Page 201 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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CLEVELAND, VESCIO, BARNES-FARRELL
White females. More multiple demographic groups need to be investi­
gated: Hispanic, Black, Asian, and White women in professional, manage­
rial, clerical, part-time, and full-time work who are married, cohabitating,
single, with younger and with grown children.
A second limiting assumption of our research and our everyday lives
is that discrimination exists only where there are large gender differences:
that small, isolated differences in pay, informal comments about the high
performance of a male employee (without mention of the female em­
ployee), dismissive or condescending gestures, gendered language, the
relative size of supervisory budgets, number of subordinates, developmen­
tal assignments, and so forth are not a big deal. It is our contention, as well
as the contention of others (Valian, 1998; Martell, Lane, & Emrich, 1996),
that small seemingly insignificant differences or even slights between men
and women can accrue over time. Within a short period of time, women
find themselves hopelessly at a disadvantage to their male counterparts.
The assumption that small differences can be disregarded has permeated
the gender discrimination literature and is inextricably linked with the
cross-sectional research design that typifies our research. The need for lon­
gitudinal, interdisciplinary research focused on gender discrimination is
imperative in order to recognize when apparently trivial differences are
likely to accumulate into lasting and important disadvantages.
Finally, as industrial and organizational psychologists, we have yet to
tap all we have to offer in terms of understanding discrimination at work.
Historically, we have focused on examining gender or ethnic differences
on predictor variables or comparing differences on job attitudes and a
narrow range of work outcomes. However, we have unquestioningly ac­
cepted job performance, promotions, salary, job title, organizational level,
and so forth as encompassing the domain of success. We have both im­
plicitly and explicitly ignored the permeability of the boundary between
work and nonwork domains in our definitions of "success." Instead we
have rigidly held to the belief that marital and family well-being do not
fall within the purview of responsible organizations. This flies in the face of
evidence that many employees place family as their number one priority
(Lewis & Cooper, 1999) and the wealth of evidence that employees' work
demands regularly interfere with their ability to meet family demands and
(to a lesser degree) employees' family demands interfere with their ability
to carry out work demands (cf. Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1999). Our cur­
rent criteria for success (and theories of performance) are deficient because
we know little about the facets and structures of work that affect mean­
ingful nonwork areas of our lives. To rectify this situation, it is critical that
industrial and organizational psychologists, experts in work psychology
and behavior, address criterion deficiency by tapping previously ignored