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EOI
25,3
At Sam’s Club, no girls allowed:
the lived experience of
sex discrimination
Yasemin Besen
172
Department of Sociology, Montclair State University, Montclair,
New Jersey, USA, and
Michael S. Kimmel
SUNY Stony Brook, New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth understanding of the lived experience
of sex discrimination from the perspective of women in the Wal-Mart case and unravels the daily
mechanisms through which sex discrimination takes place.
Design/methodology/approach – One hundred and ten in-depth statements from women who are
current and former employees of Wal-Mart, describing in detail their work experience, were employed
as the main source of data. We have carried out a detailed content analysis of these in-depth
interviews identifying the mechanisms of sex discrimination.
Findings – Findings identify the specific mechanisms through which sex discrimination takes place.
In the context of the current sex discrimination case, the paper provides a rich body of evidence in
unraveling the everyday mechanisms of sex discrimination. It observes that instead of individual
events, at important thresholds, sex discrimination is a result of small, everyday acts and gendered
assumptions, which often appear supportive and harmless.
Research limitations/implications – The richness of the data provides the unique, empirical
opportunity to observe the process in detail, but this paper focuses exclusively on the process, and the
end-results remain outside the scope of the paper.
Practical implications – The paper provides a very useful source of information and practical
advice for women in the labor force in identifying the supportive, nice and harmless mechanisms and
everyday experience of sex discrimination.
Originality/value – This paper exclusively focuses on the process and identifies the mechanisms of
sex discrimination using a rich source of qualitative data. It offers empirical evidence in identifying the
daily assumptions and everyday mechanisms of sex discrimination. Sex discrimination in the everyday
lives are carried out in disguise of harmless, nice and often supportive behavior; therefore this paper
offers explanations as to why many women stay in these exploitative jobs as long as they do.
Keywords Sexual discrimination, Workplace, Gender
Paper type Research paper
Equal Opportunities International
Vol. 25 No. 3, 2006
pp. 172-187
# Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0261-0159
DOI 10.1108/02610150610687827
Donna Adair is a former Wal-Mart employee. With nearly ten years of experience in
California and Tennessee stores as a service desk clerk as well as customer service
manager and exemplary evaluations that were exceeding expectations, she inquired
about possible advancement. The regional vice-president put the matter bluntly: she
could not be a manager because she was a woman!
When faced with such blunt unequal outcomes in promotions, benefits or pay, it is
not surprising for employees to leave; however, what is interesting is what keeps
employees in such jobs. Is sex discrimination experienced only in thresholds (i.e. going
up for promotions or pay raise) or is it experienced in the daily lives of the employees?
If it is experienced on a daily basis, then what keeps employees like Donna Adair at the
workplace for nearly a decade?
Donna Adair is one of the 110 former and current employees who are the initial
plaintiffs in a sex discrimination suit against Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private
employer. With annual sales of about $250 billion, Wal-Mart has topped the Fortune
500 for the past three years; more than an industry leader: it is an economy leader.
Fittingly, this promises to be the single largest sex discrimination case in US history. In
June 2005, the case was certified as a class-action suit, and now may include all former
and current female employees of Wal-Mart stores, nearly 1.6 million women.
To date, few studies exist on the case and most analysis of the case has relied on
aggregate data analysis by the three expert witnesses, statistician Drogin (2003),
sociologist Bielby (2003) and economist Bendick (2003) examining, for example, wage
gaps and differential promotion patterns based on Wal-Mart’s employee data. These
analyses focus exclusively on the consequences, namely the unequal pay, promotions
and opportunities for men and women as a result of discriminatory behavior. In these
studies, the gender inequality is the result that needs to be explained and sex
discrimination explains those unequal outcomes.
What is missing, however, an analysis of sex discrimination as a process, as an
actual set of daily experiences in the lives of those affected. The lived experience of sex
discrimination remains virtually unexplored. First, by understanding the actual daily
experience of sex discrimination from the perspective of employees, we can unravel the
daily mechanisms of how this reified concept is practiced. The everyday, lived
experience of sex discrimination at the workplace can shed some light on the
organizational dynamics of sex discrimination. Furthermore, it will help us uncover the
assumptions made about gender in the workplace. Such a task will provide valuable
empirical support for the understanding of the process of inequality and offer ways to
remedy for the future.
Secondly, by understanding the lived experience of sex discrimination over a period of
time, we can better comprehend why so many women stay in these exploitative jobs for as
long as they do. By documenting the experience of the workplace throughout and
understanding their perceptions and explanations of the situation, we can better
understand the factors that keep them in those jobs and preserve the existing inequalities.
Therefore, for a comprehensive understanding of sex discrimination, it is imperative
to focus on the actual everyday work experience of women in addition to the outcomes.
Such a task allows us to uncover the micro-politics of sex discrimination as a set of
routine practices, unravel the mechanisms through which sex discrimination takes
place and see why so many women stay in those jobs.
Prior research
Labor market sex discrimination is defined as: ‘‘. . . two equally qualified individuals
are treated differently solely on the basis of their gender’’ (Blau et al., 2006, p. 203). Sex
discrimination in the labor market can result in lower earnings for women (Stanley and
Jarrell, 1998; Blau and Kahn, 2004). The first strand of research on sex discrimination,
therefore, focuses on the wage disparities between men and women. A substantial
body of research attempts to explain the difference in pay for men and women in the
USA. Prior inquiries consist of two different approaches: human capital approach and
the occupational segregation approach.
The human capital approach attempts to explain gender differences in pay through
individual differences which might result in lower productivity (Schultz, 1960; Mincer,
1962; Becker, 1985; Bielby and Bielby, 1988; Becker, 1993) such as differences in formal
education (Polachek, 1981; Mincer and Polachek, 1974; Sandell and Shapiro, 1978;
Reskin and Padavic, 1994; Light and Ureta, 1995) and years of experience (Treiman and
Hartmann, 1981; Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993; England, 1997). In such explanations, the
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lower earnings of women are argued to be the result of lower productivity among
women and are often associated with their domestic duties and childcare
responsibilities, or by interruptions in employment due to these duties (Berk and Berk,
1979; Mincer and Ofek, 1982; Ross, 1987; Hochschild, 1989; Hersch and Stratton, 1997;
Waldfogel, 1998).
Some scholars have also focused on differential preferences of men and women.
Filer (1983) argues that different values and personality characteristics predict
differential earnings for men and women, hypothesizing that men value monetary
gratifications while women tend to value non-monetary gratifications leading to
unequal pay. However, the hypothesized effect is an indirect one, where values and
preferences predict different types of jobs, which result in unequal pay; the
mechanisms through which these values lead to a wage disparity remain unaddressed.
A more direct association between values and the wage gap can be observed in a
number of studies that examine the relative importance men and women place on
earnings and other occupational characteristics. These findings indicate that men place
more importance on earning than women do, therefore end up in higher paying jobs
(Brenner and Tomkiewicz, 1979; Lueptow, 1980; Peng et al., 1981; Herzog, 1982; Major
and Konar, 1984), though some studies fail to find such a difference (Walker et al., 1984).
More recently, however, the field has accepted as conclusive Jacobs and Steinberg’s
(1990) argument that men and women do not work for different reasons resulting in
unequal pay and rejected this line of reasoning.
A second set of explanations, instead of focusing on the characteristics of the
employees, focus on occupational differences between men and women. This view
argues that the pay differential between men and women is predominantly due to
occupational characteristics. The most prominent position of this strand of research
argues that the difference in pay between men and women is due to employment in
different industries (Blau, 1977; Daymont and Andrisani, 1984; Groshen, 1991; Bayard
et al., 2003). Earlier studies show that women are more likely than men to be employed
in traditionally feminine occupations which require nurturing social skills and are
generally associated with lower pay (Kanter, 1977; Kilbourne et al., 1990; Jacobs and
Steinberg, 1990; Steinberg, 1990). In addition to sex segregation by occupation, there is
also sex segregation by firm. The disproportional employment of women in lowerwage firms only adds to the gap created by occupational sex segregation (Blau, 1977;
Beck et al., 1980; Hodson and England, 1986; Aldrich and Buchele, 1989; Coverdill,
1988; Ferber and Spaeth, 1984). More recent findings suggest that market forces reduce
the effects of wage discrimination (Hellerstein et al., 2002).
Gender differences in earnings, however, are not the only way in which sex
discrimination is experienced. An important line of research focuses on the differences
in promotion and participation between men and women (Blau, 1984; Reskin and
Hartmann, 1986; Reskin and Roos, 1990; Groshen, 1991; MacPherson and Hirsch, 1995).
Despite the increasing labor force participation rates of women, the highest paying
jobs are still dominated by men. In fact, women constitute less than 0.5 per cent of the
4,012 highest paid officers (Fierman, 1990; see also Reskin and Padavic, 1994; England,
1997). Within the Fortune 500 senior management, less than 5 per cent are women and
minorities (Reskin and Padavic, 1994). Some scholars argue that the disproportional
representation of women in managerial positions is due to the glass ceiling: blocked
opportunities for women, while some argue it is due to the sticky floor: keeping women
in lower paying jobs (Carrington and Troske, 1995; Cohen et al., 1998; Bertrand and
Hallock, 2001). Whether women are less likely to be promoted than men because of the
glass ceiling or the sticky floor, the promotion gap between men and women is well
established (Phelps, 1972; Kahn and Crosby, 1985; Madden, 1985; Drazin and Auster,
1987; Gutek et al., 1996; Reskin and Kalleberg, 1995). The gender difference in
promotions was associated with bias in evaluations, which favors men over women
(Nieva and Gutek, 1980). While some scholars argue the difference in promotions is not
directly linked with sex discrimination (Tsui and Gutek, 1984; O’Neill, 1985; Swim et al.,
1989), many scholars agree that there is discrimination in promotions (Clayton and
Crosby, 1992; Crosby, 1982; 1984; Kahn and Crosby, 1985; Roper, 1980).
In addition to prior research that looks into the causes and implications of sex
discrimination, a bourgeoning strand of research looks into the perception and
personal experience of sex discrimination (Tajfel, 1978; Bem, 1981; Gutek and Winter,
1989; Gutek et al., 1996).
Within all these strands of research, male domination, according to Hearn and
Parkin (1983; 1987) is analyzed but not explained. For a more comprehensive
understanding, it is important to focus on the perception and the every day experience
of discrimination to unravel the gendered assumptions in the organization. The final
strand of research on sex discrimination focuses exclusively on the process of sex
discrimination (Kanter, 1977; Feldberg and Glenn, 1979; MacKinnon, 1979; Ferguson,
1984; Acker, 1988; 1990). In one of the most influential works on the topic, Men and
Women of the Corporation, Kanter (1977) shows that gendered outcomes are results of
the organizational culture. By focusing on the everyday lives of men and women in a
corporation, she identifies that women fill the lower-rank, non-managerial positions or
infrequently make an appearance as token managerial positions. The focus on the
process sheds light on the structural and organizational assumptions made in the
workplace and influences later work in the area. Building on her findings, Ressner
(1987) identifies the dual organization of bureaucracies and patriarchy. This view
better captures the differential experience of women from men in the same workplace
by incorporating the lived experience of sex discrimination. Similarly, by focusing on
the experience of sex discrimination, later works like Ferguson (1984) offer a feminist
critique of bureaucracies and argue that even though they appear to be neutral, they in
fact exhibit traditionally masculine characteristics. Because these gendered everyday
realities and inequalities are obscured through gender-neutral terms and assumptions,
deconstructing the daily lives and experiences will reveal the gendered assumptions in
the workplace. Only though a thorough understanding of the process and the
experience of discrimination, can we unravel the gendered symbols and images that
justify existing inequalities.
Despite the emphasized importance of understanding the process of sex
discrimination, there are often methodological limitations in such an endeavor. As
observed in the sex discrimination case against Sears (Milkman, 1986), we do not
always have the option of having detailed qualitative data outlining the daily lives of
women at the workplace.
This paper aims to focus on the day-to-day experience of sex discrimination and
offers a detailed, qualitative understanding of the culture in the workplace in the
context of the current Wal-Mart sex discrimination case. It takes advantage of vast,
detailed interviews and aims to complement the existing quantitative understanding of
the sex discrimination case by offering an analysis of the process of sex discrimination.
Through understanding the daily lives of women, we aim to not only identify
how women perceived sex discrimination and also mechanisms that kept women in
these jobs.
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Case history
The class action suit, Dukes et al. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (No. C-01-2252 MJJ) began in
19 June 2001 in San Francisco, California when seven current and former female
employees of Wal-Mart from geographically diverse locations filed a sex
discrimination class-action lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of
California (San Francisco). The charges were based on systematic discrimination
against female employees in promotions, wages and job assignments in violation of
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Title VII. In June 2004, the plaintiff’s request to
constitute the plaintiffs as a class was accepted, thus making the case the largest classaction suit in the nation’s history.
The plaintiffs’ argument is that Wal-Mart, including its Sam’s Club division,
systematically discriminates against female employees – both hourly and salaried – by
denial of equal pay and promotions. Such disparities do not take place coincidentally;
they are both structural, the result of specific policies and cultural, the expressions of
cultural assumptions.
While the quantitative evidence argues for the sex discrimination in results,
focusing on the consequences, how they end up with those results and why they kept
working in those jobs remains unexplored. The mechanisms and the day-to-day
experience of sex discrimination cannot be answered solely by focusing on the
consequences. This paper focuses exclusively on this neglected part of sex
discrimination: the process and identifies the mechanisms through which sex
discrimination takes place and how people stay in these positions.
Methods
For this purpose, we have employed the statements from 110 women collected in the
Wal-Mart litigation. The statements are in-depth statements from current and former
female employees from geographically diverse 30 states and 201 stores. They are long
and detailed interviews with women employees. These detailed statements include
detailed information about the everyday work practices, workplace interactions,
employer–employee and colleague relationships, therefore provide a valuable source in
understanding the women’s perspective and the lived experience of discrimination. We
have done an in-depth content analysis and organized these statements in identifying
the mechanisms of sex discrimination.
Findings
Connell (1987) defines hegemonic masculinity of institutions as aggressive, goaloriented, competitive and efficient, instead of supportive, kind and caring.
Interestingly, women employees describe the working environment where they
experienced sex discrimination to be seemingly nice, supportive and protective. The
hegemonic masculinity, according to the women, operated in disguise of being
supportive, kind and caring.
First, we observe practices that protect women employees from useful criticism by
their solicitous, chivalrous, male supervisors. In the guise of chivalric protection, the
women therefore are denied opportunities. Stephanie Odle, a 31-year-old employee
remembers:
In March 1997, I transferred to one of the Sam’s Clubs in Las Vegas, Nevada, as the Assistant
Manager for the Merchandise Department. Within a few days after arriving in Las Vegas, I
was called back to the Riverside store for a meeting with Mr. Carlos Doubleday, Director of
Operations; Mr. Carl Brown, Regional Loss Prevention Manager; and Ms. Chris Schilling, an
Assistant Manager at the Riverside store, who was present as a ‘‘witness’’. During this
meeting, I was wrongfully accused of making incorrect audit entries ‘‘understating
shrinkage,’’ even though these entries had been approved at the time by Mr. Brown and by
Mr. Goodwin. Other male General Managers in the region had made similar entries. At the
end of the meeting, Mr. Doubleday asked Mr. Brown and Ms. Schilling to leave the room, and
then, Mr. Doubleday told me that he believed that I made the entries because Mr. Brown had
told me to, adding, ‘‘I’m going to do everything I can to protect you.’’
Odle, thus faced differential treatment based on her gender. Odle’s accusation of
incorrect entries became possible because of the protective treatment she received from
her superiors. When faced with an untrue accusation, she was told she would be
protected by her male supervisor. This image of a woman employee in need of
protection when faced with an accusation not only infantilizes them but also creates the
illusion of women as in need of men’s protection.
Similarly, Karla Rojas, a 41-year-old female employee of Wal-Mart from Texas
experienced similar protection when she inquired about a promotion. After she had
been working for a while as an assistant manager at the Henderson, Texas, store, when
she inquired about a promotion. That is when she was called by her superior, who
suggested that she should not do that because he was worried about her work-related
stress. Her desire to be promoted to a higher position was not directly turned down, nor
did she face animosity; however, she was told nicely to quit instead of working and
choose to settle down with a family because work life is too stressful for her. This is
presented to her as a chivalric concern for her health and well-being, coming from a
male superior.
Claudia Renati, too, inquired about managerial positions, during the time she
worked at the Pace Store in Roseville, California in 1993. When she asked the Director
of Operations Bob Alderman about the management promotion program, she, too, was
not turned down immediately, but when I asked about getting into the program, she
was told that she would have to be willing to relocate to Alaska, which might disrupt
her family. The response to her wish to be promoted is declined indirectly in disguise of
showing concern for her and at the same time implying she does not really qualify to be
a manager anywhere out of Alaska.
Similarly, we observe mechanisms through which women are not encouraged to
compete for challenging tasks because their supervisors fear they might not want
them, get them and that they would be emotionally crushed by the rejection. Many
remember that when considering a promotion, transfer to another department or a pay
raise, they faced friendly and casual reminders and suggestions, discouraging them
about their future prospects.
Karla Rojas, when she showed interest in the managerial program and wanted to
enroll in managerial training program, was told that she would not be interested and
she would not find the program useful. Despite her persistent interest in enrolling in
the training program, she was told the program would not be helpful to her and would
not improve her.
Cleo Page, a 34-year-old woman from Tulsa, Oklahoma observed in the Livermore
branch where she was working, that women mostly worked as cashiers and in
departments that included clothes and lingerie, while men staffed the automotive, meat
and produce departments. In 1999, when she encountered an opening as the manager
of the sporting goods department, she was not directly turned down but before she
could apply she was told they ‘‘needed a man in the job’’ and therefore the job was not
suitable for a woman.
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The most salient method of rejection is an indirect one, where the employee is not
directly turned down or confronted, but offered indirect, often irrelevant reasons. Edith
Arena, despite her above average rating on her initial 90-day evaluation and a $0.40
raise, was told that she was not given a higher rating, which would have led to a larger
pay increase, because ‘‘payroll cannot handle it’’. Such an excuse appears confusing for
employees and while discouraging them also keeps them in those positions.
These mechanisms through which promotions and pay raise takes place in WalMart, also reinforce the often indirect discouraging mechanisms. Wal-Mart promoted
from within and lacked a centralized, standard method of promotion. Until January,
2003, no job openings were posted on a central staff bulletin board. The general
practice was not to use formal mechanisms in advertising the job, but use more
informal methods. As Sandra Stevenson, from Gurnee, Illinois declares, like many
others, ‘‘During my employment at Sam’s, open positions were not posted. . . . open
positions were communicated by word of mouth’’.
Most of the managers in store were men and it was referred to as the Boy’s Club.
Promotion decisions are made informally based on ‘‘tap on the shoulder’’, and the
information on promotions were provided on a ‘‘need to know basis’’ as Kathleen
Schmedia states. When she inquired about promotions in 1998, at the Ohio branch
where she had been an employer for some time, she was told that promotion and
training information is in a need to know basis and she did not need to know. The nonexistence of openly posted positions avoids direct confrontation with many employees.
When women wanted to be considered for the same promotions, they were often not
informed about these openings until they were. As Detrx Young remembers:
Sometime in 1998, I wrote on my evaluation that I would like to be promoted to Support
Manager. I had overheard someone say that the position would be open, so I put it on the
evaluation to show my interest. . . . By that time, I had been with the company for seven years
and had worked in nearly every department. I was very familiar with the store and the
procedures, and I was willing to work at any time, any hour. I really wanted to move up with
this company. Despite talking to my Assistant Manager and putting my name on the list, I
was never even interviewed. Instead, they promoted a male named John Cooper who had less
seniority, less experience, and had not put his name on the list in the break room. John Cooper
was promoted by the Store Manager, Mr. Glen Flory, with whom he was friendly.
The boys’ club, on the other hand, was naturalized and justified based on the
distinctions between men and women. It was explained to Anna Dobbs that because
she did not hunt, fish, or do other typically-male activities, that she probably would not
advance any further.
Means of discouraging women from applying for better positions are not limited to
the attitudes and comments of superiors, but are also complemented by daily
conversations and jokes by peers as well. Like Collinson (1989) argues, casual,
seemingly friendly jokes at the shop floor may create uncomfortable for women and
show masculinist assumptions. Many times, this hegemonic masculinist culture is
created by informal conversations in which women may be joked about, or even
individual women singled out for specific joking: all done in the name of harmless fun.
Many women report being refereed to as little Janies and girls. Gina Espinoza-Price,
remembers that she was introduced as Gina, ‘‘the little Mexican princess’’, in the
workplace. Edith Arena, similarly, recalls that her supervisor ‘‘walked the floor
constantly and during our daily store meetings, he routinely stated, ‘if the inventory
goes badly, we’re going to blame Edith’’’. Although his remarks sounded comical and
said jokingly accompanied by laughter, she felt threatened.
Similarly, Tamara Zombrun, female employee at the Wal-Mart Store in Mountain
Home, Idaho, like her female co-workers, was refereed to as babe, baby-doll, or baby by
her co-manager. In contrast, he addressed male employees by their first names.
Furthermore, in friendly, casual conversations, women were often told to doll up in
order to get promoted. This can also be seen in the way traditional stereotypes of
femininity were enforced. Women learned quickly the consequences for appearing too
decisive, competent or aggressive: they were cast as bitches. One female employee in
Texas was told that women need to be bitches to survive in the work environment;
others were criticized if they appeared to act that way. One Idaho woman received a
coaching for profanity when she used the word damn in the employee break room.
However, she remembers hearing Tony Whitten call a female employee, Bobby Dimick
a bitch and he did not receive a coaching, thus contributing to the normalization of the
stereotype.
The constant use of stereotypes led inevitably to grouping all women together
based on their gender. This refers to stereotypic assumptions, so that each individual
woman is perceived only as a member of the category woman, and not as an individual.
Men were considered the real employees and are seen as career oriented, but women
were seen as support. Being seen only as a member of a group, and not as an
individual, is the classic definition of tokenism, according to Kanter (1977).
This leads to the development of a second shift in the workplace itself. Whereas
Hochschild (1989) and others had initially understood the second shift to refer to the
two types of work – paid work and family work – that working women do, there is a
second shift in the workplace as well. Women are expected to do far more emotion
work, far more emotional and social cleaning up, and often far more actual cleaning up,
than men are. Sue Brown, a former employee from Kentucky remembers:
In July 2000, I asked my new department manager, Janet Chandley, why I have these
additional responsibilities, and she told me that the boys’ main job is ‘‘to service the
customers.’’ I believe that is my main job as well, but only Barbara Bartley and I, the only
female sales associates in the electronics department, have these additional tasks, even
though we have both worked there longer than any of the young boys.
Women were expected to serve the customers as well as having additional tasks and
help the men in the same department, but they were told nicely that their emotional
work is needed and valuable hence the organization would not survive without
them.
This second workplace shift also parallels the company’s assumption of men’s work
as a part of their career and women’s work as supplementing family income. Ramona
Scott from Florida applied for a raise, she was told: ‘‘Men are here to make a career and
women are not. Retail is for housewives who just need to earn extra money’’. She was
kindly asked to be understanding of men who need to look after their families.
Along with the reinforcement of traditional gender roles, there were assumptions
made about men and women’s relative physical abilities. Paula Bird, a former employee
from Sedalia, Missouri observed that: ‘‘I was not allowed to unload off of trucks, only
off of the conveyer belt. My supervisors, including male unit lead Jesse Spencer, rarely
allowed women to unload off of the trucks. In my experience, it was much more
physically strenuous for workers to unload off of a moving conveyer belt because it
required much more rapid and coordinated movement’’. Similarly, Rita Coones, who at
the time was working as a stocker observed that men were allowed to operate the
forklift while female associates were not.
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Shirley Ervine, too, had a similar experience with the forklift.
Throughout the time I ran the garden center, Store Manager Sigala continued to deny me
training on, and use of, the forklift. As a result, I was forced to find a male associate to unload
the pallets of soil, bark, and statuary from the delivery trucks whenever the delivery trucks
did not provide that service. During the seven years I was employed at the Paso Robles store, I
only observed one female associate operate the forklift and she was the Overnight Assistant
Manager.
This was done to ease the burden of women and help them. However, such perceived
inferiority of women that are naturalized throughout the work life emerges as rules and
criteria for pay and promotions. A female manager in Arizona was told she ‘‘doesn’t
have the right equipment’’ for promotion to a managerial position. In other words, the
fact that she is not a man automatically disqualifies her for many managerial positions.
As a female personnel manager in Florida was told, she was ‘‘not tough enough for
retail’’.
Categorizing men and women into homogenous categories also brings with it the
assumption of knowing their unified choices. Deciding what is good and beneficial for
women, based on such gendered stereotypes, instead of asking them what they would
prefer is observed at Wal-Mart. When she applied for the position of domestics
department manager, Denise Mott was told by the co-manager that, ‘‘You don’t want
that job – you don’t want to lift furniture – that’s a man’s job’’. Women report being
rejected from sports goods departments and meat departments as these sections are
defined as traditional activities for men. For example, Danette Brown- Ballou’s
manager responded her inquiry with the statement ‘‘What do you know about sporting
goods?’’ The assumption that women would not be interested in those departments
necessarily implies that men would be more interested in sports goods and meat, which
also may disadvantage gender non-conforming men.
Sex segregation is also gender discrimination because the two spheres are never
equivalent. As Patricia Bebee, a former Missouri employee observes, these typically
women’s departments often involved more work and problems and seldom lead to
managerial positions. Bebee argues:
The Cosmetics Department was a high shrink area: high volume with lots of theft. It was also
a department comprised exclusively of female associates and I did not view it as a stepping
stone to management as I did some of the other departments, such as Electronics and Paper
Goods and Chemicals, that were run mostly by male associates and male department
managers.
Many acts at Wal-Mart, according to the women, appear to be solicitous and helpful,
but undermine women’s equality. These acts were mostly sets of practices in which
women are given a wide variety of tasks, especially all the detail work on a project, but
a male team leader is credited with the work. Often this comes in the guise of helping
her learn the job. Like many other women, Patricia Bebee started at the bottom to learn
the job and often did overtime, but, was told that by a store manager that she was too
valuable to be promoted when she first expressed interest in a higher position.
Similarly, Lori Pidich was transferred to the electronics department in 1995 after years
of experience in the store and she assumed the responsibilities of department manager,
but was not given the title. Despite her above standard ratings, she was not promoted,
even though she was performing the duties of a manager.
Similarly, Paula Bird started as a stocker every time she moved, and had to prove
herself over and over to learn the job, but was never promoted. Their managers,
however, took credit for their arduous work. Managers, too, faced a similar situation in
which they did the bulk of the work, while men were praised and were given credit for
it. Not only were women asked to train men, but also many women employees were
asked to do the work for their male counterparts, when men took the credit for the
work. Carolyn Perkins regularly exceeded her quota in catching shoplifters in the
North Carolina store where she had been working for some time. During the months
when her apprehensions exceeded the required quota, she was not praised as a result.
Instead, in the monthly branch report, some of these apprehensions were given to the
male employees who performed below the required quota for the month.
Most women employees at Wal-Mart, in fact remember a second shift, during which
they had to perform the duties of their male colleagues in addition to their own. In 1996,
Lorrie Williams, the front end manager was told to work with Mr. Beck, who had no
experience with hiring, scheduling, staff management, or working with cash registers,
yet he was supposed to be her direct supervisor and supervisor over the entire front
end. Yet, she had to train him. Eventually, she ended up completing his responsibilities
because he was unable to do them. She completed all the hiring, pay raises, scheduling,
associate evaluations, customer service and other management tasks. As she states:
‘‘Undertaking both sets of responsibilities was exhausting and extremely frustrating
for me and I felt I was not receiving any management support for my efforts’’.
Many organizational practices that appeared to build teamwork or informal
networking, but, in fact, subtly undermine women, as, in, for example, thoughtlessly
scheduling early breakfast meetings, at times when women are likely to have family
responsibilities. For both women and men who have spouses and children, the meaning
of family changes based on the perception of the company. For men, their families are
seen as an advantage in pay and promotions and are often used to justify higher pay
and promotions. As Andrea Tallent of North Carolina explained, her store manager
argued that men need to be paid more, as they have families to support is interpreted as
a factor justifying their higher pay and promotions, while women are told that the fact
that they have families to support is an obstacle for promotions.
Similarly, Ramona Scott, from Florida, was informed around 1995-1996, by the male
assistant manager for electronics, that the reason why he was giving one of his male
employees a merit raise was not because he thought the employee earned it but
because ‘‘He has a family to support’’. Ramona Scott pointed out that she too had a
family to support – she was a single mother – but he just walked away.
Having a family may be an obstacle for women. When Stephanie Odle told her boss,
Mr. Goodwin she was having a baby and would need to support her daughter, Goodwin
required her to provide him with a personal household budget so he could decide
whether or not equal pay was warranted.
This also refers to the timing of the work. As Penny Elkins from Rio Rancho, New
Mexico stated:
I asked Mr. Gray, the Store Manager, and Peter Abbott, the District Manager, numerous times
to be transferred from Night Receiving, but they significantly delayed my return to a day
schedule because they were accommodating a male Assistant Manager’s desire to spend time
with his children in the evenings. Even though I complained to Mr. Gray and Mr. Abbott that
I was raising four children at the time and wanted to spend time with them in the evenings,
Wal-Mart unfairly prolonged the duration of my Night Receiving assignment.
Micki Earwood was told by her superior Mr. Phelps that employees who work nights
and weekends ‘‘can’t have kids’’. And, while working at Wal-Mart’s Home Office in
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Bentonville, Arkansas, Julie Donovan was told by a senior vice president and general
merchandise manager that he was surprised that a woman was in such a high position
at Wal-Mart, and that he thought she would be better off at home, raising a family.
The undermining of women is not limited to the work hours, but extends to after
work hours as well and can be seen in those informal practices by which the workplace
dynamics extend to arenas beyond the workplace, and create potentially anomic
situations for the women. For example, in the guise of appearing liberated, a male
employee invites a female employee for a drink after work, but then shifts into a dating
model and refuses to allow her to pay for a round. It can fuse with the choices workers
make about where and when to hold off-site gatherings and parties, and especially the
use of pornography or commercial sex services.
Women employees remember parties, dinners or business meetings were held at
places like Hooters or strip clubs and women were invited and required to go to be
inclusive. If the women did not like it, they were considered prudes or bitches, since
obviously, in today’s society, everyone should like these places. Of course, these
expectations not only create discomfort in the women’s work environment, but also
create gendered expectations of what men and women should enjoy. Such activities
also assume that all men enjoy such places.
Discussion
What is common in these work experiences is, interestingly the ongoing nature of sex
discrimination. In almost every case, before women were not promoted or given raises,
they have experienced everyday signs. What many employees found surprising is that
these everyday acts were packaged nicely. These daily, everyday mechanisms of sex
discrimination that are similar to the daily mechanisms identified by Benokraitis and
Feagin (1986) as the main mechanisms of sex discrimination. They emphasize the
covert, unintentional and subtle ways in which sex discrimination takes place in the
everyday lives of women. Benokraitis and Feagin (1986) enumerate nine mechanisms
condescending chivalry, supportive discouragement, friendly harassment, subjective
objectification, radiant devaluation, liberated sexism, benevolent exploitation,
considerate domination, collegial exclusion. Based on masculinist assumptions of the
organization, the everyday experience of the women at Wal-Mart appear to be similar
to the theoretical model of subtle discrimination. However, as observed in the work
stories of women, these categories are not separate from each other, but often
overlapping. What we observe are not those clearly marked categories, but simple
everyday comments and acts that appear subtle and often in guise of protecting and
helping women. Borrowing from Connell (1987), the hegemonic masculinist
assumptions that suppress women appear packages as nice, helpful and protective.
Conclusion
This paper offers an alternative view on the sex discrimination case against Wal-Mart.
Instead of focusing on the structures of, or the outcomes and consequences of sex
discrimination, this paper focuses on the formal and informal processes through and
by which sex discrimination takes place and becomes normalized as simply everyday
workplace behavior. It thus makes sex discrimination far more subtle and insidious,
and exceptionally difficult to see, let alone to get others to see.
For a more comprehensive understanding of the outcome, a detailed understanding
of the process and the mechanisms through which sex discrimination took place is
needed. The experience of sex discrimination from the perspective of women requires
an understanding of the actual work experience, rules, regulations and dominant
categories used for men and women and hiring and promotion mechanisms. Such a
task can be accomplished mainly by the use of detailed statements of women
describing in detail their actual experience.
While extensive literature points to the need for such analyses, in the case of actual
large scale sex discrimination cases (i.e the Sears case), are often characterized by the
marked absence of large scale in-depth qualitative data, outlining the process and
experience of sex discrimination. This analysis on Wal-Mart provides the opportunity
to offer empirical evidence for understanding the lived experience of discrimination.
Our findings show, based on an in-depth analysis of this large scale, detailed
collection of interviews, that women experience sex discrimination, not through rigid
mechanisms, but as a continuation of normalized, everyday events that were
experiences in the form of friendly exchanges and paternal, protectionist behavior on
the part of the employer and colleagues. The subtlety and the niceness of the
exchanges, while reinforcing gender stereotypes and assumptions and resulting in sex
discrimination, often results in perpetuating the work experience and explains why
women stay in these jobs for as long as they do. That is why many women who were
interviewed have stayed and worked under such circumstances for almost decades.
This paper offers a deeper understanding of the way sex discrimination works. The
next step would be to unravel the men’s perceptions and experience of the sex
discrimination case.
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Corresponding author
Yasemin Besen can be contacted at: beseny@mail.montclair.edu
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