Kevin Stainback

Intersections of power and privilege: Long-term trends in managerial representation.

This article examines post–Civil Rights Act trends in private sector managerial representation for white men, white women, black men, and black women. We examine how three factors affect changing access to managerial positions: (1) industrial restructuring, (2) the process of bottom-up ascription, and (3) organizational characteristics. Accounting for compositional shifts in the labor supply, we find that white male managerial overrepresentation remains virtually unchanged since 1966, even while other status groups make gains. A significant portion of the observed equal opportunity advance for women and blacks takes place in the expanding service sectors of the economy. We also find that female and minority gains are enhanced in larger and more managerially intensive workplaces. For all groups, managerial representation is increasingly tied to the presence of similar others in nonmanagerial jobs. Further examination reveals a new status hierarchy of managers and subordinates—a hierarchy wherein white men are likely to manage men of all races. White women, in comparison, are realizing a growing racial privilege in managing women of color.

Women in Power Undoing or Redoing the Gendered Organization

A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of organizational power. Fewer studies, however, explore the implications of women in leadership positions for the opportunities and experiences of subordinates. Do women leaders serve to undo the gendered organization? In other words, is women’s greater representation in leadership positions associated with less gender segregation at lower organizational levels? We explore this question by drawing on Cohen and Huffman’s (2007) conceptual framework of women leaders as either “change agents” or “cogs in the machine” and analyze a unique multilevel data set of workplaces nested within Fortune 1000 firms. Our findings generally support the “agents of change” perspective. Women’s representation among corporate boards of directors, corporate executives, and workplace managers is associated with less workplace gender segregation. Hence, it appears that women’s access to organizational power helps to undo the gendered organization.

Documenting Contested Racial Identities Among Self-Identified Latina/os, Asians, Blacks, and Whites

A contested racial identity refers to incongruence between personal racial identification and external racial categorization. For example, an individual may self-identify as White, but be perceived by most others as non-White. Documenting racial contestation is important because racialized experiences are shaped not only by the racial classification that individuals claim for themselves but also the external racial attributions placed on them by others. Focusing solely on monoracial identifying adults, this study answers three key questions about racial contestation: (a) How common is it? (b) Who is most likely to report experiencing it? and (c) How is it related to aspects of racial identity such as racial awareness, racial group closeness, and racial identity salience? Employing the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, results suggest that reports of racial contestation among monoracial identifying adults are more common than some studies suggest (6% to 14%)—particularly among the fastest growing racial groups in the United States, including Latina/os and Asians—and that experiences of racial contestation are often associated with immigrant generation, ancestry, and phenotypical characteristics. Ordinal logistic regression analyses indicate that individuals who report experiencing racial contestation are no more aware of race in everyday life than other U.S. adults, but they feel less close to other members of the self-identified racial group and report lower levels of racial identity salience than their noncontested counterparts. These results point to a thinning of racial identity among the racially contested.