Patricia Yancey Martin

Florida State University | FSU · Department of Sociology

Gendered organizations is a recent academic specialty within sociology, management, communications, and other disciplines. Martin reviews the history and emergence of the field, its transition to a feminist perspective, and her involvement in its development. Before the 1970s, when “rational-technical” conceptions of organizations were hegemonic, m...

Using the concept of stealth power and a critical realist perspective, this article identifies leadership practices that obscure the centralisation of power, drawing on data from interviews with 25 academic decision-makers in formal leadership positions in HERIs in Ireland, Italy and Turkey. Its key contribution is the innovative operationalisation...

Joan Acker's life reflects a time when middle‐class women were expected to be satisfied with maintaining the home front, serving husbands and children, not having paid‐work careers. After living “the ideal” for 37 years, Acker took a new path by earning a Ph. D. and producing path‐breaking scholarship that challenged taken‐for‐granted beliefs about...

Breasts are defining features of the female body and the basis upon which women’s bodies are judged. They also are central to the identities of (some) women. This paper reports the justificational accounts of 40 US women who have undergone, or refused, elective breast surgery. We explore the reasons for their choice. Three categories of accounts we...

This article is concerned with the development of gendered organizations as a field of study. It begins by exploring some of the factors that militate against integrating organization studies and gender studies and gendered organizations scholarship over national/continental divides. Increasingly doubtful about whether traditional (mainstream and c...

Despite the proliferation of rape crisis centers and other improvements in the treatment of rape victims over the past 20 years, many victims still find themselves the victims of what has been called a "second rape" by doctors, lawyers, judges, police, and administrators that process them. This book takes a critical look at the organizations and of...

Using data from 7272 adolescent US girls, we explore how girls’ race/ethnic group status affects their bodyweight, perceptions of overweight, and weight control practices. We hypothesize that a girl’s race/ethnic status influences her basic identity which in turn prompts her to adopt or reject a “drive for thinness.” After controlling for family an...

The authors use logistic regression with the National Violence Against Women Survey sample (N = 8,000) to explore patterns in fear reported by women who were stalked. One fourth of our sample felt no fear, with Black women significantly less likely to report fear (compared to White women). Women who were frequently stalked, stalked by an intimate o...

In an effort to make visible the subtle and seldom acknowledged aspects of gendering dynamics, Martin focuses on unreflexive practices that both communicate and constitute gender in paid work settings. She reviews the distinction between practices that are culturally available to ‘do gender’ and the literal practising of gender that is constituted...

In sum, Mumby and Ashcraft perform a service in bringing to Gender, Work & Organization readers' attention the research of scholars in their field of communication studies or organizational communication. If our omission of such work prompted their article, we are pleased. We nevertheless underscore the point that many boundaries divide our field a...

This study asks if self-derogation in early adolescence increases the odds of adopting disordered eating practices (DEPs) in young adulthood. Using a racially/ethnically diverse random sample of 1,209 youth, our (longitudinal) data show that both boys and girls who disliked themselves at age 13 were more likely to adopt disordered eating practices...

Data from 23 alcoholism halfway houses are analyzed to assess the relationship of four aspects of organizational size to three levels of organizational functioning. As identified by Kimberly (1976), the dimensions of size are (1) personnel, (2) inputs/outputs, (3) physical capacity, and (4) amount of discretionary resources. The three levels of org...

This article encourages sociologists to study gender as a social institution. Noting that scholars apply the institution concept to highly disparate phenomena, it reviews the history of the concept in twentieth-century sociology. The defining characteristic most commonly attributed to social institution is endurance (or persistence over time) while...

Recently, the study of gender has focused on processes by which gender is brought into social relations through interaction. This article explores implications of a two-sided dynamic—gendering practices and practicing of gender—for understanding gendering processes in formal organizations. Using stories from interviews and participant observation i...

Recently, the study of gender has focused on processes by which gender is brought into social relations through interaction. This article explores implications of a two-sided dynamic-gendering practices and practicing of gender-for understanding gendering processes informal organizations. Using stories from interviews and participant observation in...

This article uses data collected in the 1970s and 1980s from old people’s homes (OPHs) in the United Kingdom to explore how aesthetics are organized in residential organizations for the elderly. The analysis reviews the sensations to which OPH members are subjected and reveals the role of power in organizing aesthetic experiences. Paradoxes associa...

This article is concerned with the development of gendered organizations as a field of study. It begins by exploring some of the factors that militate against integrating organization studies and gender studies and gendered organizations scholarship over national/continental divides. Increasingly doubtful about whether traditional (mainstream and c...

Cet article presente une etude menee en Floride a propos des prejuges sexistes a l'encontre des femmes au sein de l'institution judiciaire. L'A. se penche ici sur les croyances des juges et avocats, et s'interroge sur l'impact de la prise de conscience des femmes juges et avocates de leur condition feminine concernant les decisions relatives aux af...

To understand gender relations in organizations, I use feminist standpoint theory and critical scholarship on men and masculinities to guide an analysis of accounts from six women about their experiences with/interpretations of men at work. Restricting these accounts to those in which women perceived men as not intending harm to themselves or other...

This case study of unobtrusive mobilizing by Southern California Rape Crisis Center uses archival, observational, and interview data to explore how a feminist organization worked to change police, schools, prosecutor, and some state and national organizations from 1974 to 1994. Mansbridge's concept of street theory and Katzenstein's concepts of uno...

Guided by gendered organization theory and organizational frame analysis, this study explores officials' accounts of gender and rape processing work. The data are from qualitative interviews with 47 Florida officials who process rape victims in law enforcement, hospital emergency room, prosecution, and rape crisis contexts. Results indicate that ge...

What organizational and community conditions influence legal officials to treat rape victims “unresponsively”? Our analysis is guided by Goffman's theory of organizational frameworks and frames of activity and March and Olsen's institutional theory of organizations. Using data from 130 m-organizations in Florida that process rape cases, we compare...

Little sister organizations are groups of women who are affiliated with men's social fraternities on college and university campuses in the United States. This study analyzes the structures and dynamics of these groups with attention to how they reflect, create, and institutionalize gender inequality. The data come from participant observation, ope...

The authors explore the effects of multiple gender contexts on the material and social psychological rewards of men and women in one organization, a U. S. military depot. By multiple gender contexts is meant that employees are situated in departments, job ladders (internal labor markets), and hierarchical ranks (civil service paygrades) with varyin...

People today live much of their lives in and through formal organizations. Worshipping, learning to add and subtract, having babies, fighting wars, and making laws are organizational activities. The thesis of this chapter is that formal organizations are highly gendered, in addition to being ubiquitous, and are excellent sites for studying gender i...

Many rape crisis centers (RCCs) that were founded as autonomous organizations have affiliated with other organizations. The relationship of affiliation type and effectiveness is examined in a sample of 25 RCCs in Florida. Effectiveness is defined in terms of range of services for rape victims and involvement in rape prevention (social change) activ...

The effect for women in task groups of gender composition (all female; skewed, solo female; and balanced) and type of attributiontal accounts (internal vs. external) are explored in 36 groups with three naive subjects and one confederate. Results show that gender composition affects women's influence and likability more than attributional accounts...

This article analyzes feminist organizations as a species of social movement organization. It identifies 10 dimensions for comparing feminist and nonfeminist organizations or for deriving types of feminist organizations and analyzing them. The dimensions are feminist ideology, feminist values, feminist goals, feminist outcomes (for members and soci...

Despite widespread knowledge that fraternity members are frequently involved in the sexual assaults of women, fraternities are rarely studied as social contexts-groups and organizations-that encourage the sexual coercion of women. An analysis of the norms and dynamics of the social construction of fraternity brotherhood reveals the highly masculini...

In this autobiographical account, the author describes how her background and organizational experiences in school, the church, employment, and other contexts have influenced her life and work. The author's upbringing in a Deep South town dominated by a textile company and her work in universities as a student and faculty member have led to her int...

This paper replicates Glisson and Martin's (1980) study of social welfare organizations (SWOs) in St. Louis, Missouri (U.S.A.), with data from two samples of Pacific Island cultures, Guam and Oahu, Hawaii. We test the culture-free vs. culture-specific arguments about the effects of societal culture on internal structure. Our structural dimensions a...

This article discusses a study commissioned by the State of Florida (USA) to identify services provided to rape survivors and to identify unmet needs of survivors. Attention is given to the portion of the study which describes the 25 specialized rape service programmes located in the state. These provide a variety of services including crisis inter...

American leaders (N = 261) in four realms were studied to assess their views on the helpfulness to workers with family obligations of employers' policies and services. The realms were corporate management, labor unions, the pro-family movement, and the feminist movement. The data were analyzed by leadership realm and gender in relation to policies...

The authors present a Staff Performance Scale (SPS) for measuring quality of staff performance in state welfare agencies. The significance of staff performance is discussed in light of conflicting expectations of the multiple constituencies of social welfare organizations.

Historians argue that white southerners developed a unique social system and culture that provided white males with unusually strong support for their position as the unquestioned head of the family. Social changes during the twentieth century may have eroded the traditional authority of the white male. Using national survey data, this paper compar...

Data from 31 Florida post-rape examination sites reveal a number of dilemmas associated with rape exams. The sites include regular hospital ERs (N = 25), specialized sexual assault treatment centers (SATCs) on hospital grounds (N = 2), a nonhospital-based SATC, a proprietary OB/GYN clinic, a medical examiner's office, and a law enforcement crime la...

Grounded theory is an inductive, theory discovery methodology that allows the researcher to develop a theoretical account of the general features of a topic while simultaneously grounding the account in empirical observations or data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This article explicates the utility of a grounded theory approach to research on work orga...

This study examines how administrative, budgetary, and service delivery practices are conducted under an "integrated" organizational arrangement. It focuses on the organization and dispersion of authority and the related distribution of tasks at regional and local levels. The purpose is to analyze the extent and the ways in which services become in...

Based on a study of 130 organizations in Florida that deal with survivors of sexual assault, controversies that surround the “rape kit exam”—medical examination for purposes of evidence collection—are identified and discussed. After an overview of the rape kit examination and typical sites and personnel for performing it, the article focuses on iss...

Conflicts involving trade unions in fourteen small residential service organizations (RSOs)—children's homes, old peoples' homes, and probation hostels—in a western county in England over a 20-month period are studied via a grounded theory methodology. Results indicate that (1) multiple and competing unions stimulate intraworker conflict and compli...

A review of recent literature (1976 to 1982) on the topic of sex composition of small groups summarizes three theoretical explanations for male-female differences in same and mixed sex groups (including sex role differentiation; status characteristics/expectation states theory; and Kanter's structural/numerical proportions model); and five categori...

A multidimensional approach to the study of bureaucracy and professionalism among 200 social service workers provides general support for two hypotheses. The conflict hypothesis is that, as perceived by the workers, the bureaucratic dimensions of hierarchy of authority, formalized rules, procedural specificity, and impersonality are inversely assoc...

Women's problems and prospects for advancement to upper level positions in hierarchical organizations are analyzed within a five-level framework of social organization. The five levels are (1) societal; (2) institutional; (3) organizational; (4) role; and (5) individual. Corresponding units of analysisfor each level are identified and discussed. To...

The concept of human services integration as an efficient service delivery arrangement has been a popular idea for a number of years; but its practicality and capabilities are still relatively unclear. The authors describe an approach to developing a methodology for assessing services integration at the state level. This is a preliminary report on...

The effects of resources imbalance on reward allocation strategies are studied in 136 mixed-sex dyads to determine the extent to which the allocator rewards his or her partner on an equal basis with self. Three predictions are tested: (1) Subjects with a resource advantage will reward themselves more so than they will reward their partners; (2) Sub...

A model of human service organizations is presented and analyzed, depicting the service organization as in active and continuous exchange with diverse interest or constituency groups both inside and outside the organization. Power inside the organization is analyzed in relation to control of resources and ties with powerful external constituents. D...

Data from 23 alcoholism halfway houses are analyzed to assess the relationship of organizational and programmatic variables to clients' average length of stay. Results indicate that programs which have more resources, a more complex administrative structure, better staffing, and stronger community ties report a shorter average length of stay than d...

Data on 23 halfway houses for alcoholics are analyzed to explore the relationships of years of program operation and average staff tenure (or average length of employment at the halfway house) with each other and with: (1) the sex-composition of the halfway house clientele; (2) the employment rate of halfway house clients; and (3) the average lengt...

Utilizing a probability sample of college students, the significance of gender as a social and demographic correlate of sex role attitudes is explored to determine: (1) its explanatory power relative to other variables and (2) its ability to condition or specify the effects of other variables. Among 13 social and demographic variables, gender expla...

A study of the relationship of productivity and efficiency to the organization's structure, size, and age (or "time") indicated that a highly centralized authority structure is the most powerful direct determinant of productivity and efficiency. Conclusions focus on the pervasive conflict between quality and quantity of services delivered and the i...

In 23 halfway houses in Florida, the percentage of men residents, the percentage of residents who were employed and the mean weekly earnings of patients were positively related to the average staff member's expectations that residents would behave independently.

Issues surrounding the conceptualization and measurement of organizational size in residential treatment settings are explored. Five indicators of size (three absolute and two ratio measures) are analyzed relative to each other and to a criterion variable of staff members' "role expectations" for client independence. Data are taken from 23 halfway...

Based on Scanzoni's operationalization of the "functional requisites" for marital organization, the association of nine predictor variables with marital intactness/dissolution is explored. The Automatic Interaction Detector (AID) method of data analysis is utilized with a sample of 512 low income families. Results of the AID analysis show that the...