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Interrogating the Global/Local Interface: Workplace Interactions in the New Economic Spaces of Kolkata Tanusree Paul Gender Technology and Development 2013 17: 337 DOI: 10.1177/0971852413498726 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gtd.sagepub.com/content/17/3/337
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Article
Interrogating the Global/Local Interface: Workplace Interactions in the New Economic Spaces of Kolkata
Gender, Technology and Development 17(3) 337–359 2013 Asian Institute of Technology SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC DOI: 10.1177/0971852413498726 http://gtd.sagepub.com
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Tanusree Paul Abstract Indian mega-cities have been undergoing remarkable socio-cultural transformations alongside major economic shifts driven by information and communication technologies. The newly emerging economic spaces are characterized by numerous complex home–workplace links, speeding up of information and communication flows; time–space compression; and increased individualism (Cresswell, 2009). These have juxtaposed different spatial and temporal domains in close proximity to each other. In this context, the location of female subjectivity posits an interesting field of enquiry, primarily because women have often been projected as epitomizing these new economic spaces in the visual images and corporate billboards that dot the urban cityscape. These new “iconic” women are perceived to have access to technical and higher education, corporate jobs, and greater autonomy—in short, they are portrayed as the privileged signifiers and transmitters of new India (Radhakrishnan, 2009). And the new economic spaces have been construed as gender-neutral sites of agency and empowerment (Wajcman, 2010). However, such an avantgarde and rosy view of these spaces needs to be examined. This article tries to explore how gendered spaces fare in the new urban economic spaces thrown up by globalization in Kolkata. The study shows that Tanusree Paul holds a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and is presently working as Research Associate at Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi, India. E-mail: paul.tanusree@gmail.com
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although women have gained access to liberating work spaces and economic opportunities, their workplace interactions with colleagues and peer groups continue to be framed within the cultural encodings of ideal femininity. Such socially controlled workplace socialization of women eventually culminates in loss of empowering information, resources, and other career benefits. Thus, these new economic spaces emerge as heterotopic sites where the “modern” boundaries and local binaries coexist ambivalently, and are simultaneously contested and subverted. Keywords Gendered space, spaces and places, urban heterotopias, new economic spaces, gender and social capital, Kolkata
Introduction “Globalizing processes entail a shift from the two-dimensional Euclidian space with its centres and peripheries and sharp boundaries, to a multidimensional global space with unbounded, often discontinuous and interpenetrating sub-spaces” (Kearney, 1995, p. 549). Such processes have initiated spatial flows, juxtaposing the “distant and the proximate, the virtual and the material, presence and absence, flow and stasis into a single ontological plane…” (Jones, 2009, p. 487). Consequently, there have been continuous attempts in academia to grapple with newer interpretations of spaces and places. Even as these processes are being lauded for ushering in standardized spaces, and expunging the physicality of places completely (Auge, 1995; Arefi, 1999; Gupta, 2000; Martin, 2004), many scholars argue that such processes actually revitalize the material realities of places instead of erasing them (Martin, 2004; Massey, 1994; Raju, 2007; Watts, 1996). Although a detailed exposition of this debate is beyond the scope of this article, it is of interest here to recognize the contemporary problem of spaces and places for a more nuanced understanding of the intersecting effects of the global and local processes in mutually constitutive ways (Raju, 2007) For exploring how the local, with its symbolic and spatial metaphors, exists within the global, I turn to the new economic spaces or the modern workplaces that have risen up in the city of Kolkata, India, in the Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337–359
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post-liberalization era. Kolkata, like other Indian cities, has been undergoing major economic shifts post-liberalization due to the emergence of the information technology (IT) sector, information technology-enabled services (ITES), and organized retail (OR). These new economic spaces have in turn led to the emergence of a distinct group of people, termed as the ‘new’ urban middle class, which has probably benefited most from these new economic activities and cultural changes. This group of people is defined by its global aspirations, a new culture of consumption, and what is most pertinent for this article, an intricate association with the new economic spaces. These spaces have been posited as being instrumental in blurring the boundaries between male and female spaces, revalorizing the feminine, and providing the technological basis for a new form of society that is potentially liberating for women (Plant, 1998). In this context, the location of female subjectivity posits an interesting field of enquiry, primarily because women have been viewed as the “privileged signifiers and transmitters” (Radhakrishnan, 2009, p. 198) of these new economic spaces. Women employed in these modern high-end professional sectors work in “first world” conditions and earn relatively high salaries, which puts them at the economic and cultural cutting edge, thus rendering them as symbolic markers of change in an otherwise patriarchal society. However, such zealous projections need to be problematized, and the extent to which these new economic spaces where the global is assiduously co-opted, leading to a blurring of spaces, needs to be studied. It is in this context that this article attempts to explore how spatiality participates in the workplace interaction between men and women within the new economic spaces. My question is prompted by the presumption that the social connections between employees and peer groups, both men and women, provide key insights into the way gender plays out at work, and results in engendering of spaces. This is because the employee interactions, especially of women with their colleagues, are framed within the socially coded norms of appropriate behavior. Such gender-specific codes span widely known and accepted norms of dress, demeanor, actions, and interests, as well as the wider expanse of opportunities that are culturally available to one or the other sex. Such normatives influence the ways in which men and women interact with their colleagues, thus determining the extent of their access to information, resources, and other career benefits. In order to explore how spatiality participates in the workplace interaction between men and women within these new economic spaces, this Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337–359
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article loosely draws on literature pertaining to social capital. However, here, the concept of social capital is used essentially to refer to the resources inherent in the personal ties of individuals that are useful for overall career development, that is, the structural dimension of social capital that includes social interactions which may be used for getting jobs, acquiring information, or to access specific resources necessary for working efficiently at the workplace. Such access, as Tsai and Ghoshal (1998, p. 467) observe, helps in blurring the boundaries of formal units and enables an individual unit to access “more opportunities to exchange (or to combine) its resources with other units.” This article is organized into several sections. This section is followed by an account of the data and methodology used for this research. The section after that attempts to situate the new economic spaces in the context of a globalizing Kolkata. This is followed by an account of the nature and characteristics of social contacts and relationships at workplace in terms of kin, non-kin, gender, functional and occupational hierarchical composition, and their implications on gendered spaces. The next section studies the impact of the nature of social capital upon a woman’s or a man’s career advancement in terms of access to information, resources, and other career benefits. It tries to find out the extent to which relationships and career outcomes in workplaces are governed by norms of social legitimacy, which in turn are premised around the spatiality of gender. The final section presents the concluding remarks, drawing on some of the problematic formulations of spaces and places laid down in the introductory section. I argue that even as the ‘modern’ economic spaces, such as the ITs, ITES, and ORs, provide women with spaces of global nature in terms of conditions and opportunities of work, the local cultural constructions of ‘ideal femininity’ prevent them from benefiting from these opportunities, unlike their male counterparts.
Data and Methods This study is based on a primary survey in Kolkata, the capital of the state of West Bengal, which makes for an intriguing case study because the spatialization of gender has been an important locus for the formation of Bengali cultural identity and socio-political consciousness in this city since the colonial era, when the British were ruling India. Spatiality of gender was evident in the ways in which domesticity was organized in Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337–359
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this city around the binaries of space, the public and the private, of which women came to embody the private and the home during the colonial times (Chatterjee, 1994; Paul, 2011). This article attempts to understand the extent to which the spatial transformations underway in Kolkata, after liberalization, have been able to flout the androcentrism embedded in the organization of “modern� economic spaces in the city. A total of 460 working men and women were interviewed for this study with the help of a semi-structured questionnaire. Of these, about 270 women and 90 men were surveyed from what is referred to in this study as the new generation sectors, which include the IT, ITES, and OR sectors, in Kolkata. These sectors are perceived to have emerged as modern, egalitarian, and secular professional worlds with respect to gendered access and youth empowerment. The traditional sector was represented by 70 women and 30 men from the field of academics. Traditionally, teaching has been a very popular profession among women in the city. This group was used as a reference point to compare the experiences of those working in the new generation sectors. Ideally, the survey should have taken a detailed list of employees from some organizations as the sampling frame and drawn probability samples from it. This would have facilitated utilization of the statistical theory of sampling distribution and standard errors in the analysis. However, access to employee records could not be secured due to strict confidentiality policies followed by most of the companies. Besides, semi-structured interviews took about one hour a person, and many found it difficult to take out so much time while at work. Consequently, it was a challenge to find respondents willing to take the survey. Eventually, samples were collected through key individuals in firms and organizations, and snowball method was used to find more respondents. This method may not create a representative sample, but it provides a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics operational both at the workplace and at home.
Locating the New Urban Economic Spaces in Globalizing Kolkata It was at the turn of this century that the central government of India issued its India Vision 2020 that gave a blueprint for transforming the country into an information society and knowledge economy built on Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337–359
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the edifice of information and communications technology (ICT). Consequently, the urban economy of Kolkata experienced a boom in the ICT and ITES sectors, with a spurt in the growth of business process outsourcing centers (BPOs) and knowledge process outsourcing centers (KPOs). These sectors appear to be modern, egalitarian, and secular with regard to gendered access, providing women with a more convenient work environment than those sectors that depend on physical strength (Wajcman, 2010). Further, the inter-linking of different economies/countries located in different time zones manifests itself in the emergence of a type of economy that works round-the-clock, thereby making night shifts an imperative. In the Indian context, where women’s access to public spaces is socially “sanctioned” only during an “appropriate” time and for “appropriate” purposes (Paul, 2011; Phadke, 2007; Ranade, 2007), their employment in such jobs, where working during unconventional hours is necessary, questions the spatial and temporal construction of gender identity. Organized retail, too, has emerged as one of the important sectors post-liberalization (Gooptu, 2009). Although, historically, retail trade has played a key role in creating employment in the country, the recent boom in organized retail is different, taking place in swanky shopping malls with franchise outlets, stores of national and international brands, multiplex cinema theaters, and food courts. The cities where ICTs have proliferated have been variously termed informational cities, wired cities, telecities, and cybervilles, due to the metaphorical characteristics of the virtual world (Dear, 2000, p. 201). Nonetheless, the emergence of these new economic spaces has rendered some of the spaces problematic. The information and communication technologies culminate in erasure of places and thus, destabilize the material specificities of the places to the extent that some see it as the end of geography (Castells 1996, 2000; Gupta, 2000; Martin, 2004). It has been argued that such technologies create new “virtual spaces” that transcend and “overlay” the real spaces of the everyday world (Dourish, 2006). Scholars have taken differing positions on the virtual world, with some saying it will “annihilate space, produce an entirely original urban geography; it will numb the people, or it will liberate them” (Dear, 2000, p. 211). However, this is a misleading proposition. As Raju (2007) notes, the reassertion of the local has to be emphasized. Dourish (2006) contends that these technologies do not create new spaces, but enable people to engage with existing spaces in different ways. This article employs the Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337–359
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lens of workplace interactions to examine the experiences of women in the new economic spaces.
Nature and Characteristics of Social Relationships and Peers Social capital, according to Burt (1997), is a quality created between people. The relationships of an individual are a repository of resources that have enormous implications for his/her well-being. The strength of these social resources is dependent on developing contacts with people in other functions, that is, different job roles and departments within an organization; and at higher levels of an organization because functional or technical specialities and hierarchical levels are likely to enforce significant social boundaries in organizations (Burt, 1992; Ibarra, 1993, cited in Seibert & Kraimer, 2001, p. 8). Following is an overview of the quality of the contacts developed in the workplace, since they have farreaching implications for career advancement.
Kin and Non-kin Composition of Social Ties The ties or social relationships engaged in by the respondents in the workplace can be classified as kin and family ties or non-kin ties that include friends, colleagues, and mentor–protégé relationships. Moore (1990) shows that male networks have fewer kin and more non-kin, including friends, co-workers, and advisors, than the networks of their female counterparts. Women’s networks in contrast include a larger proportion of kin, perhaps because of the fact that they are expected to devote greater time to their families, which leaves them with little time to socialize outside. Close interaction, primarily with relatives, is likely to expose them to information mainly about their domestic realm. But the nature of social relationships men have paves the way for many more potential contacts and resources than women. The present study, however, indicates that the stock of connections made by women working in both the traditional and new generation sectors is dominated by non-kin members, although men continue to have a higher proportion of non-kin ties (Table 1).
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Table 1. Proportion of Non-kin Contacts for Sharing Family Problems, Work-related Problems, and Exchanging Work-related Information New Generation Characteristics Total
Traditional
N
Mean
N
Mean
Men
88
77.41
29
68.63
Women
265
69.86
65
61.16
Men
60
78.0
7
75.1
Women
195
70.2
13
65.9
Men
27
76.0
10
55.9
Women
59
70.0
31
58.6
Men
1
81.0
12
75.5
Women
11
62.9
22
62.0
Men
18
74.3
11
76.2
Age < 30 31–40 > 41 Marital status Married with children
Women
72
65.0
38
57.8
Married without children
Men
21
73.1
11
58.3
Women
59
70.5
21
67.8
Unmarried
Men
48
80.3
7
73.0
Women
129
72.2
5
65.7
Men
1
88.9
–
–
Women
5
73.2
2
43.8
Senior officials and managers
Men
11
76.5
Women
27
76.1
Professionals
Men
53
76.3
29
68.63
66
61.16
Divorced/Separated Occupation
Women
126
70.5
Technicians & associate professionals
Men
10
83.8
Women
64
63.5
Service workers and market sales workers
Men
14
77.7
Women
48
73.2
Source: Computed from fieldwork in Kolkata, 2010–2011.
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At the disaggregated level, irrespective of sector,1 the average proportion of non-kin contact is significantly higher among men than women in the new generation sectors. However, the mean difference of the same is not significant between men and women working in the academic sector. Further, the proportion of non-kin contacts is significantly higher among the women working in the new generation sectors, except organized retail, than those working in the academic sector. Age also appears to be an important attribute in building up non-kin contacts. The mean is significantly higher among the women aged up to 35 years than those in the 35–49 age group. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that while working women are increasingly engaged in bonding with non-kin, they are still outnumbered by men in this regard. Younger women also appear to be more robust in building up non-kin ties than their older counterparts. Marriage seems to push women toward more kinship ties since the average proportion of non-kin contacts is significantly higher among unmarried women than those married with or without children. The difference between married women with and without children in average proportion of non-kin contacts is not significant. These observations reiterate the conjecture that structural attributes in terms of age, marital status, and motherhood continue to inform the gender-based differential associations in workplaces, even in new generation sectors (Lin, 2000).
Gender Composition of Informal Social Ties at Workplace It has been argued that there is a general tendency for individuals to interact with people sharing similar characteristics, although cross-group ties help in better access to information and resources (Lin, 2000). Thus, social bonds are likely to be formed between persons belonging to the same ethnicity, class, and caste. In India, gender is one of the most important factors that determines socializing at the workplace. Women are socialized since childhood to consider their home their rightful place, and abstain from intermingling freely beyond the family domain. Brass (1985) argues that members of one gender tend to feel uncomfortable in informal settings populated by mainly members of the other gender, and may prefer interactions with members of the same gender. The present study indicates that such engendering of workplace interactions continues to hold true even within the “modern” economic spaces. It notes that Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337–359
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women are not well integrated into the networks of men and vice versa, and both tend to make contacts with people of mostly the same sex. Mixed-gender work groups often provide women with an opportunity to interact with men who, being located amidst much more heterogeneous work groups, tend to wield greater information and power (see Granovetter, 1973, 1974; Renzulli, Aldrich, & Moody, 2000). While about half of the women working across all sectors interact with only women, their male counterparts, except in the organized retail sector, interact more with mixed-gender groups (Table 2). Thus, if inclusion in male networks is an important determinant of influence, those women who socialize only with other women lose access to important information and resources, a point to which we will return in the next section.2 There are more nuanced connotations to this. The study notes that women in the new generation sectors, particularly the ITES, are mostly restricted to the lower levels of occupational hierarchy, and therefore have the opportunity to interact mainly with women working in the same team/project. Further, the urge to produce respectable femininity (Radhakrishnan, 2009) could perhaps also be another reason behind abstaining from intermingling more frequently with their male colleagues. As one of the respondents pointed out: “Since higher level is constituted of mostly men, women’s comfort level is restricted and they do not get an opportunity to develop personal rapport” (Namrata Sinha, 30 years, married, Associate, IT). Table 2. Gender Composition of Work Groups for Informal Interaction All Same Gender IT
Mostly Same Gender
Mixed Gender
Men
12.5
–
87.5
Women
42.4
43.5
14.1
ITES
Men
0.0
23.8
76.2
Women
61.0
11.9
27.1
Organized retail
Men
47.4
52.6
–
Women
44.3
40.9
14.8
Academics
Men
22.7
54.5
22.7
Women
48.4
40.3
11.3
Source: Computed from fieldwork in Kolkata, 2010–2011.
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The given excerpt subtly indicates that the women working in these sectors consciously attempt to escape the â&#x20AC;&#x153;discomfortâ&#x20AC;? ensuing from interacting freely with the opposite sex in the workplace, which may eventually lead to a question mark on their reputation. On the other hand, workplace interactions in the academic sector, which comprises men/ women working in colleges and universities, are governed by their own subtle dynamics. We observed during the fieldwork that while the science departments comprise mostly men, departments of humanities/ social sciences are dominated by women. Given the fact that both men and women tend to interact with those in their immediate work groups/ departments, it is obvious that here too mixed-gender socialization is rather infrequent.
Functional Composition of Informal Social Ties at Workplace Besides gender, functional and occupational rank of the peer groups of an individual also plays a crucial role. Higher-level organization positions have more authority, formal power, influence, and control than lower-level positions (Seibert & Kraimer, 2001). Contacts in other functions also play a crucial role in providing information. The present field evidence reveals that women tend to interact with colleagues performing similar functions in their immediate work groups more than men, who appear to develop contact with people in the same and different functions (Table 3). The average number of contacts belonging to a different function is significantly higher among men than women in the new generation sectors. Among the women, the average number of contacts in different functions is significantly higher among those working in the new generation sectors compared to those in the traditional sector. The proportion of contacts in other functions tends to increase with the designation of an individual for both women and men, although the former at higher levels of hierarchy tend to interact with fewer contacts in different functions than their male counterparts. Both unmarried and married women with children also have significantly fewer contacts in different functions than their male counterparts. The mean for the same also increases significantly with the increasing age of the respondents, perhaps because older
Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337â&#x20AC;&#x201C;359
Men
Women
Men
Women
0.0 13.6
Middle rank
Total
67.7
Total 17.6
50.0
High rank
Low rank
68.2
Middle rank
9.4
Total 68.4
25.0
Low rank
7.7
High rank
Total
Middle rank
61.2
High rank 6.7
34.4
Middle rank
Low rank
67.1 59.5
Low rank
22.7
20.0
23.5
11.3
0.0
4.5
15.8
7.8
0.0
11.5
6.7
13.8
25.0
7.1
13.3
63.6
80.0
58.8
21.0
50.0
27.3
15.8
82.8
75.0
80.8
86.7
25.0
40.6
33.3
19.6
No Male Few Male All Male
Source: Computed from fieldwork in Kolkata, 2010â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2011.
Traditional sector
New generation sector
Designation
Gender Composition
Table 3. Characteristics of Work Groups for Informal Interaction
4.5
20.0
0.0
1.6
0.0
0.0
2.6
29.7
50.0
38.5
16.7
15.9
25.0
26.2
11.4
Proportion of Contacts in Different Functions
31.8
0.0
41.2
67.7
100.0
72.7
63.2
37.5
50.0
42.3
30.0
76.6
68.8
73.8
79.0
13.6
20.0
11.8
8.1
0.0
4.5
10.5
18.8
25.0
11.5
23.3
7.8
9.4
2.4
8.9
No High-level All High-level Contacts Contacts
Rank Composition
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women have worked longer in the industry, and have therefore acquired greater familiarity and ease of interaction with others in the workplace. The study notes that more than one-fourth of the women, compared to only one-third of the men, do not have contact with senior officials in the organization. On the other hand, about half of the men, compared to only about 17 percent of the women, have only a few high-level contacts. This study further notes that women tend to develop more high-level contacts with age and higher designation. It may not be misleading to presume that greater interaction with key persons in the organizational hierarchy may be contingent upon the time an individual spends in the organization as well as his/her own designation. However, contrary to this, the present study shows that a higher proportion of men in the middle and high rungs have informal interactions with senior officials than their female counterparts (Table 3). A composite index has been worked out to ascertain the relative position of respondents with respect to the characteristics of the social ties that facilitate their career benefits. The variables that have been considered are gender diversity, the proportion of colleagues who are male, the occupational/functional diversity of contacts, and the diversity of contacts in terms of designation. The results indicate that the average score is significantly higher among men than women, regardless of their sectoral location, and also among men occupying low and middle ranks in the organization compared to their female counterparts, thereby implying that men have more heterogeneous, and thus more beneficial, social ties at the workplace. Thus, women and men located in the same positions on the occupational ladder do not have identical activity spaces. Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activity space in the workplace is much more restricted as is reflected in their rather homogenous peer groups. However, mean scores between men and women occupying higher rank in the organization are not significantly different, although scores for the former are higher than the latter. This indicates that women who have managed to break the glass ceiling and reach the topmost levels in the occupational hierarchy have access to integrated and heterogeneous peer groups. Further, this is a circular process wherein a woman in the low or middle rungs has to work in a constricted space, which in turn limits her prospect for climbing up the ladder (Figure 1). This analysis demonstrates how interpersonal workplace interactions, irrespective of new or traditional sector, are significantly guided by Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337â&#x20AC;&#x201C;359
•Career satisfaction
•Work climate
•Career mentorship
•Access to resources
•Access to Information
Career benefits
Women
Men
Low rank
Medium rank
High rank
Activity Space
•Diverse job hierarchies
•Diverse functions
•Mixed gender
•Kin & non-kin
Heterogeneity of peer
Source: Based on fieldwork in Kolkata, 2010–2011.
Figure 1. Schematic Diagram Showing Circular Relationship between Occupational Rank and Activity Space
Loca occu tion in hier pationa a on o rchy de l n spac e’s act pends ivity e
Low rank
Medium rank
Action depen space ds on High rank location in e’s the occup a hierar tional chy
Number of Employees
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socially legitimized gender norms of behavior. The latter marks the assertion of place as well as local culture in these “modern” and global spaces. Thus, the women who are working in this so-called first world/ modern environment have to adhere to norms of “proper” behavior that are, in turn, influenced by local cultural specificities. These workplaces, being defined by such myriad interactions, are thus spaces which may be posited as invested with meaning in the context of power (Cresswell, 2004). These global spaces have increased the activity spaces of women as compared to the past, but even today, this space they occupy is not at par with that enjoyed by their male counterparts, as the socially legitimized rules about what is in or out of place pervade and structure the work lives of employees even within these modern spaces. These new economic spaces, in fact, show how the local processes and identities are endorsed within the global spaces.
Differential Nature of Social Relationships and Professional Development Social capital, according to Burt (1997), refers to opportunity. It enhances the likelihood of instrumental returns, such as better jobs, earlier promotions, higher earnings or bonuses, and expressive returns, namely, better mental health (Lin, 2000). The impact of the benefits accruing from access to social capital may be ascertained in two forms: extrinsic, which manifests in terms of salary, promotions, and growth; and intrinsic, which manifests in feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction with his or her career growth (Seibert & Kraimer, 2001). In this study, the respondents were asked to indicate, on a five-point Likert scale, the extent to which they had access to information, resources, career mentorship, support from colleagues, and a favorable work climate.3 The results show that there is significant difference between men and women working in the new generation sectors in terms of all career benefits (information, resources, and mentorship). The difference is not so significant in the academic sector. Further, the mean score of career benefits accruing from the stock of workplace peer group is significantly higher among women working in the traditional sector than those in the new generation sectors (see Table 4).
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Table 4. Career Benefits Accruing to Men and Women Working in Different Sectors
Career Benefits Access to resources Access to information Career sponsorship Work climate Support from colleagues Career satisfaction
New Generation Sector Men Women N Mean N Mean 90 4.28 270 3.94 90 4.34 270 3.99 90 4.13 270 3.56 90 3.70 270 3.41 90 4.33 270 4.03 90 3.79 270 3.44
Traditional Sector Men Women N Mean N Mean 19 4.42 70 4.53 19 4.37 70 4.54 17 3.96 70 4.21 19 3.32 70 3.71 19 3.95 70 4.47 30 3.73 70 3.86
Source: Fieldwork in Kolkata, 2010–2011.
The data suggest that men’s position in voluntary/informal networks provides them better access to information about jobs, business opportunities, and chances for professional development. Conversely, the structural position of women in the workplace, as discussed in the previous section, puts them at a disadvantage in accessing such information in a way that may restrict their professional growth, particularly as some writers claim that such informal interactions are “one of the most significant components of successful power acquisition” (Schein, 1978, p. 265, cited in Brass 1985, p. 327).
Access to Information and Resources Face-to-face discussions with the respondents revealed no overt discrimination because information related to work was disseminated through formal channels such as office portals and the Internet. A lot of information also gets circulated through informal means in the form of going out with co-workers and mentors socially and staying late in the office. Such forms of informal networking tend to be dominated by men, with women consciously withdrawing for a number of reasons.4 Networking is very important and women are expected to network with highlevel officials. Nice women are considered available. (Jayshree, 34 years, married, Senior Content Developer)
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When a man tries to network with colleagues, people consider it as a friendly gesture, but when I try to do it, they take me otherwise. In the corporate sector, men are in an advantageous situation when it comes to building contacts with senior officials. (Debamitra, 23 years, Software Developer, IT) We have booze parties, late night parties, people going out for a fag or something…women also socialize but not that comfortably. Also, men do get some advantage, some extra information which a woman colleague may be unaware of. (Chaitali, 36 years, HR, Future Group)
Thus, according to some respondents, the men’s position in voluntary/ informal networks endows them with better access to information about jobs, business opportunities, and chances for professional development. The ambiguity of the position of women, on the other hand, tends to restrict their access to such information in a way that may negatively affect their professional growth.
Career Mentorship Career mentorship has been posited as a key component in professional development: first, because it provides entry to special forms of information networks enabling access to valuable information unavailable through formal communications; and second, because it enables an individual to grow through social learning (Dreher & Ash, 1990). It has been noted that the mean of career mentorship is significantly higher among men working in the new sectors on low and middle-level rungs than their female counterparts. The study also noted that the women employees are less visible than their male colleagues in the eyes of their mentors and seniors, the chief reason being the inability to stay for long hours in the office due to domestic responsibilities, and reluctance to attend late night parties or other events organized after the office hours. These eventually affect their appraisals, no matter how conscientious they may be in discharging their roles and responsibilities. As one of the respondents observed: “Visibility is a problem. I could not publicize my work. Indian women are more shy and submissive. They have to stick to the decorum” (Mimi Kanungo, 41 years, married, Deputy Manager, IT). A principal component analysis (PCA) was done using the following variables: access to information, access to resources, career mentorship, Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337–359
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support from colleagues, work climate, and career satisfaction. The extraction communalities for career satisfaction and work climate were found to be less than 0.5, and were hence dropped, and the final score was computed taking the remaining four variables.5 The first component takes four variables, namely, access to information, access to resources, mentorship, and support from colleagues, and explains 64.1 percent of the variance. The results suggest some interesting findings. First, the score is significantly higher among men than women working in the new generation sectors, particularly among those occupying lower and middle rungs as well as among those unmarried and married with children. In the traditional sector, the score is not significantly higher among men than women across all designations. Second, education seems to have little impact on boosting oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s career. There is no significant linear relationship between education level and career benefits accruing to the respondents. Yet, the analysis shows that women working in the traditional sector have higher score than those in the new generation sectors across all education levels. Intriguingly, the latter sectors show a low score even among women with postgraduate business administration or technical degrees (MBA/MTech) compared to their male counterparts. Third, the score is significantly lower among married women with children working in the new generation sector compared to their counterparts in the traditional sector. Fourth, age also seems to play a crucial role. The score is higher among women working in the traditional sector than those in the new generation sector across all ages, the difference being significant for those aged 31 years and above. This implies that women with greater family commitments find it harder to continue a career in the new generation sector. It would not be misleading to argue that women are not able to participate in the new labor market opportunities on a par with their male counterparts despite access to technical education and well-paid formal work. This is because the career benefits accruing to women working in the new generation sector are tacitly controlled by a host of other factors such as gender, marital status, motherhood, and position in the organization. Married women, especially those with children, seem to face greater constraints than their unmarried counterparts. As Colgan and Ledwith (1996, p.34, cited in Guillaume & Pochic, 2009, p. 23) argue: Sex role spillover will affect women regardless of their sexuality or whether or not they have children, and stereotypical attitudes toward women predicated
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on women’s general lack of commitment to work because of their families is a powerful process structuring gender hierarchies. (cited in Guillaume & Pochic, 2009, p. 23)
On the other hand, men occupying lower and middle rungs are significantly more advantageously placed than their female counterparts in the new generation sector.
Conclusion The structure and characteristics of social relationships among peers define the way in which an individual gains access to various benefits accruing from such ties. The nature and processes of such interactions, in turn, are shaped by a person’s socio-spatial location. The preceding analysis reveals that although the new economic spaces have widened the horizon of opportunities for women, they continue to face constraints because of their engendered identities. The spatiality of gender and the contingent array of legitimized behavioral norms shape who interacts with whom, and who gains access to what benefits with respect to professional development. Thus, the norms of action and behavior legitimized by society for performing gender, which are a tacit outcome of a person’s location in space, often determine the workplace interactions. This eventually manifests itself in gendered access to various career benefits and the stock of relationships that an individual builds up in the office. The way a man or a woman interacts and enjoys the benefits of career progression is all significantly controlled by his/her legitimate right to claim the space in which she or he is located. This demonstrates the assertion of local cultural specificities within global processes. Women seem to be associated with smaller and less diverse ties in terms of sex and the functional and hierarchical composition of the people with whom they socialize. They have more female ties, ties with the same function and work group as well as in the same or lower rungs of hierarchy. Although family ties may help in overcoming some of the disadvantages by providing them access to male contacts, “depending on the resources embedded in a family, these family ties may or may not actually provide better access for females” (Lin, 2000, p. 788). Further, the private roles played by women after marriage often act as deterrents Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 3 (2013): 337–359
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to their engagements with public spaces. Therefore, it may be aptly claimed that these new economic spaces are indomitably gendered, since the reformulations of the notions of femininity are interceded by the norms of respectability, and direct physical control over women is maneuvered through tacit spatial control. With women’s labor being deemed as secondary and invisible compared to male labor, and their commitment to work being questioned due to their reproductive roles, it could be that, despite education and employment, the “new” women risk being professionally disadvantaged because they will continue to be entrapped within the socio-spatial constructions of gender. That said, it is not difficult to comprehend how these new spaces provide fertile sites for exploring the interface between the local and the global. The free play of the globalizing processes instills new sets of tensions, which underscore a new identity of place. These new economic spaces thus may be construed as heterotopias where the “modern” boundaries and local binaries coexist ambivalently. On the one hand, these provide sites where old customs attributed to women are expunged and they are given “claimed spaces” (Gaventa, 2006) of resistance where they can work “odd” shifts, attain corporate power positions, and break the proverbial glass ceiling. On the other hand, their local place-specific gendered identities as “women” are simultaneously reinforced and contested in the same space. This is also reflected in the fact that women’s access to information and resources are tacitly restricted through control over these spaces, not by excluding women but by “sanctioning” them with limited access. Thus, the dominant group, men, retain their power and status. Therefore, these spaces subvert the projection of the new economic spaces as some form of an urban utopia marked by gender neutrality and women’s empowerment. In reality, these spaces are locales where the global processes are co-opted and contested within the local specificities. Acknowledgment I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Professor Saraswati Raju, for helping me to articulate my thoughts more cogently. I am also thankful to Ms Chinmoyee Mallik, my fellow researcher, for her support during my fieldwork. My special thanks to all those respondents without whose cooperation this study would not have been possible.
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Notes 1. Sector-specific mean difference in average proportion of non-kin contacts could not be statistically tested due to the small sample size. 2. This is not to deny the contention of Burt (1998) that women with dense networks of female colleagues have a competitive advantage in breaking through the glass ceiling into senior ranks. Such women can better look out for each other’s interests, speaking up for one another in the absence of the other, and informing one another of developing opportunities. 3. These variables have been adopted and modified from Spreitzer’s (1995) six-item scale (role ambiguity, working for a boss who has a wide span of control, socio-political support, access to information, access to resources, participative unit climate) to depict individual empowerment at workplace; and Dreher and Ash’s (1990) global mentoring scale. 4. Nieva and Gutek (1981) suggest that women are more likely than men to believe that hard work, perseverance, and talent are the primary determinants of advancement, and therefore are less likely to pay attention to forming ties through informal networking (Dreher & Ash, 1990). 5. PCA attempts to identify underlying variables, or factors, that explain the pattern of correlations within a set of observed variables. The communalities indicate the amount of variance in each variable that is accounted for. Extraction communalities are estimates of the variance in each variable accounted for by the factors (or components) in the factor solution. Variables with small values of communalities do not fit well with the factor solution, and must be dropped from the analysis.
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