Joan C. Williams

Pluralistic Ignorance and the Flexibility Bias: Understanding and Mitigating Flextime and Flexplace Bias at Work

Workers who request flexibility are routinely stigmatized. The authors experimentally tested and confirmed the hypothesis that individuals believe others view flexworkers less positively than they do. This suggests flexibility bias stems, in part, from pluralistic ignorance. The authors also found that flexplace requesters were stigmatized significantly more than flextime requesters. Given this finding, they recommend research distinguish between different types of flexwork. In a second study, they assessed whether exposure to information suggesting organizational leaders engage in flexible work reduced bias. They found that when the majority of high-status employees work flexibly, bias against flextime (but not flexplace) workers was attenuated.

The Language of Performance Evaluations: Gender-Based Shifts in Content and Consistency of Judgment

Performance evaluations of male and female junior attorneys in a Wall Street law firm were analyzed. Male supervisors judged male attorneys more favorably than female attorneys on numerical ratings that mattered for promotion but offered narrative comments that showed either no sex effects or greater favorability toward women. Judgments of male attorneys were more consistent overall than they were for female attorneys, and predictors of numerical ratings differed by sex: Narrative ratings of technical competence mattered more for men than women, and narrative ratings of interpersonal warmth mattered more for women than men. Open-ended use of positive performance words—the only outcome that favored women—did not translate into positive numerical ratings for women. The data suggest subtle patterns of gender bias, in which women were harmed by not meeting gendered expectations of interpersonal warmth but were less benefited than men by meeting masculine standards of high technical competence.

Beyond Work-Life “Integration”

Research on the work-family interface began in the 1960s and has grown exponentially ever since. This vast amount of research, however, has had relatively little impact on workplace practice, and work-family conflict is at an all-time high. We review the work-family research to date and propose that a shift of attention is required, away from the individual experience of work and family and toward understanding how identity and status are defined at work. Several factors enshrine cherished identities around current workplace norms. The work devotion schema demands that those who are truly committed to their work will make it the central or sole focus of their lives, without family demands to distract them. Importantly, the work devotion schema underwrites valued class and gender identities: Work devotion is a key way of enacting elite class status and functions as the measure of a man--the longer the work hours and higher the demand for his attention, the better. Advocating change in the way work is done and life is lived meets resistance because it places these cherished identities at risk. Resistance to these identity threats keeps current workplace norms in place. This is why even the business case-which shows that current practices are not economically efficient-fails to persuade organizations to enact change. What is needed now is sustained attention to the implicit psychological infrastructure that cements the mismatch between todays workplace and todays workforce.

Stability and transformation in gender, work, and family: insights from the second shift for the next quarter century

Arlie Hochschilds The second shift: Working families and the revolution at home argued that the revolution toward gender equality in the USA has been stalled due to three factors: (1) women continue to do most of the ‘second shift’ – the unpaid work of childcare and housework; (2) insufficient flexibility in the workplace for accommodating family caregiving needs; and (3) a deficit of public sector benefits, such as paid parental leave. Since the books publication in1989, many aspects of the gender structure (how gendered opportunities, barriers, and cultural meanings are socially structured in the USA) remain the same. Yet many aspects have changed. This article looks at areas of stability in the gender structure and areas of transformation in the past quarter century. We then plumb the book for the analytical insights it generates for scholars today. We discuss how deep-seated cultural understandings of gender infuse all levels of analysis: macro-level policies, family and work institutions, and personal experiences of gender, intimacy, and moral commitments. These insights help illuminate paths forward for new research on how new economic developments, including economic insecurity, flexibilization (the increasingly reliance on temporary and contract labor), and the widening social class divide, continue to affect intimacy at home.

My Obstetrician Got Me Fired: How Work Notes Can Harm Pregnant Patients and What to Do About It.

Prenatal care providers are frequently asked to provide employment notes for their patients requesting medical leave or changes to work duties. Writing employment notes correctly can help patients negotiate for and obtain medically indicated workplace accommodations, allowing them to continue to work and earn an income. However, a poorly written or poorly timed note can jeopardize a patients employment and salary. This commentary provides an overview of pregnancy-related employment laws and guidance in writing work accommodations letters that allow pregnant women to keep their jobs while maintaining a healthy pregnancy.

Culture and Certainty: Legal History and the Reconstructive Project

PEOPLE like their conclusions to sound inevitable. A defining characteristic of the Western tradition is that argumentation follows from first principles through deductive logic to objective truth. A traditional argument begins with a highly abstract principle-for example, that human life is sacred. Then, as ones opponents are lulled into agreement, the argument takes unexpected turns: fetuses are babies, babies are human, and abortion is murder.... The traditional argument proceeds through logic to certainty. A defining strategy of modernism3 is to challenge this argumenta-