I was recently speaking to a senior PSU (Public Sector Undertaking) official who has worked in the same office for over thirty years and has exhibited all markers of ‘company loyalty’ and sincerity towards her work. She explained that even though she has five more years of service left, she probably will not be considered for promotion to a directorial position as she does not have enough social connections to bring in new business for the company.

Now, I knew very well from personal experience that business development through personal (versus official) social capital is a required skill or service that one needs to provide to climb the corporate ladder. But I was rather surprised to find the same expectation permeating other sectors.

At first glance, this might not seem like a gendered problem which acts as a barrier for women in the workplace. But it is, and let me explain how. The expectation to capitalise on one’s social and professional connections to enhance opportunities and profits for the company when combined with the structural lack of social capital awarded to women, especially in male-dominated workspaces, is what becomes a barrier for women in rising to higher ranks in their career.

Women have faced various structural disadvantages within the workspace which stem from the system of patriarchy for a very long time. Disadvantages such as unequal pay, various forms of discrimination in the workplace, risk of sexual assault in the workplace, dual burden of professional and household work due to lack of support at home, lack of benefits such as maternity leave, amongst others. Because of the progress in women’s rights, there have been attempts to mitigate most of these factors to a certain extent through affirmative action and stricter workplace regulations. But this is where current inclusion initiatives fall short – that they cannot evoke true acceptance. Women continue to bear the brunt of invisibilised, informal means of othering which play out in such complex, subjective and personal ways that it is almost impossible to draft regulations around them. So, whilst women have fought for and won the right to safely participate in and contribute to the workplace, they haven’t been able to gain full acceptance and an equal status with those who solely occupied the workplace before them – men.

In her famed paper titled ‘When the Goods Get Together’ (1977), Luce Irigaray, a cultural theorist and psychoanalyst, in her attempt to dissect the gendered nature of economics; also ends up questioning the very boundaries of expression of sexuality in context of what she considers deeply homoerotic socio-economic behaviour exhibited by cisgender heterosexual males in the ‘market’. She postulates that in a society that ascribes the role of subject only to men, ‘homosexuality’ is what informs the socio-cultural order. She theorises that in patriarchal societies, trade forms the basis of the society and is conducted only between men. Everything else – signs, goods, currency and even women – then become objects that are traded amongst men. Now, she does not mean to say that all men are homosexuals, rather she makes a deeply analytical observation of the ways in which men connect with each other to form the dominant social order, attempting to leave other social groups behind. Men’s loyalties usually lie with other men, especially to those men of a higher social standing – something we see deeply entrenched in the ‘boys’ club’ culture in the modern workplace.

Whilst some may find Irigaray’s choice of words absurdist, I think it is intentional and deeply impactful. It allows for the idea of expansion of the term sexuality to include not just literal sexual orientation but also social attraction and corresponding behaviours which exhibit a repeated gender preference whilst forming social bonds. Irigaray uses a Marxist approach to turn the very conceptualisation of sexuality on its head by using the objectification of women as counter to male heterosexuality. This postulation is especially relevant whilst analysing concepts such as boys’ clubs.

Boys’ clubs is an important concept to take into account when understanding how women are systematically excluded from professional social circles in invisible ways and how this hinders upward movement in their careers. These clubs in the workspace function as informal social circles or networks of male professionals which “promote from within and provide networking and professional mentoring opportunities that are simply not available to anyone who isn’t a part of them” (Elting, 2018). Usually the boys clubs’ admission criterion is just that – maleness. And this admission criterion trumps all, even otherwise seemingly cemented social constructs such as seniority and class. While these constructs may affect power dynamics within the clubs, as for entry into the clubs, you will see men from different walks of life and from junior to senior positions awarded the privilege of admission sheerly on the basis of gender. You see these clubs in action across the workplace – congregating in cabins, break rooms, the smoking area, corridors, meeting rooms and the boss’ office- engaged in boisterous laughter, backslapping revelry and exhibiting profound social intimacy. And any woman who has witnessed these circles would know that it is practically impossible to break into them.

These boys’ clubs provide significant social capital to the members and form the overall landscape of the professional world, especially within the profit-motivated sectors. With the new trend of switching jobs regularly and increased movement across workplaces, the social status acquired through participation in these clubs become a common denominator in connecting with other professionals, bringing in business, and vying for position and promotion opportunities. It doesn’t help that women’s entry into the workspace has only happened very recently, and that boys’ clubs have been in place and well-established with the passage of time, before women could even get the right to work. With any group that has been in place for a long time, we know that the sense of in-group and out-group gets deeply entrenched.

To further understand how lack of social capital can impede a woman’s opportunities of climbing the career ladder, let’s break down the workspace structure into three basic levels of worker, managerial, and leadership. A woman, or any employee, would be able to navigate the worker level depending mostly on their skills and quality of work. Though it is important to note, that even within this level, the visibility of one’s work contribution is affected by the type of social connections that one has within the workspace. Yet, compared to the higher levels, it can still be a controlled variable at the worker level because, at this level, employees are expected to produce the bulk of the written work to meet deliverables in the form of reports, presentation decks, proposals, etc. This type of work is easily measurable by both the employer and the employee, ensuring that the employee has the benefit of demanding the inclusion of these work items in the annual review of their work. If the job is well done, this would allow the employee to be promoted to senior positions within the worker level and they could eventually even enter the managerial level. Now, here is where things become murky. As mentioned in the anecdote in the beginning, most sectors now expect employees in senior managerial positions and in leadership roles to have social connections in the professional world which will bring in more business. So those without these connections are not considered for further senior positions and end up spending the rest of their career in either the same managerial position within their company or similar positions across other companies.

At one of my earlier workplaces, I saw many female managers who were viewed as strong subject experts in their field being consistently passed over for promotion to leadership roles and bonuses in favour of male managers who were better at business development. Now, one might throw their hands up in the air and argue that “Hey, despite the sociological reasoning, business development is essential for, well, business.” To which I would respond, “Ensuring that the progress of an entire set of employees isn’t stagnated because of a systematic disadvantage that they have no control over is also essential for business!”

In fact, the narrowing of pathways of upward movement in the workplace does not have a negative impact only on women, but rather on everyone – even men, especially those who might not exhibit stereotypical, extroverted ‘macho’ traits in their professional behaviour. To create healthier workplaces, there has to be a wider array of possibilities, pathways and skill sets that need to be taken into consideration and given equal importance. For example, there could be pathways to leadership roles from angles beyond that of business development such as subject expertise, people management, and administrative skills, amongst others.

Almost fifty years since Irigaray’s article first came out, with a long journey that still remains for us to achieve true gender equality within workplaces, I wonder what she would have to say about boys’ clubs, this new form of homoerotic bonding amongst men, that has transposed itself directly from the older days of trade into the modern workplace.

References:

Elting, Liz. “How To Navigate A Boys’ Club Culture.” Forbes, July 27, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizelting/2018/07/27/how-to-navigate-a-boys-club-culture/

Irigaray, Luce. “When the goods get together.” The Sex Which Is Not One. Éditions de Minuit, Paris (1977)

Cover Image: Photo by Sean Pollock on Unsplash