Casting the Other: The Production and Maintenance of Inequalities in Work Organizations

Casting the Other: Maintaining Gender Inequalities in the Workplacefocuses on the production and maintenance of gender inequalities in organizations. By emphasizing 'difference' as something to be managed, many organizations institute the 'problem of difference', and while organizations pay lip-service to ideas of equality, their day-to-day practices may be unchanged and unchallenged. Discrimination of various groups such as women, immigrants and older people continues and its dynamics remain unclear, largely because of the difficulties of studying it in the field. Additionally, various programs aimed at removing inequality, such as gender equality of managing diversity programs, may actually promote it by making differences visible and stabilizing them. Management, under these circumstances, comes to refer to the management of appearances which take the place of more radical acts to change the 'status quo'.