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Abstract
A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of organizational power. Fewer studies, however, explore the implications of women in leadership positions for the opportunities and experiences of subordinates. Do women leaders serve to undo the gendered organization? In other words, is women’s greater representation in leadership positions associated with less gender segregation at lower organizational levels? We explore this question by drawing on Cohen and Huffman’s (2007) conceptual framework of women leaders as either “change agents” or “cogs in the machine” and analyze a unique multilevel data set of workplaces nested within Fortune 1000 firms. Our findings generally support the “agents of change” perspective. Women’s representation among corporate boards of directors, corporate executives, and workplace managers is associated with less workplace gender segregation. Hence, it appears that women’s access to organizational power helps to undo the gendered organization.
Keywords gendered organizations, segregation, workplace, leadership, management
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Kevin Stainback is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University. His research examines gender and racial inequality in organizations. He is author (with Donald Tomaskovic-Devey) of Documenting Desegregation: Racial and Gender Segregation in Private Sector Employment since the Civil Rights Act (Russell Sage Foundation, 2012).
Sibyl Kleiner is Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Calgary. Her research covers various subfields in sociology, including medical sociology, work, family, gender, and social psychology. Her recent work appears in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science Research, and Social Forces.
Sheryl Skaggs is Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas–Dallas. Her research examines workplace diversity addressing issues of gender and racial/ethnic disparities in promotions and authority, earnings, and recruitment, as well as job- and occupational-level segregation across organizations and industries.
