Lee’s Blog 14

Britton starts out by telling us on page three of “At Work in the Iron Cage” that the theory of gendered organizations says that we should not see an organization as a neutral organism that has been infected by the identities of a worker’s gender, sexuality, race, and class. We should, instead, see these as places where “these attributes are present in pre-existing assumptions and constructed through ongoing practice.” While Britton uses a number of sources, her main venue are interviews with seventy-two corrections officers. These officers work in two male prisons and three female prisons. Structural, agency, and culture are all linked together in organizational gendering because, as Britton tells us, there are various cultural ideologies and cultural ideas that affect job choice, employer preferences, organizational practices that have an influence. For example, my mother used to work in a daycare center. If she had gone in there to apply for a job at the same time a man had, she most likely would have gotten the job because she is a woman. This could be because the employer would assume she had past experience in taking care of children as a mother.

Britton also tells us that the public sector and the private sector definitely have a division when it comes to work. Culture defines what our beliefs are about gender. These beliefs include specific things that men do and that women do. This is what Britton refers to as “organizations gendered at the level of structure.” Often, a man can leave work for the day and he is done for the night. However, a woman often leaves work and goes home to work many more hours as a wife and mother. She could very easily be working harder at home than she does at work.