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Outsiders/Insiders: Women and Professional Norms*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Peta Tancred
Peta Tancred
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, McGill University
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Abstract

This paper enlarges the discussion of normative systems by arguing that the professional domain is just as normatively “gendered” as any such systems at the societal level. Taking off from recent media discussion, the author underlines the extent to which the implicit normative systems of the work world are overwhelmingly male and she demonstrates how the currently accepted definitions distort our understanding not only of women's work but also of men's. She employs her recent research on women professionals (particularly architects and engineers) to argue that a variety of definitional norms of the professions are credible, but that these are differentially exclusive of women. She ends with a wide-ranging discussion of definitional criteria for feminists which would serve to ensure that women's modal experience within professional arenas is included to the same extent as men's, for women's contributions to the workplace can only be grasped if male normative approaches are abandoned.

Résumé

Cet article élargit la discussion des systèmes normatifs en proposant que le domaine professionnel est tout aussi «genré» normativement que le sont les autres au niveau sociétal. À partir d'un récent débat médiatique, l'auteure souligne à quel point les systèmes normatifs implicites du monde du travail sont à prédominance mâles et montre comment les définitions actuellement acceptées déforment notre compréhension non seulement du travail des femmes mais aussi de celui des hommes. Elle puise dans sa récente recherche sur les femmes professionnelles (notamment les architectes et les ingénieurs) pour argumenter qu'une variété de normes définitionnelles des professions sont crédibles alors qu'elles excluent les femmes à des degrés divers. L'article se termine sur une discussion élargie des critères de définition pour des féministes qui pourraient assurer que l'expérience modale des femmes dans les arènes professionnelles soit incluse dans la même mesure que celle des hommes, puisque les contributions des femmes au monde du travail ne peuvent être saisies que si les approches normatives mâles sont abandonnées.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 14 , Issue 01: Gender, Ethnicity, (Hetero)Sexuality, and Norms Genre, ethnicité, (hétéro)sexualité et normes , Spring/printemps 1999 , pp. 31 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1999

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References

1. This term is usually used to refer to professional settings where at least 65% (see Marshall, Katherine, “Women in Professional Occupations: Progress in the 1980s” (1989) 13:15Canadian Social TrendsGoogle Scholar) to 70% (see Jacobs, Jerry A., Revolving Doors: Sex Segregation and Women's Careers (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989Google Scholar) of position occupants are male.

2. Tancred-Sheriff, Peta, “Gender, Sexuality and the Labour Process” in Hearn, Jeff et al. , eds., The Sexuality of Organization (London: Sage, 1989) 45Google Scholar; Grant, Judith & Tancred, Peta, “A Feminist Perspective on State Bureaucracy” in Mills, Albert J. & Tancred, Peta. eds., Gendering Organizational Analysis (Newbury Park: Sage, 1992) 112.Google Scholar

3. Adams, Annmarie & Tancred, Peta, “Designing Women”: Gender and the Architectural Profession (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) c. 1 [in press].Google Scholar

4. “Where Women Work, and Why” The Globe and Mail (28 March 1998) D6.

5. The reasons for quotation marks around this word will become clear as the discussion progresses.

6. It never seems to occur to the editorialists that, given that the teams are overwhelmingly male, the experience of being a team player might be distinctly different for women and men.

7. This expression, of course, is derivative of Belenky, Mary Field et al. , Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic, 1986).Google Scholar

8. Tancred, Peta, “Women's Work: A Challenge to the Sociology of Work” (1995) 2 Gender, Work and Organization 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Definitions vary, but a frequent official definition of part-time work would include all waged work that is undertaken for fewer than 30 hours per week. Women in Canada: A Statistical Report (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1995) at 65.

10. Ibid.

11. Adams & Tancred, supra note 3, c.2.

12. Ibid. Table 1.

13. Or that of a family member who responds on her/his behalf.

14. Ministry of Supply and Services, 1991 Census Questionnaire (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1991).Google Scholar

15. To take an example from the field of architecture, while the definition changes from one Census year to another, landscape, marine and naval architects have usually been included by the Canadian census as acceptable specialities whereas these are specifically excluded by the provincial architectural associations.

16. Adams & Tancred, supra note 3, c.2.

17. Schirmer, Gretchen & Tancred, Peta, “Women's Participation Within Male Parameters: The Official Presence of Women in Engineering Associations” Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association Annual Meeting. Brock University, Ste. Catharines, June 1996 [unpublished], Table 1.Google Scholar

18. For example, women architects, in their post-association employment, were employed in unofficial architectural practice, teaching in architecture-related fields, urban planning, the arts, and various idiosyncratic employment related to architecture such as architectural journalism, the development of software programes for architecture, and so forth. Adams & Tancred, supra note 3, c.2.

19. For architects, the percentages for 1991 are 10,6% for the professional definition and 19,1% for the Census definition. Adams & Tancred, ibid. For engineers, the percentages are 4.2% for the professional definition and 8.9% for the Census definition. Schirmer & Tancred, supra note 17, Table 1.

20. This hypothesis is based on the evidence, for architects, that the proportion of women entering the professional associations over an appropriate career-period is practically identical to the proportion of contemporary women who are members of these associations. Adams & Tancred, supra note 3.

21. This hypothesis is based on: a) evidence that the presence of women in professional schools is generally higher than within the relevant profession and that the differences are sufficiently significant that a time-lag argument is not totally convincing; b) some early evidence, for architects in particular, that a low proportion of professional graduates register with the appropriate associations. Ibid.

22. Christiansen-Ruffman, Linda, “Women's Conceptions of the Political: Three Canadian Women's Organizations” in Ferree, Myra Marx & Martin, Patricia Yancey, eds., Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women's Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995) 372.Google Scholar

23. Ibid. at 381.

24. Ibid. at 381–82.

25. Ibid. at 382.

26. Who's Counting: Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics, Videotape (Montreal: National Film Board 1995) [hereinafter Who's Counting].

27. I had the opportunity, in February 1996, to present some of the results of our research on women architects to members of the Québec Ordre des Architectes at a conference on the topic “Les Jeunes et l'Emploi.” As one practising architect admonished me: “Architects work on the site” [my translation] and he was completely disinterested in women's innovative approaches to the use of their professional qualifications. And this despite the fact that the conference was deliberately organized to discuss possible openings for graduates in architecture, amongst other topics, given the retrenchment of openings in traditional domains over the 1990s.

28. Waring, Marilyn, If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics (San Francisco: Harper & Rowe, 1998).Google Scholar

29. Who's Counting, supra note 26.

30. Christiansen-Ruffman, supra note 22 at 373.

31. Savage, Mike, “Women's Expertise, Men's Authority: Gendered Organisations and the Contemporary Middle Classes” in Savage, Mike & Witz, Anne, eds., Gender and Bureaucracy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) 124.Google Scholar

32. Tancred, Peta & De Serres, Michèle, Professional Women and Men in the Banking Sector: The Experience of Automation (Laval: CITI, 1992).Google Scholar