Organisations’ Contribution to Social Inequality – An Intersectional Lens on the Simultaneous Structure of Advantage and Disadvantage

• In Event: 2451 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 21. Representation and Inclusivity II

Abstract

Access to the upper echelons of organisations has long been proven to be unequal, as women, racial minorities, and lower-class members are found to be segregated into lower-ranking jobs within organisations. I look at how organisations produce inequality by adopting an intersectional lens and integrating insights from gender-, race-, and class-based inequality into a common framework of inequality processes in organisations. I suggest that stereotyping of individuals and archetyping, a category-based mental model, of job roles jointly privilege some individuals while marginalising others. The extent to which the individual’s stereotype and the job role archetype converge (diverge) drives the strength of the positive (negative) bias in the evaluation of the job role fit. Thus, stereotyping and archetyping jointly contribute to the recreation of existing structures by driving systemic job segregation. My contribution is two-fold. First, I integrate previously separated literatures to show that the mechanism underlying inequality processes in organisations is the same for gender, race, and class. Second, I illustrate the importance of ‘job role archetypes’ in the recreation of existing inequality patterns. In doing so, I contribute to the inequality literature and specifically to the institutionalisation of inequality. I discuss further implications for research and practice.

Authors

• Andrea Wessendorf, University of Cambridge

• Kamal Ahmed Munir, University of Cambridge