Women in the Workplace:

This study examined the influence of employee sponsored child care service on employee stress level and job satisfaction. The findings revealed that women who used company sponsored child care services manifested significantly lower levels of stress and higher levels of job satisfaction than women who were not utilizing this service. In addition, a higher level of satisfaction with child care arrangements was associated with women involved in company sponsored child care service compared to women who had to make their own child care arrangements.     

Violence Against Women in the Workplace

Although Employee Assistance Programs often incorporate workplace violence prevention and debriefings into their array of services, rarely has any attention been paid to the risks for workplace violence that female employees face. The prevalence in society of violence against women and the increase in violence at the work site could create a swific risk for women at work. An exploration of this risk was undertaken, using three apparent categories of workulace violence: random criminal (perpetrator unknown to victim). worker (perpetrator works at the same company as victim), and relationship or domestic (perpetrator is a family member or significant other of victim) violence. An analysis of the results of the 1991 Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries indicated that of all women who die on the job, 39% were the victims of assault, whereas only 18% of all male fatalities were murdered at work. Of the female homicides, over three-fourths were acts of random criminal violence. Worker violence and its potential for affecting female employees is discussed. Lastly, the effects of relationship violence entering the workplace are explored through the use of a case study. Information on assessment and prevention techniques useful to the EAP professional is included     

Cisgendered Organizations: Trans Women and Inequality in the Workplace

This article responds to calls to better understand how intersecting “inequality regimes” operate in organizations. Through in‐depth interviews with 25 white trans women about their workplace experiences, my analyses highlight how trans women navigate relational practices that are simultaneously gendered and cisgendered—that is, practices that maintain cultural connections between sex and gender and maintain gender as immutable. Findings demarcate three distinct mechanisms by which cisgenderism, a system that devalues women and trans people, operates and strengthens hierarchical privileges at work: (1) double‐bind constraints; (2) fluid biases of cissexism and sexism; and (3) group practices of privilege and subordination. In the first regard, analyses reveal unique double binds that trans women face—binds that dictate contradictory feminine and masculine ideal worker expectations but also expectations of gender authenticity. Second, I find that trans women often hover between two subordinate statuses (i.e., gender and transgender status) in a given workday, a fact that prods a more fluid conception of cisgenderism. Finally, this study highlights how cis men collectively mobilize through group practices to repair cisgender system breaches. All three dimensions are critical for understanding the production of workplace inequality between not only trans women and cis men, but all feminine‐identified workers.     

Older Women in the Workplace and Implications for Retirement:

More women are in the work place than ever before. Job opportunities continue to open up for women, especially in nontradiuonal professions, for example, medicine, law, administration. While these facts seem optimistic, for today and many years to come, an alarmingly vast number of women are living in post-retirement poverty. The poverty is due in part because women of all races remain over-represented in lower paying occupations and industries, a phenomenon which directly affects retirement. Employee assistance programs have a particularly unique opportunity to assist women in helping to eradicate inequities in the marketplace and in averting post-retirement poverty.     

Women in Procrustean Beds: Strength Testing and the Workplace

Pre-employment strength testing in its present form supports employment practices which exclude women from manual handling tasks traditionally assigned to men. However, several lines of reasoning lead us to think that pre-employment testing is a Procrustean bed which imposes unreasonable requirements on most women. Examination of some tests and their scientific underpinnings leads us to conclude that they may result in discrimination. Women often approach manual tasks in ways different from men, so that pre-employment tests developed around the ways men usually perform these tasks are poor predictors of women’s performance at real-life jobs. We also question the fact that pre-employment testing involves the types of requirements imposed in men’s traditional work, but not women’s. This perspective leads us to propose a less rigid notion of physical strength and to introduce the concept of human-task interaction. Representations of human capacity based on sexual stereotypes may conceal health and safety problems in job requirements which should be addressed directly, leading to more constructive propositions regarding job design and employee selection. We propose that standards be set for job requirements, such that all manual handling jobs become physically accessible to at least 75% of all workers.     

Low-Income African-American Women Talk About Stress

This paper presents the results of a questionnaire of 12 South Asian agencies nationwide that work predominantly with domestic violence victims of South Asian origin. Based on the analysis of their responses to questions that compare their strengths, ideology, ethnic specific intervention approaches, and challenges they face, this article demonstrates their relevance and the role they play in meeting the needs of a growing number of women who seek help.     

African-American Women and the Concept of Cultural Competence

No abstract available for this article.     

Life As Gift: Spiritual Narratives of Elderly African-American Women Living in Poverty

Fifty elderly African-American women living in poverty were interviewed for a research project entitled, “Chronic Poverty and the Self in Later Life.” Using four representative case studies from the 50 respondents, this article explores how their spirituality informs their ability to cope with poverty. A key theme emerging from the women's narratives is that their relationship with God, perceived as personal, reciprocal, and empowering, allows them to take an active and positive stance in viewing and interpreting the circumstances of their life. Their spirituality imbues their hardship with meaning, engenders self-esteem, keeps despair at bay, and grants hope for rewards both in this life and the next.     

Gendered Projects of Solidarity: Workplace Organizing among Immigrant Women and Men

Drawing on an ethnography of organizing among Latina/o immigrant janitors in Los Angeles, I argue that constructing workplace solidarity between women and men is a dynamic, gendered project. I demonstrate both how this project unfolds and how it can be halted, with varying implications for gender and class inequality at work. Organizational restructuring upsets gender‐segregated divisions of labour making solidarity between women and men possible but restructuring also allows workers to reinforce gendered divisions and cultural distinctions. The mechanism pushing workers one way or the other is the degree to which the process of organizing recognizes gender inequalities.     

What We Can Learn of Resilience from Older African-American Women: Interviews with Women Who Worked as Maids in the Deep South

Resilience theory is increasingly informed by an in-depth study of personal narratives and story telling by survivors of personal trauma and cultural hardship. From the perspective of risk and resilience theory, this study examines the personal narratives of three older African-American women who engaged in domestic service from childhood. Collectively, their autobiographical memories describe experiences coping with the forces of an oppressive social and economic system. Our analysis of these personable narratives reveals how these women not only endured the cruelties of segregation and racism but somehow prevailed over them.     

Gendered Futures? Women,the ICT Workplace and Stories of the Future

This article investigates stories of the future in relation to women in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector through the development of a theoretical and methodological stance towards the future. Given concerns about the future of the ICT sector in terms of skills shortages and gender imbalances, an understanding of how female ICT professionals view this future is vital. Using data gathered from female ICT professionals in the UK, we look specifically at gendered stories about the future in relation to hybrid/bridger ICT workers, the practices of offshoring/global locating ICT work and the under‐representation of women in ICT. Such stories of the future are part of wider discourses on gender relations in late modern society, and so their examination becomes a conduit for problematizing contemporary discourse about gender, work, time and technology.     

Multicultural Existence in the Workplace:

This essay will examine some of the issues that queer workers must deal with, with particular attention to the dynamics of multiple undervalued identities of individuals in the workplace. The interplay of racism, sexism and homophobia is explored focusing on three key areas: special challenges in the workplace; advancement concerns; and safety issues and survival strategies. It also examines the impact of internalized homophobia and horizontal hostility in each of these areas. While grounded in my personal standpoints, as a Latina and Lesbian in academia, the issues raised have broader applications for diverse indivualds across a variety of occupational settings.     

Miscarriage in the Workplace: an Authoethnography

This paper is an extension of the literature on pregnancy and work, and it introduces miscarriage as an important topic of study in management. Miscarriage starts with a pregnancy, so a woman who has miscarried deals with many of the same workplace issues as women who carry to term. The experience of miscarriage, however, often leads to physical and emotional trauma and/or grief that many women hide from their co‐workers. In this paper we also explore how secrecy is an integral part of the miscarriage experience. The combination of secrecy and grief that is layered on top of a difficult physical experience makes miscarriage a unique experience that, to date, has mostly been ignored in management literature and practice. It is well documented that contemporary corporate structures have little room for addressing procreation, health and grief, it is perhaps unsurprising then that despite miscarriage being seen as a relatively common event it remains silenced.     

Workplace Diversity:

This chapter describes the impact of changing demographic trends on the workplace and its implications for EAPs. Diversity is defined and examples of workplace diversity programs are shared. Additionally, a theoretical model explaining variance in the readiness of one to be culturally sensitive is offered. A model for supervisory training on managing diversity is shared as well as a model for diversity mutual aid and peer support groups.     

Popular Culture and Workplace Gendering among Varieties of Capitalism: Working Women and their Representation in Japanese Manga

Female empowerment is a prerequisite for a just and sustainable developed society. Being the most developed non‐western country, Japan offers an instructive window onto concerns about gender worldwide. Although overall gender equality is advancing in Japan, difficulties remain, especially in achieving equality in the workplace. We draw on theories of ontological commitment and the psychology of fiction to critically analyse the role of popular culture — in this case manga — in the reproduction of gender inequality in the Japanese workplace. We present examples of four of the most popular mainstream manga aimed at working men and women in Japan and show how women are depicted. We argue that the hyper‐mediated fictional realism of representative tropes generates an ontological commitment to characters and narratives among consumers that reinforces the reproduction of a culturally exceptionalist national political economic space, one of whose essential defining characteristics is a gendered workplace. Our research suggests important implications for researching the relationship between culture, in all its forms, and spatial variation in persistent institutional biases among varieties of capitalism.     

African-American Male Stereotypes:

As evidenced by the last presidential campaign, the African-American male continues to be the subject of extensive stereotyping. Such stereotypes are pervasive. Reinforced by media images, the stereotypes of the African-American male as a sex crazed beast with a penchant for violence aimed at the European-American community is an obstacle to social work in a multicultural society. Individual practitioners may perceive or be perceived on the basis of these stereotypes. The continued effort of social workers to confront these stereotypes is imperative.     

Enhancing Well-Being at the Workplace:

The workplace is a social environment and for many the opportunity for social interaction at work is a source of satisfaction. Yet, the quality of relations is variable and can be a source of anxiety, stress and work dissatisfaction. There is a need to enhance employee well-being and to improve social relations by increasing the opportunity for social support at the workplace. Two approaches are proposed: (a) as a health promotion strategy, to provide employees with training in interpersonal skills, and (b) as a component of aftercare, to foster the development of formal and informal support networks in order to reintegrate employees with emotional difficulties into the workplace. These strategies are discussed in the light of their applicability to EAP practice.