Gender and: The Intersection of Gender and Other Aspects of Social Identity at Work

Organizational researchers have been studying women’s experiences in the workplace for decades. Recently, however, they have more deeply examined how gender interacts with other aspects of identity to shape these experiences. To further this emerging research, we bring together four papers that build theory and provide closely examined evidence about how gender – together with other aspects of identity – drives professional experiences, opportunities, and outcomes. Two papers advance work on gender and race, demonstrating that while women of color might be advantaged in organizational selection processes when hiring managers are told to keep a diversity goal in mind (Yan & Leigh), they are still devalued in team information sharing processes, diminishing team performance (Masters-Waage et al.). The two remaining papers highlight the notion that gender interacts with other less studied forms of identity to dictate the experiences and behaviors of individuals themselves: age (Strassman & Harrison) and social class (Dittmann & Birnbaum). These papers show that women nearing or at middle age (but not others) experience stereotype threat about being perceived as young in a markedly different way than men of the same age, and that upwardly mobile women adopt a “work-harder” ethic more so than all others, potentially leading to increased burnout. Together, these papers point to the notion that gender in the workplace is best studied through an intersectional lens, and that organizational members’ genders intersect with other aspects of their identities to significantly impact individual- and team-level outcomes. Identities as Additive Author: Anna Yan; Fuqua School of Business, Duke U. Author: Angelica Leigh; Fuqua School of Business, Duke U. Intersectionality in Virtual Reality Author: Theodore Charles Masters-Waage; Singapore Management U. Author: Zoe Kinias; INSEAD Author: Modupe Akinola; Columbia U. Author: Jazmin Argueta-Rivera; Rice U. Author: Dillon Stewart; Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice U. Author: Michelle Hebl; Rice U. Author: Eden King; Rice U. Does This Make Me Look Too Young? Author: Jamie Strassman; U. of Texas at Austin Author: David A. Harrison; U. of Texas at Austin Working Harder, but not Smarter Author: Andrea Dittmann; Emory U., Goizueta Business School Author: Hannah Birnbaum; Washington U. in St. Louis, Olin Business School