The Intersection of Gender and Ethnicity in the Workplace

Women’s experiences in the workplace have been critically shaped by gender, race and class as has been shown by a number of authors (e.g. Acker, 2006; Mavin, 2008; Conley and Page, 2010; Durbin, 2016). Acker (2006) posits that the structures of organisations themselves are gendered and reproduce gendered inequalities which suggests that gender appears to function as a key form of discrimination through the unequal distribution of power, privilege and resources. Consistent with Crenshaw's (1991) structural intersectionality, Acker (2006) provides how structural arrangements create the intersectional process that could frame behavior at work including occupational segregation, hierarchical positions, wage determination, and distribution of decision-making. The intersectional processes can be different according to the social settings and levels of power in different countries, which is particularly relevant for this research context.

Acker's (2006) perspective is fundamental to the theoretical framing of my research as it assumes women’s ability may be devalued and placed as subordinate to males, particularly in the work context. It leads to the under-representation of women at senior levels in management because organisations have been inherently conceptualised and controlled by men’s authority (Davidson and Burke, 2000; Terjesen, Sealy, and Singh, 2009). As a result, women tend to feel silenced and demotivated working in male-dominated organisations. The experiences of women in the workplace are qualitatively different from those of men (Powell and Graves, 2003). Interestingly, Acker's (1998, 2006, 2012) framework clearly positions gender as a social construction. She states that the analysis of what she names ‘inequality regimes’ is a way of tackling the methodological problems of exploring intersectionality. She argues how the class processes and hierarchies are always gendered and racialised and that they should be examined as a separate entity in inequality regimes. This will be explored through the experiences of senior female managers working in Malaysia’s public and private sector employment. The investigation on privilege, contained below, is highly politicised constituted

by social practice which serves primarily to frame the constructions of gender and ethnicity. A different set of privileges due to unequal national cultural policy has been reflected in the construction of the research participants in this thesis where ethnicity intersects the more prominent category of gender.

In relation to women’s employment, Bradley and Healy (2008) indicates that labour markets remain clearly segmented by the hierarchies of gender and ethnicity where the Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) women are less likely to hold managerial positions, particularly at the top of management, and confined to lower skill jobs in comparison to white women, in the same way as women and men are differently positioned. In the US, Hispanic and Latina women are at the most disadvantaged by the processes of gender and ethnic segregation (Hite, 2007). This therefore, explains how occupational segregation is not solely ‘gendered’ but ‘ethnicised’ (Bradley and Healy, 2008, pp 40), reinforced between majority and minority ethnic groups in the workplace. Challenges faced by ethnic women and their intersectional identities are likely to be ignored and erased if ethnicity is separated from gender in theorising experiences at work. Unlike individuals with the highest social ranking (e.g. white individuals / majority ethnic), individuals in the lowest social ranking (e.g. non-white individuals / minority ethnic) appear to experience multiple jeopardy for having the fewest privileges, low social class rank and less power and opportunities in society. This understanding is consistent in acknowledging the unequal distribution of privilege in the context of senior female managers in Malaysia (see Chapter Two).

Using the intersectional lens, the distinction between the black women’s experiences and the white women’s experiences has been one of central focus on the research of women’s employment amongst feminist scholars. Nonetheless, the analysis of intersections between gender and ethnicity is still underdeveloped despite the awareness from previous scholars that ethnic exclusion is visible in unequal access to opportunities (McBride et al., 2015). There is little evidence, especially at management levels, on the importance of the intersections between gender and ethnicity acknowledged in the field of women in senior management (Atewologun and Sealy, 2014; Belkhir, 2001; Browne and Misra, 2003; Meisenhelder, 2000). It needs to be explored thoroughly within women’s employment studies since it allows looking at inequality among multiple social groups (e.g. gender, ethnicity, privilege) empirically, which will be informed later in this study.

Social inequalities based on gender and ethnicity intersect and create differential experiences between people. Non-white individuals often face additional barriers at work that could have blocked their career progression, resulting in women being placed at lower levels of management in organisations. For instance, Atewologun and Sealy (2014) indicated how ethnicity, privilege, seniority, being middle-class and from educated backgrounds could help women to be promoted as senior managers. Their study also provides a useful example of

how the explanatory potential of an intersectional approach in examining women’s senior managerial experiences in the UK may be appropriate for the research context of this thesis. It is evident that the disadvantaged position of women compared to men is increased where women from minority ethnic groups may encounter double jeopardy (does not imply the additive approach) in the workplace, particularly at the upper echelons of management.

In the East, conversely, women are likely to differ due to their exposure to various socioeconomic, political, language, religion and cultural characteristics. Kim's (2004) work on female Chinese accountants in New Zealand, has demonstrated that ethnic minorities women, Asian women in particular, are still experiencing discrimination for being non-white individuals, regardless of the title and status they hold in the workplace. Rana, Kagan, Lewis and Rout (1998, pp 229) claimed that British South Asian women “are subjected to a triple form of discrimination on the basis of their race, gender, and social status” for not being detached with the Asianness trait that could jeopardise their managerial skills and professionalism in the workplace. Along with the Indians, the Chinese are taken to be the most successful ethnic minority group, but the nature of Chinese success is very different from Indian (Heath and Cheung, 2006). Heath and Cheung (2006), however, explain in their studies on Chinese indigenous groups that, other than driven by gender occupational segregation, Asian employees are also being discriminated due to ethnic penalties in the workplace. Equally important, little research has been conducted on the Indian community and it is difficult to make a direct comparison with Malaysia as the social categories used are different as are the cultural and political context.

The contribution of ethnicity to an intersectional lens has been reviewed based on the relevant theoretical constructions of gender and ethnicity from feminist theorising the role of state (Conley and Page, 2010) drawing from Bradley and Healy (2008) and Acker (1998, 2006, 2012). Many of the problems in the workplace experienced by women with intersecting disadvantage stem from the way the state treats them. As a theoretical framework for this thesis, the above explanation on gender and ethnic definitions show that both are socially constructed. In the context of intersectionality, it unveils the experiences of senior female managers which may or may not be silenced due to their position at the relationship of gender and ethnic status. Women go through different experiences and are not a homogenous group, hence, it is inaccurate to say that any form of stratification overrides the other. Besides, there has not been enough work done that examines how social inequalities intersect to shape women’s experiences in the developing countries. For that reason, the following section extends the examination of intersectionality to frame its focus on women’s lived experiences and demonstrate its dynamic in the context of Eastern societies such as Malaysia.