Interrogating male privilege in the human services and social work education.

Noble, Carolyn ; Pease, Bob

Introduction

To date, Western feminist scholarship on gender and work has primarily focused on women, providing valuable information as to their discrimination and invisibility, especially in the higher echelons of power and in senior decision-making positions. As in other parts of the world, women in Australia continue to be under-represented in leadership positions in the workplace, especially in the human services sector despite the feminist agenda and the scholarship that supports their suitability (Burton 1991; Eveline 2004; Probert 2005; Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007). Two important ways to challenge this hegemony are suggested. First, we argue for the urgent need for new research which specifically focuses on the extent to which male privilege results in the promotion of men to leadership positions in the human services sector at the expense of their (sometimes more qualified) female colleagues (Martin 2001, 2004; Flood and Pease 2005; Connell 2006). Second, we argue that educators in social work and human service courses need to challenge male privilege in the classroom and in the educational processes men and women share so as to deconstruct the way gender politics might be played out in the classroom and hence in the workplace. This joint strategy is needed if the elimination of gender as an axis of power and privilege in organisational and educational cultures is to be a cultural, social, economic and organisational goal for social work and human services workers across the sector (Connell 1995, 2006).

The Gendered Workplace: Women's Disadvantage

From the late 1970s in Australia, as in many parts of the Western world, feminist scholarship emerged paying considerable attention to the 'women question'. Initially, feminist research on gender equality highlighted what was regarded as important differences between the sexes, offering explanations as to why women were largely absent from positions of influence. For example, Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action research by Burton (1991), Acker (1998), Bradley (1999), Noble and Mears (2000) and Eveline (2004) indicated that in comparison to men, women were seen as lacking the 'right' motivation, the 'right' skill set, and the 'right' leadership aspirations or qualities to aspire for and then secure senior management positions. In other words, with regard to competencies, motivations, specific skills or other observable indices, women's behaviour was found 'wanting' against the male norm. Success in promotion was equated with assertiveness, drive and competitiveness (all attributes associated with masculinity). As a consequence, women were not seen as possessing 'the cut and thrust' attributes required for promotion to senior positions. This being so, it was inevitable that women were not included in the culture and rewards of work in the same way as men (Bradley 1999; Martin 2001; Noble and Moore 2006).

Beginning in the early 1980s, a suite of policy initiatives was introduced and gradually adopted across both state and federal jurisdictions. Partly informed by the liberal feminist agenda, strongly influential in the 1970s and 1980s, feminist activists argued that for women to succeed in organisations there needed to be major adjustments to the corporate culture. Effective adjustments would be more likely if there were specific social and employment laws and policies framed as well as specific workplace strategies attached to the legislation strategies that were specifically aimed at removing barriers to women's full and equal participation in the workforce. These laws, policies and strategies were needed to help women maximise on opportunities in applying for and securing senior jobs (Noble and Mears 2000; Thornton 2001). Some success was achieved. By the early 1990s across Australia, Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action (EEO/AA) policies and practices, sex discrimination legislation, maternity and family leave, provisions for child care in the workplace, grievance procedures, leadership and mentoring programmes and more recently personnel practices that recognise the value of traditional feminine skills as well as managing diversity in employment choices had been introduced. At last structural barriers identified as preventing women achieving equal footing with men in promotion to senior positions were being addressed and implemented. Legislation provided for organisations to be 'named and shamed' in parliament if improvements in Equal Employment and Affirmative Action outcomes were not reached for women employees (Burton 1991; Thornton 2001)

In addition to the EEO/AA legislation and as the liberal feminist lobbying held more sway with Governments during the 1990s further strategies were identified to support these initiatives such as encouraging women to build networks and find a mentor. Workplaces were to help women have access to adequate child care, develop family friendly work policies and provide leadership training and EEO awareness for both men and women (EOWA 2011). These EEO/AA strategies and training programmes seemed for a while to give women some hope for a changed future--a future that might include more public leadership roles for women employees and for women to take their place in senior management. In the mid 1990s, many organisations moved to mainstreaming their EEO/AA initiatives (approved as part of the 1995 UN World Conference on Women, Beijing) as a strategy for making the concerns for gender equality the responsibility of men as well as of women (Thornton 2001; Walby 2005). Now men were encouraged to be an integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of employment and personnel policies and organisational practices (Noble and Mears 2000; Sawer 2003; Probert 2005). So how effective were these policy initiatives?

While these policies were an ambitious social and legal experiment, little change in women's promotion to senior positions resulted from these reforms. The latest research conducted by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) in 2011 found only 8.0 per cent of key executive management positions in Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) 200 companies are held by women, 8.4 per cent of board directorships are held by women, 2.5 per cent of chair positions and 3 per cent of CEOs are women and 72 of ASX 200 companies do not have a woman on their board. This report also identified that 17.9 per cent of Australia university vice chancellors were women; 33.4 per cent of Government board members were women and of seats in the national parliament, 30 per cent were held by women compared to 70 per cent by men. Moreover 80 per cent of ministerial positions and senior portfolios were held by men (EOWA 2011). Overall women made up 45.3 per cent of all employed people and 34 per cent of managers and professional positions. Women still earn only 82 cents in the male dollar and the gender gap in pay has widened over the last four years (The Global Gender Gap Report 2010). Importantly these discrepancies also exist in the human services sector where women numerically dominate in the workforce (Pease 2009). This report also demonstrates that Australia dropped eight positions in the Global Gender Gap rankings between 2006 and 2010, from 15th to 23rd, and showed significant deficiency in other areas such as being ranked 40th in ministerial positions and 59th in wage equality for similar work (The Global Gender Gap Report 2010).

This disparity between men and women in leadership roles does nothing to change the existing stereotypes about the role of women both at home and at work, and if anything, could continue to discourage women to aspire to leadership roles at all (EOWA 2011). While women continue to do the majority of care and domestic work, often disrupting their career to provide this essential service, the continued discrimination against women moving into leadership positions will remain. Further, while fatherhood is a career asset for men and while motherhood results in a wage penalty for many women creating and supporting what is colloquially known as the "maternity wall syndrome" women will continue to be viewed as unreliable workers not worthy of organisational time and investment (Nyland 2007). This lack of success was to receive a further blow with a change in the workplace climate.

In early 2000 Australia began to adopt a more neo-liberal approach to its labour laws moving away from formal arbitrated agreements towards a deregulated workforce which relied on workers to negotiate employment conditions at the workplace. This change has resulted in more ad hoc gender equity policies being implemented across the workforce. The idiosyncratic nature of these polices has resulted in inconsistent and unequal outcomes for women employees, despite the existing employment legislation to support their advancement and to minimise discriminatory employment and promotional practices. This setback and lack of industrial will has been disappointing for women and feminist policy makers alike as women's visibility in public life, industry, business and the public sectors continues to be under represented, despite a large body of feminist scholarship and three decades of EEO/AA legislation at state and federal levels designed to examine this phenomenon and search for solutions (Acker 1998; Burton 1991; Connell 1995; Bradley 1999; Thornton 2001; Probert 2005). The lack of progress in the workplace for women's advancement has prompted many writers to resurrect the notions of a "glass ceiling" and a "maternal wall" as still impeding women's progression (Thornton 2001; Dietz 2003).

Many feminists, especially those inspired by a more radical and structural perspective have identified the limitations of addressing gendered inequality in organisations from a 'women in management' as well as from a policy and legislative agenda perspective. In particular Fenstermaker and West (2002); Sinclair (2005) and Noble and Moore (2006) argued that by putting the emphasis on changing social and employment policies to address women's disadvantage in organisations' cultures has meant that the focus of change was put squarely on women. Women's lack of success in leadership positions was seen as 'their problem'. This position does not begin to address and question the masculinisation of workplace norms, and the ways in which the widespread acceptance of such norms privileges men, thus leaving the gender advantages attached to men in the workplace unaddressed and men 'off the hook' from analysing their role in women's continuing discrimination (Flood and Pease 2005; Connell 2006).

Challenging the liberal approach to organisational behaviour with its focus on individual responsibility, the current post structuralist/postmodern theorising is informing a new and potentially significant body of work for gender politics at work (Dietz 2003; Calas and Smircich 2006). One strand that is important in our thinking is the epistemological concern that organisational knowledge is in fact underpinned with masculine imagery and connotations and the 'doing of (stereotypical) gender scripts' that are enacted by both men and women in the workplace. This 'doing of gender scripts' is not a naive or innocent activity but one that vigorously constructs, consciously or unconsciously, the gender order of organisations (Calas and Smircich 2006). That is, men and women act out the scripts of men's privilege and women's subordination as a result of the social construction of men's interests over that of women's, both subjectively and structurally. The doing of masculinity is the understated but present norm in knowledge construction and subsequently informs and supports both men's and women's behaviours as well as expectations and actions in the workplace. Focusing on men and their masculinist assumptions and the way these are played out by both men and women as socially constructed behaviour is presented as the new arena for understanding the gender politics of organisational advantage. This focus may give a much needed new perspective into the gender politics at work that seem so entrenched in western society. It also has the potential to shift the focus from women to men in order to redress the continuing inequality between them in attaining leadership roles (Flood and Pease 2005; Noble and Moore 2006; Connell 2006). This analysis suggests that men must explore their position of privilege and take an active role in organisational change, thus freeing women from bearing the sole responsibility for transforming organisational culture (Pease 2009).

The Gendered Workplace: Men's Advantage:

Harvey (1999) used the term "civilised oppression" to describe the way in which processes of oppression are normalised in everyday life including work. Because civilised oppression is also embedded in cultural norms and bureaucratic institutions, many of these practices are habituated and unconscious. Many of the injustices people suffer are a result of the attitudes and practices of ordinary people going about their daily lives not aware of how their assumptions of superiority impact on the lives of others. Such people do not understand themselves as having unearned privilege. Nor do they see themselves as oppressing others. Civilised oppression can be used to describe many of the specific uses of privilege by men as they do gender in workplaces. In making men's privilege more visible, we will also make civilised oppression more recognisable. However, there has been very little interrogation of the processes by which this is done and whether men can act in ways that challenge the patriarchal relations embedded in organisations. Very few organisations in Australia recognise that women's exclusion from senior management is a structural and cultural problem that requires transformation of the culture of the workplace (Noble and Moore 2006).

Historically we know that when gender inequalities are acknowledged they tend to be discussed more in terms of women's disadvantage rather than male advantage and privilege. Even many profeminist writers who recognise gender inequality do not theorise male privilege (Carbado 2001). So rather than talking in terms of women's lack of resources, we should talk about men's surplus of resources (Connell 2006). Eveline (2004) has drawn attention to "male advantage" in contrast to "women's disadvantage", pointing out that focusing solely on women's disadvantages and ignoring male privilege normalises and legitimises masculinist standards. It is the taken for granted norms of hegemonic masculinity that reproduces men's power in organisations, the classroom (Hearn and Collinson 2006) and life generally (Harvey (1999).

According to Acker (1998), Martin (2004), Ruxton (2004), Flood and Pease (2005), Hearn and Collinson (2006) and Connell (2006), men come into educational institutions and the workforce with an unfair advantage attached to their status as men in a patriarchal culture. That is, men seem to have an unmarked status, a status and privilege not recognised by those who have it. Acker (1998) calls this factor "doing gender". Martin (2001) names this as men "mobilizing masculinities", McIntosh (2002) named this advantage an "invisible knapsack" of privilege, while Flood and Pease (2005) refer to this phenomenon as "doing privilege". In this analysis, this invisible package of unearned assets associated with male privilege can be cashed in on a daily basis; from choosing jobs, work conditions, having access to credit, and being free to act in uninhibited ways with confidence because of their position as central actors on the cultural turf.

By exercising their prerogatives in everyday interactions, men as the privileged group can easily ignore or not see how others, especially women, are denied the same opportunities. Messerschmidt (2000) argues that the privileging of males in the workplace has to do with the intersection of cultural and structural factors that are reproduced and constrained by individual actors who exercise varying degrees of power attached to them by their structural position in the gender division. Men, and by implication women, unconsciously know what the established order is and act in partnership to keep it in place. That is, women and men live their lives trying to attain certain valued aspirations associated with these structural scripts resulting in a gender division that has both a subjective and instrumental dimension.

Talking specifically about men, Messerschmidt (2000) argues that masculinity is "what men do under specific constraints and varying degrees of power" (p. 53). Gender is thus a series of accomplishments done in specific situations. Messershmidt acknowledges that these 'accomplishments' are shaped by structural constraints. Acker (1998), Sinclair (2005) Martin (2001, 2004) and Fenstermaker and West (2002) argue that as most men have few other social contexts to define their identity than by the paid work they do, it is not surprising that men do gender as they do work. While the argument that work provides a key site in which male workers and managers actually mobilise masculinities, Martin (2001) argues that men are only vaguely, if at all, aware of working in concert with each other to keep women out. This may explain why men continue to see gender issues as pertaining to women (not themselves) and seem to have little awareness of the ways in which their behaviour and norms operate to exclude women from male domains such as senior management positions (Noble and Moore 2006). The same "knapsack of privilege" is carried by men into the educational sector and thereby the classrooms (Hall 2007). Williams (1992) names the phenomenon the "glass escalator".

What these scholars are arguing is that it is not women's failure which results in equality remaining an elusive goal. Rather, the invisibility of male privilege is so deeply ingrained as to be unconscious (at worst) or semi-conscious (at best), but nevertheless all pervasive, resulting in masculine regimes as the norm. Consequently, all behaviour is measured or compared with the male script and entrenched in the ideological working of Western patriarchal culture. Men's behaviour in organisations is a sum total of this phenomenon. It is feasible to argue that the culture of patriarchy sustains a workplace culture with both surface and deep prejudices against women's place in senior leadership positions and that this 'doing gender' or 'doing male privilege' continually acts against and prevents women from making a valuable contribution to work in senior positions and having access to their rewards.

While intentional harm by men towards women may be disapproved of by many men, it is the more covert behaviours that men enact in workplaces which are regarded by men as harmless or natural that reproduces patriarchal social relations. Thus, as argued earlier, many of the ways in which men do masculinity are so taken for granted that they are invisible. However, because these gendered practices involve accomplishments enacted by human agents (who presumably have free will and some agency over their lives), it is possible to resist (and change) the reproduction of social structures before more harm is done to women by their exclusion from decision-making arenas. One way to challenge these practices is to make visible what is invisible. In making men's practices of masculinity in organisations visible it might be possible to enable the processes that reproduce male dominance to be exposed (Martin 2001). Feminist research into women's experiences of men in organisations identifies many of these practices as harmful and distressing for women in the workplace, whether it is intentional or not, or whether they are aware of it or not (Probert 2005).

While the scholarship on men and masculinities is theoretically rich, to the authors' knowledge there are no specific studies, in Australia or elsewhere, that explore the how, when, where or why men 'do gender' or 'do privilege' in the context of senior leadership positions. Likewise, there are no studies that explore what role, if any, women play in this interaction. New research is required that deliberately focuses on taking men and masculinities into account by exploring with both sexes their interactions and interpretations, individually as well as interactively, in the workplace (Mac an Ghaill & Haywood 2007).

If gender is a process, as contemporary scholarship suggests (Fensternmaker and West 2002; Acker 2006), then the gendered practices of both women and men need to be studied and the findings need to inform new theories on gender relations and be reported back to the workplace as well as being used to deliver gender-specific public policies and work-based strategies and training programmes. That is, the exploration of male privilege as a newly emerging theoretical position needs a feminist and profeminist informed exploration, so as to understand the processes whereby dominant knowledges reify the norms that associate privilege with masculinity. That is not to say that men should not be continually encouraged to let go of any construction of their manhood that depends upon the subordination of women even before empirical evidence is explored. However, we know historically that men will not let go of the privilege that results in this superiority without a struggle (Pease 2002).

Human Service Organisations as a Site of Male Privilege

A good strategy to develop a new research agenda for addressing this issue is to conduct research with both men and women in human service organisations where knowledge, policies and practices of social justice and gender equality are part of the workplace culture and where one might expect that managers might have a cultural sensitivity to gender politics. It is also the sector where women dominate in both their training and their employment (ABS 2007). When men enter the human services they tend to specialise in particular forms of practice (such as social policy) and are quicker to move up the hierarchy into management positions (Camilleri and Jones 2001; Christie 2001a; 2001b). While women constitute a large majority of workers in the sector, men tend to dominate the senior positions. We know little about the extent to which this gendered pattern of employment is being challenged. Particularly, we are not aware of any examples of profeminist management practices in the human services that have been initiated by men (Flood and Pease 2005). This is despite many employees having backgrounds in such disciplines as social work, psychology, youth and community work and social and human sciences and, as such, could be assumed to be accommodating or even proactive in supporting a culture which is sensitive to issues of social justice and gender politics (Jamrozik 2005). However, we know very little about how such managers and employees 'do gender' and whether they are actively engaged in challenging rather than reproducing the masculinist bias in management structures. The prevailing view is that the human services simply mirror the patriarchal relations of the wider society (Camilleri and Jones 2001).

Drawing upon the wider scholarship of men and masculinities and the feminist analysis of women's structural oppression and discrimination, we argue that the time has come for new empirical and theoretical work. In looking to explore and deconstruct male privilege and its practices we are inclined to look to those organisations in the sector that employ social workers/human service workers who would at least be sympathetic to equity issues in the workplace even if they were not committed to feminism itself. Significantly, these organisations are more likely to be staffed with workers familiar with the politics and debates about gender equity issues and are more likely to at least to be sympathetic or familiar with equal opportunity and gender democracy and social justice concerns. It is important for the human services management literature to acknowledge and address male privilege if it is to contribute to the promotion of equality in the human services workplace

These organisations are, then, more likely to yield participants who are willing and able to articulate practices and reflect upon a range of organisational behaviours, formal and informal, that reproduce and/or challenge the dominant gender order in which men and various forms of masculinity dominate (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Martin 2001; Flood and Pease 2005). Questions which need to be acted upon include: What are the aspirations, experiences and practices of leadership in their place of work? What are the opportunities and strategies as well as barriers and obstacles they have encountered to reach senior leadership positions? How do each of them relate to gender equity issues? Can they name them and see their relevance in their experiences? In the organisation, who speaks and who listens? Whose questions are legitimate, whose interruptions are allowed? Can they describe how they manage/work as (men) or (women) leaders? Do they see gender issues? Are they implicated? How?

Research that has an analysis of male privilege as the centre of inquiry will go a long way towards deconstructing male privilege and the subsequent unearned advantages that come with it, thus helping to address the long-standing discriminative practices against women in achieving senior positions in the workplaces, not only where they dominate numerically but generally across all workplaces.

It should also be remembered of course that men are not homogeneous. Not all men benefit equally from the operation of the structures of gender domination. Issues of race, sexuality, class, disability and age significantly affect the extent to which men benefit from male privilege. Thus some men in social work and the human services will experience marginalisation on the basis of their class origins, sexuality, level of able-bodiedness and ethnicity or race (Pease 2000). These other social divisions will complicate men's gender dominance in human service organisations (Hearn 2001). Furthermore, women are also divided by class, race, sexuality and able-bodiedness and consequently some women will face other sources of discrimination in addition to their gender (Bent-Goodley and Sarnoff 2008).

Teaching Social Work Students About Privilege

To what extent then do men in social work recognise their gender privilege and to what extent are they willing to give up the privileges and power of their position? Feminist practice in social work is part of anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice so it is difficult to imagine how any male or female social work practitioner or manager could have avoided coming into contact with feminist challenges to traditional masculinity during their training. A structural analysis demands a critique of gender and its impact on women positing a feminist or profeminist response. However while male social workers increasingly might be encouraged to promote a profeminist practice in human services work and study (Pease 2001; 2009), there are very few examples of men working to challenge institutional discrimination against women within this sector. We have in fact come full circle with our argument that men need to challenge male domination within social work and the wider society. If men are to play an anti-oppressive role in relation to gender in social work, they will need to embrace a commitment to profeminist practice. Again, if men gain unearned benefits from their presence in social work, then they have a responsibility to challenge the basis of those entitlements (Pringle 1995).

In the context of wider anti-oppressive theory and practice, social work education thus needs to develop specific knowledge and skills to inform a profeminist commitment by men in social work to challenge dominant constructions of masculinity (McMaster 2001). This further challenges the premise that the responsibility for challenging sexism should rest solely with women. Hall (2007) goes so far as to argue that men in social work who are not actively opposing sexism are practising unethically by supporting the patriarchal system which provides them with privileges.

In social work education we spend a lot of time examining the experiences of being oppressed and the social forces that discriminate and exclude oppressed people. In shifting the lens on the classroom toward male privilege it might be possible to open up educational spaces for men to begin to reflect upon the construction of their own identity, status and values so that they may more easily see both the disadvantages and privileges that they as men experience as a result of their membership of this particular social group.

It would be pertinent to ask male students to list the privileges they think that they have as a result of that membership; to reflect upon times when they were conscious of using any form of privilege they have and how it felt. By encouraging male students to write their own personal narratives of privilege and by engaging in dialogue with others about their experiences, the aim is to increase students' awareness of the ways in which privilege as well as oppression intersects in their lives. If social work is to be committed to social change and social justice, then male social workers will need to face the predicament of their unearned advantages and find ways to undo their privileges.

Conclusion

Our argument in this article is that the reproduction of male privilege has been given insufficient attention both in the human services workforce and the social work classroom. We argue that if men continue to benefit from the "knapsack of privilege" they carry with them, especially in traditionally female-majority fields, they will continue to be over-represented in senior positions and in decision and policy making positions. It is important to move the focus of addressing men's unearned advantage to men and the culture of masculinity, thus freeing women from having to continually both identify the problem and address it.

New research into the way men and women 'do gender' at work is needed and this research might be more fruitful if both women and men engage in the process together. This engagement could begin in the classroom and then continue in the workplace so that the way men and women ' do gender' is made more visible. Finally we agree with Hall (2007) who believes that male social workers have an ethical and moral duty to support gender equality for the benefit of their female clients and their female co-workers. It is argued that because men occupy more dominant positions in the human services, that they have a greater responsibility than women for promoting a non-discriminatory culture in social work. Engaging in new research will advance feminist theory as well. Feminist theory as a multifaceted and discursively contested field of inquiry has survived despite the setbacks outlined in this article. Its survival has depended, in part, on its ability to produce its own hybridised critical interpretative positions (Calas and Smircich 2006). Exploring the way masculinity and masculinist practices perpetuate women's inequality might be just the new impetus needed to motivate another wave of activism that characterised the last three decades of feminist debate.

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Authors: Carolyn Noble, Victoria University. Email: Carolyn.Noble@vu.edu.au Bob Pease, Deakin University