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In the wake of the #metoo movement, Harris and Giuffre use the restaurant industry as an example to illustrate how viewing sexual harassment as an issue of industry and organizational culture–rather than just the behavior of a few bad actors–can inform our understanding of sexual harassment in the workplace.

AbstractOrganization scholars historically ignored the crucial importance of sexuality in the workplace. But in the last 20 years, scholars influenced by the 'sexuality in organizations' perspective have documented the ways that the management and deployment of workers' sexuality are key elements in organizational life. While most of these studies have documented persistent privileging of heterosexuality in work organizations, a recent trend is to investigate a new organizational form: the gay‐friendly workplace. We review legal and policy changes in US workplaces that have made them more accepting of gay and lesbian employees. Then we examine ethnographic studies of gay‐friendly organizations. Although they are certainly an advance over previous homophobic workplaces, the literature suggests that they may reproduce inequalities of race, class, and gender. Few studies have investigated 'queer organizations', which we identify as a rich area for future scholarship.

Women's empowerment and "success at work" self-help workshops, webinars, and advice books proliferate in our neoliberal economy. These initiatives purport to help women navigate workplaces and overcome their limitations to be more successful at work. Through a qualitative content analysis of 15 advice books published from 2013 to 2020, this article analyzes how women's and men's work relationships are depicted in popular press career advice books that are marketed for women. We identify three main themes. First, men are described as baffled by women's "strange ways," so women are warned to be aware of men's uneasiness and tread carefully in their work relationships. Second, men are depicted as enemies, yet women are told to rely on powerful men to achieve success. Third, women are instructed to ignore and downplay sexism in their workplace interactions. We conceptualize the work that women are expected to do as "tightrope labor," in which women must carefully navigate contradictory gender expectations. Women are expected to walk a tightrope with (1) handling men's discomfort with women; (2) identifying "menemies" and mentors; and (3) managing sexism. We argue that relationship depictions in career advice fault women for career failures, burden them with extra labor, and bolster neoliberal feminist rhetoric.

AbstractVoluminous scholarship documents the wage gap, occupational segregation, sexual harassment, and other forms of gender inequality at work. Few sociological studies explore women's work relationships with other women. Our article summarizes existing research from several disciplines on women's working relationships with other women. Specifically, three themes about the conditions of work emerge that discourage women's support for other women: (a) negative stereotypes about women, (b) lack of recognition of gender inequality, and (c) the devaluation of women's relationships, groups, and networks. We assert that these conditions reinforce essentialized notions of women, ignore larger structural inequalities at work, and cast women as the primary culprit in perpetuating gender inequality at work. We conclude with promising areas for future research on women's working relationships with other women.

This paper describes two teaching strategies from our workshop, "Teaching the Sociology of Gender and Work," that can help students understand the mechanisms and consequences of workplace gender inequality at the macro- and micro-levels. Cynthia Anderson's class project uses wage and sex composition data that allows students to learn actively how data are used to study general trends and changes over time. It encourages students to explore the reality of their possible careers and fields in terms of wages, proportion of women and men, and other factors. Sharon Bird's class exercise requires students to consider the interactional dynamics of everyday work life and encourages them to see the subtle processes of marginalization and exclusion while also thinking about how to overcome gender biases. Some of this information will contribute to student angst about inequality in the workplace; thus, we conclude with suggestions for decreasing potential student distress and increasing student empowerment.