Beyond Glass Ceilings and Brick Walls - International Labour ...

Glossary of Conceptual Terms
Affirmative Action: originally to mean an institutional policy decision to tip
evenly balanced scales in favour of a candidate from an under-represented
group. This includes preferential hiring and quota systems. Can also mean
taking into account gender differences in organizational policy and practice
so that the existent oversights, gaps, and outright discrimination are rectified.
Androcentric: male-centredness. Assumption that the experiences of men are
generalizable to women; that the male is the norm that provides ‘the objective
criteria’ through which women’s experiences can be organised and evaluated.
Brick Walls: metaphor to signify the ideological and structural barriers
preventing the horizontal and divisional mobility of women within the
workplace.
Gender: socially, culturally and individually constructed notions of what it
is to be or expected of a man or woman in terms of roles, responsibilities,
characteristics, behaviour patterns, morality, professions, dress codes, rights
and so on.
Gender Division of Labour: the differentiation and distribution of the tasks
involved in the production of goods and services—paid work by men and
unpaid family labour by women.
Gender Equality: a state or position of being the same, especially in terms
of social status or legal/political/employment opportunities and rights. To
extend to women the same rights and privileges as men and vice versa.
Gender Equity: recognizing and accounting for the gender differences
between men and women (especially the hitherto ignored needs and
interests of women) through policy, structural and practical interventions.
Gender Segregation: gender divisions of labour within the paid labour
force.
Gender Stereotypes: a standardized and sometimes pejorative idea or
image held about a person on the basis of gender.
Glass Ceiling: metaphor to signify the ideological and structural barriers
preventing women’s upward mobility (especially into management) in the
workplace.
Micropolitics: the conflicts, anxieties, pressures, resentments, competing
needs and interests as well as power imbalances which influence the
everyday transactions of work institutions.
Organizational Substructure: intangible interactions and practices of an
organization such as gender relations, conventions of behaviour, family/work
splits, and moral codes etc.
101