Link to Session Platform

Chairs(s):

Lena Grip, Dep. Geography, Media & Communication, Karlstad University, Sweden

; Ulrika Jansson, Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research

Description:

The fact that work is gender-coded is well-established. Different occupations, positions and work tasks are gendered and marked, that is, assumed to be more or less suited for a certain gender (Acker, 1990), and the labor market is likewise a part of creating and recreating gendered identities (McDowell, 1999, 2004). In other words, the labor market is formed by perceptions of gender-specific ‘suitable’ tasks, but it is also a part in forming identities. Also within organisations, notions on whether or not women or men are suited for a certain occupation or certain work tasks create segregation. By studying the structure and culture of an organisation, conceptions of and presumptions about men’s and women’s positions and relations as consequences of the gender order of that organisation are made visible (Wahl et.al., 2018). Focus is in this way transferred from individual characteristics and abilities to the organisational gender order that often conditions the positions of women and men in a workplace and within an occupation. It is a persistent pattern that is repeatedly reproduced, even when organisations go through organisational change (Acker, 1990). Research on material position in a workplace (e.g. Hofbauer, 2000; Dale and Burrell, 2008) shows that the structure of an organisation can often be understood by the positioning of workers in the workplace, the internal built environment of the organisation. However, these studies often lack a thorough gender perspective. Therefore, this session will focus on research that combines the three perspectives of gender, work and place, based on the arguement that the gender-coding of work and the gender-coding of place need to be understood as a unity to truly understand the gender division of labour (Hanson and Pratt, 1995; Kobayashi et al., 1994; Johansson and Lundgren, 2015; McDowell, 2004, 2012; Tyler and Cohen, 2010).

References
Acker J (1990) Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2): 139-158.
Dale, K. & Burrell, G. (2008) The spaces of organization and the orgaisation of space. Power, identity and materiality of work. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hanson S and Pratt G (1995) Gender, work, and space. London: Routledge.
Hofbauer, J. (2000) Bodies in landscape: On office design and organization. In J. Hassard, R. Holliday & H. Willmott (Eds.) Body and organization (pp. 166-191). London: Sage.
Johansson K and Lundgren A S (2015) Gendering boundary work: exploring excluded spaces in supermarket job rotation. Gender, Place and Culture, 22(2): 188-204.
Kobayoashi A, Peake L, Benenson H et al (1994) Introduction: Placing Women and Work. In: Kobayashi A (ed) Women, Work and Place. Montreal; McGill-Queens University Press.
McDowell L (1999) Gender, Identity and Place – Understanding Feminist Geographies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
McDowell L (2004) Thinking through work: Gender, power and space. In: Barnes T J, Peck J, Sheppard E et al (eds) Reading economic geography. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
McDowell L (2012) Gender, work, employment and society: feminist reflections on continuity and change. Work, Employment and Society. 28(5): 825-837.
Tyler M and Cohen L (2010) Spaces that matter: Gender performativity and organizational space. Organization Studies, 31(2): 175–198.
Wahl, A, Holgersson, C, Höök, P and Linghag, S (2018) Det ordnar sig. Teorier om organisation och kön. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Non-Presenting Participants Agenda