrimination and harassment. This route of dealing with the situation was usually preceded by personal stress and feelings of depression and self-doubt. The effects of the stress are both psychological and physical. According to Mary, I felt like I was having chest pains, heart problems. When I went to the clinic for it, they gave me nitroglycerin, told me to take three, and if they didn’t help, to call 911 and to look at the stress in my life. Now I usually tell [coworkers harassing me] to fuck off, to stay out of my face.

The danger was that the women might be seen as “moody,” “premenstrual,” “aggressive,” or even “dangerous.” According to Beth, Well, you just get so sick of it. And of course, you’re standing there and crying. You feel like, “Oh no!” Then everyone blames it on PMS, and in a couple days it’s all over. Either that or they forget what you said or what she stuck up for. Once you have said something, you can never take it back, so you really got to be careful with what you say and how you say it.

This getting-angry strategy needs to be used with caution; women use it at the risk of being labeled “aggressive” or “crazy.” For one woman it led to a security escort out of work because the supervisor deemed her to be “threatening the safety of a coworker.” However, overall, when women showed themselves to be a little unpredictable and volatile, men approached them with caution and even fear that bordered on respect. The challenge for the women who displayed their anger was to moderate the anger and

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act it out in such a way that the company or union did not intervene with a mental-health evaluation or discharge, while still getting the attention of coworkers and the employer so that they knew the women were serious and would not tolerate the abuse and harassment anymore. DON’T ROCK THE BOAT Not rocking the boat meant working within the existing system. The challenge for the women of not rocking the boat was advocating for themselves and assuring recognition for doing a good job while not drawing undue attention to themselves as women. This meant establishing that they were there as qualified workers doing the job, not as women out to show that women could do the job. It meant not doing anything that was perceived as “causing trouble.” This might mean that they had to compromise or endure discrimination and harassment, particularly in the short run. Not rocking the boat made day-to-day life at work with coworkers easier and often increased the likelihood of promotions or accommodations. The women I interviewed recommended this as a beginning strategy for when women first entered the workplace, but they did not recommend it as a long-term or final strategy for persistent and personally humiliating discrimination and harassment. This strategy can play a part in women’s efforts to achieve a balance that enables men to perceive them as reasonable women who have a right to and deserve the same opportunities as the men doing the job. THE ONE-YEAR MARK During the first year, the women experienced a process of adjusting to the particular workplace culture while the workplace adjusted to them. They recommended reserving judgment about the long-term hostility and waiting to make a decision about leaving until a year had transpired. The financial rewards of enduring this year outweighed the escalated adversity the women experienced during this time period. Many described the one-year mark as almost a magical point of passage where they found that the culture of the workplace had changed toward including or accepting them and that they had changed and acculturated to the workplace and coworkers. HUMOR This was the most common strategy women used to confront and communicate the unwelcomeness of coworkers’ hostile behaviors and comments. It was also the most highly recommended strategy. Although humor was


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the medium, the message underlying the humor was strong and assertive. When using humor it was important not to be mean-spirited or threatening. Iris described it this way: Sometimes, I’ll actively put myself in a situation where I can make a fool out of myself. And that’s really actively rolling over and showing my belly. And then I’ll just laugh at myself about it. “Ha, ha, look what I did.” I’ll poke fun at them sometimes too. That’s another way, and I can get away with that the vast majority of the time. Sometimes I’ll say something completely ridiculous, wait for one beat while they’re trying to figure out what’s going on, and then I’ll crack up. And sometimes I’ll just poke fun directly at them, wait for a beat again, and crack up. And that makes it really clear that I’m engaging at the level of humor. That’s my mainstay, I think. And it worked with those guys.

Humor was a safeguard for the vulnerability and hurt that confronting discrimination and harassment potentially exposes. Additionally, the women’s use of humor included being able to laugh at themselves, particularly if they had trouble performing the job. Humor did not involve telling sex-based jokes or condoning cruel joking toward coworkers, which are to be avoided. Humor was a way of letting the harasser or offender know that the woman was aware that the man was behaving “badly” or unacceptably but that it was not cause for, and that they would not engage in, an altercation. TALKING THE TALK The women found that it was important to be able to “talk the talk” of the guys. For many women the first challenge was to be able to name and discuss the tools and skills of the job, which they were often unfamiliar with prior to their employment at that workplace. Additionally, talking the talk included casual conversation about traditionally male topics such as cars and mechanics, but it did not include responding to flirting or conversations about sex. The women indicated that it clearly did not mean talking “trash.” In fact this strategy specifically meant not being involved in talk about sex; it was about establishing that the women could talk about the things that men talk about with the exception of sex, thus setting a clear boundary. EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY Social interaction, with personally set limits, at breaks and lunch and outside of work resulted in increasing respect and improved interpersonal relationships for the women. It was also a venue to learn and understand

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the human side of the men. At times, the benefits went further, providing an opportunity for the women to understand the men’s position and motivation for sex-based hostile behavior, based on how they acted generally in social situations. The women saw not only how the men treated the women socially, but also how the men treated the other men they worked with. The women were also able to see how the men treated restaurant and service workers in public and just passersby. Socializing was usually done on the men’s terms and in activities of interest to men (e.g., eating doughnuts on breaks, having a few beers after work, sharpshooting, eating or talking in the truck on the way to the site, or just eating lunch together). It often took weeks, months, or even years for the women to be invited to join the men on breaks or at meals. Being invited and included in the social activities of meals and breaks during work hours was a right of passage. It also included being invited to join the men after work for happy hour. These were not activities and events to which the women were invited as dates or for sex-based relationships; the women were invited as peers and coworkers. As noted in previous chapters, in the early days on the job, many of the women were subversively or overtly excluded from joining men at meals and for recreational activities. Accepting these invitations led to more increased collegiality, support, and camaraderie with coworkers. CLOTHING AND APPEARANCE Many employers require workers, including the women, to wear uniforms and protective clothing. In other jobs the uniform is optional. The women’s uniforms usually consisted of attire that was fashioned for men and that was often unflattering to women. This clothing not only protected women from job-task hazards, but also serves to reduce their visibility as a “woman” and sex object. Most women felt that the less feminine the dress, the less visible they were and the less vulnerable they were to coworker hostility. Many of the women suggested wearing the uniforms even if they are optional. In order to express or establish their femininity through physical appearance, women might use nail polish or makeup. However, caution was recommended in any assertion of femininity in physical appearance while on the job. Moreover, many of the women felt that their femininity was best asserted through their language and actions, not clothing and appearance. Many of the women recommended displaying a feminine physique on weekends and off the job, as a way to leave their work behind and differentiate themselves in and out of work.


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MENTORS Women benefited from finding and learning from mentors. Mentors can be either a man or woman. Based on a mentor’s experience within the workplace, mentors advised women on negotiating the organizational structure, developing the skills of the job, and dealing with interpersonal problems with coworkers, including supervisors. Over time and as the women advanced in their skills and jobs, the mentors had the potential to and usually did change. A woman may find that she has multiple mentors who help her understand and negotiate the workplace, including in determining what is business as usual and what is discrimination or harassment. Mentors are extremely important for guiding women through the bureaucracy and giving them a heads up on the best way to deal with unfamiliar and difficult coworkers and situations. SUPPORT FROM OTHER WOMEN As stated, many women were either hesitant to seek support from other women or devoid of opportunity. Some of the women recommended seeking out other women and developing supportive relationships with them. Other women provided reasonable checks and collective support for doing the job, negotiating the organization, and dealing with coworker problems. In instances where women did seek the support of other women, the outcomes were positive, although at times threatening to the men. Collective support and collective action were probably the most underdeveloped, disregarded, and underutilized strategies for intervening with sex-based problems at work. For some women, this strategy was difficult to enact or not an option; these women had chosen the jobs they did so they that they would not have to deal with other women, and they preferred to keep it that way. However, for these women, paradoxically, they avoided working with women, but were eager to get support and feedback from other women outside of work. This was particularly apparent when during the interviews, they were very focused on how their situations compared to those of the other women I had interviewed. This points to the need to facilitate and advocate for women to work together and support each other. MENTAL-HEALTH THERAPY AND EMPLOYEE-ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS For personal problems that affect job performance, companies regularly provide and recommend mental-health counseling and employee-assistance

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programs. Many of the women experienced anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress reactions, and physical problems that were brought on by the psychological and social stress of sexual harassment and employment discrimination. These problems affected their ability to concentrate and learn the skills required to perform their job. The harassment created “a lot of insecurities and a lot of self-doubt” in their ability to do the job. These problems affected the women’s job performance. Beth said, It’s very distracting. And then it’s hard to focus on your work you’re trying to learn. I had found that [to be a] very difficult thing to put out of my mind and try to concentrate. It’s affected my concentration. And it’s affected my training and my work.

These women sought help through their employee-assistance programs and mental-health professionals, and most of them found that they were having normal reactions to extreme or abnormal situations. With the help of professionals, the women learned ways to help themselves and deal with the men and hostility and discrimination at work. One women explained, I’m getting help and going through therapy and going to a counselor. I think she has made me see some of the strengths that I didn’t know I had. And having stuck it out is one of the big strengths that I never even noticed. Just going into work every day seems to be a big effort, but we do it. I’ve done it. And . . . I guess I’m pretty proud after all this. You know, it’s quite an accomplishment when you don’t want to be there sometimes. And to be able to sit is such an effort, and I find it coming easier now, now that I have a little more self confidence. . . . It’s just that we were so insecure.

The women then learned to move from being victims to sticking up for themselves. When they did stick up for themselves at work, it was key to have the therapist to validate their actions and techniques and support them if there was a backlash. Learning that they were having normal reactions and that they were not “crazy” was in and of itself healing and empowering. Additionally, the mental-health professionals, if informed, played a role in helping the women understand what was illegal, what was unjust, and what was their overreaction to normal interpersonal conflicts. For the most part they were not overreacting, and work posed hostile and injurious threats to their mental health and happiness. LEADERSHIP Women who assumed leadership roles, both formal and informal, were personally empowered and earned the respect of their coworkers. The women took on such leadership roles by becoming mentors to other workers (both male and female), confidantes, union stewards or executive board


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members, or representatives to company initiatives and committees. These were volunteer positions and usually required time and effort outside of the scheduled work hours. The roles utilized the women’s organizational and interpersonal skills and, in many cases, their caretaker skills. The entrance into some leadership roles was as forthright as being elected the union steward. Other starts to leadership roles were as informal as being asked to file union grievances and then filing the charges against the company for violations of the union contract with regard to both men and women. All of these leadership roles diminished the women’s isolation within their work groups. The experiences also provided positive or proactive visibility. Leadership opportunities extended into women’s trades and professional groups in the community where they could meet, support, and advocate for workers beyond their own personal workplaces. Formal leadership roles were highly recommended because they not only benefited the individual woman but also increased the visibility of women as positive and valuable members of the workforce, members who not only could perform the job, but also could enhance the workplace for others. EDUCATION Continuing formal education empowered the women personally and professionally. Education included furthering knowledge and skills in the same trade, acquiring skills in a new occupation, or working toward an academic degree. Education in this sense refers to furthering knowledge and working toward accreditations outside of work (as compared to taking advantage of company or union on-the-job training). The attainment of education led to occupational choices. In some instances, it was a way to retrain in another field that the women had realized an interest in because of their experiences in blue-collar workplaces. For example, Chris went on to earn her master’s in social work after being the employee-assistance program representative for her workgroup. For others education was a matter of retraining in a field with similar compensation, but without the constant blue-collar, sex-based workplace hostility experienced by the women in this study. Mary explained, I would leave. I mean, I’m just hoping that I can get my education and get out.

For example, Claire, the painter, went to school to become a dental hygienist. Once she had completed her education, she then felt it was her choice and decision as to whether to paint or work as a hygienist. She chose to do both. For these women it was the adversity on the blue-collar jobs that mobilized them to further their education.

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Education was empowering and moved the women from being victims dependent on the workplace to being independent persons making a choice. It should be noted that even after completing further education, the women often choose to continue in the traditionally male job because of the satisfaction and personal benefits derived from the combined security and challenge of jobs in the skilled trades\. What was different was that they now had a choice. COMPANY TRAINING AND APPRENTICESHIPS Companies and unions offer training programs and skill-development opportunities that are particularly advantageous for women who often enter the jobs with less skills and confidence than their male coworkers. Particularly when affirmative-action plans advantage their acceptance into these programs, women enroll and subsequently benefit from participation. By applying for the program, women established their intent to remain and advance in the trade. By attending the training, they increased their skills. By completing the training, they put coworkers and managers on notice that they had attained and were proficient in their trade. TAKE NOTES/KEEP RECORDS/DOCUMENT Keeping records and copies of notes and journaling about experiences were ways the women documented the experiences and identified ongoing and pervasive hostility. They recommended that women keep a calendar and record the who, what, where, and when details of when they experience discrimination and support at work. Since their companies were documenting job performance, it was also helpful for these woman to keep a file with copies of papers that they knew were in their employee files. A personal journal with narratives of difficult or egregious situations and personal insights was also helpful. These records became a way for the women to look back and see the patterns and pervasiveness of problems at work. It was a way to see and track the pervasiveness and progression or regression of the hostile environment. Additionally, the women had what they needed should they ever decide to file an EEO discrimination claim. LEARN COMPANY POLICIES AND WORKERS’ EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS As stated earlier, the women were aware that what was going on at work and how they were being treated was “not right.” However, it was through learning the company policies and their legal rights that they became


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empowered and could verbalize and describe their problems as illegal or as policy violations. Common questions the women asked themselves included these: “Is he really within his authority?” “Is it grievable?” “Can the union help with this?” “Is this just me or is it illegal?” Knowing company policies required knowing more than just EEO polices. Company policies that helped women mitigate the hostile work environment included job descriptions, evaluation criteria and procedures, documents on training and promotional opportunities, and policies on family leave, health care, and disability. Company policies were often different from federal and state policies. Knowing what actions were violations and what actions were permissible in the company according to policy enabled women to show when situations were wrong and unjust; they could show that the problems were not just results of the women’s overreacting, having unrealistic expectations, or being “crazy.” Complaints previously regarded as “whining” or as mere perceptions became legitimate complaints about wrongful or illegal acts. The women needed to understand two categories of policies: employment-discrimination policies and employment policies (including the union agreement). By knowing company policy inside and out, women were able to advocate for themselves and demand the benefits of work with authority and confidence. Knowledge yielded power. FILING GRIEVANCES/UNION INTERVENTION Overall, women had a positive experience when they elicited support through union intervention. The union, although usually male-dominated, was a protective policing agent of the workplace. The unions were effective in intervening with both coworkers and the company. In the case of sexbased harassment and discrimination, filing a grievance was often preferred over an EEO claim, since it addressed claims of harassment and discrimination without the “sex-based” label, thus allowing the women to avoid the stigma of filing a sex-based claim. However, the women warned that this strategy of turning to union representatives (e.g., the steward) must be approached with caution, since the good guys–versus–bad guys dilemma experienced among coworkers applied to peer union reps; union protections could be compromised or clouded if the union rep is a “bad guy.” Once a grievance was filed, the woman had to be subjected to the due process afforded both her and the “alleged” perpetrator. There were no special protections for victims of sexual offenses like those that have become customary in sexual-assault cases in public courtrooms. Cathy described the situation. But the union, of course, will come with the supervisor. They’ll sit in . . . now Labor Relations gets in to it. What they do is they come out and they sit you down

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together . . . so you have to face the perpetrator. You’re in a room with him. And basically then, it’s your word . . . You’re saying, “Okay, this guy did this.” And this guy’s like, “No, I didn’t.” Then, the company’ll say, “Well, prove it.” Or someone along the line says, “Prove it!”

For the most part, the women recommended dealing with harassment through the union if there is no charge of a sexual nature. But sexually based offenses are probably better addressed in the public venue where there are procedures and experts accustomed to such violations. FILING EEO CLAIMS EEO claims could be filed within the company, with state human-rights commissions, or with the federal EEOC. Most of the women had not even considered such a filing. Many of the women, after considering filing a claim as a way to mitigate discrimination or harassment, refused to do so. Many potential personal costs and benefits had to be weighed. For the women who did file, the filing placed them in opposition to the company and often to coworkers. They became threatening. However, they felt like they had done the right thing and felt esteemed for having stuck up for themselves and other women who were having the same and similar problems. Overall and in the long run, filing an EEO claim gave the women a sense of vindication, social justice, self-advocacy, and personal power. It usually did not stop discrimination against them or eradicate the hostile environment. Often, the experience of filing was emotionally debilitating, and it resulted in the loss of their jobs (constructive discharge) or in their electing to leave the job voluntarily to move on to a less hostile environment. On the other hand, for some women, once they had endured one filing, they felt empowered and were more likely to consider subsequent filings. The women’s filing, in many cases, did benefit other workers at that workplace experiencing similar discrimination or harassment or did result in new and different employment policies and practices. But filing an EEO claim was to be approached with caution and counsel. The women filing were instigators of change and advanced equal employment opportunity and awareness, but at great personal price and with little or no personal reward. In looking back, they thought they did the right thing but were not always sure it was worth it or that they would do it again if the situation presented itself. LEAVING THE JOB Ultimately, when the workplace harassment and job interference by coworkers were too pervasive, when the company was hostile or


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unaccommodating, and when equal employment opportunities and protections were not enforced or accessible, the women left. Mary determined that, You might be able to deal with one man in an office of 10 that is going to bother you, but when you are dealing with 95 percent with that mentality, there is nothing you can do about it. In my eyes, all you can do is leave.

Of the 17 women involved in this study, five years after the interviews, at least half had left traditionally male blue-collar occupations to pursue other careers. Some of them had compromised either for lower pay or for less occupational satisfaction in order to be subjected to less sex-based hostility. Others had planned their exit and had become educated or trained in alternative occupations that offered similar benefits, pay, and personal challenge with the expectation of less discrimination and pervasive workplace hostility. The unfortunate part of this was that most of them still wanted to do the job and receive the compensation of the blue-collar job they had left behind—but the personal costs were just too high. According to Claire, You think it’s gonna get better. You think something will change when you’re in the midst of it. You just hope it will get better because nobody wants to make the drastic change of changing their job or having to look for a new job because that’s very stressful. But then there comes a point where it’s just too much, and it’s easier to go and get another job and leave the stress. There’s a point where the stress of living without a job is less than what you’re living with at your job. I think that’s makes the breaking point, so that when it hits, it’s time to go!

CONCLUSION None of the women used all of these strategies or endorsed all of these strategies. In fact, individual women not only found some of these strategies unsuitable, but also found them offensive and objected to their use. The use of these strategies by individual women (and men) should be the result of consideration of the culture and environment of the specific workplace and the values, spirit, and nature of the woman electing to use them. Although these strategies were employed and suggested by women in blue-collar, traditionally male jobs, I believe and propose that these same strategies offer universal options and possibilities for all workers, both at work and out of work. These strategies are a gift from these women, who have negotiated adversity on the job daily, to workers in general who experience adversity on the job and are replete of solutions. Because these strategies were not the focus of this study, I am proposing this list as exploratory and not as complete. I suggest further study, explora-

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tion, understanding, clarification, expansion, and documentation of these strategies and their utility, particularly in relation to informal and formal protections afforded to women workers. A comprehensive handbook for women workers would be useful and affirming and would serve to inform workplace relationships for both genders. What is clear is that many options exist to provide women with the opportunity to continue on the job, do the job, and get paid the higher wages of traditionally male jobs. These strategies point to the ways individuals can extend equal employment opportunity for themselves.

Chapter 12

MITIGATING THE HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Compiling statistics and reviewing court cases does not tell the story or impact of Title VII. But talking to the workers, particularly the workers who have challenged the status quo to work in some of the most challenging, physically demanding, and economically rewarding jobs, gives us insight into their lives and our own. It allows us to reconsider and extend equal opportunity in employment both personally and as a society. These interviews with 17 women in a variety of blue-collar jobs traditionally held by men show that women endure persistent hostility, discrimination, and harassment at work. The hostility, discrimination, and harassment not only come from interactions with coworkers, but also extend across the workplace and into women’s homes and communities. The women endure these difficulties in order to obtain pay, benefits, challenges, and job satisfaction that exceed what they would receive in comparable traditionally female jobs. OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS From the interviews with 17 women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, prominent and consistent themes emerged to frame and extend an understanding of work and the workplace. These themes can be summarized as occupational choice and hiring practices; job performance, training, and evaluation; employers’ policies, compensation, and supervision; and interpersonal relationships between the sexes. The following is a brief summary of the findings from the interviews.

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Occupational Choice and Hiring Practices The decision to enter a male-dominated blue-collar workplace is part of a complex matrix of social, economic, and personal needs and capabilities. Women’s preparation was limited, support was critical, and self-determination was crucial. The women’s decisions were based on their assessment of their ability to do the job and probability of being hired. It was a long process and the result of a series of life events and influences. Preparedness for jobs starts with early socialization (i.e., with the family and public education), making each woman’s circumstance different. The women were aware of their families’ role in preparing them for and familiarizing them with job opportunities and their interests in those jobs. Early preparation for traditionally male occupations included being exposed to the skills of the job, a general ability to negotiate adversarial relationships with men, and an orientation to union, management, and labor relations. The composite message derived from their family, schools, neighborhoods, and communities ultimately encouraged or discouraged their pursuit of jobs in male-dominated workplaces. A woman’s decision to pursue a particular traditionally male blue-collar job required knowledge that such a job existed, confidence that in some way or on some level she could do the job, empowerment to apply for the job, fulfillment of the minimum requirements, and determination. Beyond these factors, most of the women benefited from affirmative hiring policies or nepotism and, moreover, from the drive that came from pursuing a dream to do what they loved most. But each woman had to overcome obstacles in order to procure the job. Determination was an essential component of the hiring process for all the women. The job-application process usually presented overt and covert obstacles. Women usually only heard about job opportunities from men they were in contact with (family and friends). In applying and interviewing, the women often perceived that they were less qualified and less prepared to perform the job than men. This, coupled with overt and covert attempts by male employers not to hire women, made it less likely that women would be hired into traditionally male blue-collar jobs. The women were aware of and sought out the skills, pay, benefits, and security afforded workers in traditionally male jobs. The jobs were attractive to women from the varied socioeconomic, racial, and cultural backgrounds represented in this study (although there was limited diversity among the women interviewed). Women chose to enter these occupations at different stages in life. The commonality was not the demographics of the women, but the attraction to working in a numerically male-dominated

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work group and to the combined job description, skills, and higher compensation and benefits offered. Some of the women were attracted to the jobs because they would be entering workplaces where they would be the only women there, because they were male dominated workplaces. Some wanted to work only with men and other wanted to be pioneers and pave the way for other women. As the workplaces changed and women were known to work in traditionally male jobs or work sites, other women were more likely to notice and apply, thus changing the composition of the workplace. Examining the reasons for women’s decisions to enter workplaces dominated by men and the factors involved with their entering helps lead to an understanding of why the number of women in these jobs is so low and some of the factors that contribute to the pervasiveness of the hostile work environment. Further, to look at the reasons why these women choose these jobs is to begin to understand why others might not. The reasons begin accumulating long before the first day of work and the hostile environment surpasses the boundaries of the workplace and spreads into the family, neighborhood, community and larger society. Job Performance, Training, and Evaluation The jobs were physically demanding and required specific job skills. Training and performance measures used an established male standard. Work sites were often unsafe and dirty and lacked sanitary facilities and required specialized clothing and equipment. Job performance involved the ability to perform tasks and provide services, ensure personal safety, and manipulate the work environment under challenging and often adversarial conditions. The acquisition of these three abilities resulted in women performing jobs that were rewarding both to them personally and to the employer. The rewards of a job well done included recognition, compensation, and the satisfaction of the successful production of goods and services. Although the required and desired product, service, or outcome of doing the job is the same for men and women, how that job is done and what personal assets and accommodations are required is often different for women than for men when performing traditionally male blue-collar jobs. This study demonstrates the need for flexibility in accommodating women at work. Universal standards used to assess job performance, though apparently neutral, were male-based. The women utilized skills of negotiating, planning, caring, protecting, and assuring safety that were beyond the recognized skills necessary for the job. Existing measures, particularly of traditionally male blue-collar jobs, overlooked, devalued, or negated the

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strengths, personal qualities, and skills of individual women workers. In many instances, these assets increased job productivity, making them an appropriate consideration for evaluating overall job performance. Promotions, training opportunities, and compensation were tied to being able to perform the jobs as the men did. When women divulged creative or different methods of performing jobs to coworkers or supervisors, they opened themselves to ridicule or even devaluation. Women often had to exceed the performance levels of male coworkers in order to counter the preconceived expectations of coworkers and supervisors that women were not as capable as men of performing the required tasks. Ultimately, the women had to fit in and perform as the men, meeting both the written and the unwritten male-based traditional expectations for job performance, in order to receive the compensatory and promotional rewards of work. Employers’ Policies, Compensation, and Supervision Blue-collar, traditionally male jobs offer women pay, benefits, security, and opportunities that often exceed those available to women in traditionally female jobs. These benefits result in retention of women workers, who strive to improve and excel in performing the work. Desirable employment benefits cited by the women included pay, health care, retirement, seniority, and union representation. Attractive employment opportunities included alternative schedules, education, training, apprenticeships, promotions, and union protections. These same factors, when not sensitive or responsive to the life cycles and personal needs and aspirations of women, become the reasons women leave such jobs. The women interviewed entered their jobs with limited training and in entry-level positions. They took advantage of many employer-offered benefits that allowed them to develop more advanced work skills and obtain promotions and increased pay. Education, training, affirmative action, and union protections provided opportunities to mitigate and rise above discrimination and barriers to equal employment opportunity. Formal written employment policies helped reduce sex-based employment discrimination and served as markers and guides for women determined to remain on the job and advance in the organization—the policies were a road map. For the most part, the existing employment policies and benefits of traditionally male blue-collar jobs supported women’s personal, social, and economic needs. The jobs offered the women more pay, benefits, and security than traditionally female jobs—and often more than the women’s husbands or partners received from their jobs. One of the only downsides of traditionally male jobs as compared to some traditionally female jobs cited by the women was that the jobs requiring rotating shifts or spontaneous


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overtime did not accommodate responsibilities for small children. However, child-care for many of the women was a shared responsibility with the child’s father, making this a family’s, not a woman’s, employment problem. Most of all, the advantages and disadvantages of policies varied from woman to woman because each woman had her own personal, family, career, and social needs and individual aspirations and responsibilities. Policies that were problems for some women were attractive policies to other women. The impact of employment policies varies more according to individuals’ life-cycle stages than according to the sex of the worker. The workplaces were structured so that women’s access to promotions and seniority and even her ability to remain on the job were dependent on the women’s relationships with their supervisors. Supervisors were the first line of management representing the company and enforcing company policy. Supervisors affected women’s pay in that they controlled distribution of overtime, they affected women’s access to promotions and training because they evaluated job performance and submitted recommendations, and they policed job interference among the coworkers who were facilitating or encumbering women’s ability to perform their jobs. Because the supervisor had power over the women’s access to soughtafter compensation, benefits, and promotions, an adversarial supervisory relationship had the double impact of the interpersonal problems of a hostile male-female relationship and the issues inherent in a hierarchical power-based gatekeeper relationship. Negotiating work relationships with supervisors was often difficult and challenging. Supervisory relationships involved the simultaneous negotiation of a relationship with the supervisor as the representative of the organization (as an institution) and a relationship with the supervisor as a coworker (as an individual), making the relationships with supervisors important, complex, and at times problematic. Supervisors were the gatekeepers of available benefits, compensation, and opportunities; they were responsible for policing coworker harassment and interference; and moreover, their personal treatment of the female employees significantly impacted the women’s workplace environment; supervisors set the tone for the workplace environment. Their tolerance of harassment dictated whether coworkers and the general atmosphere would be hostile, neutral, or friendly and welcoming to women. Interpersonal Relationships at Work between the Sexes Relationships with male coworkers were the overriding contributing factor to these women’s day-to-day personal and persistent hostile work

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environments. The women categorized men into a dichotomy of good guys and bad guys. This dichotomy was so clear and divisive for the women that they were able to classify male coworkers without hesitation into one of the two categories. Good guys were men who welcomed and supported women in nontraditional jobs. Bad guys were hostile and prohibited or inhibited women’s job performance. A man is either a good guy or a bad guy at any one time; however, over time and as the women develop skills and relationships with individual male coworkers, those male coworkers can shift from one category to the other. Among the most pervasively hostile situations were those in which the women worked in isolated, small work groups where male coworkers directly supported or interfered with the women’s ability to perform their jobs. In settings such as these, the men who threaten, harass, and jeopardize the safety of the women go undetected. These 17 women’s experiences indicate that men are aware and capable of welcoming and nonoffensive behavior toward women at work and that women come to understand men’s behaviors toward them and identify who is a good guy and who is a bad guy. The women determined whether they were dealing with sex-based harassment and discrimination by comparing the way they were treated by male coworkers to how male coworkers treated the following people: other male coworkers, other women in the same jobs in the same company, secretaries in the same company, women in similar jobs in the same company, women in similar jobs in other companies, the men’s own wives. From these comparisons the women derived their own understanding of how a “reasonable woman,” as compared to a “reasonable person,” was treated in that workplace. The women used both the reasonable-woman and the reasonable-person standard to determine whether behavior was pervasively hostile. The women described a continuum of positive and negative behaviors and treatment that they received from male coworkers. Negative treatment included the range of hostile behaviors of assault, job interference, verbal harassment, and devaluing competency. Welcoming behaviors included mentoring; being nice, helping, and caring; and showing respect. At work the women were always on guard for threatening and hostile actions by male coworkers. Bad guys displayed negative behaviors. Good guys were attributed with welcoming behaviors. The women’s stories show that, in many cases, when women work in traditionally male workplaces they encounter assault, harassment and job interference, all of which can represent physical harm or the threat of physical harm. Although still unwelcome and hurtful, they often accept devaluing of their competency and verbal harassment (either as individuals or workers) by coworkers because the treatment no longer places them at risk for direct physical harm.


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Women who are supported, mentored, and respected by coworkers are often able to overcome the obstacles, discrimination, and adversity they encounter. They are satisfied with being treated nicely and are able to concentrate on their job performance. Mentors provide support and guidance for the women to develop skills and integrate into the work group. With this support women are able to perform the jobs and comply with company policies and procedures. This results in a welcoming workplace. It is at the point of respect that the workplace is no longer sex-based. When the women are treated with respect, they are accepted into the work group based on their job performance and not on their sex. The women aspire to be treated with respect, although it is not their expectation. The women interviewed suggested strategies that they used to mitigate discrimination, harassment, and denied employment opportunities. These strategies can help build a supportive workplace and allow women to perform their jobs with diminished interference. The women interviewed recommended many solutions and strategies for dealing with (1) employers’ discriminatory practices and policies and (2) coworkers who interfere with job performance. The benefit of these strategies is that they enable the women to negotiate a work environment for themselves that is tolerable, if not welcoming, to the point that they can perform their jobs, pursue promotion, and receive compensation. Conceptually, the women are financing their personal enforcement of equal opportunity in employment when they are compensated by being able to remain on the job and perform the job over the long haul. Strategies suggested by the women based on their experiences included the following: set clear limits with coworkers; change attitudes; use humor; be smart while playing dumb; talk the talk of the men; socialize with the men; adapt male or neutral clothing and appearance; find and use mentors; file grievance and utilize union protections; seek and develop support from other women; get mad or be “unreasonable”; assume positions of leadership; pursue further education; take advantage of company training and apprenticeships; allow one year to assess, adapt, and adopt the workplace culture; file EEO claims; and finally, leave the job. None of these strategies were recommended by all the women. The use of one strategy or another must take into account personal choice, personal style, assessment of the possible consequences and benefits, and the feasibility of the strategy mitigating the problem under the specific circumstances. TITLE VII AND EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY Analysis of the perspectives and experiences of the women interviewed generated three key findings in response to the issues raised by Title VII case law.

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1. The pervasively hostile work environment that exists for women exceeds the limited case-law definition of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 2. The use and development of a reasonable-woman standard based on women’s performance of the job and women’s assessment of sex-based hostile behavior and policies results in improved and increased worker productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. 3. In order for women to have equal employment opportunity, employment policies and practices must exceed the passive protections inherent in standing equal-rights legislation and policy.

The Hostile Work Environment “Hostile environment” as referenced in Title VII protections is a term referring to the sexual harassment of employees. Using “hostile environment” to refer only to sexual harassment artificially bounds and limits consideration of experiences of female workers. The term only refers to a small and limited range of the behaviors that create a pervasively hostile environment for women at work. When a person or a class of people are capable of doing a job, seek to do that job because it offers compensation in excess of the compensation offered by the jobs that they traditionally perform, and are deterred from those higher-paying jobs because of employment policies and coworkers’ actions, a pervasively hostile environment results that violates the protections of Title VII. The hostile environment experienced by these interviewed women at work overshadowed the personal satisfaction and welcome challenges offered by traditionally male blue-collar jobs. Such environments are a result of employment policies that disregard women’s competing personal responsibilities imposed by their dual labor role as family caretakers and employees or paid workers; employers’ failure to recognize women’s alternative abilities to perform the job; employers’ or coworkers’ denial of opportunities to women for occupational development and promotion; harassment and discrimination imposed by coworkers and reinforced by supervisors and employers; and community and family disregard and discouragement of the women’s pursuit and capabilities to perform these jobs. The extent of this pervasiveness is evidenced not only through the interviews but also by the fact that after more than 40 years and despite EEO policies, additional legislation and endless litigation, the number of women employed in nontraditional jobs remains low and the wage gap between male and female workers remains. Women have made little representative advancement as workers in nontraditionally male blue-collar jobs and generally are disadvantaged in the workplace in general.


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Employment discrimination is a pervasive social problem. The sexbased hostile work environment is not confined to the workplace but spans women’s life experiences including within family, education, legislature, and communities. The overriding social message is that women do not belong and cannot succeed in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. In order to counter this message, proactive affirmative actions and policies need to be implemented and enforced. Women need messages, support, and encouragement that span our society in order to mediate the prevailing sex-based hostile environment of employment. The Reasonable-Woman Standard In Harris v. Forklift (1993) the Supreme Court held the reasonable-person standard in determining employment discrimination and more particularly sexual harassment. This book has considered employment opportunity and discrimination in the context of the reasonable-woman standard as described in Ellis v. Brady (1991). As with “the pervasively hostile environment,” the reasonable-woman standard must be extended from application to sexual harassment to the broader context of job performance and employment discrimination, both in disparate treatment and impact. The perspectives of the women interviewed reveal that women perform work differently, value the rewards differently, and have different expectations of coworkers than men do. Based on the findings of this book and the perspectives of the women interviewed, I support the reasonable-woman standard over the reasonable-person standard for evaluating and determining the existence of job interference and employment discrimination. The use of the reasonable-woman standard not only benefits the victims, but also benefits the employers and coworkers by offering insights for alternative and improved work conditions, practices, and policies. Considering job performance and the context of work from women’s perspective points to the need for employers to be flexible in evaluating, defining, compensating, and developing policy. Flexibility does not mean diminishing the quality or quantity of work performed. It does not mean defining work in such a way that jeopardizes the completion of the tasks and production of the goods and services. It does not mean that employers need to sacrifice efficiency or profitability in order for women to work in traditionally male jobs. Rather, such shifts allow women to bring skills and abilities that are comparable, compensatory, and complementary to the skills and performance of the men while at the same time allowing workers to respond to and meet their multiple, and often competing, personal and work responsibilities.

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Women’s standards and understandings of workplace discrimination and harassment have (1) offered suggestions for accommodations to many workers with other abilities and (2) resulted in workplaces that reduce the risk of all workers to unsafe and hazardous situations. Many of these solutions accommodate not only women’s but also men’s physical and mental abilities, particularly as imposed by divergent age, size, or physical disability. As was demonstrated in this book, female workers will compensate, persevere, and push personal limits in order to perform the job and meet evaluative criteria; however, in order to meet the established male standards and avoid embarrassment and ridicule, women often hide their creative strategies. The reasonable-woman standards described in this book particularly address the value that women place on caring for customers, employing coworkers’ assistance in physically strenuous tasks, and adhering to safety procedures. This book has pointed to the value of difference and the perils and limitations of rigid standards and doing work as it has traditionally been done by men doing “men’s work.” Resistance to a “woman’s standard” denies employers the benefits of increased productivity and improved safety that result from modifying work procedures to incorporate women’s strategies and skills. A reasonable-woman standard would require that workers’ performance on the job be evaluated using multiple measures, including comparison to written standards, coworkers’ performance, coworkers’ feedback, supervisors’ feedback, and self-assessment, based on noted improvements over time. No single evaluation is sufficient. Employers and organizations can design workplaces that meet the needs of women and that welcome capable and qualified women. Through incentives, compensation, promotional opportunities, training, collective bargaining, and good supervision, employers can assure women’s job performance and longevity. However, the policies and structures that have been designed for men doing the job must be reconsidered, not just applied to women. Retention of women workers is significantly impacted by employment policies that accommodate dual family and work demands. Though these responsibilities are not unique to women workers, they are often an overriding concern of women. These accommodations are not sought at the expense of job performance but rather are requested in order to enhance and ensure job performance. Further, just as there are differences between the men and women, this study found that there were differences among the women as to the meanings that women ascribe to seemingly similar behaviors among men and as to what different women found acceptable and unacceptable. As stated by Henrietta Moore, there is no “universal” category of women. Extensive


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and further exploration, using feminist qualitative methods, into what different women find “reasonable” is recommended to understand the meaning of behaviors among and within the genders. The very nature of the phrase “reasonable standard” is problematic in that it implies that a person who does not conform and adhere to that standard is unreasonable. It diminishes, if not negates, the relevance of context and the impact of pervasive hostility on the reaction of individuals to offensive and discriminatory situations. As attorneys compile evidence and structure their cases and arguments, they should not only use a gender-first lens, but should also avoid universal standards and form a matrix of difference and discrimination in experience (Collins, 1991). Key individual differences to be considered are race, class, age, ethnicity, and familial status. Additionally, the cultures and norms of individual workplaces should be investigated. What is expected, usual, hurtful, destructive, and beneficial must be understood to vary at each workplace. However, this workplace specific culture should not and can not be misconstrued to excuse or allow treatment, policies, or practices that deny employment or lead to a hostile environment for workers. These are the questions that need to be answered: why do workers stay, and why do workers leave? Are these reasons different with regard to categorical groups? The defining of “reasonable” would benefit from incorporating standpoint theory, inductive analysis, symbolic interaction (exploring meanings, not just events), participant observation, and feminist in-depth interviewing. Although this is an extensive undertaking, most litigation takes years and the costs are prohibitive. A qualitative investigation of an individual case or workplace would be efficient and effective in comparison. The findings might result in worker retention, expedient out-of-court settlements, and mediation. Expanding Equal Employment Opportunity Policy and Practice From work, women seek (1) to maximize pay and compensation by (2) performing challenging and achievable jobs that are (3) free from interference and obstructions by employers and coworkers. Though the workplace provides the arena, the hostile environment that supports or limits the opportunity extends beyond the workplace into the family and community. Strategies and interventions to mitigate the hostility are available at all levels of society. As demonstrated in the functional policy analysis of Title VII, pursuing equal employment opportunity in the courts is costly both in time and in money; is destructive to the woman, the coworker, and the employer; and is inaccessible.

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Women in this study were aware of the basic rights afforded them by Title VII. However, discrimination and opportunity were addressed through a much broader context including, but not limited to, the ancillary legislation reviewed in chapter 3. Equal employment opportunity must be considered in a broader policy context. Reliance on additional employment policies for challenging discrimination (1) expanded opportunities to understand, contextualize, and confront discrimination and (2) moved the focus from sex-based to worker-based discrimination. This was illustrated by women’s being able to file harassment grievances with the union against supervisors under the provisions of NLRA and negotiated bargaining agreements, rather than file Title VII violations that require evidence of sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination. Though the predominant policy and case-law findings center on Title VII at this time, there are multiple policies that protect women workers. These policies need to be integrated and understood as part of comprehensive equal employment opportunity. As protective policies of the early twentieth century demonstrated, women’s employment policy must be considered with a critical eye since seemly well-intentioned policies may in fact limit instead of extend opportunity for employment. This study points to the value of analyzing and evaluating the impact of the policies based on the experiences of the women. Functional policy analysis may provide an objective delineation of the policy and its provisions, but through the descriptive analysis provided by qualitative study, we can assess and modify policy by adding the human factors of experience and meaning. Policy needs to be continually reanalyzed, and our understanding of that policy needs to be continually reconstructed from the understandings and experiences of the persons the policy is designed to serve. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EXPANDING EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN Policy Implications and Recommendations Sex-based discrimination and harassment at work have little to do with blatant or physical sexual behavior but instead are about the denial of economic opportunity through behaviors, words, and policies directly and implicitly predicated on male dominance over women in the workplace. Employment policy that provides for equal employment opportunity has opened doors for women’s entry into nontraditional jobs. However, as indicated by the findings of this study, affirmative action and other proactive training and employment policies are necessary in order to counter the adversarial situations and discrimination


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that women encounter in the hiring, performance, and promotional processes of work. This study affirms the positive benefits of affirmative action. Affirmative action as policy extends the passive provision of equal employment opportunity by including the preferential hiring, training, and promotion of underrepresented classes. This study indicates that this preferential treatment in many cases only tips the scale toward equal opportunity. Women are discouraged both directly by employers and coworkers and indirectly through socialization and the larger community from pursuing these jobs and promotions. With affirmative action, a publicly provided policy with ramifications for denial, women begin to consider contesting previously foreboding employment positions and situations. Equal should not and can not be confused with, misconstrued as, or limited to meaning “same.” Comparable worth allows us to move forward to consider and quantify truly equal pay for work of equal value. Although Title VII and the Equal Pay Act were clearly not intended to legislate equality, as clarified and reinforced by the courts, this study supports the standard that focuses on individual effort, capability, skill, and performance as a standard for equal pay, not just a comparison of two individuals performing the same job. This study supports making two standards for equal pay: (1) the individual as central to the test comparing two jobs and (2) the job as central comparing two individuals. One standard is myopic and further disadvantages women workers. Sex-based discrimination in employment can not be eradicated until we construct and use a standard of comparable worth as the standard for equal pay. Further, these interviews revealed that many women were employed and trained in traditionally female jobs but that the pay and compensation for these jobs was less than the pay and compensation for male occupations. In some cases, the women indicated that if they could receive the same pay for female occupations, they would undoubtedly work in female occupations, diminishing the day-to-day aggravation they experienced working with men. This truth is further validated by the fact that so many of the women were pursuing education and training in order to qualify them for jobs with comparable pay that were not blue-collar and that were more typically female (e.g., social work, human resources, dental assistance, and sociology). The women in this study shifted between female jobs and male jobs. They chose traditionally male jobs that provided significantly greater income and benefits without having to obtain any additional skills in most cases. When hired, they received the same compensation and same job evaluations as the men through protections in union agreements. These women demonstrated that women are capable of doing the work and can perform in either male or female jobs.

186


These women are comparable individuals (a comparison can be made of the same woman between when she is working one job and when she is working another) without comparable worth because the same person receives starkly different pay in different jobs. By comparing the individuals and their perceived abilities and preparedness, we can rethink and reconceptualize value and compensation. We can investigate because we are able to control for cultural messages, institutional discrimination, effects of history, and other extraneous influences that maintain job segregation and the gender wage-gap. These women provided proof that there is no equal pay without consideration of comparable worth. Much of the attention regarding women’s employment discrimination has focused on sexual harassment. Recent court decisions of notoriety include Harris v. Forklift (1993) and Oncale v. Sundowner (1998). Women in nontraditional jobs negotiate hostile actions from coworkers on a daily basis. They do this to attain the economic rewards of jobs that include dealing with the harassment, and there is a level of acceptance of this as business as usual and as an obstacle to overcome. It is when these actions cause physical harm through direct violence or unsafe work conditions or when they restrict women’s ability to perform or achieve in the workplace that women no longer feel the behavior is acceptable. As stated, women prefer to be treated with respect but often are satisfied with being treated nicely or just being allowed to do their jobs. Policy that holds employers accountable and focuses on harassment that either covertly or overtly interferes with job performance would diminish employment discrimination. I suggest policies that couple employer liability with a broadly defined standard of “job interference” to mitigate work-site interpersonal harassment. Presence of equal employment opportunity is not the result of one employment policy, legislative act, or court decision. The composite of policies and legislation cited in the functional social-policy analysis addresses the prominent discriminatory and threatening sex-based employment problems that women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs face. Women’s work experiences demonstrate the need for policy that protects workers of both sexes from unsafe, violent, and oppressive workplaces that deny them the economic and social rewards of work. This kind of policy is needed because of the pervasiveness of sex-based employment discrimination and because the protections for women benefit workers of both sexes and other negatively impacted classes of workers (e.g., workers of certain races, ethnicities, ages, and disabilities). Because of the multiple and competing problems and responsibilities of women workers, proactive and protective employment policies that mitigate the pervasive hostility of discrimination against women are required. These policies include safety, benefits, family leave, employer


187

liability, fair-labor standards, collective bargaining, and equal employment opportunity. Particularly salient are policies that consider and extend affirmative action (E.O. 11246), training programs (WANTO), comparable worth considerations, and prohibitions on discrimination in education (e.g., Title IX). The composite effect of the legislation cited in the functional policy analysis frames the opportunities, problems, and discrimination faced by women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. Litigation This study affirms most of the case-law findings as described in the policy analysis. I particularly affirm that employment discrimination includes practices of disparate impact and disparate treatment and advocate that employers be held responsible for policing their workplace. One contradiction of existing case law is this study’s finding that the reasonable-woman standard is the more appropriate test for discrimination and harassment. Once policies are in effect to protect and provide for women’s employment opportunities, the problem of access to enforcement and remedies surfaces. The women in this study were often aware that they had experienced illegal discrimination, but there was little indication that they ever intended to pursue it in the courts. Women have the legal opportunity to speak out in the courts because of rights to equal employment opportunity and the other workers’ rights and protections afforded them. But seeking legal redress requires lawyers who can work within the established “male” framework and legal system of the courts and synthesize the sex-based discrimination experiences of women through a gender-first lens. In interviewing clients, collecting evidence, and structuring arguments, lawyers should apply many of the feminist interviewing techniques described in the methods of this study. Further, I would like to point to the fact that there is a schism between the legal language and the way women protected by the policy talk. At no time during the interviews did the women use the words “hostile,” “reasonable woman,” or “victim.” The women described experiences reflective of all these concepts, and their combined experiences have provided definition for this policy analysis; however, the courts’ and legislatures’ language is not their language. There is a need to conduct studies and analysis that bridge this gap between the policy makers and the targeted populations. Sally described her reading of a legal employment-discrimination claim she was filing this way: It just didn’t sound like what I said, but I was told that that was how it had to be written, so I went along with it.

I recommend that lawyers expand their filings to include multiple legislations, as many as may be implicated in the denial of EEO, and that the

188


evidence collected be broad with particular attention to the broad nature of the hostile environment and insidious nature of “pervasive.” This book can serve to open conversation and help women reconsider the workplace in deciding whether their situations are “unjust” or “illegal.” It can help them to articulate their experiences based on similarities and differences between their situations and the situations of the women interviewed in this book. Filing of Title VII claims depends on accessibility of EEOC. Federal agencies that enforce the provisions of employment legislation, particularly the EEOC, are not adequately funded, staffed, aggressive, or geographically accessible to represent the women whose civil rights are violated. Further, many women have been the victims of multiple illegal employment practices that violate multiple laws. There is not one place where they can go to sort through and file suit. Workers need to be informed of all their rights and need to investigate the expanse of possible violations. Pursuing a Title VII case is usually beyond women’s financial means. Women experiencing discrimination start incurring not only the costs of litigation, but also quite likely reduction in pay and benefits for work, brought on by the consequences of speaking out and perusing their rights. Funding for women seeking to invoke their rights needs to include monies for payment of all out-of-pocket expenses and legal costs of the litigation. Having to wait until the case is settled for monetary reparation limits—and in many cases makes impossible—enforcement of Title VII. Employers’ Responsibilities and Opportunities The workplace, through policies and actions of employers and employees, is the pivotal location for delivery of equal employment opportunity for women. Employers set the workplace policies, practices, and tone that are the hinge pins for equal employment opportunity for women. Consistent with the Supreme Court findings, this study finds that the employer is the party responsible for providing and enforcing Title VII protections and that enforcement or perceived enforcement results in welcoming, productive workplaces. Not only can employers protect and preserve women’s rights, but through the adoption and implementation of policies and practices responsive to the needs of women, workers in general can also operate in a more effective, efficient, and mutually accommodating manner. The following suggestions, based on the findings of this study, are recommended for employers: • Employers need to model, require, and enforce equal opportunity and welcoming workplaces for women. This includes enforcing policies against both blatant


189

sex-based discrimination and sexual harassment. Supervisors in particular need to be held responsible. As demonstrated by Beth’s change of supervisor, a zerotolerance policy can quickly ameliorate coworker hostility and improve worker productivity. • Employers who allow for flexible and innovative ways of performing jobs and work can maximize the individual skills and qualities of workers for all employees, not exclusively women. Moreover, these accommodations, when applied to all workers, acknowledge and draw on the benefits of individuals’ limitations and variations in work style. • Employers and workers would benefit from application of a strengths-based model for designing and assigning work. Rather than viewing differences as deficits, this model operates by looking beyond gender and other constructed categories of workers. It involves moving away from universal standards to flexibility and accommodation aimed at efficiency, increased productivity, and increased job satisfaction for workers. In implementing this strengthsbased model, supervisors and employers need not compromise either requirements that workers perform the job or the safety of coworkers, and this manner of handling work should result in increased productivity and worker safety.

Women Workers Ultimately, it is up to the women to negotiate and mitigate the sex-based hostility of the workplace if they want to do the job and receive the economic rewards of that work. The protections provided through public policy and workplace policy provide a framework for determining reasonable expectations of how much interference and hostility is tolerable. Through accessing collective action, education and training programs, and leadership opportunities and by employing multiple mitigating strategies, women can negotiate and perform even in jobs where they are blatantly unwelcome. Though workplace behavior and policies that demonstrate or imply that women are unwelcome are illegal and unjust, such situations are often the reality. The assertion and negotiation of workers’ rights is often confusing, overwhelming, of great personal cost, and even dangerous. Becoming informed about legal protections and talking with other women in the same or similar situations enable women to define their situations as contributing to the illegal, pervasively hostile environment as opposed to being just personally unfair. Networking with similarly situated women allows them to draw on other’s experiences. Finding a mentor at work, getting support from other women, learning company policy, and knowing their workplace rights are ways for women to empower themselves and build personal foundations for mitigating the hostility.

190


FINAL WORDS After more than 40 years, we are only beginning to experience the impact of Title VII. It is possible and probable that the court is done with much, if not most, of its contribution to clarifying the intent of the act. The major work now is that of employees asserting their rights and demanding equal opportunity in welcoming and productive workplaces, which can result shifts in the social, economic, and labor-force opportunities for women workers. Blue-collar women in traditionally male jobs provide language, examples, definition, and solutions for thinking about equal employment opportunity. They expose the painful, cruel, and abusive side of work. They tell us what and who are supportive. Title VII benefits both women and men, both employers and workers. For the most part the provisions of the policy and the subsequent court decisions support women workers’ opportunities, advancement, and security at work, factors that extend to affect the women’s families and communities. However, women continue to experience both subtle and overt discrimination. Day-to-day work life is difficult, and the workplace is hostile and discriminatory to them socially and economically. They continue to earn less, and women are segregated into lower-paying jobs than men. The day-to-day problems experienced by individual women workers go beyond the existing definitions and understandings of employment discrimination and equal opportunity, as clearly shown in human terms in these compelling stories and insights of the women employed in the most pervasively hostile and discriminatory workplaces. Their experiences offer strategies for mitigating and alleviating discrimination, for increasing opportunity, and for making the workplace more welcoming and productive overall. Although we have made strides, we still have a long way to go in achieving equal opportunity in employment for women. Each of us has a role to play. Each of us can contribute as individuals or act collectively. Ultimately, each of us can contribute to making the workplace more welcoming and productive.

APPENDIX : NONTRADITIONAL OCCUPATIONS FOR WOMEN IN 2001 1

(DOL, 2004) Occupations Metalworkers and plastic workers, all other Dishwashers Chief executives Security guards and gaming surveillance officers Dentists Announcers Chiropractors Network systems and data communications analysts Job printers Supervisors, protective service workers, all other First-line supervisors/managers of police and detectives Detectives and criminal investigators Precision instrument and equipment repairers Network and computer systems administrators Helpers—production workers Farm, ranch, and other agricultural managers

Employed Both Sexes

Employed Women

Percent Women

423 267 1,680 798

103 64 392 181

24.3 24 23.3 22.7

167 54 73 312

37 12 16 68

22.2 22.2 21.9 21.8

65 89

14 19

21.5 21.3

133

28

21.0

121 53

25 11

20.7 20.7

190

39

20.5

64 199

13 40

20.3 20.1 (Continued)

1

Nontraditional occupations are those in which women comprise 25 percent or less of total employed.

191

Occupations Crushing, grinding, polishing, mixing, and blending workers Engineering technicians, except drafters Butchers and other meat, poultry, and fish processing workers Printing machine operators Chefs and head cooks Barbers Paper goods machine setters, operators, and tenders Industrial engineers, including health and safety Supervisors, transportation and material moving workers Baggage porters, bellhops, and concierges Coin, vending, and amusement machine servicers, and repairers Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand Chief engineers Motor vehicle operators, all others Transportation, storage, and distribution managers Couriers and messengers Chemical processing machine setters, operators, and tenders Radio and telecommunications equipment and installers repairers Police and sheriff’s patrol officers Painting workers Taxi drivers and chauffeurs Parking lot attendants Material moving workers, all other Construction and building inspectors Computer hardware engineers Surveying and mapping technicians Parts salespersons Cleaners of vehicles and equipment Broadcast and sound engineering technicians and radio operators Computer, automated teller, and office machine repairers First-line supervisors/managers of farming, fishing, and forestry workers

Employed Both Sexes

Employed Women

Percent Women

111

22

19.8

416 304

82 60

19.7 19.7

195 299 101 53

38 57 19 10

19.5 19.1 18.8 18.9

177

33

18.6

220

39

17.7

70 54

12 9

17.1 16.7

1,797

290

16.1

63 57 241

10 9 36

15.9 15.9 14.9

293 63

43 9

14.7 14.3

235

32

13.6

664 191 277 77 55 104 96 80 147 316 92

88 25 36 10 7 13 12 10 18 38 11

13.2 13.1 13.0 13.0 12.7 12.5 12.5 12.5 12.2 12.0 12.0

369

44

11.9

59

7

11.9

(Continued)

192

Occupations Civil engineers Refuse and recyclable material collectors Service station attendants Engineers, all others Electrical and electronics engineers First-line supervisors/managers of landscaping, lawn service, and grading Industrial truck and tractor operators Sales engineers Grounds maintenance workers Other installation, maintenance, and repair workers First-line supervisors/managers of mechanics, installers, and repairers Railroad conductors and yardmasters Pest control workers Construction managers Painters, construction and maintenance Mechanical engineers Engineering managers Water and liquid waste treatment plant and systems operators Fire fighters Aircraft pilots and flight engineers Helpers, construction trades Welding, soldering, and brazing workers Telecommunications line installers and repairers Cabinetmakers and bench carpenters Security and fire alarm systems installers Crane and tower operators Driver/sales workers and truck drivers Machinists Maintenance and repair workers, general Sheet metal workers Industrial and refractory machinery mechanics Aircraft mechanics and service technicians Electric motor, power tool, and related repairers Millwrights Tool and die makers Logging occupations Construction laborers

Employed Both Sexes

Employed Women

Percent Women

293 81 120 283 343 227

34 7 10 23 27 18

11.6 8.6 8.3 8.1 7.9 7.9

530 41 1,280 239

40 3 91 17

7.5 7.3 7.1 7.1

327

23

7.0

58 75 851 719 311 106 56

4 5 54 42 18 6 3

6.9 6.7 6.3 5.8 5.8 5.7 5.3

268 118 121 572 142

14 6 6 28 7

5.2 5.1 5.0 4.9 4.9

86 65 65 3,276 445 300 152 434

4 3 3 147 20 12 6 16

4.6 4.6 4.6 4.5 4.5 4.0 3.9 3.7

135 56

5 2

3.7 3.6

59 86 92 1,234

2 3 3 40

3.9 3.5 3.3 3.2 (Continued)

193

Occupations Highway maintenance workers Electronic home entertainment equipment installers and repairers Automotive body and related repairers First-line supervisors/managers of construction trades and extraction workers Electricians Carpenters Carpet, floor, and tile installers and finishers Structural iron and steel workers Heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers Automotive service technicians and mechanics Operating engineers and other construction equipment Roofers Pipelayers, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers, and tapers Stationary engineers and boiler operators Brickmasons, blockmasons, and stonemasons Electrical power-line installers and repairers Bus and truck mechanics and diesel engine specialists Cement masons, concrete finishers, and terrazzo workers Miscellaneous vehicle and mobile equipment mechanics,and installers Dredge, excavating, and loading machine operators Small engine mechanics

Employed Both Sexes

Employed Women

Percent Women

96 68

3 2

3.1 2.9

169 887

4 20

2.4 2.2

781 1,764 268

765 33 5

2.0 1.9 1.9

66 351

1 5

1.5 1.4

936

12

1.3

367

4

1.1

269 635

3 6

1.1 0.9

213

2

0.9

105 239

1 2

0.9 0.8

120 325

1 2

0.8 0.6

115

0

0

91

0

0

80

0

0

58

0

0

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Unpublished data, Annual Averages 2004, Current Population Survey.

NOTES

CHAPTER 1: EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN 1. Contradicting the Ellison v. Brady (1991) reasonable-woman standard, in Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 114 S. Ct. 367 (1993) the U.S. Supreme Court reverted to the reasonable-person standard. 2. Sixteen of the 17 women were white and of European descent. There was one African American woman. Two women held dual northern European and United States citizenship. Four women described themselves as being of Italian descent, two as being of Irish descent. 3. Judicial analysis and case law interpret policy based on the experience of one person or one class of people (as in a class action). Judges, courtrooms, and the legal process are often intimidating and inaccessible to socially, politically, and economically disadvantaged persons, particularly women. The judicial process is deductive in that a plaintiff files a suit based on a claim of a violation of rights, and then the prosecution and defense work to prove the allegations valid or invalid. The process requires the plaintiff to identify as a victim, and it subjects women (and their families) to public visibility and scrutiny. Although women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs have played an active role in informing employment policy through the courts, including by filing litigation that has resulted in standing case law, cases are won and lost at great financial, occupational, time, and personal costs to both employer and employee.

CHAPTER 3: UNITED STATES EMPLOYMENT-DISCRIMINATION LAW 1. Children are defined as being under the age of 16, or age 18 when working hazardous jobs.

196

NOTES

2. The labor force is defined as all persons age 16 and over working or looking for work. A person is employed if he or she is working for pay; working in his or her own business or profession or on his or her own farm; or working 15 hours or more per week as an unpaid worker in a family-operated enterprise (DOL, http:// www.dol.gov/wb/stats/main.htm, accessed April 3, 2005). 3. In response to this issue of equality versus equity, affirmative action was implemented (E.O. 11246, section 202). 4. As a result, the Pregnancy Disability Amendment to Title VII was passed, mandating that women affected by pregnancy and childbirth be treated the same as workers with any other medical disability. 5. Comparable worth is equal pay for work of equal value. It addresses the gap in wages between sex-segregated jobs and works towards quantifying comparability of value in different jobs (e.g., maintenance workers and secretaries). For a more complete discussion of comparable worth, please refer to Remick (1984) and Acker (1989). 6. The Supreme Court, although not required to, has tended to endorse the standards established by 1980 EEOC guidelines. 7. Considering a review of the available studies, this wide range appears to be more a result of divergent definitions and methods of determining prevalence than a result of differences in women’s experiences. For the purposes of this qualitative inductive study, prevalence will be neither debated nor determined at this time. 8. All of the women interviewed in this study cited violations of the provisions of Title VII, yet they avoided navigating and pursuing their rights through this delivery system. 9. Title VII established the EEOC to administer the provisions of the act. This administrative federal agency serves a gatekeeping function for Title VII and other employment-discrimination violations. EEOC operates 50 field offices across the United States with the number of full-time employees ranging from a high of 3,390 in 1980 to 2,544 at the end of fiscal year 1998. EEOC sets policies, reviews complaints, and provides technical assistance and outreach education, and per the 1972 Amendment of Title VII, it can file lawsuits against suspect employers. The gatekeeping function is further expanded by the fact that complainants cannot sue in court without a right-to-sue letter issued by the EEOC. The guidelines for filing complaints are specific and time-limited. Individuals who do not comply lose their rights to pursue litigation. 10. EEOC is responsible for processing complaints for all charges filed under Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Equal Pay Act, and the Age Discrimination Act. Of the 79,591 charges filed in the fiscal year 1998, Title VII sex-based complaints accounted for 30.7 percent, and complaints under the Equal Pay Act accounted for 1.3 percent (EEOC, 12/29/98).

CHAPTER 4: PATHWAYS TO EMPLOYMENT 1. Even the requirement of a high school education must be necessary for job performance as determined by the courts (Griggs v. Duke Power Co. [1971]).

NOTES

197

CHAPTER 5: THE HIRING PROCESS 1. Nepotism is defined as preferential hiring, compensation, and promotion practices based on familial relationships. It must be noted that for this purpose, family is defined in the sense of traditional and legally recognized family relationships. In the case of male-dominated jobs, this has often been defined even more specifically to mean male-to-male relationships, or passing on of privilege particularly to subsequent generations (e.g., fathers to sons, uncles to nephews, and so on).

CHAPTER 6: ON THE JOB, DOING THE JOB 1. That the handbook considers the occupations held by these women to be traditionally male jobs is further evidenced by a review of the photographs of workers performing their jobs in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Photographs of men at work represent all the jobs held by the women in this study. 2. The acquisition of skills on the job through informal on-the-job training and apprenticeship is characteristic of blue-collar jobs.

CHAPTER 8: GATEKEEPERS TO OPPORTUNITY AND PROTECTORS AGAINST DISCRIMINATION 1. I did not talk with supervisors about their responsibilities and vulnerabilities in a workplace where sexual harassment was likely if women were introduced.

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INDEX

Affirmative Action, 62–63, 109–10, 176, 184–85. See also Executive Order 11246 African Americans, 12, 32, 104 AFSCME v. State, 34 Age: aging process, 46; coworker relationships, factor in, 137–38; discrimination, 46–47 Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Job Opportunities Act, 24 Americans with Disabilities Act, 2, 20 Angela (construction-union president), 6, 13; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on alternative schedules, coping with, 100, 101; on application/interview process, 66; on education/training, 104; on family’s influence, 42, 43; occupational tract of, 50; on promotions, earning, 88; on verbal harassment, 150 Application process, 65–66, 174 Apprenticeship programs, 103–4 Arizona Governing Committee for Tax Deferred Annuity & Deferred Compensation Plan v. Norris, 33

Assault, physical and sexual, 146–47, 178 Autonomy, on the job, 83–85 Awards. See Recognition Benefits: definition of, 95; discrimination in, 95; education, 97–99; health care, 60, 96–97; men, compared to, 95; retirement, 99 Bennett amendment, 34 Bennett v. Corroon & Black Corp, 34 Beth (electric planner), 6, 9–10; on age, and deferential treatment, 138; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on alternative schedules, coping with, 101; on customer interaction, 85–86; on education/training, 98, 103, 104; on environment of workplace, 130; on getting mad/ being unreasonable, 161; on good guys/bad guys, 131; on harassment, and job performance, 166; on independence, 84; on job description, 71; on job level of women, hostility towards, 140; on nepotism, 64; occupational tract of, 49;

204

INDEX

on promotions, earning, 105, 106; on supervisors’ attitude/influence, 118–21; on treatment of women compared to men, over time, 132; on union seniority system, 108; on verbal harassment, 150–51; on women’s influence on work environment, 130 BFOQ. See Bona fide occupational qualifications Blue-collar jobs: characteristics of, 1, 54–55, 60, 69, 70–71, 72, 85, 176; economic inequality in, 24–26; social inequality in, 25–26; women as minorities in, 4, 5 Bona fide occupational qualifications, 31–32, 33, 46 Bureau of Labor Statistics. See U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 34 Carol (postal worker), 6, 17; on age, and deferential treatment, 139; age of, when entering labor force, 46; alternative schedules, coping with, 100; on clothing/physical appearance, 81; on de-skilling, 59; education/training of, 52; on family’s influence, 43–44; on independence and autonomy, 84–85; on job interference, 147–48; on leads for employment, 58; marital status of, 47; occupational tract of, 49–50; on pay/benefits, 61, 96; on promotions, being warned away from, 105–06; on safety assurance, 79; on supervisors’ attitude/ influence, 121–22, 124; on year of birth, influence on, 46 Cassey (nuclear firewatch), 6, 15–16; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on job description, 71; on leads for employment, 58–59; marital

status of, 47; on mental acuity, 77–78; occupational tract of, 50; on pay/benefits, 60–61; on year of birth, influence on, 46 Cathy (public utility customerservice representative), 6, 11; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on assessment of treatment by men, 135; on devaluing competency, 152; education/training of, 52, 98, 104; family’s influence on, 44; on health insurance, 96; on mentors, 156; occupational tract of, 50; on promotions/transfers, 105; on retirement, 99; on union stewards, 126 Chris (state highway-maintenance crew): 6, 15; on affirmative action, 62; age of, when entering labor force, 46; alternative schedules, coping with, 101; on boyfriend and coworker relationships, influence on, 141–42; on clothing/physical appearance, 81, 82; on devaluing competency, 152; education/ training of, 51, 53, 103, 167; on health care, 96; on job description, 71; on job interference, 148; marital status of, 48; on mentoring, 155–56; on nepotism, 64; occupational tract of, 50; on pay/benefits, 60; on physical strength, 75; on treatment of women compared to men, over time, 132 City of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power v. Manhart, 33 Civil Rights Act (1991), 2, 20, 22, 33 Claire (commercial painter), 6, 15; on age and deferential treatment, 138–39; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on application/ interview process, 65–66; on clothing/physical appearance, 77; on comparisons to secretaries, 135;

INDEX on devaluing competency, 153; education/training of, 53, 98, 167; on good guys/bad guys, 130–31; on independence, 84; on leads for employment, 58, 64; on leaving the job, 171; on mental acuity, 77; on nepotism, 64–65; on promotions, earning, 87, 88; on safety assurance, 78–79; sexual orientation of, 47–48; on supervisor’s attitude/ influence, 123 Compensation. See Benefits; Pay Congressional Record, 27 Connecticut v. Teall, 30 Coping strategies: anger, allowing for, 161–62, 179; assessment, 162, 179; attitude, changing, 160–61, 179; company policy, learning, 168–69, 179; don’t rock the boat, 162, 179; drawing the line, 159–60, 179; education/training, obtaining, 167–68, 179; EEO claims, filing, 170, 179; employee-assistance programs, 165–66; grievances, filing, 169–70, 179; humor, 162–63, 179; ignoring comments and behavior, 160; leadership, assuming role of, 166–67, 179; mental-health therapy, 165–66; mentoring, 165, 179; playing dumb, 161, 179; quitting, 170–71, 179; recording experiences, 168; socialize, 163–64, 179; support, seeking from other women, 165, 179; talk-the-talk, 163, 179 County of Washington v. Gunther, 34 Coworkers: good vs. bad, 130–42, 178; husbands/boyfriends as, 140–41; as mentors, 155–56 Devaluing competency, 151–52, 178 Discrimination, sex-based employment. See Harassment, sexual Disparate impact, 32–33, 187

205

Disparate treatment, 32, 187 DOL. See U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Earnings. See Pay Education, 50–52, 167–68, 176. See also Title IX, Educational Amendments of 1972 EEO. See Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) EEOC. See Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 28–29 Ellison v. Brady, 3, 5, 34–35, 181 Employee, defined, 29 Employee-assistance programs, 165–66 Employer: defined, 30; responsibility of, 28, 36–37, 115, 120–22, 188–89 Employment laws, 20–24. See also individual listings Environment: hostile vs. abusive, 3–4, 35; Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970), 2, 20, 21–22, 80; pervasively hostile, 3, 26, 34, 35, 40, 129, 180–81, 183; women’s visibility in, influence on, 129–30 E.O. 11246. See Executive Order 11246 EPA. See Equal Pay Act (EPA) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 36, 37, 38, 188; EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 28–29; Guidelines for Employers, 30 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO): filing claims, 170; legislation, 29; purpose of, 1, 2; social values of, 27–28 Equal Pay Act (EPA), 2, 20, 21, 27, 32, 34, 94, 185 Equal Rights Act, 27 Equal vs. Equality, 28–29, 185

206

INDEX

Evaluation, job performance, 86–90, 118 Executive Order 11246, 2, 20, 21, 62, 187 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 2, 20–21, 32 Family influence, 41–45, 54, 174 Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), 2, 20, 23, 99 FEPAs. See State Fair Employment Practices Administrations (FEPAs) FLSA. See Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) FMLA. See Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Gates, M. J., 37 Gender composition, 89 Glass Ceiling Commission, 22 The Good-Old-Boy Network. See Nepotism Gretchen (laborer/carpenter), 6, 17–18; on affirmative action, 62, 63; on age and deferential treatment, 138; age of, when entering labor force, 46; alternative schedules, coping with, 100–01; application/interview process of, 65; on clothing/physical appearance, 82; education/training of, 53, 98; on leads for employment, 58; on mentors, 155; on pay/ benefits, 61; on physical strength, 74–75; on supervisor’s attitude/ influence, 117, 124 Griggs et al. v. Duke Power Co., 32 Gutek and O’Connor, 35 Harassment, sexual: effects, on women, 6; examples of, 6; pervasively hostile environment, 3, 26, 34, 35, 40, 129, 180–81, 183; quid pro quo, 3, 34, 35; reasonableperson vs. reasonable-woman standards, 3, 4–5, 143, 181; Title

VII, as a violation of, 34. See also Coping strategies Harassment, verbal, 148–50, 178 Harper v. Trans World Airlines, 33 Harris v. Forklift, 3–4, 5, 35, 40, 147, 181, 186 Hazelwood School District v. United States, 33 Health care, 60, 96–97 Hiring process, 57, 174 Hishon v. King & Spalding, 30 History, personal placement in, 45–46 Holthaus v. Compton & Sons, Inc., 33 Independence, on the job, 83–85 Individualism, 29 Interpersonal-relationship skills, 85–86 Interview process, 65–66, 174 Interviews, of women, 5–8, 173. See also individual name listings Iris (longshore worker/commercial fisher), 6, 16–17; on age and deferential treatment, 138; age of, when entering labor force, 46; application/interview process of, 65; on assault, 146; on attitude changes, 160; on boyfriend and coworker relationships, influence on, 140–41; on devaluing competency, 152; education/training of, 52; family’s influences on, 44; on job skills, 73; on leads for employment, 58, 59; marital status of, 47; on nepotism, 64; occupational tract of, 48–49; on supervisor’s attitude/ influence, 121, 124; on verbal harassment, 149; on welcomed treatment, 154 Jobs: descriptions of, 69–72, 176; interference, 147–48, 178; openings, learning of, 57–60, 174 Joyce (security guard), 6, 10; on affirmative action, 62; on age and

INDEX deferential treatment, 138; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on alternative schedules, coping with, 102; on job level of women, hostility towards, 140; on mental acuity, 77–78; on promotions/ transfers, 105; on supervisor’s attitude/influence, 118, 124; on treatment of, compared to men, 132; on welcomed treatment, 154 Labor force, defined, 28 Labor laws. See individual listings Labor Unions. See Unions Leave of absence, 101; FMLA, 2, 20, 23, 99 Management, defined, 116 Mansfield, Koch, Henderson, Vicary, Cohn & Young, 4 Marital status, 47–48 Mary (automotive assembly-line worker), 6, 14; on affirmative action, 110; age of, when entering labor force, 46; application/ interview process of, 65; on assault, 146–47; on clothing/ physical appearance, 81; education/ training of, 97–98, 103–04; on employment leads, 59–60; on family’s influence, 42–43, 44; on getting mad/being unreasonable, 161; on husbands/boyfriends and coworker relationships, influence on, 141; on job description, 72; on job level of women, hostility towards, 140; on married coworkers, harassment by, 136–37; on nepotism, 64; occupational tract of, 49; sexual orientation of, 47; on treatment of, compared to men, 133; on union seniority system, 108; on year of birth, influence on, 45–46

207

McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co., 32 Medical staff, company, 96–97 Mental acuity, 75–78 Mental health counseling, 165–66 Mentors, 155–56, 165, 179 Meritor Saving Bank v. Vinson, 3, 34, 46, 147 Monotony, 77–78 Moore, Henrietta, 182 Nancy (industrial hygienist), 6, 16; age of, when entering labor force, 46; education/training of, 53, 98; on safety assurance, 79; on supervisor’s attitude/influence, 122–23; on verbal harassment, 151; on year of birth, influence on, 45 National Labor Relations Act (1935), 2, 20, 32, 108, 184 Nepotism, 63–65, 110–12 NLRA. See National Labor Relations Act (1935) Nontraditional occupation, defined, 24 Occupational Outlook Handbook, 70– 71, 85, 87, 115 Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970), 2, 20, 21–22, 80 Occupational tract, 48–50 Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, 35, 108, 186 OSHA. See Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970) Overtime: cost of vs. benefit from, 100; discriminatory distribution of, 94; mandatory, 100 Pay: blue-collar job, in a, 60; comparable worth vs. pay, 33–34, 185–86; EPA, 2, 20, 21, 27, 32, 34, 94, 185; husbands, compared to, 95; men, compared to, 24–25, 61, 94–95, 185

208

INDEX

Peg (police officer), 6, 11–12; on affirmative action, 62; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on alternative schedules, coping with, 101; on family’s influence, 44; marital status of, 47; on mental acuity, 76; on nepotism, 64, 111; occupational tract of, 50; on promotion/transfer, 89, 106, 107; on representing the company, 85; on verbal harassment, 151 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (1996), 24 Physical strength, 73–75, 80 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 2, 20 Promotions and transfers, 105–07, 113 Protective legislation, 26 Public-relations skills, 85–86 Quid pro quo, 3, 34, 35 Reasonable-person standard, 3, 34–35, 143, 178, 181 Reasonable-woman standard, 3, 4–5, 34–35, 129, 142, 178, 180–83, 187 Recognition, 88–89 Respect, 156–57, 179 Restroom facilities, 80 Retirement, 99 Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 35 Rotating shifts, 102 Safety, 78–80 Salary. See Pay Sally (truck driver), 6, 13; on age, influence on accomplishments, 47; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on alternative schedules, coping with, 100; education/training of, 52, 53–54, 98–99; on employment leads, 58; on family’s influence, 43; on husband’s influence on coworker relationships, 141; on independence, 83–84; marital

status of, 48; on mental acuity, 77, 78; on physical strength, 75; on supervisor’s attitude/influence, 117, 123; on verbal harassment, 150; on welcomed treatment, 154; on wives’ discrimination, 137 Sandy (community police officer), 6, 12–13; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on alternative schedules, coping with, 102; on clothing/physical appearance, 82, 83; on comparisons to female coworkers, 134; education/training of, 51, 52; on family’s influence, 45; on nepotism, 111; occupational tract of, 50; on physical strength, 75; promotion/transfer, 105; on representing the company, 85, 86; on union seniority system, 108–9 Scalia, Antonin, 3–4 Schedules, alternative, 99–102 Seasonal work, 100–101 Segregation, occupational, 24–26, 33, 180 Seniority system, union, 108–09 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, 22 Sex, as a protected class, 27 Sexual harassment. See Harassment, sexual Sexual orientation, 47–48 Skills, job, 72–73 Smith, Howard W., 27 Socialization, 139 Social policy, defined, 19 Sonja (meter reader), 6, 10–11; age of, when entering labor force, 46; on alternative schedules, coping with, 94; on comparisons to female coworkers, 133, 134; education/ training of, 51–52, 98; on evaluations, 89–90; on job description, 72; on married coworkers, harassment by, 136; on mental acuity, 76–77; on promotion, earning, 88; on supervisor’s attitude/influence,

INDEX 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124; on treatment of, compared to men, 132; on union seniority system, 108, 109; on verbal harassment, 150; on welcomed treatment, 153–55 Sprogis v. United Air Lines, Inc., 33 State Fair Employment Practices Administrations (FEPAs), 36 States’ fair employment practice laws, 23 Supervisors: good/bad, characteristics of, 117–20; problems with, solutions, 122–24; relationship with, 107, 111–12, 126, 177; role of, defined, 115–16, 118; workplace environment, influence on, 120–22, 126, 177 Teamsters v. United States, 20 Title VII, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: amendments to, 22, 27, 30; complaint guidelines, 30, 37; exceptions to, 31–32, 109; financing and costs, 38, 159, 188; historical development of, 26–27; protections for women, 33–36; provisions of, 1, 2, 19, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 190; remedy benefits, 35–37; restrictions, 30–31; service delivery, 36–37 Title IX, Educational Amendments of 1972, 22, 187 Title 29, of the Equal Pay Act, 32 Training: formal, 103–4, 168; informal, 52–54, 103, 110; self-taught, 104–5 Tuition reimbursement, 97–99 Uniforms, 80–83, 164–65 Unions: bargaining agreement, 107, 124, 126; defined, 124; grievance

209

process, 107–08, 126, 169; influence of, 80, 126, 169; NLRA, 2, 20, 32, 108, 184; representatives, role of, 124–26; seniority system, 108–09; stewards, 125–26; Title VII, restrictions on, 31–32 United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 32 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70 U.S. Census Bureau, 28 U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), 20, 24 U.S. House of Representatives, 27 U.S. Supreme Court, 37, 73–74, 145. See also individual case listings Usery v. Tamaimi Trail Tours, Inc., 46 Valerie (electrician), 6, 14; age of, when entering labor force, 46; education/training of, 52; on nepotism, 64 VAWA. See Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA) Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA), 2, 20, 22–23 WANTO. See Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations Act (WANTO) Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Antonio, 33 Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations Act (WANTO), 22, 187 Women’s rights at work, summary of, 39 Workers’ Compensation, 23 World War II, 45 Yellow Freight System v. Donnelly, 37

About the Author JEANIE AHEARN GREENE is founder of Ahearn Greene Associates, a social science research and consulting firm, specializing in social welfare issues, policy, and advocacy. Previously serving as a process evaluator for the Montgomery County Homeless Families Initiative and as a Faculty Research Associate at the University of Maryland’s Bureau of Governmental Research, she has conducted numerous studies and promoted programs in substance abuse treatment and health care policy, with a particular emphasis on disenfranchised groups, including women and children. She has published her research in a wide variety of reports and journals.

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