Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Most previous research on gender inequality and management has been concerned access to managerial jobs – the “glass ceiling.” We offer the first large-scale analysis that asks whether changes in the gender composition of managers is linked to changes in job segregation among nonmanagerial workers. Thus, our work speaks to larger questions about inequality – specifically, what happens to the status of a subordinate group when some of its members attain positions from which they might reduce inequality? Our analysis will use a longitudinal, multilevel approach to investigate whether the marked desegregation of managerial occupations in the last two decades has trickled down to nonmanagerial workers, resulting in decreasing segregation among these workers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper explores the experiences of Japanese women who are employed locally and work with their co-ethnic managers in Japanese-owned workplaces located in the United States. Although the overall gendered nature of the dynamics between these women and men in their workplaces—such as the division of labor within their workplaces, and its symbolic importance—does not change dramatically, new elements emerge in transnational workplaces, and they are flexibly given gendered meanings and added to the gendered way of understanding and organizing workplaces. The sense of Japanese male managers of endangered masculinity contributes to this process of gendering. In addition, ethnicity comes to light in the United States, where Japanese people perceive and construct ethnic differences more readily. Many Japanese male managers re-construct the discourse of "Japanese womenness" in the workplace context, by conflating the discourse of gender reenacted and the set of newly perceived and emphasized ethnic differences. While Japanese-owned work organizations provide Japanese women with relatively easy access to paid employment and possible visa acquisition, working with those who know how to exploit the cultural discourses of gender and ethnicity and reconstruct it to their advantage in the ethnic enclave such as Japanese-owned work organizations sometimes results to the detriment of Japanese female local hires.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Please consider this paper for Applied Communication Award of Interpersonal Communication Division

This research examined the relationship between preferences for information seeking tactics and sense of workplace community. Data from Korean workers (n=240) showed that overt tactics used for supervisors and coworkers were both related to sense of workplace community across all three types of information. The findings also showed that information types differentiated the relationship between importance of information seeking and sense of workplace community and the relationship between coworker availability as an information source and sense of workplace community. These and other findings are discussed and implications for the findings are provided.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: I investigate whether workers perceive putting family before work is frowned upon in the workplace. Many employers have provided policies to ease work-family conflict, but workplace cultural forces encouraging or demanding dedication may keep workers from using these policies.
If policies are not used, their promise for creating a more functional co-existence between work and family remain unfulfilled.
I focus on whether a worker’s gender impacts their experiences with these workplace cultural forces. Gender differences might help explain why women more likely take advantage of flexibility policies. Past research suggests a relationship between gender and expectations of workers, but this research is inconclusive in some respects.
A clearer understanding of work culture will improve efforts to shape corporate and public work-family policies. It is important to study gender differences in job flexibility because they may help explain inequality in pay and career advancement. They may also explain why women still perform the majority of domestic and child-rearing duties, even if they also engage in paid work.
I find no direct effect for either gender or a gender-parenthood interaction term. I run separate equations by gender, and the model for women has more significant predictors.
The variables that attain statistical significance—education, occupational category, occupational gender composition, and size of organization—are not easily manipulated. But these results may still inform policy if we can ascertain what it is about these kinds of jobs that increase the likelihood of a family-positive work culture and then “export” these characteristics to other jobs.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork of Latino men working as day laborers on a New York City street corner, this paper builds on the literature of the redefining self and impression management to examine the management of identity in the workplace. As highlighted in the larger research project, there were powerful implications of race and ethnicity in the exchanges that took place at the worksite. Likewise, this paper illustrates how gender was also an integral element in the work processes on the street corner. Negotiating masculinity in the workplace reflected the multiple realities and shifting identities of the various actors, including the researcher herself. While the focus is on the interactions between the men and the employers, fieldworker, and among themselves, there is a discussion about how characteristics of this particular sector of the informal economy encouraged “ser hombre” (being a man) in the workplace. The overall project attempts to advance our understanding of the incorporation of new immigrants into American society and the effects on American culture. This paper uncovers the complexity and implications of these social processes that are manifested in the everyday social practices on a New York City street corner.