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Only Girls Wear Barrettes: Dress and Appearance Standards, Community Norms, and Workplace Equality
Abstract
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... What is more, the phrase that "we are what we wear" has been shown to signify one's nationality (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016), social class (Mann & Loren, 2001), race (Smith, 2003), religion (Eller, 2000), political positions (Boris, 2017), incarceration (Gubar, 1981), modernity (Wilson, 2003), social change (Zurbriggen, 2013) and, notably, one's sex identity, the latter being a precursor to sexual objectification. Law scholar Katharine Bartlett (1994), for example, recounts a disturbing anecdote about how clothing -even a simple barrette -defines sex, even among children as young those in nursery school. As she tells the story: ...
... The study by Gervais and colleagues (2012) is one of the first attempts at an empirical study investigating these mechanisms. While we are not the first to suggest a connection between clothing and objectification (Bartlett, 1994;Dellinger, 2002;Goodin et al., 2011;Gurung & Chrouser, 2007), we argue that sex-segregated clothing, as a set of norms both formal and informal, may facilitate the negative consequences of objectification, particularly for women. ...
Title VII prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace “because of sex.” Once on the job, however, courts allow employers to impose trait discrimination policies on employees, including sex stereotypical ones. Based on a survey experiment, we found that sex stereotyped dress styles for women—defined by bright colors, long hair, excessive make-up in contrast to dark suits, ties, and short hair cuts for men—sexualize women, thereby undermining viewers' perception of women's professional competence. A vast social-psychological literature explains “why.” Specifically, gender is a diffuse status characteristic that generally diminishes the perception of women’s capabilities. Sexualized dress styles augment that effect of gender by diverting viewers' attention from women's job performance to the visual attributes of women as objects. Our study confirms that women’s sexualized dress styles decrease viewers’ perceptions of women’s competence. We contend that this reduction in the perception of women’s competence disproportionately disadvantages members of a protected class, women, and, by so doing, constitutes an “adverse effect”. Notably, Title VII prohibits policies that impose adverse effects. Thus, by integrating legal standards with social psychological scholarship, this study presents a new foundation for the claim many legal scholars have sought to make, namely, why at least some trait discrimination policies violate Title VII.
... Furthermore, in the workplace men are generally judged by their actions, while women are more likely to be judged on their appearance (Bartlett, 1994). Studies have shown that to be hired or taken seriously in business, women should not dress or act in a feminine way (Forsythe, 1990). ...
... This approach overlooks the comparative disadvantage entailed in complying with 'female' appearance requirements (Bartlett, 1994;Wolf, 1990). While women in the workplace generally are afforded more clothing choices than their male counterparts (Howlett, Pine, Cahill, & Orakçıoğlu, 2015), this may equate merely to more time and effort when selecting their attire (Peluchette, Karl, & Rust, 2006). ...
In some occupations, employers impose gendered appearance requirements on their employees. In this paper we present the findings of a small sample of Australian service industry workers subject to such requirements. We analyse these empirical findings to evaluate competing proposals in the literature for how to combat the material and other harms entailed by gendered appearance codes. We argue that the findings suggest that in the Australian context, these codes and the anachronistic norms that underpin them should be resisted across multiple fronts, including in employment and anti-discrimination law reform but also other sites of gender normalisation such as the media, schools and other institutions.
... It is important to note that these norms are rarely codified; more specifically, "dress and appearance codes are often seen as trivial, both because they seem to fit within our notions of how people ought to behave" [5]. Rather, oral tradition prevails in terms of normative appearance (Bartlett, 1994). Indeed, visual appearance is a critical component of perceived professionalism (AndersonGough, et al., 2002; Cooper andRobson, 2006). ...
... Notes 1. Huber and Burton, 1995, p. 373. 2. Konrath and Schwarz, 2007, p. 445. 3. Schau and Gilly, 2003. Bartlett, 1994, p. 2,550. 5. Brower, 2013 ...
Online self-presentation is of increasing importance in modern life, from establishing and maintaining personal relationships to forging professional identities. Academic scholars are no exception, and a host of social networking platforms designed specifically for scholars abound. This study used Amazon's Mechanical Turk service to code 10,500 profile pictures used by scholars on three platforms - Mendeley, Microsoft Academic Search, and Google Scholar - in order to determine how academics are presenting themselves to their colleagues and to the public at large and how they are perceived - particularly in relation to professionalism and attractiveness. The majority of the individuals on Mendeley, Microsoft Academic Search, and Google Scholar were Caucasian, male, and perceived to be over the age of 35. Females and younger individuals were perceived as less professional than male and older individuals, while women were more likely to be perceived as "attractive." In addition, the Mechanical Turk coders were susceptible to framing; the individuals in the profile pictures were considered more "professional" if they were identified as "scholars" rather than merely as "individuals." The results have far-reaching implications for self-presentation and framing, both for scholars and for other professionals. In the academic realm, there are serious implications for hiring and the allocation of resources and rewards.
... Unsuccessful challenges to clothing or accessories requirements (or prohibitions) are plentiful and take many forms. Many of these decisions, some argue, end up legitimating the very stereotypes and social norms that led to the differential policies in the first place (Bartlett, 1994). The court held in Lanigan v. Bartlett and Co. Grain (466 F.Supp. ...
... Women in particular suffer from formal and informal appearance norms, as they not only face penalties for being too attractive as well as for being too unattractive, but most appearance norms also dictate that they spend inordinate (or at least unequal) amounts of time, money, effort, and energy to their appearance, whether they conform to conventional standards of beauty or not. Moreover, appearance standards that are gendered or sexualized, scholars argue, reinforce stereotypes and inequalities based on gender (see Bartlett, 1994; Rhode, 2009). Likewise, white and Protestant appearance standards obscure, and sometimes eliminate, cultural and ethnic diversity as well as individual expression. ...
The formal and informal regulation of employees' appearance is a routine component of organizational life. In our research, we analyze appearance-related employment discrimination lawsuits. These cases involve organizational dress codes, grooming policies, and employers' attempts to regulate employees' appearance with regard to weight, hairstyles, religious attire, body art, and more. Men and women who refuse to comply with appearance norms face termination of their employment, promotion denials, lower wages, transfers, not being hired in the first place, and other workplace sanctions. Our focus on court deliberations and decisions allows us to explore not only the gendered nature of appearance policies themselves but also how the legal system supports, reinforces, codifies, or, conversely, deems unacceptable such policies. Our data demonstrate that organizations and courts are likely to support appearance norms that reinforce traditional ideas about femininity and masculinity.
... İşyerinde ayrımcılık işletmelerde yaygın görülen bir sorundur. Bunlar arasında; ırk (Hirsh & Kornrich, 2008;Deitch vd., 2003), cinsiyet (Elliott & Smith, 2004;Bartlett, 1993;Bell vd., 2011), din (Vickers, 2010;Ghumman vd., 2013;Wallace et al., 2014;Padela, 2016), dil (Bergman vd. 2008), sosyal sınıf (Gray vd., 2013), yaş (Riach & Cutcher, 2014, fiziksel görünüş (Mahajan, 2007); ve ideolojik farklılık (Nkomo & Hoobler, 2014) en sık görülen ayrımcılık türleridir. ...
Bu araştırmanın amacı; T.C. 1982 Anayasası’nın 2. Maddesi’nde yer alan “sosyal devlet ilkesi”nin bir gereği olarak bakıma muhtaç bireylerin topluma kazandırılması adına uygulamada var olması gereken engellilerin istihdamını sağlamaya yönelik korumalı işyerini konu edinmiştir. Engelliler toplum içinde göz ardı edilen farklı durumlara/yeteneklere sahip bireylerdir. Bu bireylerin hayata bağlanması ve korumalı işyerlerinin çatısı altında ekonomik hayata dâhil olmasının ne derece gerçekleştiği bu çalışmada kavramsal düzeyde ele alınmıştır. Ayrıca Anayasa’nın 49, 50 ve 61. Maddelerinde yer alan; çalışma hakkı, çalışma şartları, ödevi ve dinlenme hakları ile sosyal güvenlik bakımından özel olarak korunması gerekenleri belirten yasalar ve Büyükşehir Belediye Özürlü Hizmet Birimleri Yönetmeliği kapsamına giren ilgili mevzuat değerlendirilmiş, akabinde mevcut yasaların iyileştirilmesine yönelik birtakım öneriler geliştirilmiştir. Türkiye’de engelli istihdamının OECD ve bazı Avrupa ülkelerine kıyasla geride kaldığı, bu anlamda geliştirilmesi gereken korumalı işyerleri için daha fazla adımın atılması gerektiği sonucuna varılmıştır. Ayrıca çalışmada korumalı işyeri pratiği down kafeler özelinde Türkiye’den ve dünyadan örneklerle mukayeseli olarak incelenmiştir. Türkiye’de down kafelerin bağlı olarak hizmet verdiği kurumlar tahlil edildiğinde ise yaklaşık yüzde 55’nin belediyelere, yüzde 35’nin dernek ve vakıflara, yüzde 10’unun ise özel kesim girişimlerine ait olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Türkiye örnekleminde özel kesim ve belediyelerin birlikte organize ettiği down kafe sayısının yetersiz kaldığı saptanmıştır. Sonuç olarak yasal altyapısı olsa da korumalı işyerlerinin daha yaygın hâle gelebilmesi ve fonksiyonlarını tam anlamıyla yerine getirebilmeleri için ilgili yasal mevzuatın daha esnek ve uygulanabilir olmasına yönelik adımlar atılması gerekmektedir.
... Psychological research on transgender and nonbinary individuals' identities and experiences clearly show not everyone is born with genitals that match their gender nor do all people have binary experiences of their gender identity and this further complicates assumptions about how men and women are dimorphic and evolved under different pressures (Fast & Olson, 2018;Olson et al., 2015;Tate et al., 2014). Additionally, the concept prevalent in Western societies now that gender is an informative binary that organizes the social world is changeable and arose from policies that mandated binary gender (Bartlett, 1994;Bigler & Liben, 2007;Hyde et al., 2019). Lastly, evidence for the complexity of sexual orientation comes from a GWAS of same-sex sexual behavior in more than 400,000 people, which points to a small influence of genes on this behavior leaving open a lot of room for environment, psychology, and life experiences to influence whether or not a person engages in same-sex sexual behavior (Ganna et al., 2019). ...
... For their female employees, it included the proper length of skirt (knee-length), proper amount of make-up (light foundation and no black nail polish), and the proper number of accessories (no trendy or showy jewelry) (Berton, 2010). Researchers contend that this dress code continues to put women in subordinate positions to men due to the amount of effort that required for women to dress professionally (Bartlett, 1994). ...
On an annual basis, Fortune releases the top 500 revenue-generating companies in the United States, referred to as the Fortune 500 collectively. The leadership team of these organizations is under scrutiny for their lack of diversity at the upper levels of management. In fact, in the history of releasing this report, there has only been one out lesbian in the CEO position (appointed in 2018). This phenomenological study of lesbians who are the senior executive levels of Fortune 500 companies seeks to understand their lived experiences within corporations to better understand what barriers, if any, exist for lesbians at the highest levels of corporations. What resulted was a discussion and insight into how these high-level leaders are redefining executive presence to incorporate more of who they are authentically versus the mold of a leader that they have been coached to or observed during their ascent to the top of corporate leadership ranks. The goal is to challenge the academy and corporations to utilize theories, such as queer theory, that push outside of traditional research to understand and fix issues related to gender more thoroughly.
... In fact, children are unable to detect the gender of other children when they appear without culturally stereotypic markers of their gender (e.g., hair styles, makeup, and clothing; Wild et al., 2000). Throughout much of U.S. history, gender-differentiated dress was legally mandated in most public settings, including schools and workplaces (Bartlett, 1994), further suggesting that gender/sex is perceptually marked so that it becomes psychologically salient, when it is not naturally so. Strong cultural norms continue to dictate that men and women differ in their (a) use of cosmetics and accessories (jewelry, hats, purses, belts, and shoes), (b) treatment of body hair, and (c) sculpting of their body shape via weight lifting, dieting, surgery, and so on. ...
The view that humans comprise only two types of beings, women and men, a framework that is sometimes referred to as the “gender binary,” played a profound role in shaping the history of psychological science. In recent years, serious challenges to the gender binary have arisen from both academic research and social activism. This review describes 5 sets of empirical findings, spanning multiple disciplines, that fundamentally undermine the gender binary. These sources of evidence include neuroscience findings that refute sexual dimorphism of the human brain; behavioral neuroendocrinology findings that challenge the notion of genetically fixed, nonoverlapping, sexually dimorphic hormonal systems; psychological findings that highlight the similarities between men and women; psychological research on transgender and nonbinary individuals’ identities and experiences; and developmental research suggesting that the tendency to view gender/sex as a meaningful, binary category is culturally determined and malleable. Costs associated with reliance on the gender binary and recommendations for future research, as well as clinical practice, are outlined.
... The appearances of youth and children with gender dysphoria tend to align with the gender with which they identify (Fridell, Zucker, Bradley, & Maing, 1996;McDermid, Zucker, Bradley, & Maing, 1998;Zucker, Wild, Bradley, & Lowry, 1993). Thus, a person's clothing and appearance are tightly bound with constructions of gender in society (Bartlett, 1994;Flanagan, 2008). ...
Children's gender-stereotypical dress and appearance might be one of the first representations of children's emerging sense of gender identity. Gender self-socialization theories posit that as children become more aware of gender categories, they become motivated to adhere to gender stereotypes, such as by expressing interest in dressing in feminine or masculine ways. Socialization theories predict that children's gender-typed appearance reflects parents' choices. For example, gender-traditional parents might dress their children in gender-stereotypical ways. At the same time, dressing in gender-stereotypical ways might contribute to children's growing awareness of gender categories. The current study investigated the factors associated with gender-typed appearance among 175 (87 girls, 88 boys) Mexican American, Dominican American, and African American 2-year-olds. We examined both child and parent contributions to early gender-typed appearance. To measure children's early conceptual understanding of gender categories, we assessed children's use and recognition of gender verbal labels. To examine the influence of parent socialization, we assessed mothers' gender-role attitudes. Children's gender-typed appearance was observed and coded during an assessment. Surprisingly, mothers' gender-role attitudes were not significantly associated with toddlers' gender-typed appearance. However, toddlers' gender labeling was associated with their gender-typed appearance, suggesting that self-socialization processes can be found as early as 24 months of age.
... Community norms refer to the standard behaviors and attitudes within a community (e.g., Bartlett, 1994). Community norms can be associated with many aspects of life including religious beliefs, political structures, establishing and supporting priorities, and communication (e.g., Bucholtz, 1999). ...
People frequently engage in the process of “heutagogy” (i.e., self-determined learning). Unlike pedagogy and andragogy, heutagogy occurs without a structure or leader setting the context and directing the learning toward a specific goal. The lack of structure and the possible self-determination of topic, value, source, and trust in information led us to wonder about the motivations, goals, and processes considered by college students as they engage in self-determined learning. We conducted a survey with 83 American college students regarding their information-seeking preferences and behaviors. Some students reported accessing different media depending on what information they were seeking, while others sought multiple forms of information from the same media. Family and community influenced their trust in media, yet they also recognized experts and data as important justifications for credibility of media. We exposed some relationships among personal characteristics, perceptions of information, and self-determined learning activities. We conclude with implications and directions for future research.
... On the basis of the above analysis it can be argued that the fact that the issue of veiling is presented in Western politics and media as a question of equality and not sexuality serves the purpose of concealing similar Western cultural discriminatory attitudes behind the Other's 'barbaric' culture and divert attention from the real questions. Although feminist scholars have pointed out the discriminatory and degrading character, for example, of certain types of advertising 46 or women's dress, 47 their warnings are regarded as superficial, and their fears as exaggerated because there are far more unacceptable and degrading practices out there: practices of the 'Others', for example veiling. ...
The article addresses the use of notions of gender equality and non-discrimination in the discussions concerning the practice of Islamic veiling by the European Court of Human Rights as well as by French authorities in relation to the recent adoption of the law banning full face veils in public spaces in France. The author argues that the use of the rhetoric of gender equality without the required knowledge and understanding of the justifications for and discussions about this practice existing within Islam is in both cases very inadequate and leads to results opposite to those they intended to promote. Based on insights into the discussions of Muslims about the practice of veiling the author makes some proposals for a more adequate approach to this practice both from the point of view of women's status as well as from the point of view of relationship between Islam and the West.
... While it is certainly true that, even absent overt employer dress codes, worker dress and appearance would be impacted by and regulated by cultural norms and perceived employer preferences (Bartlett 1994(Bartlett : 2549(Bartlett-2556, the imposition by employers of explicit dress and grooming codes greatly increases both the extent and degree of such regulation. ...
Employers frequently impose dress and grooming codes on their employees, and courts routinely uphold their right to discipline workers for their violation. Employee resistance to these dress and grooming codes is grounded in the importance of personal appearance to the performance of their sense of authentic identity – particularly racial and gender identity. Employers’ insistence on appearance codes in the face of that resistance represents their attempt to assert the primacy of an employee’s worker identity over other aspects of their personal identity. This paper takes a semiotic approach to analyzing the practices of dress code enforcement and resistance to enforcement and argues that it is through these practices that the meaning of race and gender identity in the construction of the self is made manifest in the workplace.
Perceptions of clothing are complex, varying across individuals, situations, cultures, and time. Although there is very little research on the topic in our field, evidence from a wide variety of other disciplines points to the importance of clothing in the workplace. In this article, we review this evidence and identify three universal and distinctive clothing characteristics at work: formality, provocativeness, and fashionability. We also identify two other categories: uniforms and religiosity of clothing, which are tied to particular social groups. Drawing on attribution theory and the stereotype content model, we provide a cohesive conceptual framework in which clothing characteristics influence observers’ perceptions of wearer’s warmth and competence through observers’ dispositional attribution processes. These perceptions, in turn, influence facilitation behaviors, such as providing support to wearers, and harm behaviors, such as negatively biased performance appraisal. We conclude by offering suggestions for future research and implications for employees and employers with regard to managing clothing choices and avoiding potential biases.
Toplumsal cinsiyet rollerinin ve beklentilerinin çalışan kadınlar üzerinde etkisini gösterdiği alanlardan birisi de giyim tercihleridir. Kadınların giyim ve görünümlerini düzenlerken dikkat ettikleri unsurların neler olduğunu araştırmayı amaçlayan bu çalışmada nitel araştırma yöntemi kullanılmış ve 16 beyaz yakalı kadın çalışandan derinlemesine görüşmeler aracılığıyla veri toplanmıştır. Çalışmada elde edilen sonuçlar kadının iş yeri giyimine dair toplumsal ve örgütsel beklentiler; iş yeri giyimi üzerinden cinsiyet ayrımcılığı ve iş yeri giyiminin kadın üzerindeki etkileri şeklinde gruplandırılmıştır. Sonuçlar genel olarak iş yerinde kadın çalışanların giysi tercihlerinin toplumsal cinsiyet rollerine dair beklentilerle şekillendiğini veya şekillendirildiğini, kadınların iş yerlerinde giyimleri söz konusu olduğunda çoklu dengeleri gözetmek durumunda kaldığını ve giyimleriyle sürekli denetim altında hissettiklerini göstermektedir.
We study whether a seller’s gender impacts the bargained-for price in a product market, specifically baseball cards. We isolate the seller’s gender using an online transaction exposing the buyer to the seller’s gender via the seller’s hand and name. In both a field experiment, in which we actually sell cards on eBay, and a laboratory experiment, in which we conduct surveys via Amazon Mechanical Turk, we find, contrary to current literature, that women sell baseball cards for a higher price and greater profit compared to men. The observed discrimination appears to be both statistical and taste based. These findings contribute to the law and economics literature on discrimination and have ramifications for the economic opportunities of women in the retail marketplace and for the law of gender discrimination. (JEL J16, C91, C93, K31, K38)
Gender inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time. A core factor that feeds gender inequality is people's gender ideology—a set of beliefs about the proper order of society in terms of the roles women and men should fill. We argue that gender ideology is shaped, in large parts, by the way people make sense of gender differences. Specifically, people often think of gender differences as expressions of a predetermined biology, and of men and women as different ‘kinds’. We describe work suggesting that thinking of gender differences in this biological-essentialist way perpetuates a non-egalitarian gender ideology. We then review research that refutes the hypothesis that men and women are different ‘kinds’ in terms of brain function, hormone levels and personality characteristics. Next, we describe how the organization of the environment in a gender-binary manner, together with cognitive processes of categorization drive a biological-essentialist view of gender differences. We then describe the self-perpetuating relations, which we term the gender-binary cycle , between a biological-essentialist view of gender differences, a non-egalitarian gender ideology and a binary organization of the environment along gender lines. Finally, we consider means of intervention at different points in this cycle.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.
Abolitionism is the view that if no one is responsible, then we ought to abandon the reactive attitudes (e.g. resentment, contempt, and guilt). Proponents suggest that reactive attitudes can be replaced in our emotional repertoire by non-reactive analogues (e.g. sadness and disappointment). In this paper, I dispute and reject a common challenge to abolitionism according to which the reactive attitudes are necessary for protesting unfairness and maintaining social harmony. While other abolitionists dispute the empirical basis of this objection, I focus on its implications. I argue that even if non-reactive analogues cannot perform the interpersonal and social functions of reactive attitudes, it does not follow that the losses of abandoning them outweigh the gains of retaining them. The force of the challenge rests on a mistake, identified by John Stuart Mill among others, that is common when evaluating entrenched social practices.
This Article argues that the Constitution might be understood to "disestablish" sex and gender. Religious and gender ideologies have acted and continue to act in similar harmful ways, legitimizing social dividing practices on the basis of the supposed extra-human authority of Nature or God, and thereby violating a congeries of constitutional principles. Under the disestablishment of sex and gender, proposed in this Article, government would be significantly constrained in its ability to rely upon or reinforce sex or gender beliefs or groups. Moving beyond current equal protection doctrine with its group-comparative focus on discrimination, this approach would focus analysis upon governmental support for and reinforcement of sex and gender beliefs and divisions, and it would impose greater constraints on government than courts and legislatures have commonly recognized. The Article examines how different conceptions of disestablishment would have different effects on such issues. as governmental recognition of sex changes, sex-segregated education, and the mixed-sex requirement for civil marriage.
The consideration of appearance in employment decisionmaking context is prevalent and widely accepted. Nonetheless, statutory protection against such discrimination remains limited. Federal protection applies only to claims related to already-protected categories of discrimination, including disability, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and age. Only one state and a small number of cities and counties explicitly prohibit appearance discrimination in employment. This Comment argues that consideration of appearance in employment decisions is not justified, rational, or beneficial to society unless a bona fide occupational qualification or reasonable business purpose exists. States should adopt statutory protection for appearance to protect otherwise qualified applicants and employees from arbitrary and harmful discrimination. This protection will promote the practice of hiring and retaining employees based solely on relevant qualifications and criteria. It also will assist in repairing the inequities that result from the legitimizing of appearance discrimination in employment, as well as in society as a whole.
Sex discrimination law has not kept pace with the lived experience of discrimination. In the early years of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, courts settled on an idea of what sex discrimination looks like—formal practices that exclude employees based on their group membership. The problem is that sex discrimination has become highly individualized. Modern sex discrimination does not target all men or all women, nor does it target subgroups of men or women. The victims of modern sex discrimination are particular men and women who face discrimination because they do not or cannot conform to the norms of the workplace. These employees have been shut out of a sex discrimination regime that still expects employees to anchor their claims to a narrative of group subordination.
I argue that the lived experience of discrimination should determine employment discrimination doctrine and not the other way around. Accordingly, I propose a new regime for sex discrimination law. The model for the new sex discrimination regime is religious discrimination law. Unlike other areas of employment discrimination law, religious discrimination law offers a dynamic conception of identity and a greater array of different theories of discrimination. I argue that sex discrimination law can and should work this way, too.
On a broader level, the paper makes a strong normative claim about the substance of Title VII's sex equality project. I argue that sex discrimination law needs to recalibrate its vision of equality. Difference is universal. No two women (or men) are the same, and this is a good thing. Thus the central task of sex discrimination law should be to better recognize—and, in turn, protect—the distinctive ways in which employees express their maleness and femaleness. It is these differences, after all, that shape the way employees experience modern sex discrimination.
In this Article, Professor Burns contrasts the vertical juris-prudential style of Title VII with the horizontal approaches found in other, unrelated areas of the law. She argues that Title VII's vertical, top-down development and testing are largely responsible for the law's failure to produce more concrete results or to settle the often acrimonious arguments on the subject of gender equality in the workplace. She advocates supplementing Title VII's one-size-fits-all set of rules with a bottom-up, horizontal approach to rulemaking and rule testing. This will allow those directly affected by the rules to participate in their development and encourage different employers and employees to experiment with different plans tailored to meet their specific needs. While some plans will fail, others will succeed, wholly or partially. Gradually, firms and employees can learn from another's successes and failures.
Courts interpreting Title VII have long treated race and ethnicity as biological, morphological concepts and discrimination as a reaction to a set of biologically fixed traits. Meanwhile, they have rejected claims concerning discrimination based on voluntarily chosen physical traits or "performed" behaviors and that communicate racial or ethnic identity. Yet race and ethnicity are effectively produced-that is, they do not exist until one is socially acknowledged as possessing socially coded racial or ethnic markers, whether they are fixed physical features, voluntary appearance choices, or behaviors. This Article argues that it is error to distinguish between Title VII cases concerning morphological as opposed to voluntary racially or ethnically marked features, as the discriminator's motives and the effects of her behavior are the same. Moreover, the morphological model of race/ethnicity is fundamentally contradicted by contemporary biological and sociological studies on race, discrimination studies, and identity performance theories, which indicate that individuals actively work to "perform" racial and ethnic status regardless of, and sometimes in spite of, their morphological traits. Drawing on these studies, this Article shows that courts must hear discrimination claims based on voluntary features if they are to provide a more credible analysis of modern forms of discrimination.
The purpose of this qualitative research guided by resilience theory was to investigate the experiences of four Black women senior student affairs administrators at predominantly White institutions in order to understand the strategies for success that led to their advancement to senior level positions. Participants included four deans of students and/or vice presidents for student affairs (reporting directly to the president of the institution) at four-year small private predominantly White institutions (enrollment under 5,000). The participants’ recounted experiences of tokenism, perceptions of the appearance, perceptions of communication styles, and inequitable compensation. They also reported support systems such as mentors, giving back, and spirituality that influence their thoughts, actions, reactions, decisions, and motivation to continue in the field, in their position, and ultimately in higher education. The implications of the study encourages institutions to provide funding, personnel resources, and training for all employees as well as encourages current Black women administrators to discuss their professional experiences to continue to inform scholarship and practice.
As I have noted in the preceding chapters, countries in SSA and their citizens have been marginalized in both international and domestic patent polity, respectively. These marginalizations challenge the legitimacy of both the domestic and the international patent regulatory frameworks. They also produce juridical outcomes that fail to recognize different levels of development among nations/regions. In order to substantiate these claims, this chapter investigates the evolutionary trajectories of the concept of patents and tests whether the ‘participation’ of SSA countries in TRIPS negotiations met the basic conditions of the theory of democratic bargaining in global trade relations. Do the undemocratic outcomes, if any, affect the implementation of TRIPS in SSA countries?
Amidst increasingly equality in belief and in practice between the sexes, we ask if height preferences still matter, and if so, why people say they matter. First, we collected data from Yahoo! dating personal advertisements. Second, we used answers to open-ended questions in an online survey. The Yahoo! data document that height is still important in decisions to date but that it is more important to females than to males. Results from the online survey indicate that women wanted tall men for a variety of reasons, but most of the explanations of our respondents were connected to societal expectations or gender stereotypes. Gender-based legitimation of height preferences seem to be more central than evolutionary-based legitimation, but future work may discover a more nuanced interpretation.
Purpose
Dress and appearance codes are often seen as trivial, both because they seem to fit within our notions of how people ought to behave, and because they appear to reflect legitimate employer concerns in running a business. But they are not constructed in a vacuum. They reflect and enshrine societal stereotypes and expectations of women and men and how they look – including assumptions about gender and sexuality and majoritarian norms. As such, they punish anyone who is an outlier by reason of gender, sexuality, race, religion, or culture. This paper seeks to identify the assumptions and effects on gender, sexuality, professionalism and class in appearance and behavior codes.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper exploring US case law on dress codes and employee appearance standards to examine issues of gender and sexual orientation identity on the job. By combining insights from sexual orientation identity theories and visibility, the paper seeks to uncover some of the interactions and effects of these appearance policies on women and LGBT persons in the workplace.
Findings
This paper shows that identity strategies and performances used by LGBT individuals and women in the workplace implicate sexuality and gender, but also professionalism and class. These dress and appearance codes carry with them consequences for both employers and employees.
Practical implications
The paper highlights the gender, sexuality and identity performance burdens on women and sexual minorities workplace controls over dress and appearance.
Originality/value
The paper discusses topics that are of interest to persons studying sexuality and gender identity issues in employment. It is based on an unpublished talk at the EDI conference in Vienna 2010.
Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court will determine the constitutionality of affirmative action. Once again, the focus will be on the diversity rationale for the policy. And, once again, the discussion will likely center on whether the admissions regime of a particular school (this time, the University of Texas) can take steps to ensure that it admits a certain number — or to put the point more doctrinally, a critical mass — of students from a particular racial group, such as African Americans. Framing diversity in terms of group representation assumes that when admissions officials administer affirmative action programs, their racial decisionmaking stops at the level of the racial group. Under this view, admissions officials are simply interested in whether they have a critical mass of African Americans as a group. The racial interests of these officials, however, might be narrower than that. Especially at elite colleges and universities, admissions officials are also likely employing an intraracial diversity frame. Here, the concern is not simply whether there is a critical mass of African Americans as a group. The concern is also whether the school has admitted particular “types” of African Americans. For example, a school might screen its application pool for African Americans who are likely to promote racial cooperation and understanding. Alternatively, the school might be interested in African Americans who can facilitate the robust exchange of ideas. The point is that admissions officials can realize their commitment to diversity by choosing African Americans at least in part based on their perceived racial “types” and not simply based on their racial group membership. This Article demonstrates precisely how they can do so, describes the incentive system this creates for applicants to work their identity in the application process to signal that they are the right racial “types,” and explains how the phenomenon of intraracial diversity is implicated in the Fisher v. University of Texas litigation.
This study employs a Foucauldian feminist lens to analyze how organizational and gendered discourses are quite literally written upon women's bodies in ways that often constrain women's professional identities. Nineteen professional women were interviewed about their definitions and experiences of their professional bodies. The interview data are summarized in the following three emergent and telling themes: (1) a professional body is a fit body; (2) a professional body (purpose-fully) emits signs and messages through bodily comportment, nonverbal behaviours, and performances. Thus, the body is conceived as a text to be read; and, (3) a professional woman's body is positioned as excessively) sexual. The task of controlling the female body is made more difficult because the female body has a tendency to overflow. The undisciplined, excessive body points to the female body's otherness. These three themes indicate how professional women's bodies are normalized and made docile in organizational contexts. Additionally, the interview data imply that both men and women are disciplinarians. Finally, the political implications of women's embodied professional identities are discussed and future research directions are presented.
This article critiques the subject of patent protection of drugs in the light of the threat posed by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. It contends that the basis for sustaining the prevailing international patent system in developing countries is a “myth”: one of deception. This “myth” is validated by highlighting the dysfunctions associated with the prevailing international patent system. The article proposes the adoption of diverse patent systems that would suit the cultural and human development needs of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Such diversity implies a drug patent model that meets human needs and shows respect for communal interests, a model that permits differences and is amenable to change in the light of socio-economic needs, a model that confronts “unfreedoms” which constrain human development, and a model that ensures respect and protection for the fundamental right to health care.
Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine fashion opinion leadership among working and non-working women. Data were collected by mail survey from 630 working and non-working women in the USA. Employment orientation (i.e. viewing work as either a job or a career) and satisfaction with career apparel were investigated among working women to determine whether there are differences in these dimensions between fashion leaders and fashion followers. Results contradict earlier studies by indicating that fashion opinion leadership among working and non-working women is independent of education and income. Fashion opinion leadership among working women is independent of occupational level. Whether one works in a managerial position or a service position, or one considers work to be a job or a career, has no significant effect on fashion opinion leadership. Fashion opinion leaders among working women demonstrated greater satisfaction with career apparel and were younger than their fashion follower counterparts. Fashion leadership, regardless of work status, was found to be a strong determinant of apparel satisfaction for all women. The results suggest that the effect of being a fashion opinion leader may be greater when considering apparel that is more salient to the wearer.
Employment has shifted from a relatively stable and secure relation in which shareholders bore the risks associated with the market and firms buffered the risks vis-à-vis workers to a dynamic relation characterized by employment insecurity and individual responsibility. Modern businesses face new management challenges stemming from decreased employee loyalty and difficulties in supervising and controlling the workforce. Firms have responded by implementing internal branding programs that parallel consumer marketing programs but target workers rather than consumers. The goal of such programs is to re-align employees’ self-interest with that of the firm, persuading employees to internalize the firm’s brand so that they “live the brand” and react instinctively “on-brand.” Identity-based brand management, the most aggressive and potentially effective of the internal branding programs, aims to induce employees to view their employment as a personal relationship akin to a family tie, imbuing the economic transaction with emotional significance. In this psychological framework, workers’ decisions to invest in the firm - by staying and rejecting other labor market alternatives, and by purchasing company stock in their individual retirement plans - signify emotional attachment and faith rather than reflecting a cognitive process of choice. Understanding how identity-based brand management programs work sheds light on why employees consistently ignore conventional advice against over-investment in company stock in their individual retirement accounts, with potentially disastrous effects should the firm fail. The recent wave of “stock drop” litigation triggered by the recession reveals an even more disturbing trend: As the recession deepened, employees invested more, not less, in their firms. Despite its willingness to regulate consumer advertising and dissemination of information to shareholders, the law has steadfastly refused to regulate internal branding or the investment choices that it influences. The traditional justification for the law’s refusal to intervene to protect employees from losses stemming from over-investment in their firms has been that employees unilaterally choose to make these investments: They choose employment at a particular firm, they choose to remain at the firm, and they choose to invest in company stock. Drawing on research by management theorists, economists and sociologists concerning the potential for manipulation of employees’ psychological framework through identity based brand management, I argue that the law’s matrix of unilateral choice to invest at a particular moment in time is only half the story. Though employees are not mindless victims or dupes, their vulnerability to brand management programs that influence their frame of reference over time fundamentally alters the lens through which they view investment choices. Branded employees come to see their relationship with the firm in affective terms rather than as a market transaction, and their investments signify faith and loyalty rather than reflecting a reasoned choice between investment options. I contend that the absence of regulation is unsustainable, and sketch the contours of possible legal responses.
No one wants to be fat but many Americans are obese. Although people who are obese are often discriminated against, they have had little or no protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). The recently enacted Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (“ADAAA”) promises to make recourse more readily available to people with disabilities who feel they have been discriminated against. Despite the intention of the ADAAA to provide a broad scope of protection, it will provide no more relief to people who are obese than the prior version of the Act. Although we do not know the cause of obesity, we blame the person for being obese and refuse to see this as a disabling condition.
This article considers the landmark gender discrimination class action, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, both as a prototype of an emerging litigation strategy and also as a case that is entirely unique. As part of a growing trend of gender discrimination class claims, Dukes has the potential to push the boundaries of the law to confront the pervasive, tenacious stereotypes that continue to limit women's workplace opportunities. The plaintiffs' arguments - both the narrative of discrimination their evidence set out and the legal strategies they chose - are strikingly similar to claims that have been made in many class action lawsuits over the past decade. It is a strategy for litigation that challenges both the company-wide policy to delegate pay and promotion decision-making authority and the individual subjective decisions of managers throughout the country. The first challenge - to Wal-Mart's centralized policy choices - puts this case squarely within doctrinal debates about Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 that have dominated class litigation for close to a decade. The second aspect of this litigation - its assault on the subjective decisions made as a consequence of Wal-Mart's delegation - raises a question that has lurked behind Title VII litigation for years: What responsibility should employers take for gender stereotypes and biases that pervade United States culture when the effects of those cultural norms are felt at work? By challenging the aggregate consequences of multiple individual decisions, this article argues, this type of gender discrimination class litigation takes an extremely important step in efforts to root out gender inequalities at work. Finally, the piece considers the ways in which Dukes v. Wal-Mart, although it is part of a trend of similar litigation, has unique importance because the defendant is Wal-Mart, and in particular because of Wal-Mart's extraordinary market power and its consequent influence on other employers' practices, and the company's remarkably strong corporate culture.
This Article provides the first in-depth reading of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) as an antidiscrimination statute. GINA, touted as the first major civil rights legislation of the new century, passed in May 2008. Thus, both to understand GINA’s potential impact, as well as to improve its efficacy, the statute must be analyzed as an antidiscrimination law. When read as an antidiscrimination statute, GINA takes a clear position on one of the most contested issues in that area of law: antisubordination versus anticlassification. This debate queries whether antidiscrimination law should seek to elevate the social status of certain subordinated groups or should prevent all consideration of particular forbidden characteristics. GINA as currently drafted plainly favors anticlassification; it protects individuals from any intentional differential treatment by health insurers or employers based on genetic information. In contrast, an antisubordination approach to protecting genetic information would focus not on outlawing all forms of intentional, differential treatment, but on preventing a genetic underclass from forming. In particular, an antisubordination framework would allow employers to consider genetic information for accommodation purposes and victims of discrimination to challenge to facially neutral policies that produce discriminatory results. This Article proposes that amending GINA to include more antisubordination protections would better safeguard genetic information.
Masculinities theory explains that masculinity is constructed in relation to a dominant image of gender difference, ultimately defining itself simply as what "femininity" is not. In the workplace, masculinities comprise both a structure that reinforces the superiority of men over women, and a series of practices associated with masculine behavior (performed by men and women) that maintain men's superior position over women at work. This article applies masculinities theory to analyze whether Title VII should protect women employees in highly sexualized workplaces from sex- or gender-based hostile work environments, created by customers and tolerated by the employer. The author employs a case study of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Through its advertisements and policies, the Hard Rock creates a highly sexualized workplace for its female blackjack dealers, producing an atmosphere imbued with aggressive masculinities that create a stressful working environment. The Hard Rock promotes and ratifies this behavior by constructing this environment, yet instituting few safeguards to protect its women employees. The Hard Rock case study raises serious questions concerning the application of Title VII to protect women working in highly sexualized workplaces from hostile work environments. The author reaches several conclusions. First, courts should consider the context of the workplace and the job the woman performs in determining whether her employer has violated Title VII. Second, the Bona Fide Occupational Qualification defense should not expand to defend an employer's failure to protect women employees from harassing behavior in a highly sexualized workplace. Finally, although employees should bear some responsibility to complain about harassment, the employer, who creates the sexualized environment and profits from it, rather than the individual employee, has the greater opportunity to control and prevent harassing behavior, and therefore should take extra precautions to assure employees are not suffering from harassment by customers.
The 2008 Presidential campaign highlighted three strong, interesting, and very different women -- Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Obama -- who negotiated identity performances in the political limelight. Because of their diverse backgrounds, experience, and ages, an examination of how these three women performed their identities and the public response to them offers a rich understanding of the changing nature of gender, gender roles, age, sexuality and race in our culture. This essay suggests that optimism that Obama's race and gender performances may have removed the stigma from "the feminine" may be misplaced, at least when it comes to women aspiring to high public office. Indeed, a review of the public's reaction to the gender, race, and class performances of these three women confirms that women aspiring to high public office continue to suffer intense public scrutiny of their gender performances.
This is a story about gender, makeup and the law. Darlene Jespersen, a bartender, was fired from her job of fifteen years at Harrah's Casino because she refused to wear makeup. Jespersen responded with a lawsuit that traveled to the Ninth Circuit, where she was represented by LAMBDA Legal, the preeminent gay rights litigation organization. Makeup, some will argue, is a trivial thing. Why would Darlene Jespersen (choose to) lose her job over makeup? More generally, how did favoring (as opposed to prohibiting) a practice that so many women (but not men) engage in become the basis for a sex discrimination suit? Why was LAMBDA involved? What is at stake? Isn't makeup a vehicle for women to express their autonomy and individuality? Finally, do we really want the federal government involved in policing employers' makeup policies? Because anti-discrimination law has been wedded to a biological conception of sex, it has not grappled well with sex discrimination cases that implicate makeup and grooming. This is particularly problematic in today's labor market because few contemporary employers are likely to exclude all women from their workplace; they are far more likely to engage in intra-gender screening based on whether a woman's self presentation is in accord with social scripts about gender normative behavior. Using Jespersen as a point of departure, we reveal how makeup is implicated in this screening process and explain why its regulation ought to be conceptualized as a form of discrimination on the basis of sex.
This paper seeks to explain a paradox: Why does Title VII's prohibition on sex discrimination currently look so much more expansive than its prohibition on race discrimination? Why in particular, do workers appear to be receiving greater protection for expressions of gender identity than for expressions of racial identity? I argue that as a doctrinal matter, the paradox is illusory - the product of a fundamental misinterpretation of recent sex discrimination case law by scholars. Rather than reflecting fundamentally distinct antidiscrimination principles, the race and sex cases in fact reflect the same traditional commitments to ending status discrimination and undermining group-based subordination. Nonetheless, as a practical matter, the paradox is real. Courts are more likely to protect workplace expressions of gender identity than racial identity. The divergence, I contend, flows not from law, but from culture - in particular society's ongoing commitment to racial transcendence and gender essentialism.
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