Sheryl Skaggs

Sex segregation, labor process organization, and gender earnings inequality

This article revisits Tams finding that occupational sex composition does not influence wages. This problem is approached in two quite different ways. First, a potential conceptual and methodological weakness in all research that focuses on national occupational, rather than local job and organizational, processes is pointed out. Second, the implications of organizationally relevant social closure and gendered labor process theories for our understanding of wage determination models is developed. The gendered devaluation and specialized human capital theories, which are stressed by Tam and his critics, do not represent the entire story. We find that the sex composition effect on wages exists, but it is indirect and relatively weak, operating largely through lower access of typically female jobs to extensive training. There is no strong evidence for the existence of a more generic gendered labor process in these cross‐sectional data. The evidence for social closure processes in this article is limited to the gendered nature of access to on‐the‐job training.

An Establishment-Level Test of the Statistical Discrimination Hypothesis

This article explores the basic assumption of statistical discrimination theory, which holds that women and minorities earn lower wages because they, on average, have lower productivity. Employer exploitation of women and minorities and social closure by advantaged employees are advanced as alternative explanations for the lower wages of women and minorities. The authors first demonstrate that there are substantial gender and racial wage penalties net of human capital for a sample of employees. The primary analysis focuses on the sample of private-for-profit establishments in which these individuals are employed. Establishment productivity as well as aggregate salaries and wages and profits are regressed on the sex and race composition of the establishment with other factors that may influence establishment productivity. Findings show that neither the sex nor race compositions of the workplace are associated with productivity. The authors interpret the results to be most consistent with a social closure account of gender and racial earnings inequality.

Producing change or bagging opportunity? the effects of discrimination litigation on women in supermarket management

Despite women’s advancement in the workplace over the past 40 years, their representation in top‐level positions remains disproportionately low relative to that of men. This raises the question of what factors drive greater gender equality in managerial ranks. Using national equal employment opportunity (EEO‐1) data for the supermarket industry, this article proposes that high‐profile sex discrimination lawsuit filings provide the type of intense pressure that leads to increased female managerial representation. Results from fixed‐effects models demonstrate the significance of litigation in the short and long run, especially for women employed by supermarkets located in the most progressive U.S. appellate court jurisdictions. The findings also provide support for a normative effect on change based on regional variation in public orientation toward gender equality.

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.

The relationship between attitudes toward diversity management in the Southwest USA and the GLOBE study cultural preferences

This study investigates the importance of diversity management as it relates to the GLOBE study cultural preferences. A survey of 225 students in undergraduate and graduate programs at a private Texas University concluded that collectivism was a strong predictor of how positively participants rated their organizations support for diversity, diversity recruitment efforts, diversity training for mentors, and employees with disabilities. The participants were nontraditional students who were also employed in a wide array of organizations. Collectivism and assertiveness were both strong predictors with regard to participants ratings of chief executive officer (CEO) support of diversity and the organizations overall diversity training. With regard to leadership dimensions, humane-oriented leadership was a positive predictor of preference for a collective culture, which predicts diversity management ratings. Team-oriented leadership also predicted ratings of diversity management. The results of the study indicate that promoting a more collectivist rather than individualistic culture is associated with the increased rating of organizational diversity practices. Furthermore, it strengthens the argument that with the increase in globalization, organizations must be prepared to re-evaluate their policies and know when to adapt to changes in organizational culture.

Workplace regulation of sexual harassment and federal and state-level legal environments

Abstract This study investigates how federal and state-level laws designed to reduce workplace sexual harassment relate to the content of sexual harassment training programs in a sample of private U.S. companies. To gauge the effect of the law on the regulation of sexual harassment, we draw on unique data containing information on federal and state-level legal environments, formal discrimination charges filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and establishment-level sexual harassment training initiatives. State-level legal regulation of sexual harassment at work is linked to more elaborate sexual harassment training programs, even when federal legal regulations are not. Our findings underscore the importance of state-level legal regimes in the workplace regulation of gender-based rights and provide an example for future studies of work inequality and the law.

Product Review: Inside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social InequalityInside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality, by WilliamsChristine L.. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. 264 pp.

It feels “fake” because we know it involves the deflection of our natural human sociability to an ulterior end. Normally we meet strangers in the expectation that they may truly be strange, and are drawn to the multilayered mystery that each human presents. But in networking, as in prostitution, there is no time for fascination. The networker is always .|.|. scavenging to meet his or her individual needs. (P. 62)