Inequality Regime Summary

Building and modifying her theory of gendered organizations, Acker (2006) develops an intersectional approach to inequalities in the workplace in her article “Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations”, that addresses a number of problems with her original theory. Rather than looking at organizations as just gendered, this approach looks at organizations as inequality regimes (Acker, 2006, 2009). Inequality regimes are defined as “the interlocked practices and processes that result in continuing inequalities in all work organizations” (Acker, 2006, p. 441). This approach seeks to move beyond the “glass ceiling” metaphor to “capture complex, interlocking practices and processes” that create barriers all along for women in

Martin’s recognition that organizations are gendered is simply one of the assumptions she makes. Martin (2003) assumes that gender is a social institution, not all behavior is gendered, behavior is gendered only within an institution that gives gendered meaning to behavior, work is gendered because of its organization, practices, and gendered ideas, and bureaucratic organizations are gendered. These assumptions undergird Martin’s (2003, 2006) arguments. This approach makes four important arguments: “(1) that men and women socially construct each other at work by means of a two-sided dynamic of gendering practices and practicing gender, (2) that this dynamic significantly affects both women’s and men’s work experiences, (3) that gendering practices produced through interaction impair women workers’ identities and confidence, and (4) that attention to the practicing of gender will produce insights into how inequalities are created in the workplace” (2003, p. 343). Actions and practices must be understood as reflecting the gender institution, as well as perpetuating the gender institution (Martin, 2003, 2006). This is directly related to the idea of gender as practice. According to Martin, “To view gender as practice means, among other things, to view it as a ‘system of action’ that is institutionalized and widely recognized but also is dynamic, emergent, local, variable, and shifting” (Martin, 2003, p. 351). Gendered practice, often performed nonreflexively, “sustains gendered relationships and, in turn, reconstitute[s] the gender institution” (Martin, 2003, p. 352). Scholars cannot simply reduce such complex processes to words ( or the “said and done”), but rather must try to