LECTURE: 'Gender-Related Cultural Change: A Cross-Institutional Approach'

Abstract:

Gender research shows us more about how gender inequality is perpetuated than how it can be reduced. To gain a deeper understanding of how gender relations might be deeply transformed, or to put the problem differently, why such changes are so glacially slow, we turned to institutional theory. Generally, institutional theory tells us more about legitimizing and reproducing the status quo than changing it (eg DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Scott, 1994). Wacquant (1997, in press). However, we took Wacquant's ideas about cross-institutional reinforcement of inequality and applied them to gender. We asked how do multiple institutions (schools, peer social relations, employing institutions, families) interact to reinforce gender inequalities. Then moving from the documentation of enduring gender inequalities to the question of transformation, we asked how a cross-institutional change program might decouple those linkages and open the possibility of deep, lasting cultural changes in gender relations?

We study these issues in one context (technological training programs for male and female college students in Mexico) and then offer a more general theory, based on multiple examples, showing how lasting gender equity interventions require cross-institutional reinforcement.

About the Speaker:

Joanne Martin is the Fred H. Merrill Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. She holds a B.A. from Smith College, a Ph.D. from the Department of Psychology and Social Relations at Harvard University, and an Honorary Doctorate in Economics and Business Administration from the Copenhagen Business School. She recently received the Distinguished Educator award from the Academy of Management and the Centennial Medal for "contributions to society" from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. She has served on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Management, on the Board of Directors of CPP, Inc., and on the Advisory Board of the International Centre for Research in Organizational Discourse, Strategy, and Change for the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, London, and McGill. She has published many articles and five books including Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain (Sage, 2002). Her current research focuses on the subtle ways gender shapes organizational cultures, work she is pursuing while on sabbatical in Sydney this year.

All interested parties welcome.