equal opportunities policies, employment and patriarchy

EQUAL OPPORTUNlTlES POLICIES 83

Equal Opportunities Policies, Employment and Patriarchy

Carol Buswell* and Sarah Jenkins

This paper, based on research in the North of England, seeks to examine the interconnections between equal opportunities policies, women’s employment and patriarchy in a local labour market. It is argued that organizations develop a selection of public patriarchal strategies, most notable of which are the denial of inequality and the use of ’time’ to segregate and disadvantage women within the labour market and labour process. It is masculine culture which has determined the shape and operation of equal opportunities policies where time commitment, individualism and priority to employment are necessary in order to achieve. Equal opportunities policies fail to address not only structural inequalities but also the role that organizations themselves play in maintaining gender segregation. By individualizing women the policies may also undermine women’s own employment coping strategies which depend on assistance from other women both inside and outside the employment setting.

Introduction

he data on which this paper is based are T drawn from research, in progress in the North of England, which is concerned with exploring the connections between organizational practices and women’s employment and the role that employers’ equal opportunities policies play in the labour process. The data were elicited from a range of organizational equal opportunities policies and from case study work conducted in four companies operating such policies. These represented the finance, communications, retail and voluntary sectors of the labour market.

The ineffectiveness of the majority of equal opportunities policies in enhancing women’s employment position is illustrated in order to understand that it is necessary to address the interconnections between employment, equal opportunities policies and patriarchy. Walby (1990) has argued that Britain has seen a tran- sition from a private to a public form of patriarchy and it is argued here that equal opportunities policies have, in fact, served to aid public patriarchy by both segregating and individualizing women within the workplace and also by legitimatizing such patriarchal strategies as the denial of inequality and the control of women, by men, through the control of ’time’. The effectiveness of control through time as a patriarchal strategy is increased when equal opportunities policies

and practices define ‘merit’ and ’ability’ in terms of total commitment to the organization. This is particularly important when the occupational ’flexibility’ of male workers often seems to be gained at the expense of women’s control over their own time. This reduces women’s individual ability to be flexible in paid employment and therefore less attractive to employers who seek to regulate the supply of labour in order to meet the peaks and troughs of demand.

This paper, in describing the organizations in which qualitative data were collected, draws attention to the ways in which these companies are organizing their workforces in order to achieve the labour flexibility they feel they need. All the companies studied possessed equal opportunities policies and, as a result of examining a range of such policies by means of a questionnaire to organizations across the North of England, it is suggested that such policies have become part of the regulatory mechanism in the competition for advantage. The emphasis, however, on workers as competitive individuals fails to take account of women’s additional ‘careers’ outside the workplace. With regard to employment it is argued that women are actively subordinated within the labour process and that equal opportunities policies contribute to this as part of public patriarchy which segregates and subordinates women in the workplace. Qualitative data are used to illustrate the operation of the patriarchal strategies of both

Address for correspondence: *Carol Buswell and Sarah Jenkins, Depart- ment of Applied Social Science, University of Northumbria at New- castle, Northumberland Building, Newcastle upon Tyne NEl 8ST.

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84 GENDER, WORK A N D ORGANlZATlON

the denial of inequality and of the ways in which ’time’ can be manipulated and used to the detriment of women. In discussing women’s response to the operation of these strategies it is concluded that women‘s assistance towards each other, both inside and outside employment, is a crucial factor in their ability to involve themselves in the labour market, but it is this co-operation that is negated and undermined by the emphasis in equal opportunities policies on individual ‘ability’ and achievement.

The research

Initially, quantitative data were collected through the use of questionnaires aimed at both identifying employment changes and also organizations with equal opportunities policies. The questionnaires were distributed to companies in the six SIC categories of the economy which comprise the communication, voluntary, retail, finance, public and manufac- turing sectors. These data allowed for an overview of the regional economy in terms of the percentage of women employed in the different sectors and in grades of work and the proportion of full-time and part-time workers.

Organizations with equal opportunities policies were asked to include their policy/ statement with their completed questionnaire and these were analysed to provide informa- tion on the interpretation of equal opportunities by individual organizations. Subsequently, a selection of organizations which had re- sponded to the questionnaire were contacted for interviews. These initial interviews with regional and local personnel managers provided data on employment changes and equal opportunities policies in different sectors of the economy. From these contacts a selection of Organizations for case study work was identified.

Other data reported here are drawn from qualitative research conducted in four case study organizations with equal opportunities policies, in the communication, retail, voluntary and finance sectors mentioned. The case studies involved interviews with approxi- mately 25, predominantly female, workers throughout the occupational hierarchy in each organization as well as interviews with a number of male management staff. The case studies were conducted over a period of four to six weeks in each organization which allowed for non-participatory observation, where appropriate, and the collection of secondary data. In this way the levels of job segregation could be observed and triangu- lated with organizations’ records on the

gender breakdown of occupational grades and other secondary data.

The communication company case study was conducted in a large national organization which had recently completed a widespread business re-organization. Management grades had been restructured to provide a more efficient service and new technology had been introduced to reduce labour costs and provide increased efficiency. Recession and increased business rationalization, in addition to the threat of the change of ownership had led to a re-appraisal of the staff profile. One of the aims of the organization was to match the staff profile to peaks and troughs in demand. This was being achieved by the increased use of part-time staff which was having important implications for the staff profile of the organization. The company had previously employed a traditional full-time male employment base with strong union identification and life-long, secure employment patterns. More recently it had moved towards employing an increasingly casualized female work force. Gender segregation is a feature of the organization, with the majority of workers at shop- floor level being men although there are certain shifts of work and part-time posts undertaken by women. The clerical and administrative base has a balance of males and females, although no part-time or job share posts are available for these jobs. At managerial grades men predominate although steps have been taken in recent years to increase women’s participation.

The voluntary organization selected for case study was one of the top five national providers of residential care for the elderly. This organization had also witnessed a changing outside environment which had implications for the company. These related to government policy and demographic changes. In order to meet these new demands, the organization had embarked upon a restructuring of its business. This had involved rationalization of the administrative function and managerial grades. Staff losses were incurred and the re-organization of administrative boundaries, which included moving the personnel function to a central office outside the region, had repercussions for the experiences of staff in the organization. The organization was both vertically and horizon- tally segregated; women predominated as care assistants and clerical officers and at some levels of management whilst men predominated at senior management level.

The retail organization studied was a large national food retail company. The increasingly competitive external environment had meant that labour costs had been reduced sharply

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85 EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES POLICIES

and opening hours and the use of new technology increased. This organization had also restructured its management grades and had recently taken over a small retail food chain. The result had been short-term financial constraints which had caused a shift in the staff profile to an increasingly part-time base to correspond with the peaks and troughs in demand throughout the day, week and year. This organization is also marked by vertical and horizontal segregation; the increase in part-time work resulting in the shop-floor staff being predominantly female workers whilst full-time males were employed in specialized roles and management positions.

The financial organization in which data were collected was a national building society based in the North of England. The organization provided a somewhat different picture compared with the other companies as it had been the only organization to operate an expansionist plan. Over the past 10 years the organization had merged with smaller building societies and had opened branches throughout the country. It was evident that the business expansion was adopted and implemented very cautiously. Whilst at branch level part-time workers were employed to cover surges in demand throughout the day, at head office there were very few part-time workers. The increased volume in work at head office and the need for flexibility had been achieved through the employment of temporary workers and the introduction, in some cases, of shifts. Although some recruitment had been undertaken, existing staff had increasingly been expected to work longer hours and raise their productivity levels. Plans were being introduced, however, to increase the number of part-time workers and to expand the working day. This organization is also vertically segregated. Women are over-represented in administrative and clerical grades and although there are few women in managerial grades there are no women at all at senior management, at executive level or on the board of directors.

Equal opportunities policies

Both the meaning attached to equal opportunities and its ’ownership’ have shifted significantly. The notion of equal opportunities itself involves a major change in focus when contrasted with women‘s rights. In effect, the notion of rights is removed and replaced by an anodyne equal opportunities policy awaiting implementation by a human resource manager. The implication of this is that ’ownership’ of equality is removed from those

who are fighting for it - women themselves - to ’technicians’ whose responsibility is merely to implement a ‘policy’ (and stay the right side of the law).

Jewson and Mason (1986), in developing their model of ’liberal’ and ‘radical’ equal opportunities policies see procedures as central to the liberal model and outcomes of the radical one. Cockburn (1989), though, in arguing that this model does not capture the diversity and complexity which exists, suggests that we should have equal opportunities agendas of ’shorter’ or ’longer’ length. The longer length agenda is to transform organizations and change the nature of power.

Morgan and Knights (1991) suggest that Foucault’s concept of ’disciplinary gaze’ draws attention to the way a particular set of relations is understood to be constituted and monitored; these sets of relations then become potentially subject to new disciplinary powers of control. So equal opportunities come to be seen as being achieved by spelling out, in detail, how activities are to be carried out and by intensifying checks on the extent to which they are being followed. It is then assumed that managers will become aware of their own unintended biases. The implication being that discrimination is irrational and counter productive.

The equal opportunities policies of local companies which have been examined, with a few notable exceptions, not only emphasize individual ’abilitylmerit’, as part of the regulatory mechanism in the competition for advantage (Baker 1987) but some go further and attempt to placate white men by emphasizing that the policy will not mean ‘unfair advantage for certain groups’ and certainly not a ’lowering of standards’. Several policies put the onus on lower level employees to ’own’ it and become involved in diminishing discrimination. Thus, inequality is explained in terms of personal prejudice and attitudes rather than in terms of structural features. One policy, in explaining that the ’former accepted (our emphasis) roles of the sexes are subject to change’ makes it clear that the policies are often a vehicle for men to talk to other men.

Newel1 (1993) has pointed out that the emphasis on equal opportunities policies has been to open up access for individual women to compete with men. This reliance on ‘fair competition’, however, has a limited effect on the majority of women as it ignores, and so refuses to address, structural inequalities such as the gendered domestic economy. Equal opportunities policies, in this way, have served to individualize the problem and, in effect, to ’blame the victim’; that is, attribute

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the absence of women in higher positions to their failure to take advantage of equal opportunities. If equal opportunities policies and ‘fair’ competition exist and women still remain relatively few in number at senior management levels, it is seen as a result of women’s own ‘choice’ or ’lack of ability’. Newel1 (1993) concludes that ‘equal opportunities policies, are, for the majority of women, simply enabling them to be exploited in dead-end jobs which are low-paid and with few, if any promotional prospects’ (p. 288).

Within employment, equal opportunities policies operate by treating workers as competitive individuals whereas women’s additional careers of motherhood, consump- tion and housework need to be studied in the context of the labour market and the labour process (Brannen 1987). This is what equal opportunities policies strikingly fail to do. These policies also allow men to deny that inequality exists whilst simultaneously redefining the ‘good worker’ as the one who ‘gives most time to the organization’; time being a commodity women often lack. Women, on the other hand, often maintain their foothold in the labour market with the help of other women, both at home and within organizations. By individualizing and sep- arating women, therefore, equal opportunities policies can undermine the survival tactics of the majority of the female work-force.

Employment

A review of women’s current labour market position reveals that whereas feminist struggles have succeeded in diminishing the patriarchal strategy of occupational exclusion another strategy, that of job segregation, is as powerful as ever. One of the main patterns of segregation is that between full-time and part- time workers. One half of married women in Britain are currently in the latter category and the majority of ‘women returners’ re-enter employment in a part-time capacity (Employ- ment Gazette 1991). But women do not just ‘happen’ to have less power in the labour market than men; they are actively subordinated within the labour process and equal opportunities policies are contributing to this not only in acting as legitimatory ideology (Collinson et al. 1990) but also by dividing and individualizing women within the workplace. As Baker (1987) notes ’principles of equal opportunities help to make systems of inequality seem reasonable and acceptable’ (p. 46). They shift the whole issue away from whether inequalities are themselves justifiable

to the question of how to distribute those inequalities. But as Cockbum (1991) has pointed out, organizations are crucial to the production and reproduction of power, and men will not therefore readily let women in.

Various writers have demonstrated how gender segregation is maintained by patriarchal processes such as the exclusionary tactics operated by male workers (Cockbum 1983; Walby 1986). Their analyses have illuminated the role which organizations play in the operation of patriarchal power. An analysis of patriarchal strategies operated in the context of organizations is therefore crucial in an attempt to understand the process of gender segregation. Walby (1990) argues that there have been changes in both the degree and form of patriarchy in Britain over the last century. Changes in degree include aspects of gender relations such as the slight reduction in the wages gap between men and women and the closing of the gap in educational qualifications between boys and girls. Other aspects of patriarchal relations have, however, intensified - not only in degree but in form. Britain, like Scandinavian countries, has seen a movement from a private to a public form of patriarchy. Private patriarchy is based on household production as the main site of women’s oppression and public patriarchy is based principally in public sites such as education and employment. In private patriarchy the expropriation of women’s labour takes place mainly by individual men within the household; while in the public form it is a more collective appropriation.

In private patriarchy the principal strategy is exclusion; in the public it is segregationist and subordinating. The change from private to public patriarchy involves a change both in the relations between and within the structures. Walby (1992), in fact, argues that it is in- sufficient to turn to capital and the family as the sole causal agents for women’s position in the labour market as that position is crucially determined by patriarchal structures within employment. Hochschild (1989) also concludes that whereas formerly many men dominated women within marriage now they dominate, anonymously, outside it.

It is crucial to understand and document the processes of subordination currently in action under the guise of liberal egalitarian policies for, as McDowell (1992) observes, women are being drawn into employment in ways that both deepen pre-existing patterns of exploita- tion and, at the same time, open up opportunities for certain individual women. Women themselves may respond by choosing low- level employment in order not to be required to subordinate all aspects of their lives to the


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requirements of jobs which demand exclusive time and commitment.

In considering the inter-relationship between paid and unpaid work (public and private), women’s involvement in the labour market is still dependent on men, in both private and public spheres. In the public sphere equal opportunities policies can form part of the public patriarchal control. Segre- gation is the main strategy of public patriarchy and it is evident that the labour process is constructed using the full-timelpart-time division as a real operating principle.

As has been illustrated, all the organizations studied were marked by gender segregation. Horizontal occupational segregation exists when men and women are most commonly working in different types of occupation. Vertical segregation, on the other hand, exists when men are mostly working in higher grade occupations and women are most commonly working in lower grade occupations, or vice versa (Hakim 1979). It is apparent that the creation of part-time jobs ‘for women’ aids both horizontal as well as vertical segregation. The construction of most lower-level jobs in the retail organization as part-time meant that women were not only subject to horizontal segregation, since they were sought as the chief supply of labour, but also this, in turn, excluded women from higher levels of the organization. It was clear that management hold strong assumptions about the ‘type’ of work appropriate for women. For example, the fact that the workforce is often constructed as part-time and women are recruited for such employment means that they are excluded from promotion ladders. Additionally, the emphasis given by senior management to working long hours and week-ends has major implications for family life. The few women who are in management positions stressed that their jobs had involved a choice between career and family.

With regard to part-time employment it should be noted that part-time jobs have, as their starting point, a firm’s desire to maximize productivity without incurring extra costs. Part-time jobs exist in their own right and are not fractions of full-time jobs. Over four-fifths of part-time jobs are, in fact, permanent and part-time jobs for women have been sub- stituted for full-time ones steadily since 1951 (Hakim 1993). Labour markets which recruit female labour are actually structured around women’s assumed dependency in a household context where the main expenses are born by a higher earner (81% part-time women in Britain are officially ’low-paid’ and this will be exacerbated by the demise of Wages Councils).

So changes in the labour market are not simply about employment but also about the connections between employment, home and gender (Buswell 1992). Management, in fact, consciously exploits the connections by actively utilizing women’s life cycle position. This is illustrated by the fact that they seek women of a certain agelstage. In the communications company, for example, there were very few part-time jobs and flexibility was achieved by longer hours and overtime. Management, in this company, expected to employ either young women without children or older women whose children had grown up. They did not have to pursue an active policy with regard to this as women with caring responsibilities do not apply for jobs they are unable to do. It is this latter group of women who comprise the part-time workforce in the retail company and management expect that, at this stage in their life-cycle, they are unlikely to demand full-time contracts either because of other responsibilities or because of a deliberate choice to give time and attention to other activities. Kerfoot and Knights (1991), in a different context, also point to the active use, by employers, of a woman’s ‘stage and age’; although their example is based on the unpaid use of older women’s skills within the labour process rather than labour market contours shaped by employers around women’s available time at certain ages.

Thus, in addition to employment flexibility having a gendered nature it is also heavily reliant on women’s assumed life-cycle stage. From the research, it is evident that management hold clear views about the appropriate- ness of their staff’s gendered characteristics to deliver flexible working patterns. Morgan and Knights (1991) draw upon an extension of Foucault’s notion of the ‘disciplinary gaze’ to emphasize how management take an explicit interest in the qualities of the workforce that derive from understandings of these gendered characteristics.

Patriarchal strategies

Organizations rely upon different patriarchal strategies depending on the inter-relationships between the external environment, corporate strategies and product demand. Distinct strategies are utilized in the various sectors of employment as well as in different depart- ments in the same organization. For the purpose of this paper two public patriarchal strategies which we have found to be widespread and common are discussed; these are the denial of inequality and control through time. The complexities of strategies utilized in

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organizations can be understood by developing Bagguley’s (1991) formulation of the organization of labour. This approach departs from more conspiratorial usages of the term patriarchy and expands upon the role of organizations in developing and mobilizing different strategies depending on its particular needs.

Bagguley (1991) discusses the distinction between ‘monological’ and ‘dialogical’ forms of the organization of labour. Monological forms rest on centralized decision-making and men mobilized, patriarchally, through trades unions and professional associations which excluded or segregated women. This often gave rise to credentialist tactics of closure. Dialogical forms, however, see power exer- cised through actions and normative claims. When institutions are formally committed to sexual equality men cannot draw on monological resources and have to draw on dialogical norms and actions to retain their dominance. The move from one to another can be seen as a response to the ‘success’ of the liberal feminist strategy of using the qualifi- cation lever.

Dialogical control includes informal collu- sion, conscious or unconscious, between men and the beliefs that they transmit to each other and act upon. One of the beliefs and a strategy of counter-attack that the existence of equal opportunities policies allows is that of the denial of inequality.

Male Manager Ladies, now, sometimes get (Finance) more opportunities than men.

Male Manager I’ve heard it said that you (Finance) need a skirt to get anywhere

at the moment.

These statements become important when one considers the working lives of the majority of women in such organizations.

If equal opportunities policies encourage men to believe that women not only have equality but more opportunities than men, this opens the way to explaining women’s subordination in terms of women’s own attitudes.

Male Manager (Finance)

Male Manager (Finance)

Female Manager (Retail)

Ladies’ attitudes haven’t changed much. They still think their careers are secondary to their husbands’. If their husbands move they go. It needs to come from women themselves - they need career ambition. Women tend to get faced with home problems. Women. do what their husbands tell them up here.

Female Manager Barriers are now self- (Finance) imposed. Females tend to

Where the labour process is segregated between men’s jobs and women’s jobs, as in the communications company, the segregation and subordination of women can be reinforced by collusive male behaviour. Although as Mills (1992) has observed - as with class, the processes of gender differentiation do not simply operate as a one-way street; women observe the contradictions and note the way men and women are treated in organizational practices.

debar themselves.

Women Workers (Communication)

Woman Worker (Finance)

I think women get a rough deal. All the men stick together - so there is double standards from the bosses. They make generalizations about women talking etc. but not about men. It would be much better if there were more women bosses, the men are really funny about allowing women to go to the toilets - they time you.

Part-timers aren’t valued by the gaffers - they only ever say bad things to us. The work we do isn‘t reflected in our treatment.

Men get a better deal. They go off to the pub and nip off early. It’s a man’s place here.

It’s not just caring responsibilities that stop women getting on - there are barriers at the top. Men are in with the cliques.

A further strategy that could be understood in terms of dialogical control is the way in which time is used in an organizational context. It is apparent that the use of time is used to segregate women in the labour market and equal opportunities policies may give legitimation to this strategy by emphasizing individual effort and ‘commitment’. ’Time’ is a different commodity for women and for men. Women working part-time have a plethora of timetables with which to juggle, and coping mechanisms, so that moveable shifts and unpredictable (but expected-to-do) overtime sometimes means the difference between being able to do the job or not.

Women Workers They keep trying to change (Communication) our hours - but if you don’t

get home until after 9.30pm and have to work every Saturday you never get to see your kids. If you refuse


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the hours they find ‘errors’ in your work. They offer overtime without warning, so women can‘t take it because they can’t plan.

Add to this the fact that some women are attempting to ’construct‘ their own full-time jobs by doing more than one part-time one, all designed to dovetail, and the impossibility of managing unpredictable time can be im- agined and for women who are sole parents, unpredictable work patterns are extremely problematic.

There are some other processes to do with time and place that are interesting, and widespread. Training programmes for management often, now, take place in hotelslcentres away from home. Besides the obvious fact that this may be difficult for women because of domestic responsibilities, the practice is grounded in patriarchal assumptions that home hinders ‘proper’ work. In practice, this means that decisions are increasingly taken by a group (mainly male) - outside the setting - without reference to, or discussion with, those who are managed (mainly female). Coser (1974) pointed out that ‘greedy institutions’ minimize role conflict by removing outside role partners and, whilst becoming insulated from competing relationships and competing anchors for their social identity, the selected few find their identity in the symbolic universe of the greedy institution. Most employment settings now exhibit these features as far as managers are concerned; which not only steals time from their families but effectively isolates them from the majority of the workforce who are not necessarily expected to be part of the symbolic universe. This process is gendered. Women managers may not be inculcated into these norms, but they do have to participate in order to progress.

Another feature connected with the use of time is the expectation that managers will work very long hours and be expected to go into work on their days off if required, cover for other people and be telephoned at home by superiors. This does not necessarily increase profits or production. It is, rather, the identifier of middle-class masculinity - instead of giving strength they give time; they are expected to subordinate all other aspects of their lives when called upon. This means they cannot always plan, but men are not usually operating several time tables and co-ordinating everyone else’s. Time, of course, is usually made available to men by women’s labour. If women themselves are either reluctant or unable to adopt these male norms of work

practices, liberal policies have little to offer them.

Women Worker They’ve arranged a 4 week (volulztary) residential course which

would be impossible for a lot of women to attend, as well as a lot of men for that matter - but the difference is that the men won‘t say they can’t attend because of family commitments. Somehow that‘s seen to be wrong.

Women Worker I think women are used to (Retail) doing 15 things at once.

When a bloke goes out to work, he just does the job and that‘s it. I’m sure that with men only one part of their brain works at once.

Men can only give more time to their jobs if they do less at home and thus prove their masculinity and loyalty to the company; as their pay increases so does their exemption in the domestic sphere. Hochschild (1989) has estimated that most women put in an extra month a year on the ‘second shift’ at home and it is this month that contributes to her partner’s success and the expanding wage gap between them and so the vicious circle continues. Burrell (1992) discusses the lack of concern with ‘time’ in the management of change literature. As opposed to the linear, cyclical or spiral times he mentions, women’s time may be more of a horizontal wave-like shape. In terms of the life-cycle women may have relative surges of available time before and after child-care, but a paucity of time in- between and, perhaps, also later in life as a result of parent care. On an annual basis they may have less time in-between holidays, when other household members’ free time usually takes away their own; on a daily basis they may find time ’at work‘ is often less fraught than time outside it. Even women in onerous jobs often comment that it is a ’rest’ compared with the remainder of the day.

E.P. Thompson (1982) describes how, throughout the 19th century, the ’propaganda of time thrift’ continued to be directed towards working people. He quotes from an 1821 ’Essay on the evils of popular ignorance’ (by J . Foster). ‘After work they are left with several hours in the day to be spent nearly as they please . . . we shall often see them simply annihilating those portions of time.’ As Mellor (1991) notes ’to the extent that women are responsible for biological time, they do not have time, they give time . . . They create the time and thereby the space in which men and children live’ (p. 256). She also maintains that

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men are speeding up our institutional processes by using the fuel of women’s time and that society is now rushing along at the pace of the fastest man - the one who has the most human and natural resources. Hochschild (1989) describes it as ’backstage wealth’ (p. 254) where the richest is the high-level executive with an unwaged wife and a sec- retary; the poorest is the single mother who works full-time and rears her children with no help from anyone.

A consideration of time provides an understanding of the important intersections between patriarchal strategies, equal opportunity policies and women’s employment. As has been discussed, the reliance on full-time employment in our society is problematic for many women who are unequally burdened in the domestic economy caring for old as well as young dependents. One way in which organizations segregate women is through the use of part-time work for which women are sought (Beechey and Perkins 1987). The ideology of equal opportunities may legitima- tize this policy by emphasizing the need for ’mother’s privileges’ (Cockburn 1991) defined in practice as the creation of inferior, low-paid part-time jobs. The creation of part-time work serves further to segregate women’s work from that of full-time men as well as exclud- ing women from the higher echelons of organizations.

Women‘s responses

The study of patriarchal strategies also leads to a consideration of the concept of agency. Anyon (1983) argues that complete acceptance (as well as complete rejection) of sex-role appropriate attitudes and behaviour is rather rare. What is more usual is a simultaneous process of accommodation and resistance. ’Gender development involves not so much passive imprinting as active response to social conditions’ (p. 19). Women and girls are presented not only with ideologies of appropriate behaviour for themselves as females - the nurturance of men and children in the domestic sphere, but also of what are appropriate means, in our society, of achieving self- esteem - participation in the public sphere. A major contradiction faced by many women, therefore, is to be both subordinate and domestic and also aggressive enough to compete.

Given the public patriarchal strategy of job segregation and a labour process constructed

patriarch at home. It is not suggested that this has simply been ‘awarded’ to individual women; often it has involved years of personal struggle, helped now by the need for additional household income. Obviously, women with children have to pick their part-time jobs to fit in with the father’s hours (if they are in a couple), so women’s ’choice’ of a job is constrained by that of the man’s. Some men though, now, are taking on child-care and household tasks while the woman works her shift - indicating a loosening of private patriarchy in some instances.

Woman Worker My husband‘s a post-man (Volun t a y ) and works 4am-llam, so he

does all the housework.

Woman Worker I think that looking after the Sunday shift children for a day has done (Retail) him good - it’s opened his

eyes.

Woman Worker My husband gets in at 6.30. 8pm-11.30pm Having one day with him, Sunday shift Sunday, is definitely enough. (Retail) He looks after the child when

I’m out and sometimes he feels tied and has a moan - but I’m tied all day.

But it is clear that the labour market flexibility of men - to do moveable shifts, unplanned overtime etc. - is gained at the expense of women’s ‘flexibility’. The more unpredictable the man’s hours the less possible it is for the woman to involve herself in the labour market. Influential literature on labour market flexibility is silent on this point (e.g. Atkinson 1986; Piore and Sabel1984), as Walby (1989) points out. Where individual men have not loosened their control within the household and do not want the woman to work, it is usually only possible for the woman to do so when the children are older.

Whilst it may be the changing face of patriarchy that gives women a subordinate foothold in the present labour market it is, in fact, often other women who make it possible for them to juggle the requirements. More women mention other women - sisters, mothers, female in-laws - in connection with child-care than mention husbands. This situation parallels a survey by the Policy Studies Institute which found that 36% of women returning to work left their children with grandmothers, which was more than childminders, nannies and nurseries put together (The Guardian 13 January 1993).

around part-time and temporary employment, women have been able to accommodate because of the decrease, in some instances, in private patriarchy and the power of the individual

Woman worker (5pm-8pm) (Communication)

I live with my mother and she looks after the two children. Lots of women here are sole earners which is why they do


EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES POLlClES 91

these hours and their mothers look after the children in the evenings.

Woman Worker School holidays are the (Retail) biggest problem because I

haven’t got family on hand. Generally my mum will come down from Scotland to look after them.

Woman Worker My friend’s a childminder. (Finance) But as a favour, she looks

after my children as well, otherwise I couldn’t work.

Women’s assistance towards each other, however, is not confined to kin and the domestic sphere. The moveable hours and unplanned overtime mentioned were features of the male-dominated communications company. In contrast, the female-managed voluntary organization showed quite a different pattern - and yet continuous cover was required and there was no slack in the staffing.

Women Workers She was good in negotiating (Volunta y) hours I could manage - so

that as long as I do the right total in a fortnight it doesn’t matter when they are. She has a young family and knows what it‘s like.

The manager’s really flexible - we can do our hours over 4 days instead of 5 . She lets us swap shifts and build up time so that we can have a week off.

As the women are having their own needs taken into account they also feel responsibility towards each other:-

Women Worker (Volunta y)

I t wasn’t so bad when I was in an office because you could take a day off sick. But here we all come in even if we’re really ill. If you don’t, one of the other girls would have to cover - but they really need their day off. So we don’t.

The retail company was different in the sense that part-time contracts were for specified hours and days, with overtime offered. In this store the workforce was managed by women and there was another informal flexibility going on within the formal flexibility.

Women Workers I’ve had to change my (con- (Retail) tracted) hours twice because

my sister couldn’t look after my children. She (Personnel Manager) goes out of her way to help you.

Those without kids normally give up their time to do the overtime in the holidays. I’ve had to change my hours 4 times! She’s very good. It’s very flexible in my department. That has a lot to do with the fact that it’s a woman running it.

Additionally, if a woman became pregnant, the woman manager would work out how many hours short she was to qualify for maternity benefits and offer the woman that amount of overtime over the succeeding weeks.

This informal flexibility is not necessarily a feature of the retail industry itself:-

Woman Dept. I try to accommodate the Manager women re. their hours. My (Retail) boyfriend’s a food manager in

another store and he’s really tough in work - he can‘t believe what I do. He says the hours are fixed and if you find it difficult - tough. He’s not at all sympathetic.

This also illustrates that women super- visorslmanagers often involve themselves in more ’emotional labour’ (James 1989) in their jobs than d o most men.

There are also examples of women, without female managers, assisting each other. In the finance organization the permanent employees had pressurized management for the only woman employed on a temporary part-time contract to be made permanent. This company also tried to refuse all Christmas holiday leave, whereupon the women with no children offered to do extra over-time on condition that those with children could have leave.

This process of women, not just in private but also in the employment sphere, helping each other to cope takes on significance when one remembers that one of the features of equal opportunities policies is to divide and individualize women, between full-time achievers and the rest. The women super- visorslmanagers in the voluntary and retail organizations tend not, at the moment, to have higher education or professional qualifications; they therefore share with the other woman a similar class background andlor age and stage in the life-cycle.

Conclusion

’Achievement on merit’, as a central plank of equal opportunities policies, exemplifies

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individualism and hierarchy - rather than co- operation, identification and similarity which are, in fact, the very features that make some jobs more possible for women to do than others. Phillips (1987) points out that ’Liberalism is the doctrine par excellence that tries to keep things separate to demarcate the personal from the political sphere . . . In its desire to keep separate the worlds of public and private, it offers us ‘equality’ in the former while hypocritically ignoring our real differences in the latter’ (p. 13).

It has been claimed that the main feature of employment restructuring in the 1970s and 1980s has been a sharing out of employment between larger numbers of women (McDowell 1992). The majority of women now engage in waged work for most of their adult lives. The Department of Employment in 1988 stated:

Employers must recognize that women can no longer be treated as second class workers. They will need women workers and must recognize both their career ambitions and their domestic responsibilities. This will involve broadening company training policies, much more flexibility of work and hours and job-sharing to facilitate the employment of women with families and help adapt to their needs (p. 8).

There is no mention of men’s domestic responsibilities or flexibility for men, the contradiction of women’s lives is simply formally stated and endorsed.

This paper has sought to provide an insight into the relationship between equal opportunities policies, gender segregation, patriarchy and women’s employment in various labour markets in the North of England. It has been argued that organizations develop a selection of public patriarchal strategies in response to their external as well as internal environment. What is evident, however, is that job segregation continues to be a result of these strategies. This is further enhanced by the reliance on the full-timelpart- time dichotomy which is particularly pertinent in both the maintenance of vertical and horizontal segregation.

It is not possible, therefore, as Walby (1990) notes, to explain the phenomenon of ’flexibility’ without understanding the changes in gender relations which make women available to be used in this way. Flexibility is not just about capitalllabour relations but also the change from public to private patriarchy. In fact, Walby (1990) concludes that ‘women are no longer restricted to the domestic hearth, but have the whole society in which to roam and be exploited’ (p. 201). Meis (1986), in discussing patriarchy on a world scale, points

out that capitalism now depends on women‘s labour as producers in the Third World and consumers in the First World. But she also maintains that under the slogan ’flexibiliza- tion’ women are being reintegrated into paid labour in a range of non-protected and informal production relations, thus reintroducing into industrialized countries the ’dual model’ according to which Third World labour has been segmented.

In Western societies definitions of masculinity are bound up with definitions of work and the masculine culture makes firm distinctions between ’work’ and ’non work’, ‘career’ and ’family’. It is this culture which has determined the shape and operation of equal opportunities policies where time commitment, individualism and priority to employment are necessary in order to achieve.

It is structural inequalities and the active role that organizations play that serve to maintain gender segregation in the workplace. Equal opportunities policies not only patently fail to address these issues but may also, in fact, actively work to the detriment of women workers as we have suggested in this paper. By providing the myth of formal equal opportunity that individualizes women, policies often undermine or restrict the co- operative strategies that women have deployed by encouraging a denial that inequality exists. The use of time as a form of control by management over workers and, crucially by men over women, means that ’backstage poverty’ (i.e. the lack of help and time awarded to them by others in the household) renders the price of success too high for many women to contemplate let alone realize.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to our colleagues Mary Mellor and John Stirling for their helpful comments.

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