Craftworkers and Clerks: The Effect of Male Co-Worker Hostility on Women's Satisfaction with Non-Traditional Jobs

This paper assesses the impact of hostility from male co-workers on women working in non-traditional blue-collar jobs. We compare women in traditionally male craft jobs with women in traditionally female clerical jobs, using five dimensions of job satisfaction: pay, work content, promotion opportunities, supervisors, and coworkers. We find that women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs are satisfied with their jobs and, contrary to the mainstream view of women's work-related behavior, women in blue- and white-collar jobs attribute more importance to pay and work content than to congenial co-workers. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of blue-collar women are less satisfied with their work because of harassment from male coworkers. Our study challenges traditional assumptions about women's priorities in the workplace and supports the feminist argument that male workers play an important role in perpetuating job segregation. Employers, however, have clearly exaggerated the tensions between male and female workers, and management resources could be used more effectively to achieve equal employment opportunities. A promising historical approach to the division of labor by sex, introduced by Hartmann (1976), explains occupational segregation in the current economy as a facet of men's collective dominance over women in all spheres of public and private life. In this view, the actions of employers and male co-workers (pursued out of respective self-interests which may or may not coincide) perpetuate women's inferior position in the job hierarchy. For example, Hacker's (1979) analysis shows that corporate decisions on technological change disproportionately displaced women and minorities in the company's work force. Hartmann (1976) argues that there may be periodic shifts in the relative contributions of employers and male workers in sustaining sex segregation, but she stresses that tactics such as unionization and legal actions by male workers limit women's access to jobs. Another way male workers attempt to keep women out of certain jobs is through open hostility and aggression. Our study contributes to this discussion of job segregation by providing new evidence on the relationship between women's perceptions of male co-worker hostility and their satisfaction with non-traditional jobs.' The alleged resistance of incumbent male workers to women in non-traditional jobs is a central issue in job integration, especially in the blue-collar sector where progress is slow (Baker, 1978; Cahn, 1979; Shaeffer and Lynton, 1979; Smith, 1979). A survey of 265 major corporations shows blue-collar occupations account for only 14 percent of cases in which women were successfully integrated into non-traditional jobs (Shaeffer and Lynton, 1979). Employers assert that hostile male incumbents discourage women from entering and staying in non-traditional jobs, thus preventing managers from meeting affirmative action goals.2 An article in The New York Times stated the management view this way: