چگونه می توانم روی شما حساب کنم؟ اکتشاف انتقاد از فرصت های شغلی و تجارب زنان اقلیت های قومی

This paper draws on new data examining career opportunities and experiences of ethnic minority women. We follow a growing literature in the field of social accounting which has raised awareness of both actual and represented notions of women's roles within accountancy and organisations in general (e.g. [Adams CA, Harte G. Towards corporate accountability for equal opportunities performance. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants Occasional Research Paper No. 26; 1999; Kirkham L, Loft A. Gender and the construction of the professional accountant. Acc Organ Soc 1993;18:507–58; Tinker T, Neimark M. The role of annual reports in gender and class contradictions at General Motors 1917–1976. Acc Organ Soc 1987;12(3–4):71–88]), and has demonstrated how social accounts of organisations are generated and represented [Adams CA, Harte G. The changing portrayal of the employment of women in British banks and retail companies’ corporate annual reports. Acc Organ Soc 1998;23(8):781–812; O’Dwyer. The construction of a social account: a case study in an overseas aid agency. Acc Organ Soc 2005;30:279–96]. In producing this paper, we seek to extend such approaches to include race and ethnicity. Thus, our purpose is to reach an explanation as to why, when for 3 decades during which legislation has been in place to outlaw unfair discrimination, and when organisations have policies purporting to support and serve that legislative framework, ethnic minority women continue to struggle for corporate acceptance and progression.

This paper draws on new data examining career opportunities and experiences of ethnic minority women. We follow a growing literature in the field of social accounting which has raised awareness of both actual and represented notions of women's roles within accountancy and organisations in general (e.g. Adams and Harte, 1999, Kirkham and Loft, 1993, Loft, 1992 and Tinker and Neimark, 1987), and has demonstrated how social accounts of organisations are generated and represented (Adams and Harte, 1998 and O’Dwyer, 2005). In producing this paper, we seek to extend such approaches to include race and ethnicity. Thus, our purpose is to reach an explanation as to why, when for 3 decades legislation has been in place to outlaw unfair discrimination, and when organisations have policies which purport to support and serve that legislative framework, ethnic minority women continue to struggle for corporate acceptance and progression. The structure of the paper is as follows: we begin with a literature review in which we comment upon the nature of gendered categorisation, extending that to take account of race and ethnicity; we then examine our theoretical framework before discussing the methodological approach used for the study. The paper is then divided into sub-sections addressing two significant themes emerging from the empirical work, before progressing to a discussion of those themes and a conclusion drawing together the theoretical, analytical and empirical threads.

In this paper, a social constructionist framework has been adopted in which we have incorporated, what we have contended to be, the interdependent factors of agency, structure and culture as a means of examining ethnic minority women's career experiences. We have considered additional factors which can hinder, or contribute to, their development and advancement opportunities. Analysis of two themes derived from new empirical data has been presented and in this final section, the links between the themes and the framework are developed and discussed. Organisational support, the extent to which ethnic minority women can penetrate mainstream organisations and their experiences once in them are defined, to some extent, by the degree of emphasis placed by organisations on equal opportunities for career development and advancement of ethnic minority women, and the extent to which they seek to actually provide such support. Thus, the structural and cultural dimensions of our framework are important in mediating the full and progressive participation of ethnic minority women within organisations. Structural and cultural dimensions of organisations can be discriminatory, in terms of policies and practices, in an ‘impersonal’, indirect manner. This phenomenon has become known as ‘Institutional Racism’ and is defined as: The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people. (The Macpherson Report, 1999) It is important to note that, from that perspective, an institution can be racist whether or not the individuals in that institution are racist or prejudiced. As an extension to the definition, we have taken the argument, well defined in the literature, that women in general are subject to sexist regimes within organisations. This leads, in career terms, to androcentricity (Crompton and Sanderson, 1990, Evetts, 1994 and Halford et al., 1997), whereby women's careers are defined by male work patterns. Our data suggests strongly that organisations are, institutionally, both sexist and racist and that this combination of andro- and ethno-centricity has clear and potentially detrimental implications for ethnic minority women. Linking the above with the combined issues of networking and career strategy, it is clear that the predominantly white male culture of organisations can hinder advancement opportunities for ethnic minority women, by stereotyping them and excluding them from the influential ‘old boys networks’ on the bases of their gender and their race. Previous research confirms that ethnic minorities tend to be excluded from informal work groups (Fernandez, 1981). This situation has negative implications for their networking and career development opportunities. Not being in a network has been cited as one of the most significant problems faced by black people (Irons and Moore, 1985). With few exceptions (e.g. Bell, 1990), such research does not acknowledge gender issues, and therefore fails to combine the negative implications inherent in the experiences of ethnic minority women. Such organisational shortcomings, when combined with the excesses of stereotyping ethnic minority women, which stem from an interaction of their status as both women and ethnic minorities, is challenging in the extreme even for the most assertive person. In their research of black women managers in a local authority, Liff and Dale (1994, p. 195), argued that black women ‘were subjected to domestic stereotypes by their managers … [which] were distinctive and drew on views of Asian and Afro-Caribbean families … the racism they faced often drew on ethnically specific notions of femininity’. Thus, we can appreciate elements of bicultural stress resulting from their having to live in two worlds and our data consolidates this view. In involving women of different ethnicities and in different types and ‘levels’ of work, we have extended the argument that the interaction of gender, ethnicity and race is important for some of the ethnic minority women in our sample, but it is important to say that this was not felt to be the case for all of our participants. Where there were negative effects of this interaction, they might be intensified where culture and religion are more clearly apparent through, for example, dress, hairstyle and general appearance. Hence, while we do not claim negative effects for each of our participants, we have been able to identify particular instances of negativity as well as the circumstances around which such negativity is centred. In some cases this might be focused upon skin colour, in others on style of clothing, particularly where this is related to religious affiliation. One consequence of the combination of those factors is the exclusion of many ethnic minority women from influential networks and, while not all felt that they had been personally affected, each one of our participants expressed their belief that, as a social group, ethnic minority women are more likely to face discrimination at work than other social groups. This situation can lead some ethnic minority women into positions in which their development and maintenance of agency is potentially compromised by social, organisational and/or religious culture. We do not want to argue that they are unable to exercise agency in such circumstances. However, we must acknowledge that it must be exercised much more consciously than is the case for white western women. In spite of the problems identified, networking can be one of the strategies employed by ethnic minority women in an attempt to assert agency in order to improve their promotion opportunities. Indeed, it was through such an initiative that we were able to secure the involvement of our ‘independent’ group of participants. Women involved in such networks can actively pursue specific structural and powerful networks and strategically attempt to penetrate them. However, as discussed earlier, ethnic minority women often have to downplay, or even deny, their own cultural identity and abandon some of their cultural or religious values, or at least outward representations of them, as a strategy for ‘fitting in’. Trying to penetrate and be accepted in white-dominated networks, let alone white male ones, would be one instance where the women would, most probably, have to downplay both their ethnicity and their gender. Engaging in this form of ‘cost–benefit’ analysis, as argued above, can, for some ethnic minority women, be a cause of stress in itself, not to mention that associated with having chosen to juggle working in white, male-dominated organisations, adhering to own-community expectations and dealing with additional pressures attached to their roles as women, wives and mothers, daughters and daughters-in-law. Networking and career strategy can be, therefore, analysed within all three features of our framework: structure, culture and agency. While arguing that agency and strategy are factors for ethnic minority women when attempting to be part of influential networks, or more generally when they are trying to develop their career, we must take care not to succumb to the shortcomings of Hakim's analysis by contending that it is the sole responsibility of women to develop and progress their career. Career strategies are very important but they must be examined against the structurally- and culturally-defined constraints of organisations and society since, even for the most practised networker and systems negotiator, such constraints can prove formidable. In thinking of taking this research further forwards, it might be useful to consider the Tracer Studies method to examine the networking process linking organisational members. This method provides a framework for the researcher to trace, or follow, the flow of organisational decisions, considering the perceptions, perspectives and inputs of individuals and groups within organisations (Hornby and Symon, 1994). In this way, the manner in which people are linked through a network or series of networks can be traced and the extent to which any such involvement has a bearing on career examined. Thus, adopting such a method might be useful in tracing decisions regarding opportunities for career progression and the extent to which such opportunities are taken up by ethnic minority women. Such an approach might also illuminate clearly the incidents in which stereotyping has taken place. This paper acknowledges the structures inherent to organisation, including families, organisational culture and ethnic minority women's cultural background. Drawing on a social-constructionist approach, we have woven through those structures the concept of agency and examined the practical determination of our participants to achieve career advancement. We have considered factors believed necessary by our participants for them to develop successful careers, and, significantly, what it takes out of them to achieve such aspirations. In doing this, we have accounted for some of the factors affecting the career opportunities and experiences of our participants, thus adding an important dimension to the development of both career theory and organisational practice.