Introduction to Women and Work: Current RMIT University Research

Transcrição

Women and Work:
Current RMIT University Research
Sara Charlesworth and Maureen Fasteanu
Co-editors
December 2004
First published on Informit e-Library, November 2004
An imprint of RMIT Publishing
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Copyright 2004
Copyright rests with the individual authors of the papers, the School of Management, Business
Portfolio, RMIT and the Centre for Applied Social Research, School of Social Science and
Planning, RMIT.
ISBN: 0 86459 337 6
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the prior written permission of the publisher.
Reprinted December 2004 by the Centre for Applied Social Research and School of Management,
RMIT University, with the kind permission of RMIT Publishing.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Sara Charlesworth and Maureen Fastenau
1
IF ONLY IT WERE A GLASS CEILING: GENDERED ACADEMIC CAREERS
Belinda Probert
7
WOMEN’S DECISIONS ABOUT PAID WORK AND FAMILY LIFE
AFTER CHILDBIRTH: A CRITIQUE OF THE HAKIM MODEL
Sheree Cartwright
27
LOVE’S LABOUR: CONFLICTS OVER WORK AND RELATIONSHIPS
FOR TRAFFICKED FILIPINA ‘ENTERTAINERS’ IN KOREA
Sallie Yea
41
DECENT WORK OR DISTRESS ADAPTATION? EMPLOYMENT CHOICE
AND JOB SATISFACTION IN THE SRI LANKAN GARMENT INDUSTRY
Judith Shaw
57
BEING ABLE TO DO WHAT YOU ASPIRE TO DO
Lionel Boxer
75
PROCESSES FOR DEALING WITH CONFLICT IN THE WORKPLACE:
MEETING FEMINIST CONCERNS REGARDING MEDIATION
Kathy Douglas
85
(IN)VISIBLE WOMEN: REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN
IN AN AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS PUBLICATION
Maureen Fastenau
105
HANDWORK, FOODWORK AND SMALL COMMERCE:
REFLECTIONS ON GENDERED MICROENTERPRISE IN BOLIVIA
Dr Robyn Eversole
124
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
136
Introduction
Sara Charlesworth and Maureen Fastenau
Co-editors
This collection of papers suggests the broad and rich terrain that can be travelled by
those interested in the topic of ‘women and work’. In Australia, as elsewhere, an
increased acceptance of the right of women – in principle at least – to equal status
with men and the growing presence of women in the public sphere has seen
research interest in women and their working lives grow exponentially over the last
25 years. While much theoretical debate has focused on women’s sameness to
and/or difference from men, there has also been a growing recognition of the
heterogeneity among women. The interdependence of what were assumed to be
separate public and private spheres of work and family is also increasingly
acknowledged. However, despite profound social changes in employment and in
family and household structures, and despite significant policy and legislative
reform, women as a group remain unequal –in the workplace, in political structures
and in economic resources. It is the persistence of this inequality that continues to
provide the impetus for research around ‘women and work’, across a range of
disciplines and from a variety of theoretical perspectives.
How did this monograph come about? It has been a common lament among
academics for at least the past 25 years or so that the explosion of knowledge has
led to silos within disciplinary silos. This isolation has been further intensified over
the past 10–15 years with the growth of mega-universities which has further worked
to isolate academics. Even those researchers in the same institution with shared
interests within and across disciplines infrequently meet, limiting the opportunities
for the dialogue that enriches knowledge and research.
This collection of papers arises from an attempt by a group of RMIT academics
interested in the topic of women and work to develop communication channels
within the University across disciplines and between academics at different stages
of their research journeys. It has its origins in the chance meeting of two
academics, Sara Charlesworth from the Centre for Applied Social Research in the
School of Social Science and Planning, within the Design and Social Context
Portfolio, and Maureen Fastenau from the School of Management in the Business
Portfolio (notice the silos!) We knew of each other but were unaware that we were
working in the same university until a mutual colleague suggested that we might be
interested in talking to each other. We leapt at the chance!
1
Women and Work: Current RMIT University Research
After several enjoyably stimulating conversations, we wondered how many other
academics at RMIT were exploring various aspects of women and work and would
enjoy an opportunity to discuss their work with others sharing their interests. We
decided to seek expressions of interest from colleagues and research students to
present papers at an in-house conference. The conference was held in February
2004, with over 50 people attending and with 15 papers presented. Professor
Belinda Probert, then Pro Vice Chancellor (Design and Social Content Portfolio),
RMIT University, and now Pro-Vice Chancellor (Academic), University of
Western Australia, was the keynote speaker. The research she presented appears as
our first paper. This monograph also showcases another five of the papers presented
at the conference, together with two papers contributed by RMIT researchers unable
to attend on the day.
In selecting papers for the monograph we have tried to illustrate the diversity of
research around women and work that is being carried out at RMIT University,
from a study of women working in export manufacturing zones in Sri Lanka (Shaw)
to studies of senior managers and professionals in Australia (Probert and Fastenau).
In their scope, the papers range from the more theoretical (Boxer) to the more
empirical (such as Yea and Eversole), and from a focus on the lived experience of
the work/family divide (Cartwright) to different approaches to the mediation of
workplace disputes (Douglas). We also wanted to highlight the diversity of the
researchers themselves, who range from postgraduate students and recent PhD
graduates through to established researchers with significant publication records
and international reputations. Biographical details of each of the contributors are set
out at the end of this monograph.
The Papers
Several of these papers highlight the complexity of women’s lives; lives requiring
an often tenuous balancing of paid work and ‘private’ lives, including family
obligations and relationships, a balancing act often undertaken in unsupportive
environments. Many of these papers remind us that policy decisions are often
simplistic approaches to the complexity of factors that structure, and often limit,
women’s opportunities and choices. All of these papers remind us that while
women may be disadvantaged, they are not victims; they are actively engaged,
often in the overlooked but nonetheless heroic struggles of ordinary people, to
shape and control their own lives. Documented here are the powerful forces which,
wittingly and unwittingly, are used to deny women equality and the courageous
struggle in which women, individually and collectively, engage to make better lives
for themselves, their families and their communities.
Research on the reconciliation of work and family lives has traditionally focused on
the workplace. Belinda Probert and Sheree Cartwright, however, turn their gaze to
the divide between the public and private spheres. In her keynote address, ‘If Only
2
Introduction
It Were a Glass Ceiling: Gendered Academic Careers’, Belinda highlights the
importance of the household in structuring workplace outcomes. Her paper
challenges the ‘conventional wisdom on gender inequality for academics’ that
suggests women are under-represented in senior academic positions because of
gender biases. Drawing on the findings of two large-scale studies of Australian
academics, Belinda argues that university EEO policies have been largely effective
in that women are not more likely to do more poorly than men in the promotions
process; women are, however, less likely to apply for promotion. While on average
women academics have less ‘human capital’ than their male colleagues, as
measured by qualifications and work experience, they also have to contend with
greater responsibilities for family work which may impact on their careers. The
absence of many senior women in the top of the academic careers structure is
linked, Belinda argues, to the way households organise the division between paid
and unpaid work rather than to discrimination against women in the workplace.
While EEO and work/family workplace initiatives and policies are essential to
allowing women to remain attached to their careers, it is within the highly gendered
and complex context of the household that women’s ability to devote time to the
particular demands of an academic workload has to be negotiated.
In her paper ‘Women's Decisions about Paid Work and Family Life after
Childbirth’ Sheree Cartwright also acknowledges the nterrelationship between the
household and the workplace. Sheree focuses on the work of Catherine Hakim,
which has had a particular resonance in Australia where it has been favoured by the
Coalition government to guide and justify its family policies. In particular, Sheree
offers a critique of preference theory on which Hakim's model is based and of the
static nature of much research on women's choices about work-life balance. She
highlights the importance of longitudinal studies for revealing the dynamics of
women's decision making about work-family balance as they move through the
changing requirements of managing a family, particularly with regard to childcare
demands. Sheree argues that research freeze-framed on women's decisions at a
particular stage of their family development is a flawed basis for policy
development. She also cautions against the use of preference theory, based as it is
on an assumption that women in ‘affluent and liberal modern societies have genuine
choices as to what to do with their lives.’ Sheree argues that while women have
choices, these choices, limited as they are by constraints imposed by work practices
and government policies, may not actually be an expression of preferences.
Sallie Yea also focuses on the blurring of the public and private in her paper ‘Love's
Labour: Conflicts over Work and Relationships for Trafficked Filipina
‘Entertainers’ in Korea’. Sallie examines how Filipina ‘entertainers’ attempt to
negotiate relationships with their clients, usually American soldiers, in South
Korean military ‘entertainment’ zones in order to re-establish some control and
agency over their employment and their personal lives. Sallie’s research documents
how these migrant workers are coerced into supplementing their incomes through
3
requirements to provide emotional and sexual labour to their employing clubs'
clients. Rather than prostitution, many of the Filipinas establish boundaries to the
emotional and sexual services they will provide and to whom, frequently resulting
in relationships which ‘hover on “the edge of ambiguity” with many of the elements
of prostitution, such as barter, promiscuity and emotional indifference, partly or
completely absent.’ These romances not only provide the women with income, but
in ‘buying her time,’ regular customers (‘boyfriends’) minimise the emotional
labour they must expend on other customers and the pressure, sometimes necessity,
to engage in prostitution. Without minimising the abuse inherent in the
commodification of human beings in the sex trade, Sallie allows the Filipina
‘entertainers’ to define their own reality, thus effectively reminding us that even in
extremely difficult circumstances women are not without power and that men may
offer sympathetic assistance.
In her paper, ‘Decent Work or Distress Adaptation?’, Judith Shaw also highlights
the ways in which globalisation impacts on traditional social and familial roles.
While Sallie Yea’s paper focused on a particularly ugly manifestation of the global
economy – the globalisation of the sex industry – Judith explores the effects of
globalisation in Sri Lanka's export garment industry on women's social and
economic well-being. Although offering regular and secure employment to rural
women, who often lack other employment opportunities, the industry suffers from
an inability to attract and retain staff. Using structured questionnaires administered
by staff from a working women's centre and focus group interviews, Judith's
research carefully documents the unsafe working conditions, under-payment of
wages, excessive hours, harsh discipline, and sub-standard living conditions that
characterise garment trades work in the export zones. At the same time the forces of
modernisation and globalisation that have required these women to undertake
economic roles also challenge their traditional social and familial status. However
there is some potential for change. Judith points to the possibility that the upgraded
skills and labour productivity required for high-end production, together with
demands from buyers for adherence to internationally acceptable labour conditions,
will generate pressures to improve the working and living conditions of the women
working in Sri Lanka's export garment industry.
Lionel Boxer and Kathy Douglas turn their attention to the organisational level and,
from very different perspectives, explore the ways in which women can negotiate
the gendered power structures there. In his paper, ‘Being Able To Do What You
Aspire To Do’, Lionel Boxer applies his elaboration of a social constructionist
model to gendered organisational cultures and practices. Lionel’s model is partly
based on Positioning theory which concerns the discursive production of self. He
argues that if gender equality is to be achieved, individual women will need to rePosition themselves and others to both push for and take advantage of changes in
dominant workplace cultures and discourses. Lionel contends, somewhat
controversially, that as individual women assert their right, for example, to be
4
Introduction
considered on their merits for the jobs they aspire to, other individuals will be
compelled to respect them as competent to undertake these jobs. As a result,
individual women can progressively align the social order with their ambition.
Appropriately aligned, the social order or culture will provide an environment for
women to do what they aspire to do.
In ‘Processes for Dealing with Conflict in the Workplace’, Kathy Douglas
highlights a number of gender issues in the use of mediation at a time when more
workplaces, courts and tribunals are requiring disputing parties to attempt to resolve
their conflicts through mediation. She examines different approaches to mediation
used to resolve workplace grievances. Kathy considers the feminist critique of
mediation as not providing women with the same opportunities as men to
participate equally in mediation processes. She argues that methods of mediation
practice may in fact be the cause of women's disadvantage in mediation processes.
Traditional mediation practice is based on a problem-solving model, more suited to
a male transactional approach. Mediators are nominally neutral and thus do not
intervene in mediations to counter power imbalances and differences in negotiating
style which may disadvantage women. Kathy suggests that ‘second generation’
mediation practices, storytelling, narrative, and transformative models, may be
more suited to women's emphasis on relationships, and that the participation of
mediators to address power imbalances may enable women to participate more
satisfactorily in workplace mediations.
Maureen Fastenau turns her attention to some of the forces outside the workplace
that continue to construct the disadvantage women experience. While the increasing
number of women in Australian senior management roles and in business is held
out as a measure of progress towards gender equity, the extent to which this
increased presence has translated into increased acceptance of women in such roles
is more contested. In ‘(In)visible Women’ Maureen investigates whether the
representation of women in Business Review Weekly (BRW), a leading Australian
business publication, has altered in the fifteen years since the enactment of the
Affirmative Action legislation. In particular, she discusses the implications of this
representation on women's opportunities for recognition of professional expertise
and for gaining leadership roles in organisations. The media has been recognised as
a powerful mechanism for stimulating and facilitating change or for maintaining
and reinforcing the status quo. While Maureen finds that there has been some
increase in the representation of women in BRW, she also shows that women
continue to be underrepresented. Moreover, she argues that they are often presented
in ways which perpetuate traditional views of women as ‘aliens’ in the business
world.
Robyn Eversole also focuses on women operating within the world of business.
While drawing on a case study in a developing country, Robyn, like Maureen
Fastenau, draws our attention to the social and economic contexts in which women
5
operate and try to achieve some independence, financial and otherwise. In
‘Handwork, Foodwork and Small Commerce,’ Robyn considers the role of
microenterprise development on women's economic opportunities in Bolivia. Based
on a series of ethnographic studies exploring microenterprise development,
household economy, and community economic development in the city of Sucre,
Robyn argues that microenterprises will only offer women satisfactory income
levels and income security if consideration is given to the social and economic
contexts in which they develop their businesses. Failure, for example, to implement
community economic development programs that identify innovative and ‘new
economy’ business opportunities and perpetuation of gendered divisions of labour
will continue to restrict women to traditional economic endeavours and to hamper
their ability to achieve financial security. In fact, without efforts to expand
economic opportunities and facilitate women's skills development in non-traditional
business areas, microenterprise programs may actually increase competition in
women's traditional areas of food preparation and service and textile and clothing
manufacture, thereby creating more desperate and marginal enterprises rather than
providing income security for women and their families.
Acknowledgements
The conference and this monograph would not have been possible without the
support of a number of people. We would especially like to thank Associate
Professor John Murphy, Director of the Centre for Applied Social Research, and
Professor Clive Morley, then Head of the School of Management, who provided
financial and other support for the conference. Ms Natalie Myer wore many hats,
including conference administrator and publications officer. The success of the
conference and the timely editing of the manuscripts owe much to her skill and hard
work.
The papers were blind refereed, and we would like to thank the referees for their
detailed and well-considered reviews. All those submitting papers, including those
not published in this monograph, have expressed their appreciation for the critical
analyses of their papers and the suggestions made about improving their work
provided by the referees.
6
If Only It Were a Glass Ceiling: Gendered Academic Careers1
Belinda Probert
Pro Vice-Chancellor, Design and Social Context Portfolio2
In this paper I want to argue that research into gender inequity in academic
employment, in the UK and Australia at least, has been insufficiently willing to
expose many of the most commonly accepted assertions to rigorous scrutiny, and
that this has prevented us from properly understanding the remarkable persistence
of unequal outcomes for men and women in terms of pay and status. I want to
suggest that most of the factors that are widely used to explain the fact that women
remain concentrated in the lower levels of the academic hierarchy are not in fact
supported by credible evidence,3 and that for those of us interested in action to
address these inequalities, our attention is being diverted from the real problems.
The research on which I base these arguments derives from two large studies of
gender equity in Australian higher education. The first was a national survey of
academic and general staff in 18 universities (Probert et al 1998, see also Probert
1999a, Probert 1999b) undertaken for the National Tertiary Education Union
(NTEU); the second was a survey of all academic staff at the University of New
South Wales (a prestigious, large university belonging to the elite ‘group of eight’
universities in Australia), which was followed up with focus group discussions with
female academic in their forties, currently at Level C (senior lecturer in Australia)
(Probert et al 2002).
Both these Australian studies confirm what we all know: that men and women are
unequally distributed through the academic hierarchy, with far fewer women than
men employed above Level C. The under-representation of women at level D and
E (Associate Professor and Professor) is particularly striking across the sector.4 The
data from UNSW presented here (Table 1) are in no sense atypical, although the
overall proportion of academics at UNSW who are women is low.
1
An article based on this research is forthcoming in Gender, Work and Organization 12, 1, January
2005.
2
Now Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at the University of Western Australia.
3
Many of these factors have had some real historical basis, but to remain focussed on them is to
ignore the substantial gender equity reforms that have been introduced in public sector employment
over the last twenty years, and their substantial impact.
4
There are interesting changes at the highest management levels however, with 3 of the 7 ViceChancellors in the state of Victoria now being women, and more than half the Vice Chancellor’s
executive at my own university now made up of women. It is possible that this is a reflection of the
declining attractiveness of such jobs, but this is pure speculation.
7
Table 1: Male and female staff by level
UNSW ACADEMIC STAFF as at 31 March 2001
Percentage of male/female
academic staff at each level
Level A
Level B
Level C
Level D
Level E
Total
Men %
9
35
24
13
21
100
Women %
24
46
19
5
6
100
Percentage of academic staff
at each level who are
male/female
Men %
Women %
48
52
65
35
76
24
86
14
89
11
71
29
This pattern is common not only to Australian universities, but to universities in the
UK and the US,5 and it appears resilient to change, despite the impact of antidiscrimination legislation and policy development around equal employment
opportunities and affirmative action.
Explanations for the under-representation of women at senior levels tend to be
embedded in two different frameworks. The first framework, which dominates the
academic literature on gender and work, argues that this unequal outcome results
from the unequal treatment at work of men and women in terms of any or all of the
following: appointment levels, workloads, promotions, access to mentoring, and
other factors that contribute to career progression. The second framework, which is
to be found in the work of labour market economists, focuses on the different levels
of human capital that men and women have, and often links this to arguments about
the different kinds of choices that men and women make between career and
parenting. In this work the outcome reflects gendered choices rather than unequal
treatment.
The recent article by David Knights and Wendy Richards on ‘Sex discrimination in
UK academia’ published in Gender Work and Organisation this year, provides
what I would see as a widely held picture of the problem by adopting the first
framework, but strengthening it by further arguing that women’s necessarily
different biographies (resulting from childbearing) can also be seen as a factor
contributing to discrimination. Rather than seeing the gendered constraints of
childbirth and childcare as the result of ‘choice’, Knights and Richards (2003) insist
on the dominant position of masculinity within academia and the active
5
See articles in Gender, Work and Organization, 10, 2, March 2003.
8
Belinda Probert
If Only It Were A Glass Ceiling
marginalisation of femininity in everything from the construction of academic
disciplines to selection panels.
Such is the accepted dominance of the first framework that Knights and Richards
(2003, p. 217) can rely on assertions and anecdotal examples to develop their
argument. For example, they claim that ‘casualisation in higher education affects
women disproportionately’;6 that there is ‘anecdotal evidence that men may be
appointed at higher levels, and will therefore remain more highly paid’; that ‘the
promotions process also creates pay differentials, and there is some reason to
believe that this process may disadvantage women’ (Knights and Richards 2003, p.
218). All this is by way of introduction, however, since the authors wish to argue
that even when universities attempt to address these inequities through policies and
practices based on a purely ‘meritocratic’ system, they simply ‘reinforce the
advantages that men have over women’ by requiring women to behave and think
like men.7
The initial research into gender pay equity that we undertook across the Australian
higher education sector8 was designed to test the first framework of ideas – what I
am calling the conventional wisdom on gender inequality for academics - which
suggests that women are under-represented at the top because of gender biases. For
example, it is regularly asserted that women are less successful in gaining
promotion because of their commitment to teaching. This, it may be argued, is
because teaching (a feminine activity, even if socially constructed to be so) is
undervalued by male dominated promotion panels concerned with glamorous
publication records. For Knights and Richards, promotions panels are, furthermore,
likely to privilege male (hard) disciplinary work over female (soft) disciplines,
‘largely because they are made up of predominantly male senior academics…whose
success may often be attributed to conforming to the ‘malestream’, ‘mainstream’ or
‘hard’ aspects of their disciplines (Knights and Richards 2003, p. 223).
While such assertions are historically plausible, what evidence exists to support
them today? Some, at least, of the evidence derives from research projects that
have asked women to describe their experiences of academic life, or from focus
6
Our national study included the first detailed case study of casual employment at an Australian
university, and we were able to get a 20 per cent response rate from casual staff at the UNSW.
While data on casual employment is even less reliable than any other category, existing analyses
conclude that there is no evidence to suggest that women are especially concentrated in sessional
employment or that casualisation is a phenomenon that is particularly associated with women. It is
the under-representation of women in continuing employment that makes their numbers in
sessional employment appear excessive.
7
Knights and Richard adopt an almost essentialist and dichotomised view of male and female
difference on which ‘bourgeois’ concepts of equal opportunity or ‘merit’ must necessarily founder.
8
While talking about ‘my’ research, it would not have been possible without the work of Peter
Ewer and Kim Whiting, with Kim Whiting carrying out the multiple regression analysis for us.
9
group based research in which groups of women are asked to discuss how they feel
about their experiences of the promotions system, or how supported they feel as
academics. It is extremely rare for men to be asked similar questions, so that the
male experience as positive and supportive is taken for granted. A perhaps
extreme, but not irrelevant example, can be found in Kate Hawkins attempt to
understand women’s under-representation in academia by undertaking exit
interviews with 23 women who had resigned their positions from a ‘large public
university in the southwest’ of the United States, which produced ‘narratives’ of
negative themes (Hawkins 1994). There are two points that can be made about
studies relying on this kind of methodology. The first is that women may feel that
they are less successful than men when applying for promotion, but this does not
tell us whether this is in fact the case; nor does it provide us with any evidence
about why this might be. The second is that men’s experiences of these processes
may not necessarily be dissimilar to women’s. In fact, in our research, which
systematically asked men and women the same questions, we have been struck by
the extent to which men and women feel similar kinds of difficulties in developing
their careers. Both, for example, feel that there is little support available to them to
do research, with men feeling even more pessimistic than women (Probert et al
1998, p. 61).
One reason why so much writing on this issue remains speculative or
unsubstantiated is that little relevant data is available. What is most easily
accessible in most countries is aggregate data around the current level of
appointment of male and female academics and their pay, which tells us about
gender differences, but cannot account for them.
Indeed, since level
overwhelmingly determines pay, this remains the focus of attention. Evidence
around the appointment process or promotions processes is not readily available,
nor is evidence about human capital or different kinds of workloads9 - all of which
might be expected to affect level. As a result, it is possible to describe unequal pay,
but very hard to identify the inequities that might be involved, or explain the
inequality. In both our Australian studies a survey was used which was designed to
gather data on such critical matters as levels of human capital, family
responsibilities, career preferences, workloads and objective outcomes of
appointment and promotion practices10 so that theories about gender inequity or
gender difference could be tested.
9
This point is also made by Melanie Ward (2001) in her study of the pay of male and female
Scottish academics. Ward uses multiple regression analysis to model the determinants of academic
salaries.
10
In the national study, a random survey of academics from 18 universities gave us a sample of
1683 from which to develop regression models for male and female incomes. The survey of all
academic staff at UNSW produced 1007 survey returns.
10
Belinda Probert
The first thing that both these pieces of work allowed us to do was to test the way
men and women navigate the academic career path. Here I will focus on the
UNSW data, and it is totally consistent with that gathered in the earlier survey
across 18 different universities. Both studies show that one obvious cause of
gender stratification is that men begin their academic careers at higher levels than
women, and have more years on average in the sector.
As Table 2 shows, half of the female academics at UNSW began their career at
Level A, with a further 23.2 per cent beginning as Research Assistants, and almost
a quarter at Level B. By contrast, 40 per cent of men began at Level A, with over a
third beginning at Level B.
Table 2: First position in higher education by sex (column per cent)
Position
Women
Men
Research assistant
Level A
Level B
Level C
Level D
Level E
N
23.2
50.0
24.7
1.5
0.5
194
16.9
34.4
39.3
6.6
1.7
1.1
349
Is this male advantage evidence of inequity or could it be justified by differences in
educational attainment or human capital generally? Are men better qualified at the
time of their first appointment? Table 3 shows that there is some good evidence to
support this explanation. 38.2 per cent of men held a PhD at the time of their first
appointment, compared to 12.2 per cent of women.11 This is particularly significant
given that a PhD is increasingly seen as an entry-level requirement for an academic
career.
11
It may be that the practices of different disciplines differ with respect to the status attaching to a
PhD at the entry point to the career path - i.e. it may be considered essential in some disciplines,
and more optional in others. This may in turn have implications for our analysis of educational
attainment and the gender stratification of the career path, because of the concentration of men in
‘traditional’ disciplines (e.g. engineering). Unfortunately when we break down the number of
women holding a PhD at the point of entry by discipline, the numbers become so small as to be
unreliable. However, our NTEU study showed that gender differences in the attainment of
qualifications were consistent across all disciplines.
11
Table 3: Qualifications held when first position obtained by sex
(column per cent)
Position
Women
Men
Bachelor Degree
Degree with Honours
Graduate Diploma
Masters (coursework)
Masters (Research)
PhD
Other
N
22.4
24.5
7.7
13.3
14.3
12.2
5.6
196
15.6
18.4
2.3
10.8
10.2
38.2
4.5
353
In both studies we also tested the theory that men are more likely to negotiate over
their initial employment level, and to be more successful in this negotiation. In the
national study we found that women were just as likely as men to negotiate over the
entry point at which they were employed by their current university (about a quarter
of all men and women claimed to have done this). And of these, there was no
significant difference between the sexes in terms of who was successful (about
three quarters).
The relatively low number of women with a PhD when they began their academic
career was a surprise finding from the national survey, and in the UNSW study a
series of questions were asked to try and account for this gender difference –
questions I return to later. However, the UNSW study also revealed that among
those who begin their career without a PhD, women are also less likely to go on and
complete one than men (52.9 per cent compared to 61.9 per cent).
Educational attainment is only one measure of ‘human capital’, with work
experience being the other major element. Years worked is a very strong predictor
of level, and hence pay, in the Australian university system where progression
within each level is still largely automatic, with promotion bars between levels.
When we look at experience, combined with educational advantage, it would seem
that men are at higher levels simply because they have been in the system longer.
Table 4 summarises the average years worked in higher education (full and part
time) for UNSW, and compares this data with that from our earlier national industry
study.
As with the gender difference in qualifications, we have not yet explained these
differences, but it is not clear that there is anything ‘inequitable’ about their effects.
12
Belinda Probert
Table 4: Average length of service in higher education by terms of employment
and sex
Data Source
UNSW
NTEU
Years worked in higher education
full time
Tenure/Continuing
Contract
Years worked in higher education
part time
Tenure/Continuing
Contract
Women
Men
Women
Men
12.6
7.1
17.7
5.4
12.2
5.3
17.2
6.6
5.1
4.6
5.7
4.6
4.6
4.6
3.4
3.7
PROMOTION
It is widely believed among Australian female academics that they do less well than
men in the promotions process and that this reflects either direct discrimination or
systemic/indirect discrimination. Such views are also reflected in Knights and
Richards’ (2003) analysis of sex discrimination in UK Academia, in which they
claim male dominated promotions panels are likely to over-value male dominated
disciplines and ‘hard’ sciences compared to female dominated and ‘soft’
disciplines. Others argue that promotion panels are likely to undervalue teaching
compared to research and that this will also discriminate against women, who are
assumed to invest more in teaching than research. The massive expansion of higher
education and growth of different types of universities in Australia means that many
institutions have introduced promotions criteria in which staff have some discretion
in how to weight their contribution to teaching, research and university or
community service at different levels of the career structure. We would expect this
change to go some way to addressing the commonly heard (but rarely researched)
concern that women are disadvantaged by focussing more on teaching than
research.
What both our studies revealed is that the conventional wisdom is not supported by
the outcomes of promotions processes. On the contrary, in our UNSW study
women are more likely to be successful than men when they apply for promotion.12
And this is so despite the fact that women do indeed tend to place greater weight on
teaching and less on research when compared to men’s applications.13 Table 5
12
In the national study, the success rate for men and women was also very similar.
In the national study, women allocated significantly more weight to teaching than men (an
average of 41 per cent compared to 35 per cent), while men allocated significantly more weight to
research than did women (an average of 41 per cent compared to 33 per cent.)
13
13
shows the relative success rates at the UNSW – a university that prides itself on
being one of the top research performers in Australia.
Table 5: Number of times promotion successful by sex and number of times
applied (column per cent)
Times applied
Once
Twice
Three
Four or
more
Times W
M
W
M
W
M
W
M
successful
Never
3.7
1.6
Once
96.3
98.4
39.1
40.0
13.9
5.6
Twice
60.9
60.0
85.7
50.0
41.7
Three or
14.3
36.1
100.
52.8
more
0
Total
54
62
23
60
7
36
4
36
The data from our research suggests that the explicit recognition of teaching quality
in the work of academic staff, and changes to promotion criteria, have been
successful in eliminating research bias in promotions outcomes in many
universities, and there is no evidence of gender bias in promotions outcomes. There
is, however, evidence that women are less likely to apply for promotion as men - or
that men approach their careers more ‘aggressively’ than women. At UNSW 63 per
cent of men have applied for promotion, compared to 53 per cent of women.
Moreover, of the staff who do apply for promotion, men do so with greater
‘intensity’, applying for promotion more often than women. As Table 6 shows, the
longer academic staff have been in the higher education system, the bigger the gap
between men’s rate of application for promotion and women’s.
Table 6: Number of times applied for promotion by sex and years in higher
education (column per cent)
Years in higher 7 or less yrs
8-13 yrs
14-20 yrs
20+ yrs
education
No. times
W
M
W
M
W
M
W
M
applied
Never
76.9
69.2 48.2
47.3 31.4
29.9 25.0
17.7
Once
23.1
30.8 39.3
35.1 41.2
26.9 37.5
15.6
Twice
10.7
12.2 21.6
34.3 20.0
22.0
Three times
1.8
5.4
5.9
9.0
7.5
19.1
Four or more
10.0
25.5
times
N
39
52
56
74
51
67
40
141
14
Belinda Probert
Table 7 shows that only seven women (compared to 36 men) have applied for
promotion three times, and for those applying four or more times, only four are
women (compared to 36 men). But there is relatively little difference between the
number of times men and women apply until they have accumulated more than 14
years of service (which would take male academic staff to near the top of Level C),
at which point women begin to fall seriously behind.
This data suggests that many researchers may have been looking in the wrong place
if we wish to understand why women are so unequally represented above Level C
in the academic hierarchy. Women have less ‘human capital’ than men, measured
in terms of formal qualifications and work experience, and they do not seem to
attack the career structure as vigorously as men, with significant proportions
appearing to stop climbing just as they are getting near the peaks. We need to know
more about the reasons for this.
WORKLOADS AND PRODUCTIVITY
Another commonly held belief about gender inequity is that unequal treatment in
the allocation of workloads and opportunities for research may contribute to male
over-representation in higher-level jobs. In both our studies data was gathered
about actual workloads in an attempt to test this hypothesis. Questions were asked
about numbers of lectures given in the current semester, numbers of tutorials,
numbers of students’ work marked, coordination responsibilities and so on. What
we found was that, whether measured in terms of class numbers, hours worked or
numbers of students, male and female workloads are on average roughly
comparable.14 In the UNSW study, if we aggregate the data for teaching loads for
the semester, we find that on average women spend 55.6 hours teaching at
undergraduate level compared to 52.3 hours for men. And on average women will
spend 10.4 hours teaching at postgraduate level compared to 13.7 hours for men. As
in the broader NTEU survey we found no evidence to support the commonly
articulated contention that women carry heavier teaching loads than men.15
While we found no evidence to support the suggestion that women are given higher
teaching loads than men (i.e. no evidence of institutional or systemic
discrimination), we did find evidence that women spend more time than men on
student welfare and pastoral care. When asked about time spent on activities other
14
A well known British academic who has written about the gendered experience of postgraduate
research students refused to believe our findings, and when presented with the data suggested that
the men responding to the survey must have lied about their workloads. This suggestion is hard to
take seriously with almost a thousand responses from men, but what is interesting and symptomatic
of this area of study is the extent to which researchers wish to believe certain things.
15
This finding has been regularly met with disbelief when presenting findings to groups of female
academics.
15
than teaching and research, by far the most common one identified was
administration (mentioned by three quarters of both male and female academic
staff). For women the next most common one was student welfare work (mentioned
by 42.6 per cent compared to 26.5 per cent of men) and mentoring (27.8 per cent
compared to 17.6 per cent of men). Men were more likely to identify conference
organisation and management (22.2 per cent compared to 13.1 per cent of women)
and consultancies (10.5 per cent compared to 2.8 per cent of women). While at
Levels B and C a strong focus on teaching and student welfare may well be of no
disadvantage to women, it is possible that the fact that this time is not being spent
on other career enhancing activities may be a longer term disadvantage. However,
there is no evidence to support this.
While it does not appear that women do more teaching than men as part of their
workload (holding level constant), there are some gender differences in research
output.16 In the national study these differences were insignificant when discipline
was held constant, but in the UNSW study differences remained when discipline
and level were held constant, with men being more productive than women.
Unfortunately we could not further explore these differences because of the sample
size.
What we can say is that women do not perceive themselves to be less supported in
their research environment than men, although the vast majority of both sexes
perceive material obstacles to undertaking research. However, significant gender
differences emerged from a question asking all staff what they needed most in order
to be able to do research. Over half of women (52.0 per cent) nominated a need for
teaching relief or time off, compared to 35.3 per cent of men. Men, by contrast,
were most concerned with financial support. This felt need for teaching relief by
women needs to be further analysed since it would not appear that it is caused by
having heavier teaching loads than men.
FAMILY LIFE
While most work on gender equity in higher education has focussed on the issue of
whether men and women are treated unequally in the workplace, or rather
differently, it is widely recognised that women also have to contend with greater
responsibilities for family work, and that this may have an impact on their careers.
Some measures have been introduced in universities (and other workplaces) with
the intent of making it easier for parents (nearly always mothers) to manage a range
of family related demands while protecting their careers. For example, academic
16
It is difficult to compare research work in a reliable way, and much easier to focus on quantity
than quality. What we do know is that for the purposes of promotion most universities rely heavily
on academic publications recognised by the Department of Education Science and Training, and for
this reason both studies asked staff to report on the different DEST recognised categories, from
which a weighted measure was derived.
16
Belinda Probert
staff at Australian universities are entitled to paid and unpaid maternity leave, have
access to part-time employment, and carers leave, and in some cases, to special
support designed to get those returning to the workforce after parental leave back
into their research. To what extent do these measures give women ‘equal
opportunities’ in the academic workplace? In answering this question we need to
know something about the family related responsibilities of academic staff, but we
also need to set these against the specific nature of academic work and how it is
organised. For example, Lotte Bailyn (2003, p.139) argues that the distinctive
aspects of academic work ‘makes the ideal, the perfect academic someone who
gives total priority to work and has no outside interests and responsibilities’.
In both our studies we asked about whether staff lived with a partner and if they had
dependent children, or older relatives requiring significant care, and for those with
dependent children, we asked who was primarily responsible for their care. In
analysing the UNSW and national data around family and household arrangements
we found an unusual pattern emerging in the later UNSW study. In particular,
female academic staff at UNSW appear to be significantly less likely to live with a
partner than comparable social groups in Australia. The difference for between
UNSW men and others is much less marked. A comparison with the national NTEU
survey illustrates this point in Table 7.
Table 7: Do respondents live with a partner by sex (column per cent)
Data source
UNSW
NTEU
Live with partner
Yes
No
N
Women
63.5
36.5
197
Men
80.2
19.8
353
Women
72.1
27.9
674
Men
83.8
16.2
989
Such a difference could reflect a younger age profile of female staff at UNSW in
2002, but in fact there is no significant difference in the average age of staff in the
two studies. Furthermore, age (or perhaps life-cycle factors) appears to be
significant for somewhat different reasons. At UNSW it is in the 40-49 year-old
group that the proportion of women who ‘live with a partner’ falls dramatically
compared to other industry studies we have undertaken. The comparable figures are
80.4 per cent living with a partner among female primary and secondary school
teachers, and 81.5 per cent in the finance sector (banking and insurance workers)
(Probert et al 1999, 2000). In this age group, our national higher education study
found that 72.4 per cent of female academic staff lived with a partner, while it falls
further at UNSW to 61.6 per cent. Up until that age bracket, the UNSW data is
roughly comparable with the larger national survey.
17
This data was one key factor behind the decision to hold two follow-up focus group
discussions with female academic staff aged between 40 and 49. During the second
focus group discussion it emerged that eight out of the ten women had broken up
with their partners while they were studying for their PhD. As one of them
commented, ‘to this day I wonder how much a price I did have to pay to do my PhD
because my marriage ended 4 or 5 months after - the price I paid for working so
hard. And I did... I worked all the time’.
At the same time, the proportion of UNSW staff with children is much higher than
our national study, both among people living with partners and those without, as
Table 8 shows.
Table 8: Have children by sex and live with partner17 (column per cent)
UNSW
NTEU
Data Source
Women
Men
Women Men
Lives with partner
Has children 70.4
83.4
49.0
52.5
No children
29.6
16.6
51.0
47.5
N
125
283
484
823
Does not live with partner
Has children 38.6
35.7
17.7
10.1
No children
61.4
64.3
82.3
89.9
N
70
70
186
158
The impact of the caring load falls more heavily on UNSW staff than it did for their
national colleagues in 1996. The primary care giver is more likely to be ‘self’ than
‘shared’ for both men and women in comparison to the national study; however
only 8.4 per cent of male UNSW continuing/contract staff are primary care givers,
compared to 67.3 per cent of women. This data is presented in Table 9, and
confirms what we know about wider demographic trends: the stable nuclear family
organised around a male breadwinner and a female home-maker is declining as a
social norm. With the increase in both the number of sole parents and families with
both partners at work, the complexity of people’s lives is increasing, as they juggle
the demands of work and family.
The caring load of UNSW women is also high compared to our other industry
studies. Among primary/secondary teachers, 40.2 per cent of mothers describe
themselves as having primary care of their children, as do 48.3 per cent of mothers
in the finance sector, compared to 67.3 per cent at UNSW.
17
The question used in the NTEU study was “How many children under 18 do you have living at
home?”. As a result, the number of children in the UNSW study will be slightly higher as it asks
about all children, not just dependent ones.
18
Belinda Probert
Table 9: Main carer of children by sex (column per cent)
Data Source
UNSW
Main carer of children
Self
Partner
Shared
Other
N
Women
67.3
2.8
25.2
4.7
107
Men
8.4
49.0
39.4
3.2
249
Women
48.9
2.9
42.6
5.5
272
NTEU
Men
4.4
47.1
44.5
4.0
452
It is important to recognise that almost all the partners of female academics were in
full-time employment (91.7 per cent of national study), while only 57.2 per cent of
male academics had partners in full-time employment. These dilemmas are
compounded by the fact that almost a quarter of female academic staff also have
caring responsibilities for aged parents - 16.9 per cent of these academic staff have
caring responsibilities for aged parents, compared to 13.8 per cent of men.
Table 10: Other caring responsibilities by sex (column per cent)
Women
Men
Aged parents
Aged relatives
Partner with illness or disability
Relative with illness or disability
Other person
No other caring responsibilities
N
22.3
3.8
3.8
10.5
6.7
46.7
105
13.8
3.0
4.5
7.4
2.0
72.3
202
From this initial data, it appears that academic staff at UNSW are experiencing
widely recognised social changes more intensely than the community norm. Fewer
UNSW staff live with a partner, and more care for children on their own, and this is
particularly pronounced for women. It is not possible to make assertions about
demographic trends from the UNSW study, but they are supported by national level
data on the rate of marriage breakdown, and should alert us to issues that should be
taken up in future research.
LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACE?
The UNSW study of gender equity in academic employment allowed us to follow
the survey with interviews around issues that emerged from the survey data. The
survey data confirmed the earlier national study data which provided no evidence to
support many of the commonly held assumptions about why women fail to develop
19
their academic careers as successfully as men. Both studies suggest that policies in
support of equal employment opportunities and affirmative action18 have been
effective and that appointment and promotions procedures, and the allocation of
teaching workloads, are largely free of systemic gender bias. The UNSW study
allowed us to ask more questions about why men are so much more likely to have a
PhD than women, and what men and women require in order to be able to do
research – both of which are critical dimensions of the human capital required in
academic careers.
The absence of many women above Level C in the career structure would appear to
be linked to the way households organise the division between paid and unpaid
work rather than to discrimination against women in the workplace. What the
UNSW data suggested was that we needed to focus more closely on the experience
of women currently at Level C in order to capture the relationship between their
domestic lives and their professional lives. In order to do this we sent out a request
for women at Level C to participate in focus group discussions, but particularly to
those between 40 and 50 years of age with children, since this group appear to face
particularly heavy family responsibilities. Those who agreed to participate were
invited to discuss how, when and if they had completed a PhD; whether they
intended to apply for promotion to Level D, and how they had arrived at this
decision; and how their family responsibilities affected their careers. They were
also encouraged to discuss ways in which their careers could be enhanced.
Of the 15 women who participated, nine had dependent children (mostly late
primary or secondary school age), and ten were separated or divorced. They came
from a very wide range of disciplines including arts, commerce, medicine,
engineering and law. Only 2 did not now have a PhD, and both of them were from
disciplines where the PhD has been historically less important. However, several
women gave us insights into the reality of the lives that lie behind the gendered
pattern of PhD completions, and a picture of what goes wrong when we add
household roles into the picture.
I was a late starter…as I gave birth to my fourth child I started my PhD
and took on my full-time position as an associate lecturer, and my PhD
took five years on that basis…It was fucking stupid.
I got a job at a university, realised, well I’ll have to do a PhD now,
enrolled six weeks before I had my first child and basically wrote it
with a full-time job and a baby. Took about five years. I think I got six
18
In Australia affirmative action legislation does not permit the use of quotas or positive
discrimination, but refers to the requirement that large employers monitor and report on gender
patterns in employment, and introduce measures designed to increase female employment where it
is under-represented.
20
Belinda Probert
months off at some stage for study leave but I remember my HOS
[Head of School] saying you’re not allowed to do your PhD on study
leave – you do pure research.
Of those still without a PhD in our UNSW survey, women with children
overwhelmingly cite lack of time as the principle obstacle (followed by teaching
commitments and ‘family’19). Similarly, ‘time off’ was what women most said they
needed in order to do research more generally, in contrast to men who needed
money. In comparison, men with children appear to be less pressed for time than
women with children. Men with children are far more likely simply to be ‘not
interested’ in completing a PhD. For men and women without children the obstacles
are more varied and less gendered. It is interesting to note that men are more likely
than women to claim a general lack of support. As noted earlier, women are less
likely than men to go on and complete a PhD if they begin their career without one.
Table 11: What prevents obtaining PhD by sex and have children
(column per cent)*
Have children
No children
Lack of time
Financial
Lack of supervisor
General lack of support
Teaching commitments
Heavy workload
Age
Illness
Not interested
Family
Other
N
Women
62.1
10.3
3.4
3.4
13.8
3.4
6.9
13.8
13.8
29
Men
36.4
6.1
6.1
6.1
3.0
24.2
6.1
3.0
21.2
6.1
3.0
33
Women
33.3
22.2
11.1
3.7
3.7
37.0
3.7
Men
28.6
14.3
9.5
14.3
9.5
23.8
14.3
14.8
3.7
9.5
-
27
21
* Percentages add to more than 100 as people could give more than one response
Within the focus groups there was lengthy discussion of the ways in which
women’s responsibility for their children constantly came into conflict with the
requirements of their work. In particular, with this older group of women, it
became clear that normal family-friendly workplace entitlements (maternity leave,
part-time work, carers’ leave) are quite unable to resolve this conflict, even where
19
This was an open-ended question, hence the additional category of ‘family’.
21
they can freely be taken up. It is not ‘having a baby’ or the demands of a sick child
that create the major tensions, but the relentless and continuous collision between
work and life on a daily and weekly basis.
For example, women reflected on the difficulties they experienced in finding
childcare on campus, with one remembering that she ‘was on the waiting list for
five years and didn’t get offered a place’. Several described their sense of guilt at
having to leave the campus to pick up small children and the difficulty they faced in
getting their colleagues to acknowledge these basic needs:
I got one of those teaching awards – and when did they want to award
it? At 4.40 in the afternoon!
Our staff seminar is at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon followed by
dinner…
Nor did things seem to get any easier when the children were older. The most
striking comments in the focus groups concerned the demanding nature of being the
primary carer of teenager children – an experience summarised by the comment that
‘it’s harder with teenagers’. Or as another described it:
The teenage thing… I find this to be the hardest period of my life. From
about five years ago I started getting calls in the school holidays –
“Mum! There’s a gang of boys outside, egging our house”, so in the
school holidays, I can’t afford childcare… You manage school holidays
from afar. I find this so stressful.
It was also pointed out that January (summer holidays) was a particularly important
time for parents to be with their children, yet critical meetings for the coming year
were sometimes scheduled at this time.
In two cases women talked about the way an older child had become particularly
needy. This included a teenager whose self-destructive behaviour meant that her
mother ‘had to take a whole session off and do nothing but look after my daughter’.
This woman was strongly supported by her Head in this crisis, but nonetheless as a
result she spent ‘hours every day trying to be home closer to four [o’clock] rather
than to six or seven, and trying to be available to [her other children] and be present
and watching what they are doing’. Less dramatically another woman described
discovering that her nine-year-old was failing at spelling. ‘It was just scary that you
do miss those things and you really want to be there to try and help them’.
One of the reasons men have greater human capital in terms of experience is related
to these childcare issues. Of academic staff with children at UNSW, 88.1 per cent
of women report that their caring responsibilities had an effect on their career plans,
22
Belinda Probert
compared to 51 per cent of men. Interestingly, almost half of the these women
indicated they had had to cut back their hours of work or stop work, compared to
only 18 per cent who said that they had made a personal choice to stay home. Of the
men who reported that caring had an impact on their careers, just over 40 per cent
also described this as requiring them to cut back on their work.
Not surprisingly, academic staff with dependent children see ‘lack of time’ as the
other main impact of family on work. Where staff with dependent children do not
have a partner who takes on this caring as their primary responsibility, they feel
they are unable to work the long hours that academic jobs need and require. It
should be noted that this does not mean that they are unable to work normal fulltime hours. It may equally reflect a reaction to the increasing workloads
experienced by many academics over the last decade. In our focus group
discussions this theme was constantly raised by the women with children – the
‘feeling that we always need to work harder’, that you are ‘just keeping your head
above water’.
Discussing our evidence about the outcome of promotion applications at UNSW
women were surprised by the data that shows a higher success rate for women than
men, and encouraged by it. Several women hoped to become full professors, and
two spoke warmly of how their supervisors were pressuring them or supporting
them into applying for promotion. A significant minority, all with older children,
had, however, ‘given up’ any idea of moving beyond Level C. As one woman with
two school-age children described it:
There’s no point when your ambition just starts to dissipate…I regard it
as a failing. I think about what has happened to me and it is partly to
do with exhaustion’.
These comments clearly also shed light on gendered patterns of research output. In
the focus group discussions women with older children explicitly acknowledged
that research was the only thing that could be put off when the combination of
teaching, administration, children and research created overload.
That’s what academics do. Primarily it is kids …then comes teaching,
and what times is left after that? There isn’t much and so publications
become like icing on the cake.
And this is not a problem that is confined to the years when children are very
young. Almost all this group of older mothers commented on the fact that having
children meant they no longer felt able to get to international conferences. The
reasons were varied. For one, it was because ‘the logistics of childcare just fail.’
For another, with four children, her spectacular early career success was now
constrained by particularly modern problems.
23
I cannot go away. I used to go to international conferences …Got
invited to Harvard to give a paper, paid for by them…and all of a
sudden I’m at home managing the bong.
These tensions reflect a collision between the allocation of responsibility for the
care of children to their mothers (rather than to their fathers or to publicly provided
and affordable children’s services) and the particular demands of academic life.
What the UNSW study brings into sharp relief is the fact that it is not just babies
that cause disruption to mothers’ lives, but teenagers and family breakdown. In
other words, normal family-friendly entitlements are quite unable to redress these
kinds of work/family conflicts, even where they can freely be taken up. It is not
‘having a baby’ or the demands of a sick child that create the major tensions, but
the relentless and continuous collision between work and life on a daily and weekly
basis. For against these family demands, academics must manage not only their
teaching and administrative responsibilities, but an apparently insatiable demand for
increased research outputs – a demand that is increasingly experienced as a set of
externally imposed performance indicators, but also as the an internalised
understanding of what senior academics should be doing.
CONCLUSION
A major purpose of this paper has been to argue that many analysts of gender equity
in universities have been looking in the wrong place. Two large scale studies of
Australian academics suggest that the problem women face in advancing their
careers is not the presence of a ‘glass ceiling’, let alone more directly
discriminatory practices in appointments, promotions or workloads.
Rather, if we want to understand more about the difference between men’s and
women’s experience of paid work, we need to acknowledge how much this depends
on what happens in the household. As Alison Morehead (2003) argues in her
recently completed doctoral research, ‘the household beats the workplace hands
down as a site where gender matters and where gender determines what you do’. In
her study of women’s work in a large hospital, Morehead (2003) argues that the key
determinant of mothers paid work patterns is the ‘management of absence from the
household’. In seeking to account for the way some households have shifted to a
more balanced division of household work to support mothers’ employment, she
develops the concept of ‘the power of absence’. In the context of hospital work,
some women can increase their ability to be absent from the home because of the
nature of shift work. Thus for many nurses there is a requirement to work shifts
that include peak periods of domestic work in the late afternoon and early evening,
which in turn requires fathers to take up a much larger domestic workload. In
addition, nurses are often unable to leave work in the event of a child’s sickness at
school or other unforeseen event. In other words, if it is agreed in the household
24
Belinda Probert
that these mothers should have paid employment, this brings with it the power of
absence, in which a key element is the non-overlapping work hours of spouses’
employment.
What is particularly striking about academic employment is, by contrast, its
flexibility and the sense that it should in fact be more compatible with family
responsibilities than more rigid working patterns. Much of what academics do can
be done from home, at night or on weekends. This may, however, have precisely
the opposite of its expected consequences in some cases. It is possible that the
flexibility of academic work makes it more difficult for women to exert the power
of absence since there are relatively few hours when they are required to be in the
workplace. It is also possible that the increasing number of women taking up senior
management positions in Australian universities is a reflection that such positions
bring with them a quite different ‘power of absence’ than senior academic
positions.
As Morehead (2003) argues, the working time schedule of the mother is an
important predictor of the division of household labour, more so than the father’s.
At the same time the professional or managerial male partners of female academics
are likely to be experiencing longer working hours, and strong expectations about
being at work and working late.20 In other words, we need to focus on the question
of how fathers have an impact on mothers’ choices, and on households and what
goes on in them. Much of the contemporary literature on work and family relies on
the concept of an individual mother revealing preferences for different quantities of
paid and unpaid work, or making rational decisions about maximizing household
income. In reality, women’s ability to devote time to paid work is the outcome of a
complex and highly gendered set of negotiations and compromises within the
household.
To accept the importance of the household as the critical sphere in which mothers’
ability to develop their careers is negotiated is not to reject the significance of
workplace initiatives and policy. On the contrary, provisions such as paid maternity
leave and access to part-time employment are essential to allowing women to
remain attached to their careers. Similarly, measures that introduce transparency
around workload allocations and promotions criteria within a ‘meritocratic’
framework appear to have had a significant impact in reducing gender
discrimination. Nonetheless, this paper suggests that these measures are unlikely
to ensure any substantial increase in the proportion of women reaching senior
academic positions.
20
Morehead argues that long working hours for men can negate the potential effects on the gender
division in the household of both parents working full-time jobs, and that the father gets two kinds
of benefits: by being able to avoid unpaid work, and by improving his status in paid work by
staying late.
25
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bailyn, L (2003) “Academic careers and gender equity: lessons learned from MIT,”
Gender, Work and Organization, v. 10, no. 2 (March): 139.
Hawkins, K (1994) “Analyzing the pure case: women’s narratives of academic
life,” Women’s Studies in Communication, v. 17, no. 1: 1-25.
Knights, D and Richards, W (2003) “Sex discrimination in UK Academia,” Gender,
Work and Organization, v. 10, no. 2 (March): 213-238.
Morehead, A (2003) How employed mothers allocate time for work and family: a
new framework. PhD thesis, University of Sydney.
Probert, B (1999a) “Working in Australian universities: pay equity for men and
women?,” in D. Cohen et al (eds), Winds of change: women and the culture of
universities: conference proceedings. Sydney: University of Technology.
Probert, B (1999b) “Gender pay equity in higher education,” in P Fogelberg (ed.),
Hard work in the academy: research and interventions on gender inequalities
in Higher Education. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.
Probert, B, Ewer, P and Leong, K (2002) Gender equity in academic employment at
the University of New South Wales. Melbourne: Centre for Applied Social
Research, RMIT University.
Probert, B, Ewer, P and Whiting, K (1998) Gender pay equity in Australian Higher
Education. Melbourne: National Tertiary Education Union.
Probert, B, Ewer, P and Whiting, K (2000) Pressure from all sides: work and life in
the finance sector. Melbourne: Finance Sector Union.
Probert, B, Whiting, K and Ewer, P (1999) Building the foundations of our future.
Melbourne: Australian Education Union.
Ward, M (2001) “The gender salary gap in British academia,” Applied Economics,
v.33, no. 13 (October).
26
Women’s Decisions about Paid Work and Family Life after Childbirth:
A Critique of the Hakim Model
Sheree Cartwright
School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT University
In Australia there has been new attention paid to women’s work/life choices,
which have been driven by changes in paid work and family, and marked
particularly by an increase in women’s paid work participation rate over
the last three decades. The increase is most obvious among married women
with young children (Pocock 2003). Attention to women’s work/life
decision-making also coincides with the apparent adoption of Hakim’s
model by the Howard Government with regard to its women and family
policies. This paper is a review of the research literature to date on
women’s decisions about paid work and family life after childbirth. A key
objective is to critique Hakim’s model about ‘women’s choice’ (Hakim
2000, 2003). The main focus is the Australian context however the
discussion also extends to the UK. Previous research explains women’s paid
work patterns by focusing on women’s preferences for paid work and family
life, but neglects to document women’s lived-experiences at particular
stages throughout the life-course. These analyses have tended to be based
largely on quantitative research methods, which are linked to more general
theories of women’s paid work orientations (Hakim 2000).
INTRODUCTION
Paid Work and Family Trends in Australia
There has been a great deal of change in Australia affecting paid work and family
life over the last three decades. This is marked particularly by women’s changing
economic and social opportunities and behaviours, including paid workforce
participation trends. There has been a distinct change in women’s paid workforce
participation from 30 per cent in 1970, to 56 per cent in 2003 (ABS 1971, 2004).
The steady increase is most obvious among married women with young children,
showing a continuity of women’s paid work participation after childbirth (ABS
2003). Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that most women
with dependent children are now heavily engaged in the paid workforce (ABS
2003). For example, the proportion of all women with dependent children in the
paid workforce (i.e. mothers in one-parent families - ‘lone mothers’, and mothers in
couple families -‘couple’ mothers) has increased from 45.6 per cent in 1985 to 60.4
per cent in 2003 (Campbell and Charlesworth 2004, p7). Similarly, ‘mothers in
27
couples with jobs has increased significantly over the past 25 years, doubling
among those whose youngest child is less than one year old’ (Pocock 2003, p73).
Research from Australia indicates that more women today are remaining in the paid
workforce during the childbearing years and that fewer women are now leaving the
paid workforce during the peak child bearing years compared with women from
previous generations (Pocock 2003, p72). For example, the labour force
participation rate of women aged 25-34 years rose from 63 per cent in 1988 to 71
per cent in 2002 (McDonald and Evans 2002, p8; ABS 2004). This also suggests
that what is different is that women today are making varied choices about their
paid work and family arrangements around childbirth (Himmelweit and Sigala
2004). It has also been noted that women who worked during their pregnancy return
faster to the job they held prior to their pregnancy after giving birth, when they have
longer previous continuous employment experience (Glass and Riley 1998). These
changes show that more and more workers bring caring responsibilities with them
into the workplace and ‘no longer approach the workplace entrance as the “ideal
workers” associated with the earlier “male breadwinner/ female homemaker”
model’ (Campbell and Charlesworth 2004, p.i). Furthermore, in the Australian
context many women work part-time in order to combine motherhood and paid
work. In fact, Australia has the second highest participation of part-time workers in
the OECD.
While some women decide to continue in paid work, some reduce their hours in
paid work and others decide to cease paid work and become full-time mothers
(Pocock 2003, p.72-85). The ways in which women make decisions about
organising paid work and family life, the influential factors upon their decisionmaking, and how much of decision-making is given over to agency or structure are
increasingly significant questions today. These questions are related to major shifts
in society over the last 30 to 40 years. In particular, changing social mores around
women’s participation in the paid workforce, and an increase in women’s paid
workforce participation rate, rising education levels for women particularly postschool education, greater control over fertility, growth of service sector jobs and the
decline of manufacturing jobs and the growing availability of part-time and casual
jobs.
This paper is concerned with the research literature to date on women’s decisions
about paid work and family life after childbirth. A key objective is to critique the
Hakim model of women’s choices due to the apparent adoption of it by the Howard
Government with regards to its women and family policies. The approach used in
this paper will discuss the current ‘popularity’ or influence of the Hakim model,
outline Hakim’s model, and discuss the various critiques and criticisms of Hakim.
The paper will conclude by discussing the need for a model that recognises the
dynamism of women’s decision-making and which is based on qualitative research
as well as quantitative.
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Sheree Cartwright
Women’s Decisions about Paid Work and Family Life after Childbirth
THEORISING WOMEN’S PAID WORK AND FAMILY DECISIONS
AFTER CHILDBIRTH
There is a growing accumulation of empirical information particularly over the last
15 years in Australia about the conflict/balance between paid work and family life,
paid work and disadvantage around maternity for women, and women’s ‘work/life’
preferences (Campbell and Charlesworth 2004; Gray, et al. 2003; Samson 2002;
Gray, et al. 2002; Warner-Smith and Imbruglia 2001; Evans and Kelley 2001;
Probert 2002; Cotton, et al. 1990; Castleman, et al. 1989). Current data about the
nature of women’s decisions about paid work and family after childbirth reveal
differential experiences among women (Himmelweit and Sigala 2004). In
particular, some women feel they have little or no choice about returning to paid
work soon after childbirth (Samson 2002) and some women are clearly constrained
to take up part-time or casual work (Pocock 2003, p.167-8). Previous analyses of
women’s work/life choices to date from in Australia (Castleman, et al. 1989;
Samson 2002; Gray, et al. 2002), and in the UK (Hakim 2000; Houston and Marks
2002) have largely been based on women’s ‘preferences’, using quantitative
research methods and are linked to more general theories of women’s paid work
orientations (Crompton and Harris 1998; Hakim 2000; Samson 2002). A number of
investigations have used human capital theory (Barrow 1999), preference theory
(Hakim 2000; Samson 2002), theory of planned behaviour (Houston and Marks
2003) or rational-choice theory to explain women’s paid work/life orientations.
There have also been many attempts to explain the relationship between women and
the labour market, for example patriarchy and gender theory which highlight the
gendered division of labour within the household and ‘separate spheres’ for men
and women (Hartman 1981; Hochschild 1989; Connell 2002), and domestic
ideology (Williams 2000).
Despite this growing body of knowledge there are gaps in the research literature
around women’s ‘lived-experiences’ in deciding about paid work and family life
after childbirth in Australia. While research in paid work and family life is growing,
there is still less material focusing on women’s paid work/family life decisionmaking in the Australian circumstance.
Preference Theory and its Popularity
In looking at what British sociologist, Catherine Hakim (2000) has said about what
women want in terms of paid work and family life, she describes a major shift in
society, towards one in which there are a variety of life-styles for people to pursue.
Using data from a national survey, Hakim argues that lifestyle preferences predict
work and fertility rates. The central argument is that women are not homogenous
but have different preferences and priorities regarding balancing paid work and
family life. Women have choices about paid work that are denied to men (McRae
2003a, p.319). Hakim’s (2000) ‘preference theory’ suggests that women’s
29
preferences for paid work and family life are directly interconnected with the
choices they make. She argues that preference theory ‘reinstates personal
preferences as an important determinant of women’s behaviour and it states that
attitudes, values and preferences are becoming increasingly important in the
lifestyle choices of people in rich modern societies’ (Hakim 2000, p.17).
Furthermore, ‘after the new scenario is achieved in affluent modern societies of the
21st century women’s employment decisions, and eventually, those of men also,
will be driven primarily by their personal preferences for one of the three
qualitatively different work-lifestyles’ (Hakim 2000, p.189-90). Based on their
preferences, Hakim (2000, p.158) argues that all women in modern societies fall
into one of three ‘types’ according to their choices, preferences and behaviours.
These include ‘work-centred women’ who are more inclined towards paid work
(20%), ‘home-centred women’ who are more inclined to care work within the home
(20%), and ‘adaptive women’ who prefer to combine both paid work/home without
giving a fixed priority to either (60%).
Hakim’s model is concerned with women’s choices between family work and
market work: ‘a genuine choice in affluent modern societies’ (Hakim 2000, p.1).
Preference theory states that in modern societies women can now make ‘genuine
choices’ about the balance between paid work and family life and that differences
in women’s labour market choices reflect and determine differences in life-style
choices and preferences found at all levels of education, and in all social classes. It
has developed from major shifts in the Western world, particularly, the women’s
movement, the contraception revolution, the equal opportunities revolution, the
expansion of white-collar occupations, the creation of jobs for secondary earners,
and ‘the increasing importance of attitudes, values and personal preferences in the
lifestyle choices of prosperous liberal modern societies’ (Hakim 2000, p.3).
Hakim’s Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory, is an
important contribution to current understandings of women’s labour market
patterns. Its popularity or influence can be seen through current researchers’
application of preference theory in their own work (Samson 2002), and the way in
which many researchers today (including this author) test or challenge its
arguments (McRae 2003a, 2003b; Crompton and Harris 1998a, 1998b; Houston and
Marks 2003; Himmelweit and Sigala 2004). Furthermore, Hakim’s model takes
account theoretically of gender differences in labour market behaviour and
outcomes (McRae 2003a, p.318). Hakim’s ‘adaptive women’ is supported by the
steady increase in women’s paid workforce patterns in Australia and the UK,
particularly the high rate of women in part-time employment, showing that the
traditional full-time homemaker ideal where a woman’s main responsibility is
childcare and family work in the domestic sphere is in the minority. Furthermore,
‘support is found for Hakim’s arguments that employment careers are centrally
important for only a minority of women’ (McRae 2003a, p.318).
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Sheree Cartwright
Hakim’s model challenges previous social science research on women’s labour
market behaviours and outcomes. Hakim claims that previous studies have
frequently focused on the views of women employed full-time which, according to
Hakim (1996, p.88) are ‘seriously unrepresentative of the views of the majority of
adult women’. She argues that studies have frequently ‘assumed that because they
account for the large majority, adaptive women are representative of all women and
consequently failed to include women who have been out of the labour market for
many years’ (Hakim 2000, p.285, in McRae 2003a, p.319-20).
Highlighting its popularity or influence, Hakim’s model has sparked recent interest
by policy makers including the Howard Government. Hakim’s model and its
influence on the Howard Government has been depicted in a positive light in the
Weekend Australian as producing ‘an about-face on the work and family debate’
(Symons 2004, p.8). In the same article, noting Hakim’s influence the Weekend
Australian reported, ‘Indeed, Mr Howard went so far as to say how he was “very
impressed” by Dr Hakim’s ideas about valuing mothers and women’s choices,
because they were so ‘realistic and compelling’… This is rational economic man
finally making her voice heard’ (Symons, 2004, p.8).
The apparent adoption of Hakim’s model by the Howard Government is alarming
given that it is a static model with many criticisms (McRae 2003a, 2003b; Houston
and Marks 2003; Pocock 2003; Himmelweit and Sigala 2004). Since the Howard
Government came into office in 1996 it has cut public spending on childcare by
$546 million, cut approximately $36 million in family programme expenditure,
collapsed all current parenting payments into the Family Tax Initiative and has set
about implementing a traditionalist type of family policy based on the idea of a
male-breadwinner/female-homemaker household (Samson 2002, p.22-9). In her
research on the impact of the Howard Government policy of the labour market
preferences of partnered women with preschool aged children in Australia, Samson
(2002, p.23) argues that:
changes to welfare benefits are not part of a social engineering exercise
but have been designed to support the decision of a large proportion of
women with children to pursue caregiving full-time … and has
increased women’s economic dependence on their partners. In addition,
the Howard Government has increased the disadvantage faced by
women when they move from being a full-time homemaker to working
in paid employment.
When assessing the Howard Government’s family, labour market and childcare
policies over the past decade it is clear that it has negatively impacted on women
with children and Australian families. Further type-casting women into only three
categories in line with Hakim’s model, would misrepresent the complex nature of
women’s decision-making processes and experiences of paid work and family life.
31
Furthermore, it should be noted that government policies and programs are only one
factor in enabling or discouraging women from combining paid work and family
care responsibilities and the level at which they decide to do so.
Critiques and Criticisms of Hakim’s Model
Hakim’s model has received considerable criticism in recent years, particularly the
categorising of women from all modern affluent societies based on their apparent
behaviour that produce three groups identified by Hakim as: ‘work-centred’,
‘home-centred’ and ‘adaptive’ women. Upon first reading Hakim’s model, it
appears that in one broad sweep women are locked into one of only three
categories, which do not account for women who fall between categories. For
example take the following passage:
A minority of women have no interest in employment, careers, or
economic independence and do not plan to work long term unless
things go seriously wrong for them. Their aim is to marry as well as
they can and give up paid employment to become full-time
homemakers and mothers. The group includes highly educated women
as well as those who do not get any qualifications… In contrast, other
women actively reject the sexual division of labour in the home, expect
to work full-time and continuously throughout life… The third group is
numerically dominant: women who are determined to combine
employment and family work, so become secondary earners (Hakim
2000, p.189).
The latter sentence, ‘The third group is numerically dominant: women who are
determined to combine employment and family work, so become secondary
earners’ (2000, p.189), highlights that Hakim doesn’t envisage or indeed conceive
of a woman or a man being both family-centred and the main breadwinner.
Furthermore, Hakim’s model is static where people may not fit overall and ignores
the fact that women make decisions about the balance of paid work and family
responsibilities repeatedly over the years, not just once. It neglects to take account
that women or men may behave in one way at one life stage and in quite a different
way at another life stage. It simplifies women’s decisions and paid work/family
lives.
Drawing on her longitudinal survey research with just over 1,500 first time mothers
surveyed in 1988, 1999 and 1993, McRae reflects on Hakim’s preference theory as
a model explaining the position of women in the British labour market (2003a,
p.317). McRae argues there is little evidence that it is women’s preferences that
distinguish the minority from the majority (2003a, p.318). She found that first-time
mother’s work histories were based almost entirely on observable external
characteristics and not preferences (2003a, p.325). McRae argues that the
32
Sheree Cartwright
preferences upon which Hakim has built her model remain largely absent with
regard to the women in her study. Rather, women in McRae’s study indicated
differing relations that Hakim had not accounted for in her model (2003a, p.324).
McRae notes (2003a, p.324),
Even without taking preferences into account, it is possible to identify
groups of women with differing relationships to the labour market;
women who fit family and work together differently – ‘a career and
children’, ‘children and a job’, ‘my family comes first’, ‘my family is
my job’.
Houston and Marks (2003) surveyed women during pregnancy and after childbirth
to examine how psychological and job-related factors in pregnancy differentiated
those mothers who carried out their intention to work and those who did not. In
support of Hakim’s (2000) characterisation of women’s work orientations proposed
in preference theory, Houston and Marks’ (2003, p.209) empirical evidence shows,
‘The proportions of women who intend to work full-time, part-time or not at all are
broadly in line with the proportions proposed by Preference theory’. They further
argue, ‘
that 24 per cent of the women who responded to the survey were not
able to return to work in a manner consistent with the preferences they
expressed in pregnancy. These findings would equally support the view
that opportunities and constraints (Crompton and Harris 1998a) also
play a role in the amount and level of work participation’ (Houston and
Marks 2003, p.209).
Other studies have shown that some women have a range of diverse and complex
employment patterns after childbirth such as a combination of full-time work, parttime work and periods of absence from the paid workforce which make it difficult
to determine a pattern of women’s labour attachment after childbirth (Moen 1985,
in Cotton, et al 1990). There is a lack of acknowledgement of women’s differing
experiences in decision-making, and relations to the labour market (McRae 2003a),
which Hakim’s primary arguments (1998, 2000, 2003a) fail to consider.
Hakim’s (2000, p.18) argument that women are unconstrained and unforced when
deciding about a particular life direction, and that ‘Affluent and liberal modern
societies provide opportunities for diverse lifestyle preferences… women have
genuine choices as to what to do with their lives’ (Hakim 2000, p.273-4), have
come under considerable scrutiny in recent years (McRae 2003a, 2003b; Pocock
2003; Himmelweit and Sigala 2004). While Hakim’s (1998a, p.135) earlier work
also represents women as ‘self-made’ who actively or freely choose their current
lifestyle of paid work or family life or a mixture of both, other researchers have
strongly disagreed, describing women as constructing their paid work/family
33
lifestyle out of both the opportunities and constraints/structures available to them at
a given time (Crompton and Harris 1998a, p.118). A vast number of researchers
point out the varying degrees in which different groups of women are able to make
‘genuine choices’ about paid work/family, and highlight constraints such as the
gender contract, access to and affordability of child care services and economic
constraints (Himmelweit and Sigala 2004; Pocock 2003; Samson 2002; Probert
2002).
McRae (2003a, p.328-9) argues that Hakim’s model
does not follow that these patterns of behaviour are unconstrained. All
women face constraints in making decisions about their lives. All nontrivial decisions have opportunity costs (things that must be foregone)
as well as real costs… Some women have substantially better chances
than others of overcoming constraints, and hence of living as if they
faced no constraints.
However, while Hakim does not deny the existence of constraints and contextual
influences on women’s preferences her arguments paint a conflicting and
contradicting picture of choice and constraint in women’s paid work and family
life.
In the Australian context, Samson (2002) argues that some mothers are more
constrained than others in their decisions about paid work and family. For example,
partnered women with pre-school aged children are more constrained than women
with school-aged dependents ‘because they are forced to make concomitant
decisions about childcare’ (Samson 2002, p.4). Australian mothers with preschool
children like the majority of Australian women have little scope for ‘real’ choice in
the current economic climate due to structural barriers and gender culture
constraints that clearly limit women’s opportunities (Samson 2002, p.4). Samson
(2002, p.90) argues, ‘We need to differentiate between preferences and livedexperience as previous empirical studies largely take for granted that women’s
preferences are evidenced by their actions and expressed views’. She continues,
‘preference-formation… create a conceptual framework in which not only are some
features of individual decision-making prioritised over others, but … serve to
obscure women’s particular lived experience of decision-making’ (Samson 2002,
p.6). Samson states (2002, p.89):
More crucially, these findings shed some light on the true nature of
women’s preferences regarding their labour market activity. They
support the contention that women who are presented with a greater
variety of options about organising their work and family lives make
markedly different decisions about their labour market participation
than those lacking such options, and that the structure and organisation
34
Sheree Cartwright
of the labour market and welfare institutions in turn shape the choices
women see as viable…not all women who appear to have ‘chosen’ the
role of full-time mother (or full-time worker, for that matter) have
really made that ‘choice’.
Himmelweit and Sigala (2004, p.2) found that mothers identified internal (personal)
and external (structural, institutional) constraints on their decisions, particularly
their identity, economic, and institutional presence and affordability of services.
Houston and Marks (2003) found that ‘planning’, ‘income’ and ‘workplace support’
were the strongest predictors of working as intended, and 24 per cent of respondents
were not able to return to work in a manner consistent with their preferences during
pregnancy. The majority of women in their study preferred ‘to work full-time’,
however, fewer women actually returned to paid work than stated their preference
for returning to paid work.
Other arguments, however, suggest that mothers’ attitudes and choices are already
structured by such economic conditions and state policies so that mother’s have
limited information on which to choose arrangements about paid work and family
life (Fagan 2000, p.244). Furthermore, recent studies of Australian women’s
childcare decisions note women’s choices are associated with external constraints
such as economic concerns, as well as internal factors such as self-esteem, isolation
(Warner-Smith and Imbruglia 2001), maternal responsibility and identity as a
‘good-mother’ (Lupton 2000).
Barbara Pocock (2003, p.261) in The Work/Life Collision, argues that Australia
needs to ‘modify the current Work/Care regime to meet the diverse needs of
individuals and catch up with behavioural realities’. She argues that policy makers
and governments ascribe too much power to individual agency and believe
individual needs are a matter of ‘choice’. The choice framework, she argues, ‘does
not encourage a focus on the constraints that shape or determine choices, and keeps
the cultures and habits that construct and limit choices, out of view’ (Pocock 2003,
p.261). She further argues that the presumption of choice is mistaken: ‘At present in
most places there is simply no option to choose, for example, decently paid
permanent part-time work or income support while caring for a child for a year or
two’ (Pocock 2003, p.261).
Other research has focused on the effects of constraints upon women’s health and
well-being. Much attention has been paid to the affects of the ‘double day’ for
many Australian women who do the lion’s share of household and care work as
well as participating in the paid workforce. In particular, the double-day
implications for time-poverty, health problems and other negative outcomes
particularly for working mothers with dependents (Cartwright and Warner-Smith
2003; Bittman and Wajcman 1999). Hochschild (1989), emphasised the negative
implications of the ‘second-shift’ for women’s health, and also highlighted the
35
positive implications of paid-employment for women’s emotional well-being:
‘Studies show that working mothers have higher self-esteem and get less depressed
than housewives, but compared to their husbands, they’re more tired and get sick
more often’ (Hochschild 1989, p.4).
The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey show
that households in Australia have ‘unchanging patterns’ of domestic and care work,
which remain largely the responsibility of women (Melbourne Institute 2002).
Despite increasing numbers of women in the paid workforce, working mothers still
bear the major burden of family management.
The constraint literature challenges Hakim’s propositions about women’s ‘free
choice’ in determining their paid work and family lives, and suggests that women
are heavily constrained according to the choices available to them and their ability
to negotiate or overcome constraints. Unlike Hakim (2000) who argues that women
have genuine, unconstrained choices about how they wish to live their lives, the
constraint literature indicates that conflicts, tensions and disadvantage largely exist
for women juggling paid work and family life.
Women and Part-Time Work
In the Australia, part-time and casual employment is one of the key means used by
working mothers to combine paid work and family responsibilities (Earle 2002).
The high concentration of women in part-time and casual employment is also
evidence that the labour market remains largely unresponsive to accommodate the
needs of workers with family and caring responsibilities (Pocock 2003). In
particular, the employment growth of women in the service sector can be seen as a
strategy for an industry that is reliant on casual and part-time labour with low-skill,
short hours, low-pay, minimum leave entitlements and offers little opportunity for
building a career (Earle 2002, p.14). This has also been described as ‘feminised
employment that do not in fact pay a living wage – such as retailing and hospitality’
(Probert 2002, p.12). Empirical accounts from Australia have focused on how
mothers negotiate existing constraints, demonstrating a move toward a range of
negotiation strategies that mothers’ use in their interaction with constraints (Pocock
2003; Earle 2002; Warner-Smith and Imbruglia 2001). For example, arranging
external family members to care for children to enable an easier combination of
family and paid work and return to the workforce (Pocock 2003, p.72-104).
McRae’s (2003a, p.324) findings indicated, ‘there are women employed
continuously part-time as an alternative strategy for combining work and family
life’.
Hakim’s model has been criticised for depicting women who are employed parttime as not as committed to their work as full-time employees. Hakim (2000, p.1656) argues:
36
Sheree Cartwright
The adaptive group consists of women who want to combine
employment and family without either taking priority… it includes
women with unplanned careers who develop successful employment or
political careers more by accident than by design or because the
economic or political environment created special opportunities for
them. The adaptive group includes large numbers of drifters, women
with no definite ideas about the life they want, who respond to
opportunities as they arise or not, and who modify their goals quickly
and repeatedly in response to the changing social and economic
environment
Castleman et al (1989, p.8) argue that, ‘except for the apparently greater financial
pressures on women planning full-time return, no differences were found between
those planning full-time return and those planning part-time return. This suggests
that the usual assumption that part-time working women are less interested in and
less committed to their jobs than full-time workers is quite unfounded’. In the same
vein, Himmelweit and Sigala (2004, p.12) note that many mothers from their study,
‘Stressed that having caring responsibilities did not mean that they were any less
conscientious at work’.
Towards a New Model
There is a need for a model that recognises the dynamism of women’s decisionmaking and which is based on qualitative research as well as quantitative. Previous
investigations separate women’s constraints and preferences from their choices and
opportunities. There are divergent arguments within the literature on women’s
choices about paid work and family, particularly around the conceptualisation of
‘women’s choice’, and the extent of constraints regarding women’s choices
(Samson 2002; Probert 2002; Hakim 1991, 1998, 2000, 2003a; Crompton and
Harris 1998a). While there is a growing body of information, at present little is still
known about the complexity of individual decision-making processes and the livedexperiences of women’s paid work and family life decision-making in Australia.
We need to acknowledge that by exploring women’s decisions about paid work and
family we are presuming that all women plan their paid work and family lifestyle,
participation and behaviour. Unpredictable or unplanned occurrences such as
‘accidental pregnancy or an offer of child care by a relative…or a partner’s
changing circumstances’, as well as the first time experience of having a child, may
instantly change circumstances and behaviours (Richards 1977, p.11-2). Barrow
(1999, p.1) uses human capital theory to explore women’s decisions to return to
work within one year of childbirth, focusing on the effect of child care costs. She
states, ‘First, I assume a woman makes her labour force participation decisions by
maximizing her utility, taking her husband’s labour force participation and income
37
as given’ (Barrow 1999, p.3). We need to consider that ideas and decisions about
motherhood, parenting/family life and paid work lives may not be ‘rationally’ and
logically designed. We need to carefully consider these arguments about
conceptualising women’s choices/decisions and the representation of the
opportunities and constraints available to women. These differing views open up
the possibility of thinking about women’s decision-making in terms of examining
women’s lived-experiences (including opportunities, constraints and choices) as
well as preferences for combining paid work and family after childbirth. There
needs to be an awareness of the difficulty inherent when considering women’s paid
work and family life decisions. Although it may be challenging to do so,
investigations should be designed to gain in-depth narratives repeated over a period
of time about women’s actual ‘lived-experiences’ and ‘preferences’ regarding
decision-making about paid work and family life after childbirth in Australia.
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about it. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
40
Love’s Labour: Conflicts over Work and Relationships for Trafficked
Filipina ‘Entertainers’ in Korea
Sallie Yea
International Development Programme, School of Social Science and Planning,
RMIT University
There is now a burgeoning literature on the interrelated subjects of sex
tourism, militarised prostitution and female “entertainers” in Asia. Despite the
central importance that many women who are the subjects of this literature
place on relationships, romance and sometimes even love in narrating their
employment experiences and discussing their working lives, very little of such
detail figures in this literature. This paper explores the experiences of romance
and relationships for migrant Filipina “entertainers” and the meanings these
women attach to such experiences through a discussion of narratives of women
living and working in two US military club areas in South Korea. Although
relationships that circumvent or contradict client-worker norms are given
scant attention in the literature on both sex tourism and militarised
prostitution, research with these women in Korea reveals that they are often
preoccupied with the tensions between work and relationships, the way
relationships are both expressed and constrained by their status as trafficked
entertainer and negotiations over their financial and emotional security.
INTRODUCTION
Some GIs say to me, ‘You just tell us you love us. But we heard about you. You
don’t love, you just want us to buy a drink’. Customers get jealous of each
other. Even Tim [boyfriend] gets jealous. He thinks he’s just my boyfriend
because I want him to buy me drinks. I have to lie to other customers and say
Tim is not my boyfriend, just a sweet guy. Sometimes customers insult me and
call [me] liar. Tim and I had fights [about that] and he wanted me to leave the
club (Charie, 24 years).
When I went with other customers it caused big problems in our relationship.
One time David saw me go into the VIP room with a customer. I had to do that
because I needed the money. My brother got in trouble with the police for
assault. After that David [boyfriend] gave me a letter, which said that he could
not accept the work I was doing in the club if we were to be boyfriend and
girlfriend. In the letter there was US$1000. In the letter David asked me to
accept the money and not to sell myself for money any more. After that I
stopped going to the VIP room (Jenny, 25 years).
41
These reflections from Charie and Jenny mirror those of many Filipino women
(Filipinas) who have come to South Korea1 to work as migrant entertainers in
United States military club areas or camp towns (kijich’on, in Korean). Both Charie
and Jenny eventually ran away from the respective clubs where they were employed
because neither woman could cope with the tensions between her work and
relationship any longer. Charie and Jenny also despised the work in the clubs, since
the club owners and their managers (promoters) regularly coerced them into
performing duties that were not stated in their contracts, including prostitution, and
both were financially exploited during their stay in the clubs. Although their
decisions to run away were informed by a coalescence of factors, their relationships
nonetheless assumed paramount importance among these. Once they ran away both
women became illegal migrants in Korea and their relationships with their
boyfriends took on a formative role in shaping their futures.2
There is now a burgeoning literature on the interrelated subjects of sex tourism,
militarised prostitution and women trafficked for prostitution/entertainment in Asia.
Despite the central importance that many women who are the subjects of this
literature place on relationships, romance and even love in narrating their migration
experiences and discussing their working lives, little of such detail figures in this
literature. Although relationships that circumvent or contradict client-worker norms
are given scant attention, women like Charie and Jenny are often preoccupied with
the tensions between work and relationships, the way relationships are both
expressed and constrained by their status as trafficked entertainers and negotiations
over their financial and emotional security. Further, relationships with GI customers
often come to play a pivotal role in these women’s imagined futures once they are
in Korea and, sometimes, prior to their migration from the Philippines as well as
after they return. Thus, what often starts as a one-year stint in Korea as an
entertainer often becomes a much longer, sometimes permanent movement in
which their futures become intimately intertwined with those of their boyfriends.
This paper is an attempt to make a positive intervention into discussions of migrant
and trafficked women and work by focusing on narratives of love, romance,
boyfriends and relationships among Filipinas working in US military camp towns in
1
Hereafter Korea, unless otherwise contrasted with North Korea.
Jenny was married to her GI boyfriend, David, 4 months after running away from Club “U”. They
continue to live in a small rental apartment nearly the base where David works. In June 2003 their
first child was born. Charie went to work in a factory in Seoul after running away from Club “P”
and, after 3 weeks, discontinued contact with her fiancé, Tim. When I later ‘found’ Charie again
she admitted she was ashamed about leaving Tim but said she did not really love him. I discovered
that she had another boyfriend, Ronny, who was a Filipino factory worker in Seoul, whom she also
met while working in Club “P”. They are now living together in a small rental apartment in Seoul
and work together in the same factory nearby their apartment.
2
42
Sallie Yea
Love’s Labour
Korea.3 In doing so, it is not my intention to sentimentalise the experiences of these
women. Nor do I wish to suggest that forming relationships with GI customers that
transcend their working arrangements somehow erases the power dynamics and
human rights abuses that exist in these relationships or are an inherent part of
trafficking for prostitution. There is no doubt that all of the women who participated
in this research experienced some form of human rights abuses and emotional
trauma while working in Korea and that some of these abuses occurred at the hands
of GIs and other customers. It is simply that such abuses do not capture the
complexity of these women’s experiences, the agency that the women attempt to
assert in negotiating their everyday lives, relationships and status as entertainers, or
the self-understanding and imagined futures the women are constantly attempting to
shape while in Korea, all of which aim to achieve a recognition that they are people,
rather than commodities and that some of their interactions at least need to be
understood in terms of emotional relationships, rather than commercial transactions.
Establishing romantic relationships with customers is one means by which these
women are able to assert agency and work towards a (partial) reversal of the power
dynamics between themselves, their employers and their customers and to
overcome the stigma attached to their labels as ‘entertainers’ or ‘prostitutes’ by
introducing the notions of romance and love into such encounters.4 These
relationships usually begin as a source of amusement or fun and as a means to
counter the boredom of otherwise mundane lives in the kijich’on (US Military camp
towns). In most cases GI boyfriends also play an important role in providing
financial and emotional support for the women. Often, however, the relationships
develop into more serious affairs with deeper levels of emotional attachment and
financial dependence.
During a 12 months period from July 2002 to August 2003 I met over 100 Filipinas
currently or previously working in clubs in the three major kijich’on areas in Korea
of Tongducheon, Songtan and It’aewon. Formally, 20 of these women participated
in in-depth narrative style interviews and completed a comprehensive, 10-page
questionnaire, whilst a further 27 participated in the questionnaire only. Altogether
these women are currently or were previously employed in more than 15 different
clubs in these three areas. The ages of the women ranged from 16 to 35 years,
although most of the women were in their early 20s. Although participants were
drawn from a range of different areas in the Philippines, the majority was from
3
The existence of romantic relationships between entertainers and their customers has been
recognised in some studies on militarised prostitution (Pollack Sturdevant and Stoltzfus 1992) and
sex tourism (Cohen 1982 and 1986).
4
See also Sea-ling Cheng 2002. Transnational Desires: “Trafficked” Filipinas in US Military
Camp Towns in South Korea, Doctoral Dissertation, School of Anthropology, University of
Oxford. In Chapter Five, Cheng discusses the discourse of love and romance between GIs and
Filipinas in the kijich’on.
43
Mindanao, Laguna, Bulakan, Manila and Quezon City. For most Korea represented
their first experience to go abroad for work, but some of the women had also been
to Japan, Malaysia and Saipan previously to work as entertainers.
About half the participants were single mothers and many had separated from their
Filipino boyfriends or husbands prior to their migration to Korea. All of the women
except one were involved in boyfriend-girlfriend relationships while working in the
kijich’on, which varied in their degree of intensity, seriousness and longevity. In
fact, some of the women had more than one boyfriend at the same time, whilst
others changed boyfriends – often more than once during the course of the research
period. A few of the women established romantic relationships with customers even
though they were still married or involved in a serious relationship back in the
Philippines. Of the 47 participants, 44 had a boyfriend (or husband) who was a GI
based at either Camp Casey, Camp Hovey or Camp Red Cloud (for Tongducheon
participants) or Osan Air Base or K-6 Army Base (for Songtan participants). Two
of the women had boyfriends who were Filipino factory workers rather than GIs.
Filipino migrant workers figured as the second most popular choice of boyfriend
among the women in the kijich’on.5 As well as the women who participated directly
in my research, I also had access to unpublished interviews and additional
information (including one woman’s diary) concerning 11 Filipinas who were
working together in one club in Tongducheon (Club “S”) and were rescued by the
police working in concert with the Philippines Embassy in June 2002. Some details
of these 11 women’s experiences have also been collected and published by the
International Organisation for Migration (IOM 2002).6
The paper first gives a brief history of militarised prostitution in Korea, including
the introduction of foreign women into these areas in the 1990s and the particular
circumstances of their work and life in the clubs. This is important because the
context and conditions of their club work and life, in part, supply the impetus for
women to engage in relationships with GIs. I then discuss the way relationships are
formed and sustained in the context of the women’s work in the clubs and the
tensions this situation can create for the women. Throughout the paper I draw
extensively on the narratives of the women themselves. My aim is to extend
understandings of trafficked entertainers in Korea through accounts of their
emotional and relational lives, which are an important – and perhaps dominant –
part of their migration journeys, imagined futures and working lives.
5
The only participant without a boyfriend in Korea was Celia (22 years). She was involved in a de
facto relationship with a Filipino man who remained in the Philippines. When Celia arrived in
Korea she was pregnant with their son. She ran away from the club where she worked after just 3
days in order to continue the pregnancy.
6
For part of the fieldwork period (August-October 2002) I was involved in a survey of trafficked
Filipinas conducted by the Korea Church Women United (KCWU). Some material from interviews
conducted by my research partners as part of that study is also drawn upon in this paper. Unless
otherwise stated all research participants (women and men) are referred to by pseudonyms.
44
Sallie Yea
Love’s Labour
CLUBS AND SEXUAL LABOUR IN KOREA’S KIJICH’ON
Military prostitution involving the United States was first established in Korea in
the early 1950s in the context of Cold War political tensions in East Asia. In 1953,
at the conclusion of the Korean War (1950-53), the US military established a
permanent presence of approximately 37,000 troops in South Korea. There are
currently 99 military bases and installations in the country, with kijich’on also
existing outside the largest ones. Kijich’on may be defined as areas in the
immediate proximity of the base that are oriented predominantly to the
entertainment, leisure and consumption needs of the US military personnel. In most
kijich’on the streetscape is dominated by businesses with signage in English and
goods and services catering to American tastes, including clubs and brothels.
The institution of military prostitution in Korean kijich’on has, until very recently,
almost exclusively involved the sexual labour of Korean women. Filipino and
Russian women began to enter Korea as “entertainers” (E-6 visa) to work in the
kijich’on clubs in 1995 as Korea’s position in the global economy vis-à-vis Russia
and its Southeast Asian neighbours, including the Philippines improved. In 2001,
according to National Statistics Office figures, 8,586 entertainers came to Korea,
among which 6,971 (81 per cent) were female. These included 1,599 Filipinas and
3,518 Russian women, which together comprised just under 60 per cent of the total
of entertainers that came to Korea for that year. Although it is difficult to ascertain
precise numbers of Filipinas working in kijich’on clubs, based on numbers of
official entrants and unofficial/illegal workers, one may safely estimate that there
are at least 1,500 women at any one time, although this number could be twice as
high.
The majority of Filipinas who work in kijich’on come to Korea on one-year
contracts; however, they must renew their E-6 visa after six months. In their
contracts, which are normally signed by the women while they are still in the
Philippines, the following generic job description is normally given by the agency:
to entertain customers by taking their orders for drinks, talking to them and sitting
with them. Some women have trained as professional singers or dancers while in
the Philippines and are told they will be using these skills as professional
entertainers in the kijich’on clubs in Korea. All of the women who participated in
this study stated that, once in Korea, the nature of their work changed from what
had been agreed to in the contract. Many of the women did not receive a copy of
their contract at all and could therefore not verify the differences between their
contracts and their actual work and conditions of employment.
Many of the women have their passports and alien registration cards withheld from
them once in Korea. These items would be returned to the women only when their
contracts had expired and they were due to leave Korea. The withholding of such
documents is a common strategy employed by the club owners and women’s
45
managers to ensure that the women do not run away. In addition, for many of the
women, all or part of their salary is withheld as an additional incentive to stop them
running away and, more importantly, as a means of coercing the women to
supplement their income through sexual labour, including prostitution and a system
of ladies drinks (explained below).7 It is these additional duties that are generally
not mentioned in the women’s employment contracts. Unlike their salaries, money
from their sexual labour and drink sales is normally paid to the women in cash on a
regular (daily, weekly or fortnightly) basis. For their daily living expenses, the
women normally use this money, rather than their salaries.
In sum, because the women normally receive less money than has been agreed to in
their contracts, in order to have a constant source of cash income they must
generate money through a drink sales system and by engaging in the provision of
sexual services at the clubs. Thus, even though many of the women are normally
not physically forced to undertake these additional duties, a form of economic
coercion related to their tenuous financial situation provides a powerful motivation
for them to generate drink sales and go on bar fines or do prostitution within the
club itself. Women who chose not to provide sex for customers, however, say that
they always had no money in Korea. As Julie (26 years) stated ‘My boss doesn’t
push me to go on a bar fine. She says, “It’s up to you. If you want to make extra
money then go – it’s not my decision”’. I don’t go on bar fines, but I don’t have any
money because of that’. In addition, the women face problems related to their free
time, freedom of movement and social life. These circumstances in their work and
living situation provide both the context for women to form relationships with GI
customers in the clubs and, in part at least, the motivation for them to do so.
AMBIGUOUS INTERLUDES IN KIJICH’ON CLUBS
Cohen’s (1982 and 1986) ethnographies of relationships between Thai prostitutes
and foreign tourists (farangs) in Bangkok provides an insight into the establishment
and maintenance of romantic relationships between Asian women and foreign men
in a similar context to that of Korea’s kijich’on. Cohen (1982) found that
relationships between prostitutes and foreign sex tourists in Bangkok came to hover
on ‘the edge of ambiguity’ with many of the elements of prostitution, such as barter,
promiscuity and emotional indifference, partly or completely absent. Such
ambiguity characterises many entertainer-GI interactions in the kijich’on clubs and
bars of Korea, with women construing encounters with some customers in benign
and even positive terms.
7
The women normally receive a salary of between W450,000 – 500,000 per month. However, all
women interviewed for this study indicated that their manager kept a percentage of their salary as
his agency fee. This fee was often as high as 25 per cent of the woman’s monthly salary, thus
reducing her actual net salary to well below the current minimum wage in Korea.
46
Sallie Yea
Love’s Labour
For the Filipinas in Korea’s kijich’on the words describing their work are carefully
chosen: bar fines are often called ‘dates’, and the women are often quick to point
out that such dates rarely entailed sexual intercourse. As Cheng (2002, p. 103)
points out, ‘romantic love’ is an emotional discourse in the kijich’on clubs for both
Filipinas and GIs, who are ‘constantly engaged in defending themselves against the
label of prostitution’. In other words, because the women are not professional sex
workers, they seek to construct their work via an alternative discourse of love and
romance.
Apart from the women’s desire to negotiate and counter their status as entertainers
in Korea, a combination of the women’s vulnerable situations both in kijich’on
clubs and the women’s constructions and comparisons between GIs help bring
some GIs and the women together in romantic relationships. The drink system that
exists in all the clubs operates in the following way: because the women normally
receive less salary than has been agreed to in their contracts (or salary is withheld
completely), in order to have a constant source of cash income they must generate
money through a drink sales system and, for some women, by engaging in the
provision of sexual services at the clubs. The drink system entails having customers
buy them drinks for which they receive a percentage from the club. A drink for a
woman normally costs between US$10 or US$20 and, as an unwritten rule, each
drink allows the customer to spend between 15-25 minutes with the woman, after
which the customer must buy her another drink. From the purchase of drinks the
women get between W1,000 and W2,000, or between 10 and 20 per cent of the
money, the rest going to the club owner. A book is usually kept behind the bar in
which a record of how many drinks each woman sells in a week or month is kept.
It is this drink system that supplies the nickname GIs give to the women who work
in the clubs, dubbed ‘juicy girls’, ‘juices’ or ‘drinkie girls’. The name ‘juicy girl’
derives from the fact that the usual drink for the women is a tiny glass of juice.
Buying a ‘ladies drink’ is a symbolic act in that the drink represents a period of time
for which a customer buys a woman’s company or she ‘sells her personality’ (cf.
Hochschild 1983). What the woman is expected to do in the 15-25 minutes of time
she will spend with her customer for each drink will usually depend on the price of
the drink, whether the woman works in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ club and what the GI
expects. Usually, he higher the price of the drink, the greater the services to be
rendered by the woman. I asked Emily (26 years) from Club ‘B’ what happened
when a GI bought her a ladies drink. She said: ‘If a customer is drunk he tries to
touch you. I say, “No touch me”. He says something like, “Why? You’re working in
a club, right? I can do whatever I like with you”. I don’t like that because I have no
self-respect. I want respect’. There is often an expectation by GIs that buying a
drink for a woman allows him to fondle and touch her on any part of her body and
kiss her. This expectation is particularly pronounced in ‘bad’ clubs, or clubs where
women perform strip shows and that allow prostitution within rooms in the club.
Thus, although the drink system does not necessarily entail penetrative sex, it does
47
allow GIs to do anything short of that with the woman while they sit together in a
booth or at a table within the club itself. Women like Emily constantly negotiate
these expectations through covert ‘forms of resistance’ (cf. Scott 1985) that fall
short of directly challenging customers or the club owners but are aimed at
maintaining their own sense of self-respect.
Some customers’ expectations surrounding buying ladies drinks fall more closely
into line with those of the women themselves. Here, the purchase of a ladies drink
entails conversation and dancing with the possibility of some minimal physical
contact. It is these encounters that normally provide the space in which romantic
relationships develop, since the interactions between the customer and the woman
are based on conversation and forms of entertainment that do not compromise the
women’s ‘self-respect’. Customers that show respect for the women are held in
higher esteem and the women draw a strong distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’
GI customers on this basis, as Charie explained:
I have met some GIs who understand our job. They know already what our
job is. Sometimes they tell us if they are already married. But sometimes they
say, ‘What do I get if I buy you a drink?’ Some guys are for fun, other guys
are disgusting. They look like this [Charie gestures up and down with her
eyes] and I get embarrassed. I like the guys who are just (there) for fun.
They spend money. Their parents have good jobs back in America, so they
can spend their salaries – not like me [Charie repatriates most of her salary
to her family in the Philippines]. So they can have fun. Like two guys who
come to Club ‘P’ a lot and they are fun. They play cards and dance with us.
They have fun and we give them fun too.
The women view customers who wish only to purchase their time for physical
pleasure as ‘disgusting’, while GIs who go to the clubs for socialising are ‘fun’.
Honey (24 years) ran away from Club ‘L’ after three months because she could not
endure her work. The expectations of some of her GI and other customers and the
pressure her mamasan (Korean female club manager or owner) exerted for her to
perform sexual labour were a constant source of tension for her:
The GI customers will come from the other clubs and say, ‘Hey, if I buy you
a drink you give me a lap dance’. I say ‘No’ and I go to the mamasan and
tell her. Mamasan says, ‘You do that because he buy you a drink’, and she
gets mad when I won’t go to the customer who asks me that. Some customers
say, ‘This club is boring’. They say, ‘We get a fuck at Club “M”’ and one
customer just came from Club ‘F’ and said, ‘I got a blow job there’.
Some GIs would go to the clubs and compare the availability and cost of sexual
services available to them. For the women in the clubs these GI customers were a
source of tension and this reinforced the women’s views of them as disgusting.
48
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The bar fine system can offer a similar space as the drink system for romantic
relationships to develop, although GIs initial encounters with women are usually
through the drink system. A bar fine is the purchase of a women’s time to take her
outside the club. The length of time varies, and there is usually a set price for
different periods of time, such as three-four hours or overnight.8 As with the drink
system, what a woman is expected to do with the customer on a bar fine depends on
the club, the customer himself and his negotiations with the woman. If the woman
has already established a relationship with a customer (through, for example,
repeated encounters in the context of the drink system) a bar fine is viewed in far
more benign terms than if a customer purchases the woman’s time without
establishing some preceding relationship with her. Some customers, especially
those who already ‘know’ the women, view bar fines more like ‘dates’ on which
they take the woman bar hopping, to a restaurant or shopping. In these cases, even
if the woman spends the night with the customer there is not necessarily any
expectation on his or her part that they will have sex. The distinctions between
customers that are developed by the women through the drink system are thus
perpetuated in the context of bar fines. Cherry (27 years), for example, had this to
say about GIs who took her on bar fines:
When this black guy tries to [have] sex I ran away. I told the guy, ‘No sex’,
but he’s drunk and crazy so I ran away. Some GIs, they help. They say,
‘Okay, you need to get out’. They’re good. [Do you have sex with these
GIs?] I say to them, ‘Just bar hopping, and then you can go home for
curfew’. Just the Korean guy or the guy I never know try sex with me and I
say ‘No’. Sometimes they slap me and say, ‘Why you not [have] sex with
me? You’re a juicy girl’.
In sum, romantic relationships between Filipina entertainers and customers can
develop in the context of the women’s work. Given the restrictions on women’s
freedom of movement and free time in many of the clubs, the drink and bar fine
systems that operate in the clubs offer the only real space for relationships to
develop. Specifically, the drink system and, sometimes, the bar fine system, enable
Filipinas and GIs to talk, dance and ‘have fun’ in the club and to go on ‘dates’.
However, not all GI customers view their encounters with women in such benign
terms, and many customers simply wish to purchase a woman’s sexual labour. Such
constructions, played out through the drink and bar fine systems, help situate some
8
The cost of a bar fine varies between different clubs and sometimes customers will negotiate with
the mamasan to establish a price that is outside that set by the club. As an example, in Club ‘TH’ in
Songtan the price of a bar fine was US$200 for overnight. Of this amount the woman would receive
30 per cent. However, Cherry, who worked in this club, said that sometime the mamasan would let
her go on an overnight bar fine for as little as US$80. Cherry would become extremely upset at this
de-valuing of her time and she was, of course, never party to the price negotiations.
49
GIs as potential partners through a comparison with other GIs who are perceived as
dishonest, disgusting or violent.9
CLUB ROMANCES, LADIES DRINKS AND THE LORE OF BAR FINES
The complex system of penalties, rules and restrictions on Filipinas working in the
clubs provides the context in which the women and their GI boyfriends both initiate
and negotiate their relationships. It also supplies an important motivation for the
eventual possibility of a woman leaving the club to marry or live in some sort of
cohabitation arrangement with her GI boyfriend (see Yea 2004). The women
become involved in relationships for a number of reasons. Their boyfriends provide
emotional and financial support (particularly through repatriating money to the
woman’s family in the Philippines); assist with the meeting of their day-to-day
material needs (by buying them food, clothes and sundry items and so on); provide
them with limited freedoms by buying their time or taking them on a bar fine, and
buy them drinks and/or buying their time in the club while they are at work (so they
do not have to go with other customers).
The most common form of support, mentioned by all the women was their
boyfriend buying their time or buying them drinks. Buying drinks or short
time/long time prostitution would mean that the woman did not have to entertain or
service other customers. Jenny (26 years), for example, had two GI boyfriends, both
of whom were initially customers, during the 11 months she worked at Club ‘U’.
She became engaged to her second boyfriend shortly after he assisted her to run
away from the club. Like Rae, both Jenny’s boyfriends would buy her drinks so that
she was not forced to serve other customers. While she was still working in the club
her second boyfriend bought her out on bar fines three times at a cost of between
US$200-500 each time. She said they did not have sex until the third occasion he
took her out, and even then he did not want to push her. He bought her out only so
9
These distinctions are often also racialised. Although the clubs in US military camp town are
established primarily for the entertainment needs of the GIs, Koreans and migrant factory workers
also patronise the clubs. Migrant workers and Koreans are normally not allowed in the clubs until
the GIs have returned to base to meet their nightly curfew, in part to avoid fights from breaking out
in the clubs. All the women interviewed for this research preferred American GI customers to other
customers. This preference was constructed as a result of a number of factors including: linguistic
affinity (English was the medium for conversation) between the Filipinas and GIs, the regularity
with which GIs were able to visit the clubs because of the proximity of the bases to the clubs (as
opposed to migrant workers who, because of constraints of time, money and proximity, could often
only visit the clubs on the weekends), and the benevolence expressed by some of the GIs towards
the women. This attitude (discussed in detail in the following section) was often demonstrated
when GIs would give women money or buy them food and personal items – even if the GI was not
the boyfriend of one of the girls. In addition, at a more fundamental level, when Koreans or migrant
workers (although not Filipino migrant workers) went to the clubs they would usually do so only
for the purpose of sexual gratification (like some GI customers) whereas, as suggested above, many
GIs would go to the clubs simply to socialise.
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Love’s Labour
she could have some free time because, as with all clubs included in this research,
the women would either receive only one day off a month or none at all. Jenny said:
The first time he took me out on a bar fine was overnight – after I finished
work at midnight. We went to a hotel but he told me to just sleep because I
am so tired. The next day we went to Second Market [the local town market]
and we had lunch. I felt like I had a day off.
Cheryl (23 years) also had a GI boyfriend while she was working at Club ‘M’.
Because this club, like Club ‘Y’, would do prostitution within the club, rather than
through a bar fine system, Cheryl’s boyfriend would often spend the night with her
in the context of a buying her time for a night (long time). She explained that he
would do this so she did not have to go with other customers. Each time he bought
her overnight the cost was between US$250-300.
Apart from providing opportunities for time off and to avoid having to serve other
customers, the women’s boyfriends are also a source of financial support. They
provide their girlfriends with money and goods, including food, sundry items,
phone cards and clothes, and, by buying drinks or time, are contributing to the
money the women earn through commission. In addition, some women recounted
that their boyfriends would also repatriate money to their families in the
Philippines. Again, this situation of boyfriends becoming financial providers arises
in the context of poor work conditions in the clubs, under which the women are
often denied all or part of their salaries. Rae (18 years) stated that her first boyfriend
put US$1000 in her bank account in the Philippines for her use. However, she said
that her mother withdrew all that money and told Rae she needed it for operations
for the family. Jenny (26 years) also stated that her boyfriend sent money back to
her family in the Philippines three times, totalling US$500. She said, ‘My brother’s
wife will have a baby soon. They didn’t have enough money for an ultrasound, so
“David” sent them US$200 for that. I didn’t know he sent money like that to my
family. I never asked him to’. The importance of such support to the women should
not be underestimated: for the vast majority of women assistance from GI
customers/ boyfriends is currently the only form of support available to them, since
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) dealing with militarised prostitution and
trafficking in Korea are having difficulty in accessing and communicating with
foreign women.
CLUB WORK VERSUS RELATIONSHIPS
When a woman enters a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with a GI while working
in the club she becomes caught in a complex Catch-22 situation. On the one hand
she receives support through the various mechanisms discussed above. On the other
hand, such relationships are fundamentally incompatible with her duties within the
club, particularly generating drinks sales, going on bar fines and undertaking
prostitution. When a woman begins to neglect these duties she becomes subject to
51
verbal abuse and unceasing pressure from the club owner or bar manager to
improve her drink sales and bar fines/ prostitution. At the same time her boyfriend
will exert reverse pressure on her to stop these duties and live entirely on her salary
and financial contributions from him. Some clubs prohibit the women working
there from having serious boyfriends or discourage them by making negative
remarks about the boyfriend, since these relationships can compromise the profits
the owners can make from the women’s sexual labour.
Cheryl’s (23 years) experience of the incompatibility between club work and a
romantic relationship is typical of many of the women interviewed. She reflected on
her dilemma in the following way:
Mamasan kept saying to me, ‘You’d better work harder because your drinks
are so low compared with the other girls’. I didn’t want to do that [go with
other guys] because I have my boyfriend. I only want to go with him. When I
met him I started to wear a long costume in the club [she shows me a
photograph of her and her boyfriend sitting in the club; she wears long
pants as part of her costume], so that they GIs wouldn’t want to go with me.
The month before I ran away [July 2002] my drink money was so low. It was
only W200,000 [100 drinks].
The mamasan did not know Cheryl had a boyfriend, as she would have been
punished if the mamasan knew. The Korean bar manager in Club ‘M’ would,
however, let Cheryl spend time with her boyfriend in the club when the mamasan
was not there.
Jenny (26 years) was also under pressure from her boyfriend ‘David’ to stop some
of her duties in Club ‘U’. She explained:
When I went with other customers it caused big problems in our
relationship. One time ‘David’ saw me go into the VIP room with a
customer. I had to do that because I needed the money. My brother got in
trouble with the police for assault. After that David gave me a letter, which
said that he could not accept the work I was doing in the club if we were to
be boyfriend and girlfriend. In the letter there was US$1000. In the letter
David asked me to accept the money and not to sell myself for money any
more. After that I stopped going to the VIP room.
Nonetheless, the consequences of Jenny’s decision were difficult for her to tolerate,
since her manager was constantly telling her to stop spending time with her
boyfriend in the club and to serve other customers. She said that she made the
decision to run away after one particularly distressing episode in which ‘David’ had
bought her food because she was so hungry. She sat with him for 10 minutes longer
52
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Love’s Labour
than was allowed under the club rules relating to drinks. She described this moment
in the following way,
I was with ‘David’ one day in the club. He had bought me a drink, so I was
sitting with him. I was very hungry, so he had bought me something to eat. I
was just finishing to eat and was walking to the toilet. The mamasan [club
owner] threw ice at me and it hit my back. Mamasan yelled at me, ‘Why you
stay with him so long? You spend too much time with him for that drink’. I
went to the toilet and started crying. My manager came in and I started
yelling at her. I said, ‘I was hungry and I was only eating’. I went back out
to the club and I was so mad. I sat at the bar and I refused to work. I just sat
at the bar. That was basically when I decided to run away.
Charie (24 years) faced similar conflicting pressures to those experienced by Jenny.
While working in Club ‘P’ she was constantly berated by the papasan in her club
for having a serious boyfriend. Charie recalled:
Papasan says all GIs are liars. They discourage us in the club to fall in love
with guys. Like ‘Tim’ – papasan says he’s a bad guy because he’s divorced
three times and he’s only 34. If you fall in love with a guy you won’t get
drinks. A guy will give money to a girl instead of buying her drinks – some
money for her future. If you have a boyfriend and he buys you a drink,
instead of 15 minutes maybe you spend 20-25 minutes. They allow boyfriend,
but not serious boyfriend. All our customers are our boyfriends [laughs].
Some customers introduce like, ‘This is my girlfriend’. Like that. I feel bad
when they say that. I think, ‘Oh, if only Tim know that’. [What do you think
about the GIs?] Some GIs say to me, ‘You just tell us you love us. But we
heard about you. You don’t love, you just want us to buy a drink’. Customers
get jealous of each other. Even Tim [boyfriend] gets jealous. He thinks he’s
just my boyfriend because I want him to buy me drinks. I have to lie to other
customers and say Tim is not my boyfriend, just a sweet guy. Sometimes
customers insult me and call [me] liar. Tim and I had fights [about that] and
he wanted me to leave the club.
In addition to the conflicting pressures exerted on the women by their boyfriends
and the club owners, some of the women also experience extreme insecurity over
the fidelity and sincerity of their boyfriends. Indeed, some of the women’s
boyfriends experience a similar sense of insecurity and doubt. Eve (24 years) was
wearing an engagement ring when I interviewed her in Club ‘J’ in September 2002.
As her contract was finishing the day following the interview, she said, ‘I don’t
know what will happen [when she returns to the Philippines]. I think he has other
girlfriends’. Grace’s (22 years) relationships with GIs also formed a very big part of
her experiences in Korea. Unlike most of the other women, Grace came to Korea
twice to work in the same club in Tongducheon. During her first contract period
53
(2000-1) she became engaged to a GI, whom she said she really loved, but he broke
her heart. She recounted the moment when she discovered his infidelity:
One night my brother [another GI, friend] took me out to drink [on a bar
fine]. We went to his friend’s house and when I went inside I saw my fiancé.
He was with another girl. All I did [after that] for a long time was drink and
have fun and get fucked up. I didn’t care about anything or anyone.
Often the conflicting pressures exerted by their boyfriends and the club owners or
managers, as well as their own insecurities about their boyfriends, become too great
for the women to tolerate. Their boyfriends often help the women negotiate their
departure from the club, especially since their boyfriends sometimes put pressure on
them to cease club work.10 The woman will either run away from the club with her
boyfriend’s assistance, or he will help her seek assistance from the police or other
authorities, or he will buy her ‘penalty’, which is the cost of buying the women’s
contract so she becomes ‘free’.11 Despite the widespread practice of the ‘penalty’
option, it is highly illegal in Korea. Among the 44 participants in this research who
had GI boyfriends, over half relied on the assistance of their boyfriends to help
them leave the club. Some ran away, one sought assistance from the police, and
some had their boyfriends pay their penalty. Media accounts and the limited
academic research on trafficked entertainers in US military camp towns in Korea
explain women’s decisions to run away from the clubs in terms of the human rights
abuses they experience in the context of their work.12 Whilst women’s decisions to
10
Some of the boyfriends don’t know if their girlfriend is planning to escape, or she negotiates her
departure by herself. Rachel (22 years), for example, left the club where she was working after 8
months of her one-year contract. Although she had a GI boyfriend at the time she paid US$500 out
of her own money to the club owner to break her contract early and return the Philippines. Her
boyfriend later came over to the Philippines, where they were married, and they returned together
to Korea. Although the five research participants who ran away together from Club ‘T’ in Songtan
all had GI boyfriends, they did not tell their boyfriends of their plan to run away because they did
not want to discuss their plans in English, for fear that the club owner would learn of their intention
to run away. They phoned their boyfriends after they were safely in Seoul after running away. In
another episode, in Tongducheon I was handed a flyer in one club by a GI. On the flyer there was a
photograph of the GI’s girlfriend who had run away from the club where she was working and
simply disappeared. She had not contacted her boyfriend for one week, since running away. This
scenario is also quite common amongst women wishing to leave the clubs, since they fear
retaliation from their employers should their whereabouts be revealed to anyone.
11
Often the woman will be granted her freedom to leave the club when her boyfriend pays her
penalty – which can be as high as US$5000. However, the manager or club owner will retain salary
and documents, such as passport and alien card, in an attempt to exact further payments from the
women’s boyfriends later.
12
A recent report by the Air Force Times (2002), for example, cites one story of a Filipina,
‘Jennifer’ who ran away from the club where she was working in Tongducheon with the assistance
of her GI boyfriend. The media account stated, ‘Army Pfc (Private first class) Brian met “Jennifer”
in a bar in South Korea where she was being held against her will and forced to work as a
prostitute. With the help of a Catholic priest, he helped her escape the bar. Here (in a photograph of
54
Sallie Yea
Love’s Labour
run away can certainly be in part explained in this way, it is also true that the
women run away because the situations linked to their relationships. In this way
their boyfriend becomes more than simply a facilitator of escape from the club and
becomes part of the motivation for running away.
CONCLUSION
Labels like the ‘global political economy of sex’ (Altman 2001) or ‘economies of
pleasure’ (Manderson & Jolly 1997) reflect an emerging research agenda on
transnational sexual liaisons that views such relationships exclusively as
commodified encounters. New expressions of this commodification, including
trafficking for prostitution, are seen to be both facilitated by, and products of the
global economy. It is often implicitly assumed by much of this literature that such
encounters are fraught with exploitative relations expressed through sites of gender,
class and nationality. Media and academic interpretations of these women’s
experiences tend to reduce relationships with customers as a strategy to exit their
work/trafficking situations.
Although it is partly true that women use their boyfriends to help them escape from
their situations, it is my view that these relationships cannot be dismissed quite so
readily. Further, if they occupy such a prominent place in the narratives of the
women’s work, then they deserve more discursive space than they currently occupy
in the literature on sex tourism, prostitution and trafficking. Women certainly
strategise about their choices while working as entertainers, and the particular
conditions of their work often have an important bearing on whether or not they
enter a romantic relationship with a customer. However, failing to then explore the
experiences of the women and men who enter these relationships, the (often
confused) meanings they attach to them, and the longer term consequences of these
romances, is to perpetuate an instrumentalist view of such relationships and
reinforces a reductionist understanding of the women, which is located only in a
singular trafficking victim or prostitute identity.
In this paper I have suggested that many of the women and men who are subjects of
these sexual economies do not necessarily construe their encounters entirely (or
even predominantly) through such commodified or exploitative lenses, including
many women trafficked for sex work or women working in military base area clubs
and the men who are their customers. Women working in prostitution abroad –
whether trafficked or not - are not simply ‘victims’ (cf. Doezema 2000), nor are
the couple riding in a taxi that accompanies the article) they ride through the streets of Seoul on her
first day of freedom’.
Similarly, in the only existing report on the women in the US military camptown clubs in Korea,
the women are seen to run away, ‘[B]ecause of the poor working conditions, unfair contracts, and
other arbitrary practices in the business’ (KCWU 1999, p. 87).
55
‘clients’ always only exploiters of women’s sexuality. Recognising this can help us
to move beyond essentialist descriptions that tie these subjects exclusively to sexual
exploitation and commodification. In fact, the boundaries between work (clients,
customers) and relationships (boyfriends, girlfriends, fiancés) are often much more
fluid and less precisely demarcated than much of the current literature would have
us believe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Air Force Times (2002) “Sex Slaves and the US Military”, August 12
(http://airforcetimes.com/channel.php)
Altman, D (2001) Global Sex, Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin.
Cheng, S (2002) Transnational desires: ‘trafficked’ Filipinas in US Military Camp
Towns in South Korea. PhD thesis, School of Anthropology, University of
Oxford, England.
Cohen, E (1982) “Thai girls and farang men: the edge of ambiguity”, Annals of
Tourism Research, Vol. 9: 403-428.
Cohen, E (1986) ‘Lovelorn farangs’, Anthropological Quarterly, v. 59, no. 3: 115127.
Doezema, J (2000) “Loose women or lost women? The re-emergence of the myth
of white slavery in contemporary discourses of trafficking in women”, Gender
Issues, (Winter): 23-50.
Hochschild, AR (1983) The managed heart: commericalisation of human feeling.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
International Organisation of Migration (prepared by June JH Lee) (2002) A review
of data on trafficking in the Republic of Korea, Geneva: IOM.
Korea Church Women United (1999) Fieldwork report on trafficked women in
Korea, Seoul: KCWU.
Manderson, L and Margaret J (1997) Sites of desire, economies of pleasure:
sexualities in Asia and the Pacific, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pollack, SS and Stoltzfus, B (1992) Let the good times roll: prostitution and the
U.S. military in Asia. New York: The New Press.
Scott, JC (1985) Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of resistance. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Yea, S (2004) “Runaway brides: marriage and relationships between Filipina
‘entertainers’ and US GIs in South Korea”, Singapore Journal of Tropical
Geography, v. 25, No. 2 (July).
56
Decent Work or Distress Adaptation? Employment Choice and Job
Satisfaction in the Sri Lankan Garment Industry
Judith Shaw
International Development Program, School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT
University
This paper investigates the factors underlying the employment decisions of
female garment workers in Sri Lanka’s Export Processing Zones. It finds
that most are ‘pushed’ rather than ‘pulled’ into EPZ employment by poverty
and a weak labour market. Workers come from poorer than average
households. Their remittances make a vital contribution to family welfare,
and more often than not are the sole source of regular household income.
Generally low levels of job satisfaction and workers’ employment
preferences indicate that most would prefer to be elsewhere, but their
employment choices are constrained by a limited and unattractive range of
alternative livelihoods.
INTRODUCTION
Over the last two decades there has been a phenomenal expansion in garment
manufacturing in South and South East Asia, due to a combination of factors
including competitive regional labour costs, the widespread adoption of exportoriented growth policies, and guaranteed access to Western markets under the terms
of the Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA). In Sri Lanka the export-oriented garment
industry has become a key sector of the economy, contributing 15 per cent of GDP,
5 per cent of jobs and 52 per cent of export earnings. About two-thirds of
investment in the sector is foreign-sourced, mainly from South Korea, Taiwan and
Hong Kong. Production is concentrated in urban Export Processing Zones (EPZs),
which employ nearly 185,000 staff, or two thirds of the country’s garment workers
(Central Bank 2002). Nearly 90 per cent of garment workers are young women,
most of whom migrate from impoverished rural areas.
In a weak labour market, where unemployment and marginal, intermittent informal
sector jobs are the norm for unskilled workers, the Zones are virtually the only
source of regular, secure employment available to young rural women.
Nevertheless, persistently high turnover and vacancy rates indicate that EPZ
factories have difficulty attracting and retaining staff.1 There is a substantial
1
Estimates of vacancy rates in the garment sector vary from 6 per cent (Kelegama et al 2002) to 11
per cent (World Bank 1999).
57
literature on labour standards and living conditions in the Sri Lankan garment
industry, most of it highly critical. Unsafe working conditions, under-payment of
wages, excessive hours, harsh discipline, poor career development prospects,
suppression of trade union rights, substandard accommodation arrangements and
the social stigmatisation of garment workers have been extensively documented
(Heward 1997, Gunatilaka 1999, Kelegama and Epaarachchi 2002, CENWOR
2001, ACCFTU 1995, Hettiarachchi 1992).
There is evidence that Sri Lankans classify available labour market opportunities
into ‘good jobs’ in the public and white-collar sectors, and ‘bad jobs’ in farming,
the non-farm informal sector, overseas domestic service and the Zones. The
paradox of simultaneous high female youth unemployment and high EPZ vacancy
rates persists because the greatest expansion in labour market opportunities in
recent years has been in ‘bad’ jobs, notably in the Zones and overseas, while the
supply of ‘good’ jobs has contracted. Young women whose families are willing and
able to support them prefer to remain under-employed or unemployed at home, and
only the poorest are compelled to seek EPZ employment (World Bank 1999). Thus,
rather than being ‘pulled’ to the Zones by the prospect of regular work, women are
‘pushed’ by poverty and a lack of alternatives into jobs which they would not
otherwise take.
This paper investigates the factors underlying the employment decisions of Sri
Lankan EPZ workers. The assumption that most garment workers are poor is
supported by anecdotal evidence, but there has been little attempt to test it
empirically. Section 3 compares the socioeconomic status of EPZ workers’
households with that of the wider population. Section 4 reviews the labour market
for rural women, and examines the EPZ employment decision in the context of the
accessibility and attractiveness of alternative livelihoods. Few studies have sought
to gauge the perceptions and motivations of the workers themselves (for an
exception see CENWOR 2001). Section 5 examines workers’ views on their lives
as ‘factory girls’. The concluding section discusses the impending termination of
the MFA and its consequences for garment sector employment.
METHODOLOGY
The principal survey instrument was a structured questionnaire administered in
January 2004 to garment workers in Sri Lanka’s oldest and largest EPZ, the
Katunayake Export Processing Zone, located 30 kilometres from the national
capital, Colombo. One hundred workers were interviewed over a three-week period.
The questionnaire contained a mix of open-ended and limited choice questions
covering respondents’ demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds; their reasons
for seeking EPZ employment and perceptions of alternative labour market
opportunities; pay, conditions, accommodation and travel arrangements in the
EPZs; and general levels of satisfaction with their working and living conditions.
58
Judith Shaw
Decent Work or Distress Adaptation?
The questionnaire was supplemented by focus group interviews with twenty
randomly selected respondents.
The questionnaires were administered by staff from the Katunayake Working
Women’s Centre, an NGO providing advocacy and health services to garment
workers. As former garment workers themselves, the interviewers were familiar
with the issues covered in the questionnaire, and were able to empathise with the
respondents’ concerns and gain their confidence. As interviewers were unable to
enter the Zones due to the controversial ‘gate pass’ requirement which denies entry
to unauthorised personnel,2 interviews were conducted in the residential areas
outside the Zone precincts. Interviewers identified respondents by visiting
randomly selected accommodation facilities within the residential areas after the
end of the main day shift, and requesting women who were present to participate in
the survey. Where workers declined to be interviewed, interviewers were instructed
to approach others until they had completed their allocated interviews. Response
rates were high: nine women declined to participate when initially approached, but
most workers displayed considerable interest in the survey process and were keen to
take part.
THE WORKERS AND THEIR FAMILIES: SOCIOECONOMIC
CHARACTERISTICS
The garment industry workforce profile is overwhelmingly young, single and
female: women account for 87 per cent of garment factory workers, although males
predominate in management positions.3 Over 90 per cent of the hundred
respondents were under 30 (Table 1), and 89 per cent were unmarried. Nearly three
quarters had completed at least 10 years of schooling, and 13 per cent had
completed their high school ‘A-levels’, a rate of attainment consistent with the
national profile and reflecting Sri Lanka’s commendable performance in public
education in comparison with other developing countries.
2
Anyone wishing to enter the EPZs must obtain a ‘gate pass’. The issue of gate passes is at the
discretion of the Board if Investment (BOI), the autonomous statutory body responsible for foreign
investmtent in Sri Lanka. Even Ministry of Labour officials can only enter the Zones by prior
appointment, an arrangement which compromises effective monitoring and enforcement and have
reportedly on occasion been denied entry (Heward 1977). The gate pass provision is routinely used
to deny entry to trade union officials and non-aligned observers, as well as to troublesome workers,
whose employment can be terminated by the BOI’s withdrawal of their identity cards (Kelegama
1998, Gunatilaka 1999).
3
Women are employed mainly in low-level positions. While men predominate in upper
management, women occupy 72 per cent of supervisory positions and more than 90 per cent of the
production workforce (Kelegama et al 2002:200).
59
Table 1: Age distribution
Age group
Under 20
20-24
25-29
30 and above
Total
Frequency
15
52
24
9
100
Respondent households are poorer than average. As Table 2 shows, they compare
unfavourably with the wider population on a variety of indicators – location,
household access to electrical power, and occupation of the household head - which
are strongly associated with household poverty (Aturupane 1999, World Bank
2002). In addition, respondent households are more than twice as likely as the
general population to be female-headed. Sri Lankan census data indicates,
somewhat counter-intuitively, that female-headed households are not significantly
poorer than the general population (DCS 2003, World Bank 2002). This finding is
not supported by the EPZ sample, in which female-headed households scored below
the sample average on a variety of poverty indicators, including housing quality,
asset ownership and land ownership.
Table 2: Household poverty indicators: respondent households and
Sri Lankan population
Poverty indicator
Sri
Respondents
z
p
Lanka
94
72
4.90
< .0001
Rural location
Household access to mains
43
60
- 3.47
.0003
electricity
Household head educated to
54
59
- 1.02
.15
post-primary level.
Household head employed in
59
36
5.22
< .0001
agriculture.
26
10
5.33
< .0001
Female-headed households
Sources: World Bank 2002, DCS 2003, Aturupane 1999, UNDP 1998
Note. z scores and p values relate to difference between the respondents’ proportions and the
corresponding proportions from Sri Lankan census data. The differences between the percentage
figures of the respondents and those derived from Sri Lankan census data were represented as zscores in order to establish whether the respondents’ percentages were significantly different from
the Sri Lankan population as a whole. In all but one instance, the differences were significant.
There was no significant difference between the two figures on the percentage of household heads
educated to post-primary level.
Poverty in Sri Lanka is predominantly a rural phenomenon, with urban and rural
poverty rates of 8 and 26 per cent respectively (DCS 2003). The EPZ workforce
profile is overwhelmingly rural: 79 per cent were from agrarian villages and a
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Judith Shaw
further 15 per cent from very remote locations more than a kilometre from a village,
while only 6 per cent were from cities or regional towns. Only one respondent
came from the relatively prosperous Western Province, while the vast majority
came from the high-poverty North Western, North Central and Central provinces.
Household heads from respondent households are clustered in low-value activities.
Only 11 per cent were employed in the relatively high-income non-local and formal
sectors. The non-farm informal sector, in which 13 per cent were employed, is
dominated by microenterprises, which are associated with a high poverty incidence,
although some skilled artisans earn poverty clearing incomes (Aturupane 1999,
Shaw 2004). Nearly 60 per cent of household heads were employed in agriculture,
another sector characterised by very high rates of poverty (World Bank 2002,
Aturupane 1999). Farmers on holdings of two acres or more are usually able to
meet household food requirements and produce a marketable surplus, although
steep rises in production costs and falling producer prices have led to a substantial
deterioration in farm incomes since the 1980s (Dunham and Edwards 1997). On
holdings of less than two acres, agriculture is a subsistence activity which earns
little or no cash income (Shaw 2004).
Table 3: Respondent households: main occupation of household head
Occupation
Per cent
Self-employed farming
44
Farm labour
15
Local non-farm employment (informal sector)
13
Local non-farm wage employment (formal sector)
5
Non-local employment
6
Economically inactive
17
Total
100
The data indicates that few of the 94 respondent households in rural agrarian
locations are able to earn poverty-clearing incomes from farming: only 16 per cent
occupied more than two acres, and 52 per cent occupied holdings ranging between a
quarter acre and two acres. The remaining 32 per cent were landless households,
which are over-represented among the poorest of the rural poor, as they are unable
to meet basic food requirements from home production. Nearly a fifth of respondent
household heads were ‘economically inactive’ due to age, illness or unemployment.
Female household heads were over-represented in the ‘economically inactive’
category, accounting for nearly 60 per cent, reflecting both a scarcity of local
economic opportunities for rural women and the relatively high proportion of
elderly widows in this group.
61
Most of the respondents were junior household members in terms of their
relationship to the household head: 90 per cent were daughters, 8 per cent were
sisters, sisters-in-law, or wives, and 2 per cent were household heads themselves.
Nevertheless, they make a substantial contribution to household income. Most rural
households rely on a shifting portfolio of low-earning seasonal activities,
supplementing farm labour and farming with non-farm microenterprises during the
lean season. As regular employment is scarce, the respondent’s wage was the sole
source of regular income in 59 per cent of households.
In 11 per cent of
households, in which the respondent was the sole economically active member or
where the only additional activity was subsistence agriculture, the respondent’s
wage was the sole source of cash income. Nearly 60 per cent of households had
two sources of cash income, 18 per cent had three and 11 per cent had four or more.
In many households with three or more income sources, the additional sources
came from non-local employment: a female family member working in the Middle
East, a son in the military or a second daughter in a garment factory.
These findings provide further evidence of the increasing role of remittances in
rural households. Sri Lanka has not undergone the massive rural-to-urban drifts
which have occurred in other developing countries in recent years, but the stability
of the rural population disguises the importance of non-local income sources in the
rural economy. There is little evidence of significant relocation of whole families
from the countryside to the cities, but it is common for individuals to migrate to the
Western Province for work, remitting part of their wages and returning to their
homes weekly or monthly. With the failure of the slow-growing rural non-farm
sector to offset deteriorating farm incomes, non-local income sources (notably
government welfare transfers and remittances from family members employed in
the military, the Western Province and overseas) have become increasingly
important in the rural economy. Estimates of the contribution of transfers and
remittances to rural household income vary between 40 per cent (World Bank 1998)
and 70 per cent (Dunham and Jayasuriya 1998).
YOUNG RURAL WOMEN AND THE LABOUR MARKET
In the last two decades neoliberal policy reforms have had a profound impact on
household livelihoods. Significant among the reforms have been the promotion of
export-oriented manufacturing, reduction of the public sector through privatisation
and the curtailment of social sector expenditure, and the progressive withdrawal of
subsidies and price protection in the smallholder farm sector. As a result, there has
been a general shift of resources and employment out of the rural, agrarian and
public sectors into the urban, non-farm and private sectors (Shaw 2001, Dunham
and Edwards 1997).
Over the same period there has been a substantial influx of women into the labour
market, due to a combination of demand and supply side factors including strong
public investment in girls’ education, declining fertility rates and a rise in the
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Judith Shaw
average age at which women marry, the post-1977 policy reforms which provided
new opportunities for women’s employment in manufacturing, and the declining
ability of traditional livelihood practices to support rural households. Female
employment is growing at a greater rate than men’s, albeit from a lower base.
Since 1993 the number of in-country jobs for men has increased by about 850,000
(23 per cent), while women’s employment has increased by about 630,000 (39 per
cent) (DCS 2002). In 2002 women held about a third of jobs in Sri Lanka. Stable
participation rates and falling unemployment among males indicate that the growth
in women’s employment is coming from job creation rather than the displacement
of male labour.
High gender equality in access to education has not translated into employment
equality. The influx of women into the labour force has outpaced the growth of
acceptable job opportunities, and women’s unemployment rates double those of
men, particularly in the 15-29 age group, in which 27 per cent of women are
unemployed (DCS 2002). Women are clustered in a narrow range of sectors,
notably agriculture, manufacturing and overseas employment, while the male
workforce is spread more evenly across the occupational spectrum. Within
occupational sectors the pattern of gender segregation persists: in manufacturing,
women are concentrated in garments and textiles production, and in the professions,
they are concentrated in teaching and nursing.
Table 4 describes the structure of the labour market for rural women. Due to the
limitations of the various official data sources, which are difficult to reconcile with
each other and do not rigorously disaggregate employment by gender, location or
sector, the data presented here is indicative rather than definitive. Just over half of
rural women are employed in the local informal sector. Agriculture remains the
largest employer, accounting for a third of employment, although its share has
fallen in the last decade. A fifth of rural women are employed in trade, personal
services and other informal sector non-farm occupations, in which the share of
employment has remained relatively stable. Most of the increase in rural women’s
employment since the early 1990s has been in non-local sectors which, as Table 5
indicates, pay significantly more than most of the local alternatives.
63
Table 4: Rural female population aged 15 and over: labour force status and
sectoral distribution of employment(a)(b)
‘000
Composition
Labour
of labour
force
force (per
participation
cent)
Local
employment:
formal
212
8.6
sector
Public sector
152
6.2
Two hundred garment factory
60
2.4
program
Local employment: informal
1295
52.8
sector
Agriculture, fishing and forestry
818
33.3
Non-farm sector(c)
477
19.4
Non-local employment
758
30.9
EPZ garment factories
158
6.4
Overseas domestic service
600
24.4
Unemployed
189
7.7
Total labour force
2454
100.0
52.6
Not in labour force
2211
47.4
Total
4665
100.0
Sources: DCS 2000, DCS 2002, Ministry of Women’s Affairs 2003
(a)
(b)
(c)
In this table women employed overseas are included as employed labour force participants,
whereas they are classified as non-participants in official DCS statistics. As a result, the
labour force participation rates presented here are higher than those indicated by the official
statistics, and unemployment rates are lower.
Includes rural migrant workers resident in the Western Province.
Trade, manufacturing, animal husbandry, personal services, construction, miscellaneous nonfarm work n.e.s.
In a widely held consensus, Sri Lankans define ‘good jobs’ as formal sector
employment in the public sector or white-collar private sector. The latter accounts
for less than 3 per cent of the country’s jobs, and has a miniscule impact on rural
employment, as most jobs are held by members of the English-speaking Colombo
elite. The role of the state as an employer remains significant, but has declined
substantially, with its share of employment falling from 23 to 16 per cent between
1994 and 2002 (Central Bank 2002). Although public sector pay fell in real terms
in the 1990s, and compares poorly with the private sector at senior management and
professional levels, lower grade public sector jobs easily outrank the available
alternatives in terms of pay and conditions, job security, pension entitlements and
64
Judith Shaw
social status,4 and a government job remains the first preference of young labour
market entrants, consistently outranking other occupations in surveys of
employment preferences (Lakshman 2002, World Bank 1999). In practice, female
job opportunities in the public sector are largely confined to middle-class, postsecondary educated women in the nursing, teaching and clerical occupations. For
young women from poor rural households, the prospects of finding public sector
employment are remote, as few possess the required educational qualifications or
political connections.
Table 5: Female wage rates in selected occupations
Occupation
Pay range (rupees per month)
Local
Public sector (entry level for non6,000
graduates)
THGPF garment factory
2,300 – 3,100
Agricultural labour
1,000 –2,000*
Non-farm microenterprise
Usually below 2,500
Non-local
EPZ garment factory
4,500 – 8,000
Overseas employment
11,000 – 13,000
Source: Central Bank 2002, TieAsia 2003 * Averaged over twelve months
An additional source of rural wage employment is the Two Hundred Garment
Factory Program (THGFP), a government initiative aimed at promoting rural
industrialisation, which employs about 60,000 women in rural factories. The
THGFP compares poorly with the EPZs in terms of wages and job security. Many
THGFP factories lay off staff during quiet periods and factory closures are common
(Shaw 2001, CENWOR 2001). Nevertheless, while they are valued less highly
than public sector jobs, THGFP jobs are highly sought after as they provide scarce
regular employment without the personal costs associated with migration to the
EPZs or overseas. THGFP workers are free from a pervasive social stigma
attaching to unmarried women who leave the parental home, and from the personal
security risks faced by EPZ workers (Heward 1997). As one THGFP worker
explains, ‘Everyone knows me, from my home to the factory gate, this gives me a
certain amount of protection. Women who work in the FTZ don’t have this
protection’ (Dent 2000:10).
As with the public sector, the access of poorer rural households to the THGFP is
limited, with evidence that THGFP jobs flow disproportionately to non-poor
4
Low-level public sector workers earn 60 to 100 per cent more than workers in similar private
sector jobs but at senior management and professional levels, compression of pay schedules has
reduced the public sector’s competitiveness with the corporate private sector, and is argued to be
contributing to weaknesses in public sector management capacity (Rama 1998, World Bank 1999).
65
families. The poorest households are over-represented in remote areas with limited
transport facilities, while factories are located in regional towns and on major roads.
Furthermore, as with public sector jobs, the allocation of jobs in the state-subsidised
factories is influenced by political patronage. A study of rural livelihoods in
Hambantota district found that THGFP workers were exclusively from non-poor
families which had been able to obtain the ‘letter from a politician’ necessary to
secure employment there (Shaw 2001).
Wage employment in the informal sector accounts for around a third of rural jobs,
mostly in agriculture. Daily rates for farm labour rose in the 1990s, and compare
well with other informal sector wage rates (Central Bank 2002), but overall
earnings are low, as employment is confined to two to four months annually, during
the peak paddy planting and harvesting seasons. Some women work for wages in
rural manufacturing workshops, where conditions compare unfavourably with those
in larger factories: low labour replacement costs and inadequate policing by the
under-resourced Department of Labour allow small firms to ignore basic labour
standards (Institute of Policy Studies 1998), and employees in firms with
establishments of less than 25 earn on average less than half the wages of workers
in larger factories (DCS 2001). The remaining 53 per cent of rural jobs are in
household-level farm and non-farm microenterprises (DCS 2000).
A major sector of expansion in women’s employment has been in overseas work.
Most labour migrants are unskilled women, predominantly from poor rural
households, who work as domestic servants in the Middle East. Between 1986 and
2002 the proportion of women among Sri Lankans departing for overseas
employment rose from one- to two-thirds. In 2002 there were 133,000 female
departures, an increase of 26 per cent from 1998 (Ministry of Women’s Affairs
2003). With the relaxation in 1996 of the requirement for migrating workers to
register with the Bureau of Foreign Employment, the precise number of overseas
workers is unknown, but is estimated at around one million (Government of Sri
Lanka, 2002). A conservative estimate is that around 750,000 Sri Lankan women
were employed overseas in 2003, and that around 600,000 were from poor rural
households.
While overseas employment is by far the most remunerative occupation available to
rural women, it is not widely viewed as a viable option for the young unmarried
cohort from which EPZ workers are drawn. It is regarded as a hazardous
occupation: excessive workloads, isolation, physical and sexual abuse and the
withholding of pay by unscrupulous employers or agents are widely reported in the
local media (CENWOR 2001, Gamburd 2000). Households prefer to send married
women, due to fear of moral corruption and damage to the marriage prospects of
single females. In addition, some recipient countries impose age restrictions: Saudi
Arabia, for instance, only admits domestic servants aged between 30 and 43. As a
consequence, overseas migrants are older on average than EPZ workers: fewer than
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Judith Shaw
a third of women departing in 2002 were in the 20-29 age range, and fewer than 1
per cent were under 20 (Ministry of Women’s Affairs 2003).
In their assessments of the attractiveness and availability of alternative jobs, the
respondents confirmed the general picture described above. When asked to
describe the main income-generating activities of women from their home villages,
overseas employment and agriculture were by far the most commonly reported
occupations, followed by non-farm microenterprises (Table 6). Ten per cent
reported wage employment in the informal non-farm sector. Employment in the
THGFP program is confined to villages close to a factory, and was reported as a
significant local income source by 7 per cent of the respondents.
Table 6: Economic activities of women from respondents’ villages
Occupation
Per cent of respondents reporting
activity
Overseas employment
71.0
Farming and farm labour
93.0
Non-farm microenterprise
38.0
Local non-farm wage employment
17.0
When asked why they took EPZ jobs rather than one of the alternatives, the women
responded overwhelmingly that they were unable to earn poverty-clearing incomes
from local activities. Most added that parental pressure and the perceived hazards
of overseas employment had dissuaded them from taking an offshore job. As Table
7 indicates, ‘push factors’, in the form of acute economic pressure to contribute to
family income or to relieve the economic burden of a non-contributing individual,
were the main motivation for moving to the EPZs in more than two thirds of cases.
For the remaining third, most of whom were motivated by less acute, longer-term
aims (e.g., the accumulation of a dowry), rather than by immediate survival
imperatives, the decision to take an EPZ job had a larger voluntary component.
Nevertheless, the EPZs were not the preferred employment avenue for the vast
majority of respondents: 69 per cent nominated a public sector job as their first
employment preference, indicating what seems to be an unrealistic assessment of
their labour market options; 20 per cent preferred local private sector employment
or microenterprises; and only 5 per cent nominated the EPZs as their first
preference.
67
Table 7: Main reason for moving to EPZ
Reason
Per cent
To contribute to household income
62.0
To reduce burden on relatives
8.0
To save for marriage
23.0
Other*
7.0
100.0
*Desire to leave home, desire to save for non-marriage purposes
LIFE IN THE ZONE
Respondents were asked to rate their levels of satisfaction on a range of variables
relating to their work and non-workplace environment. On the positive side, 85 per
cent reported that they had made new friends, and 59 per cent believed that their
jobs were equipping them with useful skills and experience. Nearly all valued the
opportunity to contribute to family income, and more than 70 per cent reported that
their contributions had led to improvements in their status within their families. A
minority felt that their marital prospects had been harmed by EPZ work, but
respondents were more likely to report that the opportunity to save for a dowry had
improved their chances of making a good marriage. Nevertheless, levels of
satisfaction were generally low: only 20 per cent reported that in general, they were
satisfied with their lives as garment workers, 70 per cent were dissatisfied, and an
overwhelming 86 per cent reported that they would return to their villages if a
regular job became available. As Table 8 indicates, the non-work environment was
by far the major source of dissatisfaction.
Table 8: Principal reason for dissatisfaction with EPZ employment
Reason
Principal reason for dissatisfaction
(per cent)
Pay
16
Working conditions
15
The non-work environment
59
Separation from family
10
Total
100
Working Conditions
Despite substantial evidence of poor working conditions and abuses of labour
standards in EPZ factories (CENWOR 2001, Gunatilaka 1999, ACCFTU 1995),
only 15 per cent viewed the work environment as their principal cause of
dissatisfaction, a reflection perhaps of the generally poor quality of working
conditions in alternative occupations. Nevertheless, most respondents reported
dissatisfaction with their working conditions, particularly in relation to health and
68
Judith Shaw
safety issues and harsh or unfair treatment from supervisors. Employee relations
are generally poor: over two- thirds complained that they were regularly subjected
to verbal abuse from their supervisors, and 14 per cent complained of physical
abuse. The setting of onerous production targets was a common source of
dissatisfaction, with claims that supervisors deliberately set targets at unachievable
levels to avoid payment of bonuses. Just under a third believed that there were
significant hazards at their workplaces, and 37 per cent reported having experienced
at least one work-related illness or injury. These included soreness from being kept
standing for long periods (30 per cent), minor injuries such as needle pricks (14 per
cent), and potentially more serious problems such as the catching of hair in
machinery (5 per cent) and chronic respiratory conditions resulting from the
inhalation of fibres (10 per cent). Other commonly reported grievances included the
denial of leave and non-payment of attendance allowances. In most cases,
respondents chose not to pursue the matter, as they were afraid of being punished or
losing their jobs.
Pay
Monthly take-home pay in the EPZs is well above the statutory minimum of
Rs.3,900, as Table 9 indicates. There was no evidence of avoidance of statutory
payment obligations. Take-home pay varied widely, with medians of Rs.4,300 and
Rs.7,980 respectively in the lowest and highest deciles. Base pay, which ranged
from Rs.3,900 to Rs.6,980, is linked to length of service and occupation. Overtime
payments, which ranged up to Rs.4,000, were the major source of variation in takehome pay. Just under one quarter of workers (23 per cent) did no overtime work
over and above the statutory 48-hour working week, 36 per cent worked 10-20
hours overtime, and 6 per cent worked more than 20 hours overtime. Respondents’
views on their working hours were mixed: while several complained that their long
working weeks left them little time for sleep and non-work activities, they also
valued the extra income provided by overtime work, and some complained of
limited opportunities to work overtime.
Table 9: Mean components of monthly pay for December 2003
Item
Amount
Basic wage
4565
Attendance allowances, other
503
allowances and production bonuses
Overtime
1103
Total
6171
The respondents overwhelmingly felt that their pay was insufficient: only 15 per
cent were satisfied with their salaries, while 54 per cent reported dissatisfaction.
They were more inclined to cite the high costs of living in the EPZs than the under69
valuation of their work. As Table 10 shows, margins for discretionary expenditure
are limited, with food, housing, transport and remittances accounting for two-thirds
of take-home pay. At Rs.1,454, mean food expenditure is above the threshold of
Rs.1,338 deemed necessary to meet basic nutrition requirements (DCS, 2002); but
given the inflation of prices by shopkeepers in the Katunayake area (Gunesekara
1998), the poor quality of cooking facilities and lack of time to prepare meals, it is
likely that a substantial proportion of garment workers have inadequate dietary
intakes. The main items in the ‘other expenditure’ category are medical expenses,
clothing and other personal items, contributions to weddings and other village
festivals, and interest on loans (a significant expense, as workers commonly borrow
from moneylenders to cover unexpected outlays at rates in excess of 10 per cent per
month).
Table 10: Mean composition of expenditure of monthly pay, Dec 2003
Item
Per cent of take-home pay
Accommodation
13.6
Food
23.6
Transport*
6.3
Outings and entertainment
6.5
Savings deposits
11.0
Remittances
22.8
Other expenditure n.e.s.
16.2
100.0
* Includes visits to family home
The Non-work Environment
As indicated by Table 8, non-workplace issues were the most widely reported
source of dissatisfaction. The three most commonly cited problems related to the
poor quality of accommodation, threats to their personal security and the social
marginalisation of EPZ workers.
Most workers live in densely populated dormitory regions around the EPZ, in
boarding houses which have been widely criticised for providing substandard
accommodation (see for example Hettiarachchi 1992, CENWOR 2001). Boarding
house residents were overwhelmingly unhappy with their living arrangements,
complaining of physical squalor, noise, and air pollution in their neighbourhoods;
and of overcrowding and poor lighting, cooking and sanitary facilities in their
residences. About a quarter have opted for better-quality accommodation with local
families, who usually provide tenants with a room of their own, a cupboard to store
their belongings, adequate kitchen facilities and physical security. The average cost
of family accommodation is between Rs.1,000 and Rs.1,500, in comparison with
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Judith Shaw
around Rs.500 for a boarding house berth. Not surprisingly, respondents in family
accommodation were considerably more likely to report satisfaction with their
accommodation arrangements (37 per cent) than boarding house residents (7 per
cent).
Personal security was a major concern. Many reported that theft was widespread,
as they had no safe place to store their valuables. There were also reports of
harassment by gangs of men, mostly off-duty military personnel from the nearby
Katunayake airforce base, who roam the residential precincts and sometimes enter
the boarding houses. Residents have little protection from intruders, as most
boarding house owners live off-site, visiting twice monthly to collect rents, and do
not employ watchmen or housekeepers. Two-thirds of respondents reported having
experienced sexual harassment while travelling to work and nearly 80 per cent
believed it was not safe to travel to work alone. Respondents complained that: ‘We
have to stay indoors because it is not safe to go out’, and ‘We cannot walk on the
road alone without being waylaid’.
The changing structure of the labour market has placed considerable pressure on
traditional expectations that women should remain in their fathers’, and later in
their husbands’ homes throughout their lives. Nevertheless, unmarried women who
leave home face strong societal disapproval, fuelled by sensationalised media
reports of immoral behaviour among ‘unsupervised’ young women in the Zones.
Matrimonial advertisements in the daily newspapers commonly specify that no
‘factory girls’ need apply. Three quarters of the respondents felt that their lives
were made more difficult by the negative images attaching to garment workers.
Many complained that they were treated with contempt by boarding house owners,
jeered at in public places and singled out for over-charging by shop-keepers.
CONCLUSION
Since the 1970s the global garment industry has been regulated by the MFA, a
GATT-endorsed agreement which provides garment-exporting developing countries
with limited but guaranteed access to Western markets under a quota system. From
2005 the MFA will be progressively phased out and replaced with a free trade
regime, with profound and potentially disruptive consequences for exporters. Given
the importance of the garment sector in the Sri Lankan economy, its future
prospects are of significant concern in policy circles. With the impending
termination of the MFA, exporters face a choice between the ‘low road’ of price
competitiveness based on low wages, and the ‘high road’ of quality based
competitiveness. Production of high-quality, high-value-added goods is
concentrated among middle-income economies such as Hong Kong and Taiwan;
while low-cost suppliers such as China, Bangladesh and Cambodia produce mainly
for the lowest rungs in the hierarchy. Like other low-income countries, Sri Lanka
has traditionally focused on low-end production, but will have difficulty competing
71
in this arena in the free-for-all post-MFA environment, as its production costs,
while well below those of middle-income countries, are high by low-end standards.
At the high end, however, Sri Lanka’s relatively low costs, educated workforce and
strong transport and communications infrastructure in the EPZs are important
competitive advantages (Central Bank 2002).
The decision to take the ‘high’ or ‘low’ road will have a significant impact on the
jobs and living standards of garment workers. While a focus on price competition
will exert downward pressure on labour standards, it is likely that the upgraded
skills and labour productivity required for high-end production will generate
pressures to improve working and living conditions. There is a growing consensus
around the need for market repositioning, and the associated requirements for
improvements in pay, working conditions and training. Significantly, influential
recent reports have advocated increased investment in the non-work conditions
which are key sources of dissatisfaction among garment workers, linking low
productivity with poor transport, accommodation and welfare arrangements
(Central Bank 2002, Kelegama et al 2002). There are signs that some manufacturers
are anticipating the expected post-MFA upheaval by moving up-market, with the
dedication of a growing share of output to high-end production (Board of
Investment 2003). There is encouraging evidence of increased attention to workers’
living standards among larger-scale producers, some of whom have made
significant investments in hostel accommodation and transport services (Kelegama
et al 2002). In addition, the post-MFA market will be increasingly sensitive to nontariff barriers, notably in the form of demands from buyers for adherence to
internationally acceptable labour conditions (Central Bank 2002, Frynas 2000).
Observers are optimistic that a combination of market repositioning and consumer
pressure will generate improvements in workers’ living standards (Kelegama et al
2002).
While the prospects for those who remain in the garment sector are reasonably
encouraging, there is little prospect of relief from the over-arching problem of
female unemployment, which is likely to worsen with the termination of the MFA.
The closure of uncompetitive low-end factories will cut garment sector jobs by an
estimated 20 per cent, a loss which will be only partly offset by the absorption of
skilled labour by expanding high-end producers (Central Bank 2002). As in other
developing countries, employment opportunities have not kept pace with labour
force growth, and the Sri Lankan economy faces a formidable task finding
remunerative jobs for new labour force entrants (about 100,000 annually), the
existing unemployed and, from 2005, an additional contingent of retrenched
garment workers. With the anticipated contraction of the EPZs and the failure of
successive governments to develop convincing domestic employment strategies, it
is likely that offshore labour markets and marginal informal sector jobs will
continue to absorb the bulk of young, poor, rural women in the foreseeable future.
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Judith Shaw
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Dunham, D and Edwards, C (1997) Rural poverty and the agrarian crisis in Sri
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rural poor?,” Pravada, v. 5, no. 10-11: 22-27.
Frynas, J G (2000) Human rights and the transnational garment industry in south
and south-east Asia: a focus on labour rights. Paper presented to the
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of the International Studies Association, Washington DC, 29-30 August 2000.
Gamburd, M R (2000) The kitchen spoon’s handle: transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s
migrant households. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Government of Sri Lanka (2002) Regaining Sri Lanka: vision and strategy for
accelerated development. Colombo, Government Printing Office.
Gunesekara, S (1998) Working conditions in the FTZ. Paper presented at the Workshop
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Gunatilaka, R (1999) Labour legislation and female employment in Sri Lanka’s
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Hettiarachchy, T (1992) Working in the Zone, Hong Kong, Asian Human Rights
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Heward, S (1997) Garment workers and the two hundred garment factory program.
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Kelegama, S and Epaarachchi, R (2002) “Garment industry in Sri Lanka,” in G
Joshi (ed.), Garment industry in south Asia: rags or riches? New Delhi,
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Shaw, Judith (2001) No magic bullet: microenterprise credit and income poverty in
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74
Being Able To Do What You Aspire To Do
Lionel Boxer
Centre for Management Quality Research, RMIT Business, RMIT University
Those women who have made their mark in Australian public and private
organisations have challenged traditional Positions allocated to women.
However, for the most part these Positions have not changed. Positioning
Theory was in part based on the notion that people are able to challenge
and change the Positions they are allocated in every social encounter.
While there have been changes in society that have generally re-Positioned
women as leaders in public and private organisations, it remains the
obligation of each person to establish four components of a social order that
supports themselves as what they specifically aspire to be able to do. These
are (1) their right to perform the work they aspire to, (2) the duty of others
to respect them as competent, (3) the moral order that enables such rights
and duties, and (4) actions that reinforce these rights, duties and morals.
Positioning Theory – that has in part evolved through feminist literature –
provides a framework for each individual to align the social order to their
individual and collective purposes.
INTRODUCTION
Those women who have made their mark in Australian public and private work
have challenged traditional Positions allocated to women. They have harnessed the
momentum created by popular feminist literature that has shattered traditional
Positions in wider society. In this paper Positioning Theory will be harnessed to
demonstrate that, while traditional Positions have been redefined on a macro level,
many women need to carry these new paradigms into their places of work. Then
from the micro level of Positioning Theory, a framework will be introduced to
understand how individuals can re-Position themselves to enable to do what they
aspire to do. Positioning Theory was in part based on the notion that people are
able to challenge and change the Positions they negotiate in social encounters.
During the early 1990s, when the author was a management consultant at KPMG, a
colleague presented a photo of the board of a national sporting body and then asked
what was wrong with the picture. After a variety of ways to improve the photo
were suggested she said, ‘wrong – they are all men’. Indeed, there was cause for
women to be on the board of this body; an equal number of women and men were
active in the sporting competitions overseen by that board. The author’s response
to her concern was that it was a matter of time, because businesswomen in Australia
75
had only relatively recently been enabled to hold significant management
appointments and few had yet achieved the sort of experience where they would be
invited to join boards.
At the same time, Margaret Jackson was a Partner of KPMG management
consulting division and already serving on several boards. A decade later – albeit
in a new millennium – Margaret Jackson has been awarded the highest honour in
the Australian Honours System for her leadership and service to business and the
community. Thirty years ago, the person leading QANTAS would have been a man
and have likely been knighted under the former Imperial Honours System. Indeed,
Margaret Jackson is today perhaps the most impressive corporate director in
Australia; she was even a strong contender in the last appointment of Australian
Governor General. Sadly, the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace
Agency (EOWA) Australian Women in Leadership Census suggests that Margaret
Jackson’s ascent to greatness is an anomaly and that too few women have achieved
such heights.
While some women hold senior management appointments, there remains a great
opportunity for more women to do so. A path must be opened for competent
women to follow and fill out the leadership ranks of Australia. However, the
measure of merit used to select business leaders is seen to be based on a male
benchmark of life and experience that works against women (Burton 1988). Bacchi
(1993) describes this limiting factor as ‘a brick wall, preventing women from
becoming senior’ and suggests a diversity agenda to deal with this injustice (Bacchi
2000). Sinclair (2000) agrees that pursuing diversity will enable people to short
circuit ‘systemic barriers’ invented and imposed by an ‘older and hardened
generation’. The challenge put forward in this paper is to change the wider culture
of a workplace so that merit is defined in terms of a female benchmark and then for
individual women to harness that changed paradigm and Position themselves as
leaders.
In the next section the burden of women at work who aspire to lead is to realign the
four components of their work culture to support them in their aspirations. A social
constructionist model of culture is used to explore these components. This model
suggest that any culture is composed of (1) a local system of rights, (2) duties and
obligations, (3) a local moral order, and (4) pubic and private actions. This social
constructionist model will provide a practical framework for women to understand
the residual fields of opposition (flux) that may be impeding their progress and take
action to neutralise that residue.
FOUCALT, FEMINISM AND POSITIONING AT A MACRO LEVEL
The author noticed (Boxer 2003a) that Positioning Theory has in part evolved
through feminist literature that relies in part on Foucauldian ideas. The obvious
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Lionel Boxer
contribution made by Foucault to women and work is his reconstituted
psychoanalytic understanding of sexuality as referred to by Sinclair (1998).
However, a deeper exploration of Foucault’s ideas about discourse and power
(Boxer 2003a) reveals technologies of far greater value to those who find
themselves subjugated or subordinated inappropriately (Foucault 1978, 1977, 1973,
1972, pp. 50-5). Burton (1985, p. 6) explains that ‘the (P)osition of women … can
be typified as an economically-determinist (P)osition’ and later explains that it is
not a social, but rather ‘personal nature of the female’s lack of self esteem and the
female’s lack of power to define her own life in many respects’. Murphy (1994, p.
24, p.68) supports this view in demonstrating how paternalism stifles the full
potential of women while at the same time doing an even greater disservice to most
men by denying them their personal feelings and sensitivities. Although affirmative
action policies are in place in many corporations, Ross-Smith (2000) concludes that
there is a potential for women to slip into stereotypical feminine roles in the
presence of male managers.
For the purpose here, discourse is understood to be all those ideas, concepts and
beliefs that collectively provide a powerful framework for understanding and
action. Foucault observed that people and societies are constrained by the
subjectivity imposed on them by the dominant discourse of their society; the power
effects of discourse produce certain types of knowledge. Feminists – and other
radicals – suggested that subjectivity can be changed and have drawn on Foucault’s
discursive technologies to show how the dominant discourse can be altered. For
example, Gilman (1982, p. xi-xii) extends Foucault’s observation of how
epistemological myths become real to discuss root metaphors that have led to what
is perceived as ‘culturally acceptable’ normal and abnormal. Halperin (1995)
beatifies Foucault for his contribution to the queer politics that enable normal
behaviour to be challenged and the residue of dominant discourse to be dismantled.
Warner (1993) introduces a volume of queer theory proposing the articles he has
assembled demonstrates that ‘the confrontational word ‘queer’ has been applied
outside of queer such that ‘traditional academic models have ruptured.’ Indeed
Foucauldian ideas threaten some. For example, Cheney (1995, p.129) warns
conservative America of the threat to stability from Foucauldian tactics. She warns
that critical legal studies uses his ideas to ‘destroy any illusions that might exist
about stability and objectivity in the law by deconstructing its arguments.’
Hollway (1984) was the first to use the concept of Position in the social sciences.
In doing so, she drew on Foucault’s use of discourse and his exploration of power/
knowledge relationship. When Davies and Harré (1991) introduced Positioning as
the discursive production of selves they did not draw on Foucault directly, but they
did refer to Hollway (1984) and eight other Foucault inspired works amongst the 22
references listed in their bibliography. This observation led the author to explore
Foucault for the ideas that might have inspired Positioning Theory and to arrive at a
social constructionist model (Boxer 2003a, 2003b) to model the residue caused by a
77
dominant discourse. Bearing in mind Foucault (1994, p. 524) said ‘I write for
users, not for readers’, Harré explains (in an email on the 14th May 2002) he has
drawn on a discursive practice (as is shown to have been influenced by Foucault) to
understand the way people construct realities. In Positioning Theory, Foucault’s
(1972, p. 52-5) insight that ‘positions … are defined by the situation’ and ‘not
established by the synthetic activity of a consciousness’, but produced by
‘discursive practice’ and that ‘discourse … is a space of exteriority’ (Foucault 1972,
p. 55) has been applied into a realist paradigm; human conversation is going on in
ways individuals are neither aware of nor can they influence.
DEVELOPMENT OF A CONCEPTUAL MODEL
Positioning Theory concerns the discursive production of self. What this means is
that people come to understand themselves and others as they engage in
conversation and other encounters with other people. When people meet they speak
and listen as they engage in conversation. In entering into a conversation they bring
with them a Position based on their current understanding of themselves and their
relationship to the other people involved in the encounter. How they react to the
Positions brought to the encounter is one part of the Positioning Theory puzzle.
While there are other perspectives on self, this paper does not explore these.
Further research could lead to compare various ways of looking at self to validate
the assumptions made here.
Of interest in this paper is how people present themselves in a social encounter and
then how they may challenge one another as the social encounter progresses. The
initial self is here referred to as first order Positioning and the way the self evolves
through the conversation is here referred to as second order Positioning. It provides
an understanding of both what happens when people are subjugated and
subordinated as well as how people deal with that subjugation and subordination.
For many years women have been subjugated and subordinated (Burton 1985) and
in recent years there have clearly been changes. There was a dominant discourse
that allocated women unjust Positions and the residue remains until it is neutralised
by an alternative discourse (Weedon 1987). Neutralising the residue requires that it
is identified in the context of a specific social situation and dealt with during each
encounter. Positioning is understood to be an effect of discursive action that
happens within any social order. That discourse takes place at the intersection of
the four components that define that social order – or culture – as shown in Figure 1
(Boxer 2003a, 2003b).
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Lionel Boxer
Figure 1
Local
System
of Rights
Local
Moral
Order
Figure 2
Duties &
Obligations
Story-line
Position
Discursive
Action
Public &
Private
Actions
Social Constructionist Model
Speech Acts
Tri-polar Discursive Action
People do not realise the full implications of culture on how they behave. When
trying to understand cultural change it is helpful to consider a fish swimming in
water. The fish does not realise that it is in water until it is removed. People
engage in discourse within a culture that is not noticed until aspects of the culture
have changed (Murphy 1994, p. 10).
During each social encounter, those individuals involved in the conversation
generate discursive action that is tri-polar as shown in Figure 2. Each participant in
a social encounter brings with them their existing Position that has been developed
over previous social encounters and their own self-perception. The context and
events of a social encounter define the story-line of the social encounter that the
participants play out as they engage in various speech acts.
Each social encounter that occurs combines with all previous social encounters to
create expectations of how people will behave and how they can be expected to be
Positioned. If it were not for radical behaviour then Positions would not change;
people would continue in their place and accept their fate. This residue is expressed
in terms of a social flux as shown in Figures 3 and 4.
Figure 3
Local
System
of Rights
Figure 4
Duties &
Obligations
SOCIAL
FLUX
Local
Moral
Order
Public &
Private
Actions
Social Constructionist Model
Story-line
Position
Discursive
Action
Speech Acts
Tri-polar Discursive Action
79
The construct of social flux (not to be confused with the symbolic act of flux
defined by Johnson (1990)) here draws on electromagnetic theory to express a
social field generated by a culture (Boxer 2003a). Nippes (1994) has shown how
electromagnetic flux can leave a residue that can interfere with or damage
mechanical components. With prevention in mind, he goes on to suggest that the
various causes of the electromagnetic fields need to be adjusted and tuned to
neutralise inappropriate electromagnetic flux. Realism holds that there is a world
beyond the cognition of any individual. In physics it is the material world, in the
human sciences it is the human conversation, which occurs in ways that individuals
are neither aware of nor can they influence. In this sense Positioning is about
personal constructionism (not social constructionism); a realism paradigm.
Building on the analogy, it is suggested that every culture suffers from residual
social flux and that the components of the social order need to be adjusted and
tuned to prevent inappropriate social flux. CEOs of well known large organisations
have been observed ‘adjusting’ the rights, duties, morals and actions of themselves,
their subordinates and other stakeholders (Boxer 2003a).
A FRAMEWORK FOR INDIVIDUALS TO APPLY TO THEIR SITUATION
Figures 3 and 4 provide the foundation for a personal Positioning framework. Any
person can understand their social situation in general and then manage each
specific social encounter to their benefit. The data used to express the measure of
all parameters of both the Social Constructionist Model and Tri-polar Discursive
Action is qualitative: richly descriptive transcripts of what people say.
To understand the social order it is helpful to listen to ordinary conversation and
create transcripts of what is said. Deconstructing this into phrases that relate to
rights, duties, morals and actions (Table 1) provides a description of the social order
(Boxer 2003a, 2003b). An individual can then consider the implications of the
social order on their aspirations in particular. With that in mind, each social
encounter can be entered into in such a way that residual social flux that might
obstruct one’s aspirations may be neutralised. To do this it is necessary to alter one
or all of the components of the social order.
Each person in a social encounter is able to influence the tri-polar discursive action.
They can do this by engaging in self-Positioning and other-Positioning so that there
is an understanding that they are enabled to do what they aspire to do. They can
also influence the story line through various speech acts in a way that favours their
ambition (Table 2).
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Lionel Boxer
Table 1: Social Constructionist Model
Each individual perceives that they have certain rights.
1. Rights
In cases where these rights are inappropriate to the
organisation’s goals the CEO must take steps to
challenge people to realise and adopt more appropriate
rights or depart from the organisation.
Each individual adopts certain duties. In cases where
2. Duties
people have not adopted those duties necessary for the
Organisation’s goals the CEO must take steps to
challenge people to realise and accept necessary duties or
depart from the organisation.
What is important to an organisation is defined by a
3. Morals
system of morals. All system within organisations are
the responsibility of CEOs to establish and subordinate
leaders to implement.
Everyone should engage in actions that are conducive to
4. Actions
the culture of an organisation. If people’s actions are
inappropriate then the CEO must correct those actions.
Through various social encounters, one can progressively align the social order with
their ambition. Appropriately aligned, the social order or culture will provide an
environment for one to do what they aspire to do. If we want to establish a more
equitable society we have to start with ourselves and then work with others on an
individual basis.
Table 2: Components of Tri-Polar Discursive Action
When people communicate they bring themselves to the
1. Position
conversation. A person’s self is defined through the
discursive action that takes place when they
communicate. So, self is evolving all the time. It is
important that people understand themselves and the
others they are working with. If they do not then there is
no chance of making quality happen.
Each time people meet they follow some sort of story
2. Story Line
line. In formal terms this is an agenda. In business we
meet to accomplish goals. It is important to ensure that
agendas – whether formal or informal – relate to the
issues that need to be dealt with.
Every utterance people make is a speech act. It is
3. Speech
important to align these speech acts with the story line in
Acts
such a way that issues are dealt with.
81
A LITTLE SELF REFLECTION
While it may appear that the author is a converted feminist, he remains biased.
Influenced by the society in which he was raised. For example, he still looks twice
when boarding a bus driven by a woman. However, he realises that the most
satisfying employment he has experienced has tended to be when his direct superior
was a woman (although he has observed some unpleasant female leaders and some
very effective male leaders). With the benefit of his research (Boxer 2003a) he
realises that those superiors – whether male or female – he has been most impressed
by have in one way or another dealt with the four components of the social order
and in doing so Positioned themselves and others appropriate to each situation.
He notices that many of his male peers – even those committed to explore their own
sensitivities – are obstructed by the paternalistic culture that invisibly envelops all
social encounters. Furthermore, institutions that are in principle devoted to
exploring men’s sensitivities are bound up in those trappings, practices and correct
form – that men do enjoy – of paternalism. The problem is men not knowing how
to deal with the changes in their lives, the workforce and women’s Position
(McNicholas 1994).
If an individual cares about changing society they must begin by changing
themselves. How they engage in self Positioning will effect those they come in
contact with and perhaps will lead to greater change in society and their own ability
to do what they aspire to do. Each person needs to sort that out for themselves.
In conclusion, the social flux model provides a representation of the relationships of
the various components of discursive action with the various components of culture.
It follows that components of culture could be altered by components of discourse.
Hence, in the case of women and work, a woman who is dissatisfied with her
opportunities to achieve senior leadership appointments can alter her Position,
engage in storylines, and use speech acts that relate to her being a senior leader in
the organisation.
Perhaps this is simply a display of self-confidence, but perhaps self-confidence has
never been broken into components as simple as the three components of discursive
action. Furthermore, perhaps the impact of a self-confident person has never been
mapped onto organisational culture in such a clear way. It would be interesting to
observe the discursive action of women senior managers to test this theory. Perhaps
a doctoral student will pursue such a study using this framework. Another
opportunity for further research would be to consider the framework from another
perspective of self, such as that put forward by Jacques Derrida or other
continental philosophers.
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Lionel Boxer
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bacchi, C (1993) “The brick wall: why so few women become senior academics,”
The Australian Universities' Review, v.36, no.1: 36-41
Bacchi, C (2000) “The seesaw effect: down goes affirmative action, up comes
workplace diversity,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, v.5, no.2:
64-83.
Boxer, LJ (2003a) Using Positioning Theory to Understand How Senior Managers
Deal with Sustainability Issues. PhD Thesis, RMIT University, Melbourne
Boxer, LJ (2003b) “Assessment of quality systems with Positioning Theory,” in R
Harré & FM Moghaddam (eds), The self and others: positioning individuals
and groups in personal, political, and cultural contexts. Praeger: Westport.
Burton, C (1985) Subordination: feminism and social theory. Sydney: George Allen
and Urwin.
Burton, C (1988) Redefining merit. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing
Service.
Davies, B and R Harré (1991) “Positioning: the discursive production of selves,”
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, v.20, no.1: 44-63, http://www.
massey.ac.nz/~ALock/Position/Position.htm, accessed 11 Sept 1999
Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (2004) EOWA Australian
women in leadership census, http://www.eowa.gov.au/Australian_Women_In_
Leadership_Census/2004_Australian_Women_In_Leadership_Census.asp
Foucault, M (1972) The archaeology of knowledge, (trans.) AM Sheridan Smith.
London: Routledge.
Foucault, M (1973) The birth of the clinic: an archaeology of medical perception,
(trans.) A.M Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M (1977) Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, (trans.) AM
Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M (1978) History of sexuality vol 1. New York: Random House.
Foucault, M (1994) Dits et ecrits: 1954-1988. Paris: Gallimard.
Gillman, SL (1982) Seeing the Insane. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Halperin, DM (1995) Saint Foucault: towards a gay hagiography. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Hollway, W (1984) “Gender differences and the production of subjectivity,” in J
Henriques, W Hollway, C Urwin, L Venn and V Walkerdine (eds), Changing
the subject: psychology, social regulation and subjectivity. London: Methuen,
pp. 227-63.
Johnson, G (1990) “Managing strategic change: the role of symbolic action,”
British Journal of Management, v.1, no. 4: 183-200.
McNicholas, B (1994) Women and the glass ceiling. Unpublished proceedings of
Women in Management, Public Relations Institute of Australia State
Superannuation Board Seminar, Melbourne: 14 Jun 1994.
Murphy, CC (1994) An introduction to Christian feminism. Dublin: Dominican
Publications.
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Nippes, PI (1994) “Principles of magnetism and stray currents in rotating
machinery,” P/M Technology, v. 7, no. 3: 14-20.
Ross-Smith, A (2000) “Managerial work and behaviour: do women do it
differently?,” in S Clegg (ed), Organising knowledge economies and societies the Eighth APROS International Colloquium. Sydney.
Sinclair, A (1998) Doing leadership differently: gender, power and sexuality in a
changing business culture. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Sinclair, A (2000) The death of discrimination in the new economy? Not likely!
Resurrecting EEO and Diversity dot.com. Delivered at the 12th Women,
Management and Employment Relations Conference, MacQuarie Graduate
School of Management, Sydney, 26 Jul 2000, http://www.gsm.mq.edu.au/
msf/content/amanda-sinclair.htm
Warner, M (1993) Fear of a queen planet: queer politics and social theory.
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Blackwell Ltd.
84
Processes for Dealing with Conflict in the Workplace: Meeting Feminist
Concerns Regarding Mediation
Kathy Douglas
School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT University
Workplace mediation is one way of dealing with conflict. Research has
shown that workplace mediators may practice neutrality in a manner that
can prejudice some participants. Women in particular can be vulnerable in
a mediation setting where the mediator is not reflective regarding the issue
of neutrality. Generally, the traditional feminist literature relating to
mediation has criticised the widespread use of this alternative dispute
resolution mechanism as some women do not have the same opportunity to
participate equally in the mediation process. However, this inequality may
be due to the method of practice utilised by large numbers of mediators, the
problem solving model. This model allows mediator bias to operate, does
not assist women with their negotiation style or with power imbalances and
does not address issues that arise when violence is a part of the workplace
relationship. This paper advocates the adoption of new models of mediation
practice, the storytelling, narrative and transformative models. Collectively
we could describe these approaches to mediation as second generation
practice. These models reject the problem solving approach and
acknowledge that a mediator cannot be truly neutral in the mediation
process. These approaches arguably better meet the needs of those women
who require assistance in negotiation and could allay some of the
traditional concerns feminists have expressed regarding the practice of
mediation.
INTRODUCTION
Conflict in the workplace can arise in a number of forms and may lead to the need
to employ a conflict resolution mechanism. A popular alternative dispute resolution
(ADR) option is the use of mediation. Mediation can be used in a range of
situations in the workplace, for example from a formal grievance process to the
informal resolution of interpersonal issues in teams (Bloom 2002). Women in the
workplace will therefore sometimes experience mediation, but is this conflict
resolution option beneficial to women or does mediation pose particular difficulties
for some women? There is evidence to suggest that the way mediation is practiced
in the workplace does not necessarily provide just outcomes for employee
participants. Mediators in the workplace may not practice mediation in a way that
avoids conflict of interest or is reflective of notions of neutrality (Van Gramberg
85
2003a). Gender poses an additional concern in relation to mediation outcomes for
employees. Gender issues and mediation in the workplace have not been
researched in Australia, but traditional feminist concerns regarding mediation can
be raised when considering whether mediation in the workplace is fair to women.
For those women in the workplace who struggle when placed in a position where
they must negotiate for themselves, who experience power imbalances due to their
position in an organisational hierarchy and for those women who experience
organisational violence, arguably mediation is not the best option. However, it may
be that recent innovations in mediation practice will assist those women who may
be vulnerable in a mediation setting, to feel secure that they will have an equal
opportunity to bargain effectively. The use of second generation practice, an
approach to mediation that incorporates critical theory and eschews a problem
solving approach, might better meet the needs of some women in the workforce.
This paper will explore traditional feminist objections to mediation and consider
whether new innovations in practice meet these concerns. Firstly, I will explore the
use of mediation in organisations generally and then consider the kinds of issues
that affect some women when facing conflict in the workforce. I will use a case
study to demonstrate the differences in approach between mediators who employ a
problem solving approach and those mediators who utilise second generation
practice such as narrative mediation.
WHAT IS MEDIATION?
The term mediation has been given many definitions. A report by the National
Alternative Dispute Resolution Advisory Council (NADRAC), into alternative
dispute resolution mechanisms, attempted to define a number of forms of
alternative dispute resolution. In relation to mediation it defined the process as
follows (NADRAC 1997a):
Mediation is a process in which the parties to a dispute, with the
assistance of a neutral third party (the mediator), identify the disputed
issues, develop options, consider alternatives and endeavor to reach an
agreement. The mediator has no advisory or determinative role in
regard to the content of the dispute or the outcome of its resolution, but
may advise on or determine the process of mediation whereby
resolution is attempted.
THE WORKPLACE CONTEXT
Mediation can occur in a number of ways in relation to workplaces. There may be
private mediation, which is mediation generally initiated in the workplace to deal
with disputes either informally or as part of a formal grievance procedure.
Workplace negotiation of wages bargaining can include facilitation of the
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Kathy Douglas
Processes for Dealing with Conflict in the Workplace
negotiation by a third party (Van Gramberg 2003, p. 53). The Workplace Relations
Act 1987 provides a statutory scheme that allows workplace agreements to include
a dispute settlement clause: section 170T(1) and (8). The section allows for the
design of dispute resolution mechanisms which may include mediation and may
also include the Australian Industrial Relations Commission having a role in private
arbitration (Johns 2004).
There may be court connected mediation as part of litigation relating to the
workplace. In this context a worker may experience mediation as part of an action
brought under various kinds of legislation. For example a worker may experience
an ADR mechanism of conciliation when making a claim under the Sex
Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth). If dissatisfied with the outcome under the
legislation at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission the worker
may take the matter to the Federal Magistrates Court or the Federal Court. Both
courts provide for the use of mediation prior to the hearing of a matter (Mack
2003).
It is difficult to quantify the amount of private mediations occurring relating to
workplace mediations. In its recent report regarding ADR statistics (NADRAC
2003a) the Federal Council did not specifically quantify workplace mediations.
This category was arguably subsumed into the category dealing with commercial
disputes. Although NADRAC does not provide data on this area the Council
recently promoted workplace mediations and conflict management systems as part
of a conference showcasing ADR’s use in the business world; ADR-A Better Way
to Do Business(2003b).
In an effort to establish the use of private ADR in the workplace Van Gramberg
(2003a) surveyed both employers and ADR practitioners. She found slow but
continuing growth in this field with the greatest trends upwards occurring in the
areas of facilitation, mediation and conciliation. Greatest use of ADR was in the
areas of personality conflicts, disciplinary matters and facilitating enterprise
negotiations. Van Gramberg identified the decentralisation of industrial relations
and the individual focus of HRM policies and practices, with less utilisation of
unions, as reasons why there has been steady growth in private ADR (2003a, p. 53).
The types of conflict that occur in organisations are of two main types:
interpersonal and systemic conflict. Interpersonal conflict largely comes from
miscommunications and misunderstandings. It is the type of conflict that responds
to third party interventions like mediation. Systemic conflict can be more
problematic and may indicate the need for an organisation to address change issues.
Complex issues about the organisation’s mission and future direction may be a part
of this kind of conflict. Third party interventions may be appropriate, but it may be
that a range of conflict resolution techniques are required (Cloke and Goldsmith
2003).
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Van Gramberg notes that in her Australian survey of employers, internal mediation
by the HR manager was seen as the most common use of ADR in the workplace.
This kind of mediation was conducted by the HR manager in nearly a third of the
mediations that occurred (Van Gramberg. 2003a, p. 55).
External ADR
practitioners were also utilised by those employers surveyed including lawyers,
employer association representative, former tribunal members, union
representatives, academics and others (Van Gramberg 2003a, p. 55).
WORKPLACE MEDIATIONS: SOME ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES
Like mediation in other contexts mediation in the workplace has a number of
benefits. It is an informal process that encourages party participation. In a
workplace this may mean the attendance of the mediator at the organisation to
speak with parties and try to facilitate the dispute. It gives the organisation the
benefit of dealing with conflict early. Employees have the chance to map out their
own solutions to problems and be creative in their response to conflict (Cloke and
Goldsmith 2003).
Mediation has been seen as valuable because parties have the opportunity to
personally put their perspectives on a dispute, rather than through a third party such
as a lawyer (Bloom 2002). The focus in mediation will generally be upon the
relationship between the parties rather than the rights that parties perceive
themselves to have.
The disadvantages of mediation relate largely to the private nature of this dispute
resolution mechanism. A public hearing of a dispute in a court allows for parties to
air a grievance. This allows for issues to come out into the open and may force
organisations to address systemic conflicts (Astor and Chinkin 2002, p. 65). ADR
and mediation may be said to be pushing workplace concerns into the private
sphere where unjust outcomes can be hidden from view (Van Gromberg 2003b).
Additionally, a court has coercive powers to help equalise power between parties
(Astor and Chinkin 2002, p. 73). In a mediation a mediator has no such power and
his ability to intervene upon the side of one party is usually restricted by the
philosophical position of neutrality that is commonly adopted.
In a workplace there are clear power imbalances between employees and
management that may provide particular cause for concern when analysing the
advantages and disadvantages of mediation. There is usually a hierarchical
relationship between the parties at a workplace and ADR processes, including
mediation, may be used by management to further management’s own agenda. Van
Gromberg found in her research that employers can use the processes of ADR to
disempower employees. Through the analysis of three case studies Van Gromberg
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(2003a p. 66) pointed to occasions where external consultants employed to facilitate
agreements confused their role and drifted into the role of advocate for
management. Employees still trusted the process, even if unhappy with the
outcome, due to the rhetoric of neutrality:
Finally, why do these weaker parties accept unfavourable outcomes?
Early evidence points again to the powerful symbolism of neutrality of
the ADR practitioner and the unquestioning acceptance by all
disputants of ADR rhetoric which holds it to be a more peaceful means
of dispute resolution than the formal adversarial system of tribunals and
courts.
Research which finds a confused notion of neutrality is of interest to this discussion
as neutrality is a major issue when considering traditional feminist concerns with
the practice of mediation.
THE VALUE OF MEDIATION FOR WOMEN
When mediation began to be used routinely as an alternative dispute resolution
mechanism many hailed the process as an opportunity for a more female approach
to conflict. Some feminists, critiquing dispute resolution, saw mediation as an
opportunity to introduce a female ethic of care into conflict resolution (MenkelMeadow 1984). However, this initial glow of confidence subsequently faded.
Concerns regarding the practice of mediation were raised and doubts expressed
about women’s ability to equally engage in the process (Grillo 1991). Should
feminists continue to be concerned about the use of mediation? There have been
developments in the literature and practice of mediation that might now address
many of the fears feminists have held regarding mediation. Second generation
practice, a term being coined by some mediators (Cobb 2001, p. 1029), approaches
the practice of mediation in such a way that some of the promise of mediation that
was initially envisaged might now be said to have come to fruition. The key is the
idea of neutrality, a core concept for many when discussing mediation practice.
Traditionally a problem solving approach to mediation, a model routinely used in
workplace mediation, values the concept of a neutral mediator who facilitates
consensual agreement between parties. A neutral mediator does not influence the
content of the mediation. The mediator is limited to influencing the process of the
mediation itself and does not seek to actively assist parties (Bush and Folger 1994,
p. 16). Alternative models of mediation such as mediation as storytelling, narrative
mediation and transformative mediation have a critical approach to the concept of
neutrality (Cobb and Rifkin 1991, Winslade and Monk 2001, Bush and Folger
1994). This critical approach arguably allows the concerns of women to be heard.
The possibility of a neutral mediator is rejected and the mediator actively helps
those women who require support in a mediation to articulate their stories and
positions.
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Some of the ways that women are at risk in mediation centre around the concept of
neutrality and the possible exposure to bias. By seeing themselves as neutral,
without any reflection regarding their own biases, mediators can fail to see that they
are constructing women in a certain way throughout the mediation process. Key
issues for feminists relate to issues of bias in the process and these concerns are
linked to issues regarding the ability of women to effectively negotiate on their own
behalf, power imbalances and the use of mediation in relationships that have had a
history of violence.
A FEMALE ETHIC OF CARE?
When the practice of mediation first enjoyed a resurgence of popularity and interest
in the western systems of dispute resolution many saw mediation as a much needed
change of approach (Menkel-Meadows 1984, p. 795). Commonly, disputes were
dealt with by negotiation or litigation. Mediation was seen as a welcome alternative
that could, through the presence of a neutral third party, provide a process where a
rights-based discourse could take a back seat to an exploration of party’s needs and
a creative approach to problem solving. Some feminist scholars categorised
mediation as a female approach to conflict resolution. Basing their analyses on the
work of the psychologist Carol Gilligan they highlighted the adversarial nature of
litigation and saw mediation as an opportunity to move away from a focus upon the
legalistic rights of participants. Mediation provided the opportunity for the direct
participation and involvement in dispute resolution of the parties (Menkel-Meadow
1985, p. 39, Rifkin 1984, p. 21).
The view that mediation involves a particular female approach was based upon the
convergence of two important works: Gilligan’s (1982) writings in relation to
psychological research and Harvard negotiators Fisher and Ury’s (1981) facilitative
model of negotiation that included a win/win dichotomy. Gilligan’s influential
thesis posits that the women and men have a different approach to problem solving.
Working with children, Gilligan used a case study approach to explore the way the
two genders solve moral dilemmas. The case study involved a wife dying of cancer
and a husband who needed to purchase a drug from a pharmacist in order to assist
her. However, the husband is not in a position to buy the drug and hence the
children in the study are presented with a dilemma. The responses that Gilligan
received led her to a theory of women in our society having a distinct voice from
men. The female child in the study, eleven year old Amy, responds differently to
the male eleven year old child Jake (Gilligan 1982, p. 17).
When faced with the dilemma in the case study Jake responds with a view of how
to solve the problem. His approach is categorised by Gilligan as a rights ethic. He
balances the rights of the pharmacist with that of the wife. Life is the more
important, he concludes, so he determines that the husband should steal the drug.
Amy, in contrast, states that the husband should not steal the drug because that
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would affect the relationship of the three people involved and instead she asks for
more information. She wants to know if the two have discussed the importance of
the drug to the wife’s health. What she proposes is an exploration of options.
Gilligan categorises this approach as the care ethic. Both men and women can
exercise the rights and care ethic, but it would appear that the two different
approaches spring from gender socialisation. Society values the male approach
above the female approach, but we need to value the female approach as a different
voice (Gilligan 1982, p. 25).
PROBLEM SOLVING MODEL
The contribution of Harvard negotiators, Fisher and Ury, to the mediation industry
has been significant. A model of mediation that is widely practiced, both in the
courts and in workplaces, is the problem solving model. Fisher and Ury (1981)
developed an approach to negotiation that attempts to explore options in such a way
that parties are able to negotiate a win/win solution. This approach rejects the
adversarial method of negotiation where competition results in win/lose outcomes.
Using four concepts to inform the negotiation Fisher and Ury try to move away
from the more traditional models of negotiation, particularly the win/lose approach.
By separating the people from the problem, focusing on interests rather than
positions, inventing options for mutual gain and using objective criteria, Fisher and
Ury encourage a more creative interaction. This approach, described as a principled
approach to negotiation, can result in a consensual outcome that benefits all of the
parties (Fisher and Ury 1981). The principled approach was adopted widely in the
mediation movement. It is the foundation of the problem solving model of
mediation which allows for the exchange of information, a search for the interests
behind demands and a creative exploration of solutions (Bush and Folger 1994, p.
63). The mediator would generally see him/herself as a neutral facilitator in charge
of the process, not the content, of the mediation (Astor and Chinkin 2002, p. 149).
Initially, some feminists saw this kind of negotiation as incorporating the female
ethic of care as espoused by Gilligan (1982). The prominent legal writer Carrie
Menkel-Meadows was one of the scholars who advocated a change of direction.
She saw mediation as the opportunity to alter the legal discourse and include the
voice of women in dispute resolution. By abandoning the win/lose dichotomy the
potential for the female voice to be heard seemed possible. The female approach of
valuing relationships, of concentrating on the particulars of a situation rather then
upon abstract notions of justice, of searching for options and creative solutions (as
Amy did in the Gilligan study) of utilising empathy and of allowing people to be
heard could all be incorporated in a model of mediation that utilised the Fisher and
Ury approach to negotiation (Menkel-Meadow, 1985, p. 39). However, other
feminists saw mediation as problematic for a number of reasons and cautioned
against its use.
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TRADITIONAL FEMINIST CONCERNS WITH MEDIATION: SELECTED
ISSUES
Bias
One of the key concerns that feminists have raised relates to the potential bias that
women may be exposed to during the mediation process from the mediator or
mediators (Grillo 1991). Poststructuralist theory has identified the inability for
those in power, such as mediators, to be truly objective. Truth or reality is socially
constructed so that the perceptions that mediators bring to the negotiating table are
shaped by the influence of cultural, historical, political and economic norms
(Bagshaw 2003, p. 131).
Feminists have long maintained that women, due to the nature of patriarchal
society, are constructed in such a way that they cannot equally engage in our
society. In the law, and in all walks of life, women are disadvantaged by the
assumptions that operate about their experience (Graycar and Morgan 2002, p. 28).
One of the attributes of the problem solving model is the view that mediators can be
neutral in the mediation process. The practice of mediation has relied heavily on
this attribute in order to convince the public, business and government alike that
mediation is as unbiased as the court system. The acceptability of mediation as a
dispute resolution option has arguably centred around the neutrality factor.
However, mediators cannot be neutral. A mediator can be even-handed in their
approach to the parties, i.e. by giving equal time and attention throughout the
process, but their own view of the world will affect how they see the parties and
how they conduct the mediation (Cobb and Rifkin 1991, p. 37). At times this may
disadvantage women as mediators either overtly or covertly influence the mediation
and silence women’s concerns. Mediation practice can vary widely and some
mediators actively intervene in a mediation to bring about settlement. Other
mediators eschew this directive practice, but also affect the outcome of the
mediation through subtle influence upon the interactions of the parties (Astor and
Chinkin 2002, p. 150).
Problem Solving and Selective Facilitation
Mediators tend to see the conflict in the dispute as a problem that requires a
solution. From the opening statements of the parties they search for the parameters
of the problem and the best way to find a ‘fix’ (Bush and Folger 1994, p. 65).
Mediators may then pursue an outcome during the mediation process. By use of
selective facilitation mediators can ensure that outcomes they perceive as preferable
are given more time in the process. Mediators steer participants towards these
outcomes by cutting short discussion of other options and returning to preferred
options (Greatbatch and Dingwall 1989, p. 613). Due to the nature of patriarchy
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mediators may see women as the party who should make compromises or who, due
to her gender, should accept a particular outcome (Astor and Chinkin 2002, p. 167).
Mediators may have a view of the ways that they expect and would like participants
to behave in the mediation process. If a participant acts in a manner that does not
suit the mediators view of the world she may be quelled. Cues work as messages of
approval and disapproval. A woman in a mediation who is angry and demanding
may be asked to modify her behaviour because it does not match the way the
mediator sees appropriate female behaviour. She is categorised as strident, but a
man in the same circumstances may be given much greater latitude and be
categorised as assertive (Trillo 1991, p. 1556).
During the process of mediation many mediators will call a private meeting or
caucus. This is the opportunity to speak with the participants privately and discuss
issues more frankly. Options are frequently explored during this part of the
mediation. The opportunity for a mediator to pressure a participant is expanded
during the private session (Moore 1996, p. 325).
Ability to Negotiate
This last point raises one of the major concerns with the Fisher and Ury model of
negotiation and its utilisation in mediation. Some women do not fare well in mixed
gender negotiations (Astor and Chinkin 2002, pp. 130-132). Gilligan’s analysis of
gendered socialised approaches to moral quandaries is relevant here. Studies
relating to women and the way that they negotiate suggest that women have a
different orientation to men. Women have a preference for harmony and a focus
upon the relationship dimension of the interaction (Kolb 2000).
When pitted against men who adopt a more aggressive, positional bargaining
approach, women may not be as successful in the negotiation. Many women are not
traditional bargainers. Their commitment to relationships may mean that they
sacrifice other issues. Their ethic of care may mean that they are not able to bargain
effectively for themselves (Astor and Chinkin 2002, pp. 128-129). One of Fisher
and Ury’s premises is the need to separate the people from the problem. Women do
not generally wish to disassociate the people from the problem (Menkel-Meadow
1983-84, p. 841) because one of their main focuses is the relationship dimension.
Additionally, gender is not the only issue to consider in relation to women’s ability
to negotiate. Race, ethnicity and sexuality are some of the aspects of identity that
will affect women in the negotiation parts of the mediation. The issue of identity
will vary from mediation to mediation according to who is involved in the process.
Fisher and Ury in the second edition of their book addressed issues of identity by
advocating that negotiators be sensitive to these issues and reflective of their own
assumptions (Astor and Chinkin 2002, pp. 133-134). The question remains though
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whether fundamentally the problem solving model of mediation can really address
some women’s needs as the emphasis upon neutrality does not allow a mediator to
actively intervene on behalf of women?
Power Imbalance
Power imbalances were also not sufficiently addressed in the Fisher and Ury
original model. Power is a difficult matter in mediations as stereotypical
assumptions can be made by both mediators and participants which may not apply
in a given situation. For example a manager in an organisation would be likely to
have more power than a clerk or a receptionist, but the manager may not choose to
exercise that power (Astor and Chinkin 2002, p.149). However, it is clear that many
women do suffer power imbalances in mediation. Traditionally they do not have
access to the financial resources, positions in society and the kinds of employment
that men are able to access (Mack 1995, p. 126, Graycar and Morgan 2002, p. 85).
Some men have a sense of entitlement over women and this can lead to conflict.
‘Exaggerated entitlement contributes to a large number of conflicts within families
and in the workplace’ (Winslade and Monk, 2001 p. 101).
Violence
Lastly, one of the major concerns feminists have expressed regarding women and
mediation deals with the issue of violence. A history of violence in a relationship
may mean that the recipient of that violence cannot negotiate effectively with the
perpetrator (Astor and Chinkin 2001, p. 351). Many feminists have commented
upon the issue of violence in the context of family law, but these concerns can be
extrapolated to the workplace context where violence also occurs (Larsen n.d.).
NEW APPROACHES: NEW OPPORTUNITIES
By moving away from the problem solving approach to mediation are we able to
better meet the needs of women? Arguably, by adopting new models of mediation,
which reject the premise of neutrality and encourage interventions by the mediator,
the promise that Menkel-Meadow and others saw in mediation can be achieved.
The explicit use of critical theory in place of the illusion of neutrality allows
mediators to intervene where issues of gender arise. New models of mediation
acknowledge the impact of the mediator on the content of the mediation and ask the
mediator him/herself to reflect upon their own biases. The mediator is therefore
more aware of the potential for gender stereotyping in the mediation.
Collectively, I would regard these new kinds of mediation models as second
generation approaches. Sara Cobb (2001, p. 1029), one of the most influential
writers in the area of mediation, has coined this phrase to differentiate new,
reflective practice from the efforts of early practitioners of mediation:
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This is a radical departure from what could be called ‘first-generation’
mediation practice, where the mandate not to impact the content of the
dispute is thought to be essential to preserving the privilege the parties
have to define their own problems and build their own solutions.
However, once we adopt an interactionist or social constructionist
perspective, the mandate to separate content from process dissolves, as
mediators recognize the inevitability of their impact on the content of
the dispute. This attention to the evolution of the content calls for a
‘second-generation’ mediation practice in which mediators interact with
disputants so as to evolve the conflict stories, reformulate relationships,
reframe the past and rebuild the future.
Cobb (2001) advocates a model known as mediation as storytelling. Critiquing the
mediation process Cobb expounds an approach to mediation which facilitates story
telling. She rejects the problem solving approach and engages with the issue of
neutrality. Cobb and Rifkin (1991) have been influential in raising the issue of the
lack of mediator neutrality and the false distinction made by many mediators that
they control the process and not the content of mediation. The effect on practice of
the realisation that mediators cannot be neutral is that mediators can more explicitly
intervene in the way that the mediation unfolds. The mediator can use the process
of mediation, such as opening statements, private meetings and questioning
techniques to co-construct a story that may lead to the parties being empowered.
Disputant’s participation is enhanced and their original narratives destabilised
allowing each story to contribute to the construction of a new narrative (Cobb 1993,
p. 253).
In a similar manner narrative mediation constructs mediation as a storytelling
experience. Like Cobb narrative mediation practitioners do not make the distinction
between the process of the mediation and the content of the mediation. The
mediator is an active participant and he/she makes the party aware of their role.
The conflict stories that many parties bring to mediation often consist of scenarios
of mutual blame. The mediator does not seek to establish the facts of the dispute,
believing there is no independent truth to be found, but instead validates each
parties’ perspective. The mediator then seeks to destabilise the stories of blame,
using questioning and private meetings to open up the story that the participant
brings to the mediation. By the use of various techniques the mediator attempts to
loosen the convictions that parties have and assists them to map the history and
effect of the conflict. The mediator then actively works to find a solution to the
dispute. There is no pretence of neutrality and the mediator is explicit in his/her coauthoring role in finding a new more co-operative story for the parties (Winslade
and Monk 2001).
This approach differs from Cobb in that the emphasis is upon larger societal stories
and their effect upon the stories of the particular mediation. The stories brought to
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the mediation table are influenced by the themes of the cultural contexts in which
they were formulated. The mediator makes clear his/her use of postmodern theory
to deconstruct and then reconstruct the disputant’s stories during the mediation.
This kind of approach has much in common with narrative therapy and has been
used extensively in family law disputes. However, this approach can be applied to
all types of disputes (Winslade, Monk and Cotter 1998, p. 24). I will consider this
kind of practice in more detail in the case study that follows in the next section of
this paper.
Transformative mediation also rejects the problem solving approach and replaces it
with the aim of participants achieving moral growth. Growth occurs through
mediator interventions designed to increase both empowerment and recognition
amongst the participants. Empowerment refers to the fact that in each mediation
participants have the potential to increase their own feelings of self worth and their
capabilities in relation to the difficulties they face. Recognition deals with the
opportunity to experience a greater empathy with other parties in the dispute; to
acknowledge and respond to the concerns and difficulties that other parties face and
to feel a common bond of humanity (Bush and Folger 1994). Again, mediator
neutrality is crucial in the approach adopted by practitioners of the transformative
model. There is an understanding that mediators cannot be neutral and that they
impact upon the mediation as it unfolds. Specific mediator interventions are
advocated as a method of achieving empowerment and recognition for disputants
(Bush and Folger 1994, p. 261).
Each of the above approaches fits Cobb’s definition of second generation practice.
Through a rejection of problem solving and a realisation of their own lack of
neutrality mediators can move away from the dominant mode of practice and adopt
new approaches which incorporate critical theory. To illustrate the differences in
the problem solving approach and the second generation models of practice I
include a case study of mediation in the workplace. The case study incorporates a
problem solving approach to mediation. I contrast this approach with the way that a
second generation practitioner, using the narrative approach, would have mediated
the dispute.
CASE STUDY
Liz worked as an administrative assistant in a large organisation. She was new to
the company having worked for three years at a university. Initially, she enjoyed
her work providing administrative support to four sales managers. However, early
on in her new job she noticed that one of the managers, Thomas, was more
demanding than the rest. He wanted her to do all his typing, photocopying, make all
of his appointments and cover for him with customers when he was late to
meetings. Liz knew that it was not part of her role to be this manager’s personal
assistant, but she knew she was expected to provide some level of assistance to all
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the managers. As time passed Thomas started to ask for her help more forcibly. He
would be at her office on the dot of 9.00 am. If she did not immediately address his
needs he became belligerent, complaining that the support he got from
administrative staff was not like the old days.
Liz tried to explain the competing demands of her job, but he would become
angrier, raise his voice and sometimes shout at her in another language. Thomas
sometimes spoke in Russian, his language of birth, when under stress. Liz started
to dread going to work. She would arrive early and lock her door, but he would
knock until she answered. She heard Thomas whispering to other staff about her.
Liz spoke to her supervisor who described the manager as ‘difficult’ and told her to
do her best to get along with him.
Then one day she said to Thomas that his work would have to wait and he screamed
at her that she was a disgrace and slammed her door as he left the room. She
decided to put in a formal complaint and after some time the processes of the
organisation led to mediation.
Now Liz was happy about this. She had heard about mediation. She understood it to
be talking things over in an informal setting and she readily agreed to participate,
although she was nervous about facing the manager. She had been told that he
refuted her version of events and had accused her of being a racist. His view was
that the trouble between them came from her inability to tolerate his cultural
heritage. It was decided that both parties should bring union representatives as
support people.
At the mediation each person was given the opportunity to make an opening
statement and Liz did so, stating that she hoped for an apology as an outcome of the
mediation. When Thomas began his statement, he said, ‘I will never apologise.
Nothing you can say will make me apologise as I did nothing wrong’.
As the mediation unfolded it seemed to Liz that the mediator spent a great deal of
time establishing the details of her position description. She felt that the events
leading up to her complaint were skimmed over. The mediator said on several
occasions that she wanted to ascertain the facts of what happened. She told Liz and
Thomas that it was important to deal with the problem and not the emotional
baggage associated with the problem.
After some time it became evident to Liz that the mediator wanted her to
compromise. She wanted Liz to forgo the apology in order to work out ways that
she and the manager could continue working together. She asked Liz ‘Is it a good
idea to shut your door and lock it if you want to do your job properly?’
Later the mediator talked about the need to put the past behind them and look to the
future. She looked pointedly at Liz and asked, ‘How can we get along?’
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During the mediation Liz could see that the mediator was also trying to get Thomas
to see the events from Liz’s point of view. It was clear to Liz that the mediator was
pressing Thomas to consider work place behaviour. However, she felt that most of
the compromises were coming from her. In the private meeting phase of the
mediation the mediator asked her to be ‘big’ about the experience. ‘You can see
what kind of man he is. He is stubborn’. The union representative was largely silent
throughout the mediation.
Liz was persuaded to give up the need for an apology. At the end of the mediation
she was surprised to realise that the disturbing allegation of racism had been skated
over by all the other participants.
During the final phase of the mediation she and Thomas agreed on the amount of
assistance she could give him and the times of the day he could ask for help. The
mediation finished with the mediator congratulating them all on a job well done.
After the mediation Liz was very dissatisfied. In time the same kinds of problems
surfaced and she put in a claim for stress.
We are left then with a mediation that had a successful conclusion but one which
later unravelled. How would adoption of any of the models earlier describe alter
the way that the mediation unfolded? By focusing upon one of the models of
mediation, the narrative model, I will seek to highlight the way that second
generation practice might better meet the needs of some women.
AN EXAMPLE OF SECOND GENERATION PRACTICE: NARRATIVE
MEDIATION
Firstly, a practitioner of the narrative model of mediation would have considered
the issue of violence in the relationship between Liz and Thomas. He would have
questioned Liz prior to the mediation, asking whether Liz felt confident to negotiate
with Thomas given their history. The mediator would have utilised the support
person from the union by briefing the representative before hand, alerting them to
the issue of violence and devising strategies to support Liz in the mediation process.
The mediation would only have occurred if the mediator was satisfied that Liz was
confident enough to proceed. Thomas too would have been briefed before hand in
relation to the mediation process in order to ensure an even handed approach to the
parties.
A mediator that practices a narrative approach to mediation would have recognised
that parties to this case study had constructed stories of their experience. The
mediator would not try to establish the objective truth of what occurred, but instead
would focus upon perceptions of what occurred. The mediator would understand
that events are socially constructed and are not independently known. Parties, such
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as Liz and Thomas, generally come to mediation with a rehearsed ‘story’. Often
they have constructed a narrative that paints themselves as the victim and the other
party as a villain. Liz has constructed her story to reflect her sense of frustration
with Thomas. While Thomas has constructed a story that portrays Liz as racist in
being unable to understand his cultural heritage and his likely emotional response to
stress (Winslade and Monk, 2001 p. 3).
Using a narrative technique of externalising the conversation the mediator would
have actively intervened in the way the parties were storying the dispute. The
mediator would have attempted to give the dispute a name external to the
participants. ‘As mediators externalize a problem, they speak about it as if it were
an external object or person exerting an influence on the parties but they do not
identify it closely with one party or the other’ (Winslade and Monk, 2001 p. 6). In
this case study the dispute might have been called the ‘breakdown of
communication’. Use of the externalising technique may have meant that Thomas
felt less blame about the way he behaved in the workplace and he may then have
been more open to apologising.
The mediator would have sought to destabilise the stories that Liz and Thomas have
constructed. By speaking about the history and effects of the dispute he would have
attempted to create space in the stories that the participants brought to the mediation
(Winslade and Monk, 2001 pp. 147-156). This approach might have helped
Thomas to understand the effects of his behaviour upon Liz. Similarly, Liz may
have come to understand the kinds of pressures that Thomas felt he was under and
his need for administrative support.
The mediator would have attempted to deconstruct the dominant story lines that
have emerged in the mediation. The mediator would have, in private the meeting,
mapped with Thomas and Liz the dominant societal discourses that affect their
dispute. Through the technique of curious questioning (Winslade and Monk, 2001
p. 123) the mediator would have asked a series of questions aimed at helping the
participants tease out the assumptions that underlined their expectations in this
workplace. Curious questioning asks the mediator to utilise a naive stance that
questions the meaning of terms used in the mediation (Winslade and Monk, 2001 p.
80).
Issues of gender and race would have been addressed by the mediator. The issue of
race would not have been selectively deleted from the discussion by the mediator.
The narrative mediation approach asks mediators to reflect upon issues such as
gender, race and other identity issues that affect a mediation and parties’ ability to
negotiate (Winslade and Monk, 2001 pp. 96-103). Liz and Thomas would have
been asked to consider the societal discourses relating to Thomas’ ethnicity and the
effect upon their workplace relationship.
99
Thomas may have come to see that his view of the tasks that Liz should perform
come from an exaggerated sense of entitlement. The mediator would have
deconstructed the view that Thomas brought to the mediation that Liz was not
sufficiently supporting him. ‘By being attentive to how systemic patterns of
entitlement are featured in conflict, the mediator can make efforts to assist those
whose voices are often silenced or marginalized. This assistance needs to be
approached by the mediator in a manner that does not alienate the party who
appears to be the most advantaged as the mediation begins’ (Winslade and Monk,
2001 p. 101).
As the narrative mediation approach does not subscribe to the problem solving view
of neutrality the mediator would have been free to actively support Liz. This would
have occurred in the pre-mediation session (intake) and in the private meeting stage
of the mediation so that Thomas would not feel that the process was uneven. Liz
would have been helped to understand the nature of the conflict, including the
issues of gender, ethnicity and organisational hierarchy. Liz may have come to
reflect upon issues of cultural difference and the need for communication. The
mediator would have sought to engage the union representative to help Liz to
articulate her position. Both parties, through out the mediation, would have been
asked to consider workplace behaviour and what it means to work in a team.
Importantly, the approach of narrative mediation, asks that each mediator be
reflexive about their practice. This requires the mediator to take account of the
effect that he has upon the other people in the mediation. It requires the mediator to
be reflective of his biases and the power that he wields in mediation. Thus a
narrative mediation practitioner would not have stereotyped Liz as he would have
been reflective of his own gender biases (Winslade and Monk, 2001 pp. 120-123).
Lastly, the mediator would have helped to construct a solution bound narrative with
the parties. The mediator would actively work with the parties to explore ways to
move forward in the future. He may have used the written word to assist in this
process (Winslade and Monk, 2001 p. 239). This may have included detailed ideas
of how Liz and Thomas would work together in the future, including
communication and emotional responses to each others behaviour. The mediator
would have co-authored, actively contributed, to the agreement between the parties.
There would have been no pretence of neutrality.
Ultimately, I would argue that the narrative approach would have meant a very
different kind of mediation experience for Liz. This kind of mediation experience
would have been more likely to result in a lasting agreement between the parties. In
the context of this paper’s discussion the different approach of narrative mediation,
and second generation practice, would have addressed the traditional feminist
concerns that have been raised regarding mediation.
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Kathy Douglas
CONCLUSION: ALTERING THE MINDSET
Second generation practice that rejects problem solving mediation and
acknowledges a mediator’s inability to be neutral can work to better meet the needs
of women in workplace settings where conflict occurs. However, these kinds of
models will not be used unless employers and human resource workers come to
know about the issues concerning women and the possible alternatives to problem
solving that are available. The problem solving model has wide acceptance in the
mediation community (Bush and Folger 1984, p. 59). Mediators need to be alerted
to different models of practice and the benefits that may flow from adoption of
these second generation models. How can we alter the discourse so that second
generation practice becomes widely known and accepted?
In Australia important influential groups looking at issues of ADR and mediation,
such as NADRAC, must articulate the limitations of the problem solving approach
and the contentious nature of neutrality. At present these kinds of issues are given
only lip service. A recently released major report into standards in the practice of
ADR (NADRAC 2001) does not adequately address concerns regarding the
problem solving model and neutrality. These issues have been canvassed in an
earlier discussion paper that preceded the final report (NADRAC 1997b), but more
recently they seem to have received scant attention. Similarly, gender issues in
mediation are not given detailed attention in the final report, except in relation to
violence.
The key is to encourage the undertaking of research in this area. There is limited
research available in relation to workplace mediation (Van Gramberg 2003a and
2003b) and even less available in relation to gender and mediation in the workplace.
NADRAC (2004b) is presently encouraging the use of research to expand
understanding of ADR. Earlier in this paper I commented that NADRAC was also
promoting workplace mediation as part of its showcasing of ADR mechanisms for
business. Before government moves further along the path of privatising disputes in
workplaces we should conduct research into the context of workplaces. Funding
needs to be made available to test issues relating to workplace concerns and these
concerns should include neutrality and gender issues. There are a number of
academic writers who are engaging with the perplexing problems of neutrality
(Astor 2000, Mayer 2004). Importantly, Van Gromberg (2003a, p. 66) identified
neutrality as an issue for training and accreditation in the context of the workplace.
More research needs to be undertaken and that research needs to include gender
issues. Too easily gender issues in mediation seem to slip from NADRAC’s agenda
and women’s concerns are not addressed in the current debates.
Issues relating to accreditation of mediators should explicitly deal with gender
education and second generation practice. Accreditation in Australia is still being
considered (NADRAC 2004a) and some form of accreditation seems likely to occur
101
in the near future. Accreditation must not be limited to the problem solving model.
Issues relating to neutrality need to be engaged with by the mediation industry and
the philosophy underpinning accreditation needs to abandon the concept of the third
party neutral.
Second generation practice must be brought into the mainstream. This requires that
short course providers, TAFE colleges and universities teach second generation
practice models. Research should be undertaken to ascertain what models are being
taught by these groups and in particular to explore whether the problem solving
model is the dominant model (Douglas 2002).
If workplace mediators are to understand and reflect upon the need to address
women’s issues we require more public debate in the mediation industry. Second
generation practice needs to be engaged with by the community of mediators so that
women can confidently be involved in the mediation process. Only then will
mediation be a dispute resolution option in the workplace that all women will be
able to trust.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Australasian Dispute Resolution Journal, v.11: 73-83.
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(accessed August 18, 2004)
Bush, RB and Folger, J (1994) The promise of mediation: responding to conflict
through empowerment and recognition, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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awareness and authenticity at work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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754-842.
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lawyering process,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal, v. 1: 39-63.
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2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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workplaces,” The Arbitrator and Mediator, v. 22: 53-66.
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(In)Visible Women: Representation of Women in an Australian Business
Publication
Maureen Fastenau
School of Management, RMIT University
The media both reflect and create reality. What journalists and their editors
present--what they choose to present and what they choose to omit--about
the world contributes to our individual and collective perceptions of the
world, including our views about the appropriate roles of men and women
in the workforce. Their choices can have the effect of maintaining and
reinforcing the status quo, of reasserting old or dated realities, or of
alerting us to new possibilities or to new or emerging realities. This paper
discusses how women have been and are represented in the leading
Australian business magazine, BRW (Business Review Weekly) and
discusses the implications of this representation on women's opportunities
for recognition of professional expertise and for accessing senior positions
in organisations, including positions at the highest levels of management
and on Boards of Directors.
INTRODUCTION
The media both reflect and create reality. What journalists and their editors
present--what they choose to present and what they choose to omit--about the world
contributes to our individual and collective perceptions of the world, including our
views about the appropriate roles of men and women in the workforce. Their
choices can have the effect of maintaining and reinforcing the status quo, of
reasserting old or dated realities, or of alerting us to new possibilities or to new or
emerging realities. This paper discusses how women have been and are represented
in a leading Australian business magazine, BRW (Business Review Weekly) and
discusses the implications of this representation on women’s opportunities for
recognition of professional expertise and for accessing senior positions in
organisations, including positions at the highest levels of management and on
Boards of Directors.
The Role of the Media
Norman Fairclough (1995, p. 2) in Media Discourse comments that the media has
the ‘power to influence knowledge, beliefs, values, social relations, [and] social
identities’ through ‘its power to represent things in particular ways’. This power is
exercised through decisions about what to include or exclude and how what is
105
included is presented (Courtney and Whipple 1983, p. 4). The media, Fairclough
(1995, p. 5) also suggests, exercises its power to represent ‘reality’ through
decisions about who is involved in the story (interviewer, interviewee, third parties,
audience, etc.) and how they are represented and also by the relationships
established between the parties involved (e.g. between the interviewer-interviewee,
interviewer-audience, interviewee-audience, etc.)
How has the media chosen to represent women? There is a significant body of
research on how women, including women in work roles, are represented in the
media, particularly in magazines and newspapers and on television and often with
regard to advertisements and the impact of these representations on women and
men (see, for example, Wiles, Wiles, and Tjernlund 1995; Ford, Latour, and
Lundstrom 1991; Krefting 2002; Shugart 2003; LaFollette 1988; King and Multon
1996; Courtney and Whipple 1983; Christiansen 1979; and the seminal work by
Goffman (1976) which considers how women are represented in advertisements,
including how they are represented in work roles). The research also indicates, as
noted by Courtney and Whipple (1983, p. 4) that ‘the way the sexes are portrayed in
the media can have a cumulative effect on the way women and men perceive
themselves’ and how they perceive each other.
Women in Australian Management and the Professions
Women today make up over 43 per cent of the Australian workforce, and are
increasing their representation in a number of professions and occupations. Over
the past 25 years, Australian women have increased their workforce participation
significantly (ABS 1994, 2003). In 1983, the female workforce participation rate
was 44 per cent, and women made up 37 per cent of the workforce. By 2002, the
female participation rate had risen to almost 65 percent.
Although Australian women have increased their workforce participation, the
vertical and horizontal segregation which has historically characterised women’s
participation in the Australian workforce continues today. Approximately 50 per
cent of women workers are employed as clerical workers or in sales and personal
service occupations (55.6 per cent in 1986 and 47.3 per cent in 2001), while men in
the paid workforce continue to be more evenly distributed across occupational
categories, with between 12-20 per cent employed in each occupational category
(see ABS 1993; ‘Women at work’ 1995; Commonwealth Office on the Status of
Women 1999, 2003).
In 1986, the year the Australian Affirmative Action legislation was enacted, only
22.5 per cent of managers and administrators were women. By 2001, fifteen years
after the enactment of the legislation, it had increased to 28.0 per cent (ABS 1993;
Office of Status of Women 2003). This increase has, however, largely been at the
supervisory and middle management levels.
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Maureen Fastenau
(In)visible Women
The Affirmative Action Agency (1995, p. 20) now the Equal Opportunity for
Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) reported that women were underrepresented at all levels of management, even in those industries dominated by
women. Overall, only 8 per cent of Australian executive managers were women in
1995, and women held only 15 per cent of senior management positions. In
Education, an industry in which women made up 65 per cent of the workforce, only
7 per cent of executive management positions were held by women. In Hospitality,
women held 48 per cent of the junior and middle management positions, but only
29 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, of the senior and executive management
positions. In the Retail industry, where women make up 53 per cent of the
workforce, women held only 12 per cent of executive management positions. The
higher the levels of management, regardless of industry and regardless of the level
of participation of women in that industry, the fewer the women.
The Agency has recently completed a census of Australian women in leadership
positions in publicly held companies (EOWA 2003). It reported that of the top 200
companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, women held only 8.8 per cent
of executive management positions, and almost 50 per cent of the companies had no
women executive managers. The census noted that holding line management
positions provides one avenue to CEO and Board appointments, but women hold
only 4.7 per cent of line management positions (EOWA 2003, p. 4). Women,
however, held 43.0 per cent of managerial and professional specialty positions in
these companies, and were more likely than men (62 per cent cf. 26 per cent) to be
in staff, rather than line, management positions (EOWA 2003, pp. 1, 4).
The census (EOWA 2003, p. 1) reported similarly disappointing data for women on
Boards of Directors. Women in 2003 held only 8.4 per cent of board directorships,
and 47.3 per cent of companies had no women directors (up from 46.7 per cent of
companies in 2002). At the present rate of women’s participation in management,
it is estimated that it will not be until late in the 22nd century that women will
achieve parity with men in attaining management positions (Fagan 1996). In other
words, approximately another 6-10 generations of women will struggle to achieve
equitable employment and career opportunities in management.
This data should not, however, be allowed to obscure the fact that there are a
number of women who have achieved pinnacle positions in their professions and
reached the highest levels of management. And, as professional expertise can often
be the foundation for managerial careers, consideration of the data about women's
participation in the professions is useful. The data for women in professional
positions is more promising than that for management: in 2001, women held 52.5
per cent of professional positions (an increase from 38.9 per cent in 1986) (ABS
1993; Commonwealth Office on the Status of Women 2003).
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While at least some of this increase is attributable to the reclassification of
Teaching and Nursing from para-professional occupations to professional status by
the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), it also reflects women’s increasing
attainment of professional qualifications in male-dominated occupations (ABS
1997, 1998). For example, in 1983, 29.5 per cent of students (18,539 of 62,821) in
Business-related post-secondary courses were women, increasing to 48.9 per cent in
2000 (88,208 or 80,503). And, 40.1 per cent of law students (4,168 of 10,391) in
1983 were women, increasing to 54.4 per cent (19,779 of 36,331) in 2000
(Department of Education, Training, and Youth Affairs, 2001, Table 7, pp. 17-19).
In other words, today there are significant numbers of women who have attained the
professional qualifications which can often be the foundation for managerial
careers. More significantly, there are thousands of women who attained their
qualifications five, ten, or twenty years ago who have developed high levels of
professional expertise through workplace experience as well as education; these
women have attained professional expertise and standing which should draw
journalists to them for professional commentary and insights.
The Role of Media in Women’s Advancement into Senior Management
The media can influence the perceptions about women’s capabilities as managers
and their opportunities to access positions in senior and executive management and
on Boards of Directors in three areas: increasing the visibility of women as
professional experts and competent managers, altering perceptions of ‘manager’
(‘think manager, think male’), and offering role models of women in leadership
roles to other women and to men.
(a)
Visibility
One factor which has been identified as hindering women’s advancement into
executive management positions and directorships has been their lack of visibility.
As the newly appointed (first woman) Chief Justice of an Australian state (Victoria)
Supreme Court, the Hon. Justice Marilyn Warren (2003), recently noted when
asked why there were apparently so few women barristers and solicitors appearing
before the courts: ‘The best way of advertising women’s competence is for them to
be seen…’ meaning that for women to gain career opportunities and advancement,
they need opportunities to be seen doing their jobs and doing them competently.
And, women need to be seen not as tokens or as oddities, but as accepted and
‘natural’ members of that profession or occupation. The media can play a
significant role in ‘normalising’ the participation of women in a particular industry
or occupation by whether, to what degree, and how women are presented and
represented.
Two of the three roles identified for those people operating at the highest levels of
management (resource dependence and service expertise; the third role is
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Maureen Fastenau
(In)visible Women
monitoring/controlling) require person visibility (Daily, Certo, and Dalton 2002, p.
14). Women have particular difficulties establishing their competence in fulfilling
the resource dependence and service/expertise roles encompassed in senior and
executive management positions because they often lack ‘person visibility’.
Resource dependence is defined as providing links between the firm and its
environment. This involves ‘not only provid[ing] access to critical resources in the
firm’s environment, but…also provid[ing] legitimacy to the firm as a function of
their reputation’ (Daily, et al. 2002, p. 14). In other words, for women to be
identified as suitable candidates and appointed to senior and executive management
positions and directorships, they need to be visible and networked and to have
recognisable and respected profiles in the business community generally and in
their industry particularly.
Similarly, women may have difficulty establishing their competence with regard to
service/expertise. The lack of line management experience can limit their access to
executive management positions and thus to the experience required for
directorships. The lack of visibility of their expertise outside their own
organisations (and sometimes even within it) can also serve to limit women’s access
to the most senior management positions.
In other words, because women, personally and collectively, often lack visibility
inside and outside their organisations, they are hindered in their efforts to rise to the
highest levels of management. The media, by providing a public profile for women
professionals and managers, can offer another avenue for women to attain the
recognition and visibility often denied them because they are unable to participate
in ‘old boy’ networks to foster their career development and enhance their
promotional opportunities (see, for example, Stephenson and Krebs 1993; Dalton
and Daily 1998, p. 18; EOWA 2001).
Research Question 1:
Has there been an increase in the representation of
women professionals and managers in BRW in 2003 from 1988?
(b)
‘Think Manager, Think Male’
Another factor which can hinder women’s efforts to enter the highest levels of
management is the disjuncture between the characteristics usually associated with
managers (and men) and those usually associated with women. ‘Think manager,
think male’ has been repeatedly noted as a problem for women seeking
management positions (see, for example, Schein 1973, 1975, 2001; Heilman, Block,
and Martell 1995; Powell, Butterfield, and Parent 2002; Fernandes and CabralCardoso 2003). Although over time, the association of male behavioural
characteristics with management has become less powerful, particularly for women,
this association remains strong (see, for example, Sczesny 2003; Willemsen 2002;
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Lane and Crane 2002; Martell and DeSmit 2001; Deal and Stevenson 1998);
Schein, Mueller, and Jacobson 1989; Brenner, Tomkiewicz, and Schein 1989;
Foster 1994; Yim and Bond 2002).
How the media represent women, when it does represent women, can either
reinforce the link between manager and male or widen the perception of the
characteristics and styles defining managers and the nature of professional and
managerial work lives. How the media deals with (and whether it deals with)
organisational issues which affect women’s workforce participation also can affect
whether women are perceived as suitable for holding managerial positions,
particularly at senior and executive levels. For example, do stories about women
include references to their marital and parental status while they remain
unmentioned in articles profiling men? Are work-life and work-family issues
presented primarily or solely as ‘women’s issues’?
Does the coverage of women and “women’s issues” in
BRW challenge or minimise the ‘think manager, think male’ association?
(c)
Role Models
The representation of women in the media is also important as women profiled can
serve as role models – to men as well as women. Female role models make nontraditional careers ‘appear more feasible, which may encourage more women to
prepare and apply for [them]… [and also serve as a way] to change and improve the
profession’ (Gould 2001, p. 14) In addition to encouraging other women, female
role models also can serve as examples to men who are or may become decisionmakers that women can capably and suitably hold positions and work in industries
where they have traditionally been under-represented (Gould 2001, p. 16). How the
media present women professionals and managers, in effect, offering them as role
models, can affect the decisions of other women about whether to aspire to similar
positions and can affect the receptivity of male decision-makers and male
colleagues about whether to accept women as appropriate candidates for
management positions and as colleagues. How the media addresses the significant
issue of work-life balance and presents managers’ work and private lives (or fails to
address these issues) can also help or hinder women in aspiring to and achieving
senior and executive management positions.
Does BRW provide both women and men with role
models of successful and accomplished women professionals and managers which
can encourage young women in pursuing managerial careers and encourage
organisational change which will make women more readily recognised as suitable
for managerial roles and able to balance work and private life responsibilities?
METHODOLOGY
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Maureen Fastenau
(In)visible Women
This study is based on a review of issues of BRW (Business Review Weekly), a
leading Australian business publication, from 1988 (two years after the 1986
enactment of the Australian Affirmative Action legislation) and from 2003 (15
years after 1988 and 17 years after the enactment of the legislation) to determine
whether women’s representation in BRW changed under the stimulus of the
legislation and the increasing participation of women in business and the
professions. In other words, did BRW’s representation of women in business and
management in 2003 work to maintain dated perceptions or reflect changes to
women's altering workforce participation.
Data was collected by the author for the number of photographs of men and women
in each issue (not including advertisements), the number of by-lined articles by
male and female journalists, the number of profiles of male and female business
leaders and professionals, the number of cover stories featuring men and/or women
and written by men or women. The process was a simple counting tally. The author
also considered how men and women were presented in photographs and in profile
articles. Articles about work-life issues and specifically about women were also
reviewed to determine how these issues were presented.
BRW is published on a weekly basis. It is readily available through news agents
and by subscription. BRW articles are frequently referred to in other publications
and on radio and television programs, both general and those specifically dealing
with business issues. In September 2003, BRW estimated its readership at over a
quarter of a million people, with women making up 35 per cent of its readership.
BRW proudly proclaims that its readers include business decision-makers, CEOs,
and people employed in the professions (‘BRW Circulation and Readership’ 2003).
From the author’s experience teaching over the past ten years in Management
subjects in three Victorian universities, BRW is a familiar publication to both male
and female undergraduate and graduate students in Business programs and
frequently cited as a source in assignments.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN BRW
(a) Visibility of Women in BRW
Visibility of women in professional and managerial capacities in business
publications such as BRW is important for several reasons. These include:
‘normalising’ and validating the status of women, individually and collectively, as
managers and professionals; raising the profile of individual women; and providing
role models to younger women as well as emphasising workforce diversity and
alerting male managers to the need to explore and implement organisational culture
change.
111
Women can appear in BRW in several capacities: they can be the ‘subject’ of
articles, they can be expert sources cited or referred to in articles about various
business issues and topics, they can appear in photographs accompanying articles,
and they can appear as journalists and/or columnists (women may also appear in
advertisements, but in this review, advertisements were not considered). As the
discussion below demonstrates, while women’s visibility in BRW increased
between 1988 and 2003, they remain seriously under-represented as subjects,
sources, and as senior journalists even though significant numbers of women have
attained considerable standing in business and the professions.
In 1988, all nine members of BRW’s Editorial Board were men, and none of the
regular columnists was a woman. By 2003, a woman had made it on to the smaller
(six-member) Editorial Board: the Chief Business Commentator, Adele Ferguson
(‘The BRW Team’ 2004). Seven ‘Section Editor’ positions had been created, and
women were listed as holding three of these (Emerging Companies, Lifestyle, and
Accounting); men were the editors of the sections on Marketing, Investments, Rich
Business, and Managing. Thirteen ‘Staff Reporters’ were listed, with women
holding four of these positions.
While almost all articles in BRW are signed, only those articles with by-lines (where
the names of authors are indicated at the head of the article) were counted. A study
of the first six issues of 1988 revealed that only 20 per cent (17 of 68) of by-lined
articles were written by women. In 2003, this had risen to 26 per cent (137 of the
528 by-lined articles published in the issues from January - July 2003). In 1988,
female journalists were credited with the authorship of four (11 per cent) of 38
cover stories as well as being joint authors with male colleagues in another five (13
per cent) cover stories. Female journalists were able to claim authorship of 23 per
cent (6 of 26) of the coveted cover stories for the period January - July 2003, and of
one cover story jointly authored with a male journalist. So, although women appear
to have improved their professional standing at BRW between 1988 and 2003, they
continue to be under-represented in securing authorship recognition and status
given that they hold 32 per cent of Staff Reporter positions.
While it appears that women journalists and business commentators have somewhat
breached the walls of the still largely male preserve of business journalism at BRW
between 1988 and 2003, the next question is whether this has been accompanied by
changes in the representation of women as identified sources for and subjects of
articles in the publication. The most obvious and readily visible evidence of
recognition of women’s standing in business and the professions would be in the
number of photographs of women accompanying articles and on the covers.
In 1988, 45 per cent of the covers featured human beings. No cover featured only
women; one cover, however, included a woman: the June 24 cover which was a
cartoon of a man holding a door against a group of three men and one woman trying
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(In)visible Women
to break it down, illustrating a story on investors and investments. Of the 28 covers
for issues between January and June 2003, again, there were no covers featuring
only women (cf. 14 covers (50 per cent) featuring only men). There were only two
(7 per cent) covers which included women: the June 12 cover featured one woman
and seven men illustrating a story on the new generation of IT leaders, and the July
24 issue with its cover story on the rarity of women entrepreneurs featured
photographs of four women and one man.
All cover stories in both 1988 and 2003 were accompanied by photographs. Of the
43 cover stories reviewed for 1988, 34 (79 per cent) had not one photograph of a
woman. None of the 1988 cover stories was accompanied by only photographs of
women, and only four included a photograph of a woman. (In contrast, over 90 per
cent (39 of 43) of the covers were illustrated solely with photographs of men, and
photographs of men accompanied 100 per cent of the cover stories.) In 2003, of the
16 cover stories for the period January to May, twelve (75 per cent) were not
accompanied by any photographs of women, and only one cover story was
illustrated with a photograph of a woman (the March 6 cover story on the job
exodus was accompanied by two photographs of men and one of a woman).
Photographs of women were scarce in the remainder of the publication as well. Of
26 issues considered for 1988, there were only 74 (7 per cent of 1001) photographs
of women. Almost a quarter (6 of 26) of the issues included only one photograph
of a woman accompanying an article, and over three-quarters of the issues (22 of
26) had only between one and five photographs of women accompanying articles.
The visual presentation of women had increased by 2003 but not markedly. Eleven
percent (11 per cent) of photographs in the issues between January and July 2003
were of women, but of the 25 issues considered 68 per cent (17) included no more
than five photographs of women accompanying articles.
Photographs also serve as a reasonable proxy for women’s appearance in articles as
either a source or the subject. It appears both in 1988 and 2003 that a woman’s
photograph only accompanied an article in which she was either the subject of or a
source quoted in the article. Thus, the low number of photographs not only accords
women low visual recognition, it also is a subtle marker of the lack of recognition
accorded women’s professional and managerial expertise.
One might query whether the paucity of women subjects and sources reflects the
difficulty journalists might encounter in readily identifying suitably qualified and
experienced women professionals and managers from whom they might seek expert
opinions and information. There are, however, a number of readily accessible
resources which would allow journalists, male and female, to identify and contact
women as sources and as subjects of articles. For example, Chief Executive
Women (CEW), an invitation-only organisation, selects its members on the basis of
their status as being ‘a leader in their chosen field’ evidenced by three criteria
113
(holding a CEO or senior role in their field of expertise, being highly regarded by
peers and the business community, and demonstrating significant achievements and
performance). Its website (www.cew.org.au) provides information about its
members’ positions and areas of expertise as well as contact details.
Other resources include The Australian Vice Chancellors’ Committee which
maintains a register of 3000 senior women academics and management staff who
have high levels of professional, management, and consultancy expertise as well as
academic qualifications in a wide variety of disciplines, including Business, Law,
Science, Technology, Engineering, Health, etc. (Australian Vice Chancellors’
Committee 1995, 2002). Many Australian professional associations and
organisations for women in various professional and managerial occupations can
readily provide names of women with significant professional and managerial
experience and expertise; for example: Women Chief of Enterprise International
(www.wcei.cm.au), a professional organisation of women entrepreneurs, and the
Australian Businesswomen’s Network (www.abn.org.au), which provides a
directory of women in a wide range of industries and occupations. The online
‘Government and Business Directory’ (www.business.gov.au/BEP2002/
GBDirectory/GBDirList) provides and extensive list of government and nongovernment organisations, including women’s organisations such as the Australian
Women’s Pilots Association and the Business and Professional Women’s
Association.
Even when BRW itself has identified women with high levels of professional and
managerial expertise, they are rarely drawn upon. For example, the cover story for
the October 3, 2002 issue was ‘20 of the most powerful women in Australian
business’ which also included a related article identifying nine other ‘women to
watch’ (Gome and Ross 2002). Of the 20 most powerful women, a search of the
BRW on-line index for 2003-2004 revealed only ten were quoted or referred to in
one or more articles, and six of these ten women were only quoted or referred to in
one article in 2003. Of the nine women identified as ‘women to watch’, only five
were quoted or referred to in at least one article in 2003 and of these five, two were
only mentioned in one article.
In its October 16, 2003 issue, BRW included a three-part article entitled ‘The Rising
Stars’, listing 20 women ‘rapidly rising to the top’ and an additional eight women
as ‘ones to watch’ (Gome and Ross 2003). Of these 28 women, only seven (25 per
cent) were quoted or referred to in an article other than the ‘rising star’ article.
Sadly, it appears that even though BRW journalists are able to identify women with
significant professional and/or managerial expertise, they rarely seek them out for
as expert sources.
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With regard to Research Question 1 looking at whether there had been an increase
in the inclusion of women in the publication, the answer is that there has been an
insignificant increase.
(b)
‘Think Manager, Think Male’ BRW Focus
The relative paucity of women’s photographs in BRW as well as the shadowy
presence of women in article content which it signifies suggests that ‘think
manager, think male’ continues to characterise BRW’s representation of
management and the professions. This is suggested not only by the relatively small
number of women’s photographs, but is also evident in how women are represented
in photographs.
Most photographs in BRW, both in 1988 and 2003, were head and shoulder shots.
Men were, however, much more likely to be photographed in a business context
(for example, with an office or work setting in the background) and also to be
photographed looking directly at the camera. Women, on the other hand, were
often posed looking away from the camera in poses which could be characterised as
thoughtful or pensive (and in several instances, apprehensive); the background
rarely contextualised them in a work or business setting (and in one case, partially
hid the woman behind a vase of flowers); and the focus was often soft. The
decontextualisation and ‘feminising’ photographs subtly suggest that women and
management/business are not synonymous.
Although few in number, several articles were illustrated with ‘generic’ photos;
almost all of these showed unidentified men at work (e.g., doing welding or at a
construction site or a mine). In one of the rare photos which included anonymous
women, women electronic technicians were shown at work behind the featured
male businessman; the remaining pictures of unidentified women showed them in
leisure pursuits (e.g., around or in a swimming pool).
The way photos were used as accompaniments to articles could also be argued to
marginalise women. The caption named the person and was often followed by a
quote or a brief summary of the major point made by the person. The photographed
person was never identified by profession or job title. Usually the person in the
photograph, whether male or female, was mentioned fairly late in the article
(usually two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through the article). While this is
true for both men and women, it has particular significance in the representation of
women in BRW as, except for articles about women, no woman was mentioned
early in an article. A result of this practice would be that women would be regarded
collectively as marginal and individually could appear to lack stature.
Photographs are not the only measure of BRW’s limitations in recognising women’s
managerial and professional expertise and roles in business management. Most
115
BRW issues in 1988 included a ‘People’ section featuring stories on two or three
businesspeople. Of the 39 ‘People’ sections considered in 1988 issues, 25 (64 per
cent) featured only men, and only one featured solely women. Of the 99 people
featured in this section in 1988, only 15 (15 per cent) were women. In 2003 the
‘People’ section had been replaced by a ‘Profile’ section providing a one- to threepage article on an individual. Eleven of the 15 issues between May and July 2003
included profiles; of these profiles, ten were of men.
The scarcity of women in both photographs and stories in 1988 suggest that
management and business are the domains of men. It could be argued that while
there had been some increase in the number of photographs and stories including
women in 2003, the increase did not significantly alter the perception that
management and business were still male preserves.
It is not only in the paucity of the presentation of women in photographs and
articles, but in how they were presented when they were included which should be
considered. The way women were presented could be seen to portray women and
manager as contradictions. In 1988, when women were presented, they were
frequently presented in ways which suggested tentativeness, indecisiveness, and
weakness rather than professionally competent. For example, the January 22, 1988
issue featured a story on Australian small businesses operating in the Japanese
market. Of the six businesses featured, one was run by a woman, and her photo
(one of only three in this issue) was captioned ‘I was saved by the fact I was naïve’
(Lambert 1988 p. 87). The captions for two of the men featured in this article
emphasised their capability, strength, foresight, and insight. Similarly, the August
12, 1988 article on the woman founder of Film World Research presented her as
lacking in confidence, beginning ‘When Eileen Nasby opened her company…she
was convinced it would fail’. Additionally, unlike similar articles about male
entrepreneurs and managers, this article included references to her husband and
children. A short article on a woman lawyer taking up a position in Japan to link a
major accounting firm’s Japanese and Australian operations included personal
details and noted that she had ‘pulled off the difficult trick of synchronising her
career with her husband’s when he was transferred to Tokyo’. Although articles
about women were few in 1988, they offered mix messages: on the one hand, they
recognised the women’s achievements, but then undermined their accomplishments
by presenting them as weak or uncertain. Additionally, women’s family
responsibilities were usually mentioned, while men’s private lives were rarely
commented on.
In 2003, there were a number of articles about women or focussing on what might
be termed ‘women’s issues’. These included articles such as ‘Motherhood
Statement’ (February 20, 2003); ‘A modest master strategist’ (March 27, 2003), a
profile of Catherine Livingstone; ‘Business out of step on maternity leave’ (May
15, 2003); ‘Missing in Action’ (July 24, 2003) about the scarcity of women
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(In)visible Women
entrepreneurs; and ‘Rising Stars’ (October 16, 2003), which focussed on women
identified as possible future business leaders. While this could be seen as a step
forward, given the limited inclusion of women in general stories, this segregation of
women to such ‘special interest’ stories suggests and reinforces the idea of women
as ‘aliens’ in management and the professions. Further the discussion of work-life,
and particularly work-family issues, almost exclusively was associated with
women, thereby reinforcing women’s status in business and the professions as
‘other’ and ‘alien’ and suggesting women in business, unlike their male
counterparts, had divided loyalties and commitments.
In answer to Research Question 2 which concerned whether the presentation of
women professionals and managers in BRW challenged or minimised the
association of manager-male, the answer is no.
(c)
Role Models
Pru Goward, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, noted in an article on female
entrepreneurs (Gome and Ross 2003, p.41) the importance of role models for
women seeking business careers: ‘One problem with older women being quiet is
that not only do young women not have advice on how to deal with [work] issues,
but it gives men permission to think that there isn’t a problem’. She highlights the
dual importance of role models: (1) to provide young women with examples of
success and important information about the means and costs of achieving it, and
(2) to prod male managers to recognise that organisational cultures need to change
not only to accommodate women’s different life patterns but also thereby to
recognise the need to for organisational practices allowing both men and women to
achieve work-life balance.
Su Olsson (2000) has pointed out the power of organisational stories and myths,
noting how these have reinforced male forms of management. She has identified a
sub-culture of female organisational tales, but these have often been difficult for
women to access. As Judi Marshall (1995) observed, women in the 1970s, 1980s,
and 1990s seeking to attain senior management and professional positions often
were required to pay for professional success with silence about the difficulties they
encountered; they were often forced to accept, or appear to accept, the masculine
management culture of their organisations. This is captured by the comment made
in a 1988 article about the first female partner in a major accounting firm. The
newly appointed partner, Jan West, went to great pains to deny she was a feminist
and that affirmative action had played any part in her appointment, stating that her
success came from ‘hard work, not political grandstanding’.
Younger women are less reticent about stating the difficulties they have
encountered in developing their careers and their businesses. In ‘Missing in
Action’, an article in the July 24, 2003 issue which explores why there are so few
117
women entrepreneurs, four women entrepreneurs discuss the barriers they have
confronted, including difficulties in securing finance because they are women, in
balancing work and family responsibilities, and the lack of mentors and role
models, and how they have surmounted these difficulties.
While younger women are more willing than their predecessors to expose the
sexism which hinders women in their careers, and BRW is to be commended for
efforts to address such issues, the format adopted continues to present
businesswomen and professionals as ‘other’. Most articles about women include
some reference to their marital and parental status, while few articles about men
give any indication of any aspect of their private lives. Further, there is no
discussion in BRW, either in personal stories or in specific articles addressing worklife balance, which explore the difficulties men may have encountered in balancing
competing work and family responsibilities.
With regard to Research Question 3 concerning whether the representation of
women in BRW offers positive role models of women to other women and to men,
the answer is that while there are articles which do present women as high
achieving professionals and managers, the coverage overall offers mixed messages
and continues to represent work-life issues as essentially women’s issues.
CONCLUSION
It should be noted that BRW’s editors are not unaware that its coverage of women in
business and management can be criticised. In an ‘Editor’s Note’ in the October
16, 2003 issue with its cover story of twenty women characterised as ‘rising stars in
Australian business’, the Managing Editor observed that ‘BRW is occasionally
criticised for being too blokey: that there are too many stories about men, and too
many pictures of them; and that women and the issues that concern them are not
adequately represented in the business media’ (Featherstone 2003). He then goes
on, in effect, to blame women for the paucity of coverage in the magazine, noting
that many of the established women in Australian business community are reluctant
to be profiled or to discuss issues affecting women in business. While this
undoubtedly can make it more difficult to profile women and to cover women’s
issues in the publication, it is also a ‘blame the victim’ response which allows the
editors to absolve themselves for failing to find other means of presenting
information. For example, older women, who often needed to ‘blend in’ or
assimilate with male organisational cultures in the 1970s 1980s, and 1990s in order
to establish their careers, could be reluctant, even today, to highlight their gender,
especially when articles profiling their male counterparts continue to focus solely
on their professional lives.
BRW’s male editors are not alone in their reaction to women’s responses to how
they and their issues are reported in the business press. The editor of Fortune, John
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(In)visible Women
W. Huey, Jr. (1998), several years earlier similarly commented on the debates
unleashed when articles about women and ‘women’s issues’ were discussed. When
commenting on a forthcoming issue that would focus on powerful American
businesswomen and include articles such as ‘Is Your Family Wrecking Your
Career?’, he observed that he was looking forward to the ‘spirited debate’ on how
Fortune approached the coverage of women. It might also be suggested that he
looked forward to enjoying a ringside seat to observe ‘cat fights’ amongst women
journalists and readers over how women are covered in the publication. It could be
suggested that both he and the editors of BRW failed to ask questions about how
accomplished women professionals and managers might be presented so as to both
to ensure recognition of women’s professional and managerial competence and
successes and to challenge and minimise the perpetuation of gender stereotypes.
Krefting (2002, p. 107) observes that the media’s coverage of women often either
engages in ‘symbolic annihilation’ of women by the infrequency with which it
covers women and issues important to women or gives ‘fractured’ portrayals of
women professionals and managers, which include, unlike articles on their male
counterparts, discussions of their private lives, and particularly family
responsibilities, thereby perpetuating gender stereotypes and the link between
manager-male. If BRW, and other business publications, wish to more accurately
reflect the ‘face’ of Australian professions and management, it must recognise the
increasing participation of women by increasing its representation of women as
subjects and sources for its articles. It is not, however, sufficient to merely increase
the number of women featured in the publication. How women - and men - are
presented is equally important. Family and private live issues are not only
‘women’s issues’. By exploring the complexities of the work and private lives of
managerial and professional men as well as women, the perpetuation of gender
stereotypes which undermine acceptance of women in managerial and professional
roles is challenged. Additionally, by exploring the issues of managing diverse
workforces, including issues of gender, work-life and work-family issues are
recognised as the organisational and managerial issues they are, not as exclusively
‘women’s issues’. Increased coverage of women professionals and managers and
coverage of work-life issues, both in articles profiling individual managers and
professionals – males as well as females and in ensuring that these issues are
explored with regard to their impact and significance for men as well as women,
can not only reflect the realities of 21st century workplaces and their employees and
managers but also recognise that women are not peripheral and transitory figures in
Australian business and professions.
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Handwork, Foodwork and Small Commerce:
Reflections on Gendered Microenterprise in Bolivia
Robyn Eversole
Centre for Regional and Rural Development, RMIT University
Over several years of working with microenterprises and the
microenterprise- development sector in Bolivia, the author has observed
strong patterns in the kinds of businesses women start and how these
differ significantly from men’s businesses. Women business owners
comprise a large part of the Bolivian microenterprise sector,
independently managing their own businesses in many cases, yet the
range of types of women’s businesses is surprisingly limited. The great
majority of these businesses draw on common domestic skills (sewing,
knitting, cooking), or the cultural institution of female-dominated market
vending. While earnings vary widely, in general women’s businesses
earn less than men’s businesses, generally operating in saturated and
price-competitive markets. This paper reflects on the reasons Bolivian
women confine themselves to a narrow range of business activities, often
those with limited potential, and explores some exceptions to the rule, in
which women have taken leading roles in less-traditional enterprises
(such as computing and carpentry). In each case, it is seen, a male
immediate family member (husband, father) has played the role of linking
women entrepreneurs into a business sector other than those where
women are typically found.
INTRODUCTION:
MICROENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT AND WOMEN’S WORK
Microenterprise development as a field emerged in the 1980s. It came in the wake
of the discovery of the so-called ‘informal economy’ by the International Labour
Office and others (Hart 1973, Peattie 1987), and in the midst of a neoliberal
international development climate that was shifting from providing social services
to poor people, to promoting self-help development and market integration.
Observing the existing, entrepreneurial capacity of ordinary people in poor
countries to employ themselves and to create local jobs and wealth, development
practitioners seized upon a vision of poor people as entrepreneurs (albeit micro
entrepreneurs). Helping micro-entrepreneurs navigate more effectively in markets
became a central orientation for local economic development and poverty reduction
efforts. And, given the success of Muhammad Yunus’ experiment with the
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Handwork, Foodwork and Small Commerce
Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (e.g. Yunus 1982, Yunus 1991, UNESCO 2001),
microenterprise credit – and particularly, microenterprise credit focused on women
microentrepreneurs – became a key strategy (see e.g. Johnson and Rogaly 1997,
Hulme and Mosley 1996).
The Grameen Bank began in 1976, and its model of women-focused, enterprisefocused microcredit is now known worldwide. In this model, Bangladeshi village
women organised into solidarity groups were given small loans for businesses, as
well as coaching in self-help behaviour (via the so-called ‘16 decisions’). As at
2003, the bank had 2.6 million borrowers, 95 per cent of whom were women
(Yunus 2003), as well as a range of replication projects around the world. Its
lending methodology has provided the inspiration for a range of other
‘microfinance’ or ‘microenterprise finance’ programmes in many countries. These
programmes are similar in that most provide credit, often to women particularly, for
business activities, as a way to stimulate local economic development, decrease
poverty, and increase women’s empowerment. As the international organisation
Women’s World Banking puts it:
The Women’s World Banking network aims to have a major impact on
expanding the economic assets, participation and power of low income
women as entrepreneurs and economic agents by opening their access
to finance, knowledge and markets. (Women’s World Banking 2003)
The wide range of other international ‘microfinance organisations’ (such as
Opportunity International, Accion International, BancoSol and many others,
including a range of more recent programmes in wealthy countries such as the U.S.)
echo this focus on enterprise development and entrepreneurship for economically
disadvantaged women.
Given the widespread interest in the ability of very-small businesses to make a
significant difference in women’s livelihoods, and the consequent financial
resourcing of these businesses, it is surprising how little these businesses are
actually studied. What quality of work do such businesses actually provide? What
level of income, and income security? What real opportunity for accumulation and
investment? How do such businesses fit into their broader social and economic
context? It has been argued, for instance, that women’s microenterprise
development programmes in the US do not really provide an opportunity for most
low-income women to transform their situations, because these programs tend to
steer women into so-called ‘pink collar’ jobs with limited earning opportunities;
nor do they take into account many of the constraints that prevent these women
from becoming successful businesspeople (Ehlers and Main 1998).
In the international literature of microenterprise development, such a critical
perspective is unfortunately lacking. Some authors have questioned the extent to
125
which women actually control the ‘women’s businesses’ that development
programmes fund (see e.g. Rahman 1999 for Bangladesh). And some authors from
outside the microenterprise development field have argued that women’s market
activities are in a structurally disadvantageous position, thus limiting women’s
ability to improve their livelihoods (e.g. Babb 1989). But the microenterprise
development field itself tends to assume that if women are running their own
businesses, all is well. The literature of microfinance is scattered with anecdotal
stories of impoverished women with hungry children who started fruit stalls (or
sewing workshops, or hamburger stands), and now successfully feed their children
and send them to school. Such stories are clearly inspiring, and not untrue. Yet we
are left with unanswered questions, not just about the actual role of microfinance in
these women’s success, but even the extent to which this can really be claimed as
success. Upon closer look, it often transpires that such businesses generate ‘profits’
(including uncalculated salary) of perhaps $1-$2 dollars a day, at most. Income is
often highly variable. Working hours are often long. And while it can certainly be
argued that these women are better off than before, why does no one ask the
question: Are there better options?
The purpose of this paper is to raise this question, and to reflect on it in the context
of the status of women’s microenterprises in one particular context – the small city
of Sucre, Bolivia in the late 1990s. The data on women’s microenterprises
presented here come from a larger ethnographic research project carried out
between 1996 and 1998, dealing with various aspects of microenterprise
development, the household economy, and local economic development in Sucre.
This project involved fieldwork in Sucre from August to December 1996, from
January to May 1997, and again in May-June and August-November 1998, a total
period of about fourteen months. During these periods the researcher lived in the
city of Sucre, visited a large number of local microenterprises as both researcher
and as customer, and conducted semi-formal open-ended interviews and informal
conversations with local women and men who owned microenterprises and larger
businesses. These interviews and conversations enquired about the nature of
Sucre’s economy, people’s experiences with their own businesses (business history,
ownership, labour arrangements, customer base, potential, obstacles, and plans for
the future), the relationship between microenterprises and households, and
experiences with microenterprise development institutions.
This project started with open-ended interviews with 50 microentrepreneurs (both
women and men) randomly sampled from the approximately 250
microentrepreneurs on the client list of a major local microenterprise development
institution (as at 1994). The author conducted interviews on-site at the
entrepreneurs’ places of business (generally market stalls, small shops or street
posts) two years later in 1996 and early 1997.1 Other sets of semi-formal interviews,
1
By the time of the interviews, some were still clients of this institution, and some were not.
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Robyn Eversole
covering similar themes, followed: focusing on residents of a peripheral
neighbourhood (25 randomly selected households in a neighbourhood of about 125
households), local carpentry business owners (30 randomly selected carpentry
microenterprises of about 150 identified in the city),2 and owners of chocolatemaking enterprises (about 16 different enterprises, comprising the total identified
population). This study did not focus specifically on women, but its findings
indicate clear patterns in terms of the kinds of enterprises women in Sucre run and
the level of earnings that such businesses are likely to attract. Follow-up work in
1998, involving a small study of microenterprise consortia and a number of followup interviews from the earlier samples, confirmed earlier observations and findings.
Overall, these data indicate that women’s businesses face important limitations, and
that any serious effort to promote microentreprise to improve women’s livelihoods,
must take the economic and social context more thoroughly into account.
WOMEN’S BUSINESSES IN BOLIVIA:
HANDWORK, FOODWORK AND SMALL COMMERCE
In Bolivia, women are more likely than men to be self-employed in their own
businesses. According to Bolivian national statistics published in 2002, 48 per cent
of urban Bolivian women were self-employed, compared with 32 per cent of men
(INE 2002). While it could be hypothesised that the strong presence of selfemployed women in the Bolivian economy is attributable to the large number of
microfinance programs in that country promoting microenterprise development for
women, there is a stronger argument that recognises women’s longstanding
presence as retailers in Andean economies. Market vending in Bolivia is considered
a predominantly female role. Thus, while men are also involved in market vending,
as well as other kinds of retail sales, many retailers (especially in marketplaces) are
women. Women are also involved in long-distance small-scale commerce and to a
lesser extent, in other kinds of businesses such as manufacturing.
Observing the businesses of self-employed people in Sucre, a small regional city of
about 220,000 people, over a period of several years, has indicated clearly that
many women are involved in microenterprise. Nevertheless, women carry out a
surprisingly limited range of business activities here. Whether discussing with
women their current businesses, their past businesses, or their aspirations for
businesses they would like to start in the future, the conversations touch upon only
a handful of different activities and sectors. Most self-employed women in Sucre
run microenterprises which involve artisan handwork, food production and sale, or
market-based retail commerce. As with men’s businesses, the great majority of
women’s businesses in Sucre are ‘microenterprises’ – that is, according to the most
common definition, they employ no more than five people. Many, in fact, employ
2
A master list of about 150 carpentry microenterprises was compiled from various organisations as
part of the larger research project.
127
no labour but the owner herself (who may be assisted informally by other
household members).
Of the fifty microenterprises in the first sample, only one woman’s business did not
fit into the categories of handwork, food service, and small-scale commerce; this
was a hairdressing business. The sample confirmed everyday observations of
women’s business activities in Sucre: most women were selling goods in the city’s
markets, running small neighbourhood convenience stores, manufacturing clothing
(often by hand) or foodstuffs, or serving food out of snack carts, market stalls or
cafes. In a separate survey of households in one peripheral neighbourhood of the
city, all of the women who ran businesses fit this profile. The majority of the
women resident in this neighbourhood were, or had recently been, self-employed in
their own businesses. Generally, these businesses involved selling food, drink, or
clothing in a city marketplace, or running a neighbourhood convenience store. A
few made handmade traditional textiles or did other forms of handwork.
Obviously, commerce is a broad field; women retail merchants in Sucre sell a wide
range of items from meat to toiletries, school supplies to shoes, and so interact with
a range of business sectors. They may travel long distances to bring goods for sale,
developing a good knowledge of markets; and a few wholesale goods to market
vendors. Where the scope of women’s businesses is most limited, is in the areas of
manufacturing and services. While men run a wide range of manufacturing and
service businesses (making and/or repairing shoes, furniture, jewellery, metal gates,
clothing, and a range of other items), women’s businesses in these areas nearly
always comprise sewing or jumper-knitting, or alternatively, food manufacture (e.g.
chocolates, sausages) or food service. Many women, planning a future business,
thought of tea rooms or corner stores.
There is clearly a gendered division of labour here. A study of Sucre carpenters,
also carried out 1996-1997, indicated that women almost never run carpentry
microenterprises (Eversole 2003). From observation around the city, it is clear that
the same generally holds true for most trades (metalworkers, jewellers, mechanics,
etc.). Most of these businesses are run by owner-operators, and women do not
generally train in these male-dominated trades. Women’s business opportunities
are, rather, found in the areas of so called ‘pink-collar’ businesses – work that relies
on common women’s skills. Nearly all Bolivian women have skills in knitting,
sewing, cooking and baking. This, however, makes it difficult for women running
businesses in these areas to charge much of a premium for their work – unlike male
microentrepreneurs who can often trade on a specialised skill. Thus, not
surprisingly, women tend to earn very little: according to this study, an average of
US $69 per month for women’s manufacturing businesses, compared with US $338
for men’s manufacturing businesses. And while women’s commerce businesses do
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Robyn Eversole
better overall than their manufacturing businesses – earning an average of US
$193/month – stiff competition in the city’s markets still makes for low earnings.3
WOMEN’S BUSINESSES IN BOLIVIA: REASONS AND ALTERNATIVES
In general, women who start businesses in Sucre face a limited range of options.
Part of the reason for this may be that the city is isolated from the country’s
economic ‘hubs’, without as many economic opportunities. Nevertheless, some
opportunities are certainly available. There is a large influx of university students;
the city is home to four universities, including the well-respected San Francisco
Xavier University, which attracts many international students. The city also has
important colonial history and architecture, which are important tourism resources.
Part of the reason for women’s limited options, on the other hand, may be that
women are not receiving training in specific technical areas that could form a basis
for a business. Nevertheless, such training was increasingly being offered by the
mid-to-late 1990s; for instance, a women’s carpentry course was being offered by
the local institution Infocal. There was some uptake of such courses; nevertheless,
they stand outside the traditional apprentice system for the trades, which is clearly
male dominated. It seems that the most convincing reason why women’s businesses
in Sucre are concentrated in a limited number of areas is these are the kinds of
activities people expect women to do. There is a gendered division of labour here
that affects women’s business choices.
Women themselves do not articulate this specifically, but when they were asked
about the history of their businesses, their replies indicated what kinds of work are
the accepted norm. Women involved in small-scale commerce generally explained
the start of their businesses in terms of a need for money – commerce was simply
assumed as a money-making strategy for women. One Sucre resident began
bringing goods from La Paz ‘because the kids were growing up and there was need
for more money’. Another woman noted that, ‘I’ve sold just about everything (all
kinds of products)…since I was very young…my father died, then my mother
remarried, and I couldn’t stay there’. Rather than a general decision to become
involved in commerce, women spoke in terms of the market opportunities they had
identified for specific products, or their trial and error process of finding that some
products sold well and others did not. ‘There are some things that are cheaper (on
the Peruvian border)…and then there were the very thick blankets, they were very
popular for awhile, they sold well’. Or, ‘jumpers didn’t go well for me…. If I sell a
lot of shoes, I earn well’. The choice of product generally depended on what ‘went
3
Data on income are drawn from the random sample of 50 microentrepreneurs (current or former
clients of a local microenterprise-development institution, comprising approximately 20 per cent of
the total client population) who were interviewed in 1996-1997, as described in the Introduction to
this article. Visits to these enterprises confirmed that they were broadly representative of the size
and range of microenterprises generally seen in Sucre.
129
well’. Meanwhile, in other kinds of businesses such as handicrafts and food
service, women also explained their businesses as responses to particular
opportunities (often established through personal contacts). A mother taught a
daughter chocolate making; another learned from her aunts, and so these women
made chocolates. A woman had the opportunity to sell jumpers to a children’s
boutique in Santa Cruz via the sister of a friend; another jumper-knitter had a
similar arrangement with a merchant daughter in La Paz and a daughter-in-law in
Santa Cruz.
Women’s businesses in Sucre are generally characterised by flexibility: businesses
that are easy to enter, use existing skills (which do not take a large investment to
acquire), and are easy to exit or shift focus as necessary. This flexibility enables the
women to be responsive to both market conditions and family demands. In terms of
market conditions, women’s explanations of their business histories clearly
indicated their ability to shift activities in response to market demand until they
found something that ‘went well’. Some even shifted location as necessary: leaving
Sucre to pursue commerce in more promising spots such as the city of Sta. Cruz or
the Brazilian border because ‘sales weren’t going well here’. Family demands also
informed women’s business choices. For instance, a merchant who travelled to La
Paz to bring merchandise indicated that she was ‘resting’ for two months while her
children were doing exams. She explained that ‘even though they’re big
now…they need someone to look after them... if no one’s here they don’t (study)’.
She was able to leave off work when she felt she was needed at home, and pick it
up again when market opportunities were particularly good, such as right before
Christmas. Similarly, another woman had shifted from selling dishes in Central
Market to running a small grocery shop in her home because ‘it’s hard to go down
(into the city) with the children’.
Although women’s businesses in Sucre tend heavily toward handwork, food work
and small commerce, there are some examples of non-traditional women’s
businesses as well. In a study of the carpentry sector in Sucre, it was found that
while carpentry microenterprises were almost never owned or managed by women
(see Eversole 2003), the city’s largest carpentry enterprise is co-owned and
managed by a woman. Another woman ran a carpentry microenterprise associated
with a furniture shop. Similarly, a study of the Sucre chocolate industry showed
that women were, predictably, often involved in the ownership and management of
these food-producing microenterprises – but they were also involved in the
ownership and management of some of the city’s larger chocolate factories. Other
ethnographic fieldwork in the city revealed significant, though unquantified,
involvement of women in the tourism sector, particularly tourist accommodation;
the members of an incipient tourism business consortium were all women. Finally,
there was at least one woman in Sucre who was actively involved in the IT industry
as co-owner and manager of a computer business.
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The point here is that not all female businesspeople in Sucre are running low-yield
microenterprises in the limited number of sectors identified above. Some are doing
other things. They are entering non-traditional industries (such as carpentry and IT).
They are involved in larger businesses, such as chocolate factories and a large
carpentry enterprise. While most of these ‘larger’ businesses in Sucre are still only
‘small businesses’, they have significantly higher turnover, and employ many more
employees, than the more common microenterprises. Finally, women are also
becoming involved in sectors with good future growth potential in this region, for
instance tourism (given the area’s historical resources) and IT/computer services
(given the local university population). These exceptions are of interest in that they
indicate other, broader and potentially more lucrative options for women’s
businesses in this setting.
Here, a frequent pattern is that women involved in non-traditional and/or larger
businesses have often done so through male intermediation. The owner of the city’s
largest carpentry enterprise, for instance, is the wife of the now-deceased founder.
Both her daughter and her son are actively involved in the administration of this
business, and it seems clear that she played an instrumental role in the business
even while her husband was alive. Nevertheless, her husband founded the business
(originally a lumberyard), in an industry sector that is almost exclusively maledominated. It is highly unlikely that she would have started such a business without
her husband’s involvement. Similarly, another woman co-owns and co-manages a
carpentry enterprise/lumberyard with her husband, often taking charge of the wood
merchandising end of the business while her husband travels. Finally, the one
female owner of a furniture microenterprise told a similar story: she had once
worked alongside her husband in his carpentry shop; when they divorced, she
continued to have a carpentry business as well as a furniture retail shop.
Women who ran businesses in non-traditional areas did not identify specific
obstacles to their involvement in these businesses which were tied to gender.
Rather, the key issue for women’s involvement appeared to be entering these
sectors in the first place. Carpentry, a growth sector in Sucre, and one in which
training is traditionally through a male-only apprenticeship system, provides
interesting examples of how a few women have become involved through male
household members. Involvement through male household members is seen in other
non-traditional industries as well. The female co-owner and manager of a computer
sales and service business, for instance, was very confident and comfortable in her
role, but she had only become involved in this sector because her husband had skills
as a computer technician. Women in such non-traditional sectors are likely to learn
their skills informally, on-the-job, rather than receiving formal training; and they
will often involve themselves in the non-technical (sales, administration) aspects of
the business where possible – leaving the technical work to male family members
and/or male hired employees.
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CONCLUSIONS: MICROENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT
AND WOMEN’S WORK IN BOLIVIA
Whereas the general pattern in Sucre is that women run microenterprises in a
limited number of sectors, there are clearly important exceptions. Yet in a sense
these exceptions prove the rule. Women may be involved in non-traditional
business, but only in a few cases, and usually through male intermediation. Women
may also be involved in businesses which are larger than microenterprises, but they
often co-own and co-manage these with men (generally, their husbands – though
sometimes with their fathers). Interestingly, in terms of involvement in ‘larger’
businesses (with more than five employees), the same can be said of men: in many
cases, men also co-own and co-manage these with their wives. There is evidence to
suggest that as businesses grow and become more lucrative, the labour of both male
and female household heads may be called upon; while smaller microenterprises are
often the primary responsibility of only one household member (see Eversole
2002:594).
What can this brief reflection on women’s microenterprises in one Bolivian city tell
us about microenterprise development as a strategy for improving women’s
livelihoods? The key message here is that, while microenterprise development may
sound very promising in theory – suggesting that women will be empowered and
that their incomes will increase – in practice, such impacts rely strongly upon the
social and economic contexts in which these women and their businesses must
work. In the case of Sucre (as elsewhere), women were running micro-businesses
long before the advent of microenterprise development programmes. These women
often work long hours in their businesses for very little pay. While it can be argued
that they, and their families, are better off financially than they would be without
the microenterprise (or the micro-loan that increases their working capital), it is
very difficult to argue that successful ‘development’ has been achieved. There are
larger constraints here to women’s ability to earn good financial returns for their
work. Through a lack of attention to the sectors women are choosing to work in,
and the financial opportunities and constraints of these sectors, microenterprise
developers tend to paint an oversimplified picture of the road to prosperity.
Social, as well as economic, constraints need to be taken into account. There is a
clear gendered division of labour informing the kinds of businesses men and
women run, and women tend to see themselves in only a limited range of business
roles. The businesses women run often permit considerable flexibility, yet are
limited in their earning potential. Microenterprise developers could possibly be of
assistance here, helping women to think ‘outside the box’ in terms of the business
choices they make, to consider a broader range of options. This does not mean
simply opting automatically to work in non-traditional trades – these may not
necessarily be more lucrative, would not necessarily add to the economic diversity
of the area (men are already running such businesses), and would also involve
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considerable investment in skills acquisition. Rather, it would be a case of assisting
women to identify good business opportunities in a wider range of areas – even in
areas where they would not automatically see themselves working.
Even in non-traditional businesses sectors, there are aspects of a business that a
given woman would feel comfortable running: for instance, marketing,
administration, or customer relations. The key would be for her to assemble the
other relevant skills: perhaps through male household members, children with
university educations (not uncommon in this university city), and paid employees,
as well as the option to invest in training for herself. Another key challenge would
be to assemble necessary information about a business sector she may know little
about. Networks of friends and acquaintances, as well as the current broad
availability of Internet-based resources, are two good sources of information;
microenterprise development organisations could also be of assistance here.
Understanding the reasons why microenterprise financing and microenterprise
initiatives often do not translate into good quality work and income for women,
requires understanding the social and economic context of women’s businesses.
Some of these contextual factors, such as the geographical isolation and economic
limitations of a city like Sucre, apply to men as well as women. Others, such as
gendered expectations of what business sector people will choose to work in, and
the need to accommodate particular family responsibilities, affect women more
specifically. As a result, women may work long hours for low pay in unstable
situations of self-employment, while microenterprise developers congratulate
themselves on alleviating poverty. A growing literature internationally is pointing
to the fact that the will to help women start businesses, and women’s own
determination to do so, does not necessarily result in lucrative work for these
women (see e.g. Leach and Sitaram 2002 on an experience in India, Wilson 2003
on a case study from Ecuador). The context matters and so do developers’
expectations. Does good development, and social justice, demand more than US
$1-$2 for a full day’s work? While prosperous businesses are not built from night
to morning, doesn’t it make sense to consider whether prosperous businesses are
even possible, given the contexts in which these women work?
This paper has suggested that the microenterprise development field, including
microenterprise finance, needs to look more closely at the context of the businesses
it supports, particularly for women, and realistically assess these businesses’
potential for providing good incomes and income security. Rather than continue to
fund ‘the usual suspects’ – such as handwork, foodwork and small commerce
businesses – simply because they are there, business developers could be much
more proactive in helping women identify more lucrative, innovative business
opportunities, and then overcoming their blockages to involvement. This may not
necessarily (as is often assumed) involve a major investment in technical skills
acquisition for the women in question. Rather, it may be a case of simply assisting
133
women to build on their existing skills and link with other individuals,
organisations, and information sources to provide what is lacking. For innovative
business ideas, microenterprise developers could also provide venture capital to
decrease the investment risk for the households of entrepreneurs. In these and other
ways, such organisations may be able to significantly expand the quality of business
options available to women.
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Key Note Speaker
Professor Belinda Probert holds the position of Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at
The University of Western Australia and has responsibility for the portfolios of
Teaching and Learning, and Staffing. Prior to her appointment in March 2004,
Belinda was Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Design and Social Context Portfolio at
RMIT University, where she previously held the positions of Dean of Faculty of the
Constructed Environment and Head of the School of Social Science and Planning.
She holds a PhD from Lancaster University’s Department of Politics and in her
career has worked extensively on research relating to employment policy, gender,
equity, and work and welfare reform.
Other Contributors
Dr Lionel Boxer is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Management Quality
Research. Lionel is qualified as an industrial engineer and has completed both
MBA and PhD programs of study with RMIT Business. Since 1981, Lionel has
consulted to government and across a wide range of industries to develop and
implement productivity improvements. His work harnesses his industrial
engineering training in facility planning, material handling, work methods, and
quality management as well as his capabilities in leadership, sales, and occupational
health and safety. Lionel's research interests focus on discursive practices and the
way that these influence individuals, teams and organisational culture.
Sheree Cartwright has a background in sociology and anthropology. She is
currently employed as a sessional tutor in ‘Qualitative Social Research’ and ‘Men
and Women: Love and Work’ in the School of Social Science and Planning and as a
research assistant at Melbourne IVF. Sheree is in the first year of her PhD. Her
doctoral research is exploring the key factors that influence the ways in which
women make decisions about paid-work and family after childbirth. Her current
research interests include gender, the work/family debate in Australia, motherhood,
women’s health and well-being, and qualitative research methods.
Dr Sara Charlesworth is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Social
Research. Sara has a background in social work, industrial relations and legal
studies. She is currently an editor of Labour and Industry. Sara's research interests
include gender equality, the ‘practice’ of industrial and anti-discrimination law in
the workplace, quality part-time work, and the intersection of work and family. She
is currently working on a number of Australian Research Council funded grants in
these areas.
136
Kathy Douglas is currently Program Co-ordinator for the Bachelor of Social
Science (Legal and Justice Studies) and the Masters of Social Science (Criminal
Justice Administration). She also works as a mediator and has conducted mediation
training for government and community groups. Kathy’s main research interests are
in Alternative Dispute Resolution, including the practice of mediation, and issues
relating to the criminal justice system. She is currently exploring the way that
different models of mediation affect practice, education and standards issues in the
mediation industry. Kathy is also presently working on a book, with two colleagues
from RMIT University, on the Sociology of Deviance for Oxford University Press.
Dr Robyn Eversole is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Regional and Rural
Development, Hamilton, Victoria. She is the editor of the book Here to Help:
NGOs Combating Poverty in Latin America (ME Sharpe 2003), and co-editor of the
upcoming Indigenous Peoples and Poverty in International Perspective, to be
published by Zed Books. Robyn has written articles for various international
journals and collections, based on research on regional economic and social
development issues in South America, Western Australia, and currently in
south-western Victoria. Originally from West Virginia, USA, she is the author of
five books for children, and holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from McGill University,
Montreal.
Dr. Maureen Fastenau is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management and the
Program Coordinator for the Bachelor of Business (HRM/IR) degree. She has
written extensively on equal employment opportunity issues as the EEO columnist
for the HR Monthly. She has edited the publication Focus on Workplace Diversity
and was the founding editor of the International Employment Relations Review.
Maureen’s research interests include women’s career development and gender
culture in workplaces.
Dr Judith Shaw is a Lecturer in the International Development Programme. Judith
worked for several years in international development as a researcher and
practitioner before joining RMIT University in 2002. In 2001 she completed a PhD
on microfinance and the informal sector in Sri Lanka. Her main research interest is
in household livelihoods in developing countries. Within this broad field, she is
currently engaged in a number of research projects, including rural labour markets
in Sri Lanka, and migrant remittances and microfinance in the Asia-Pacific. She is
also conducting a major study in Bougainville focusing on microfinance in
post-conflict environments.
Dr Sallie Yea is Senior Research Fellow in International Development in the
School of Social Science and Planning. Sallie holds a PhD in Human
Geography/Asian Studies from Monash University. The paper in this monograph is
part of an ongoing research project on women trafficked for prostitution in South
Korea. Her current research interests include Gender and Development, Gender and
137
Migration, Human Trafficking, particularly sex trafficking and mail order brides,
Tourism and International Development, particularly gender and tourism, sex
tourism and the impact of tourism on communities, and lastly, the impact of
militarism on developing societies.
138

Introduction to Women and Work: Current RMIT University Research

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