Interaction and the Conservation of Gender Inequality: Considering Employment

TLDR

Gender‑mediated interactional processes rewrite inequality into new institutional arrangements, and because status changes lag resource changes, they can reestablish gender inequality in new structural forms. The study seeks to explain why gender hierarchy persists despite socioeconomic transformations. Actors automatically sex‑categorize others, cueing stereotypes that alter interactional outcomes, biasing comparisons, and in workplace relations these processes drive gender labeling of jobs, shape perceptions, and reinforce discriminatory preferences, thereby conserving inequality.

Abstract

How can we explain the persistence of gender hierarchy over transformations in its socioeconomic base? Part of the answer lies in the mediation of gender inequality by taken-for-granted interactional processes that rewrite inequality into new institutional arrangements. The problems of interacting cause actors to automatically sex-categorize others and, thus, to cue gender stereotypes that have various effects on interactional outcomes, usually by modifying the performance of other, more salient identities. Because changes in the status dimension of gender stereotypes lag behind changes in resource inequalities, interactional status processes can reestablish gender inequalities in new structural forms. Interactional sex categorization also biases the choice of comparison others, causing men and women to judge differently the rewards available to them. Operating in workplace relations, these processes conserve inequality by driving the gender-labeling of jobs, constructing people as gender-interested actors, contributing to employers' discriminatory preferences, and mediating men's and women's perceptions of alternatives and their willingness to settle for given job outcomes.