PUBLICATION

Wingfield, A. H., & Chavez, K. (2020). Getting In, Getting Hired, Getting Sideways Looks: Organizational Hierarchy and Perceptions of Racial Discrimination. American Sociological Review, 85(1), 31–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122419894335

ABSTRACT

This article argues that black workers’ perceptions of racial discrimination derive not just from being in the minority, but also from their position in the organizational structure. Researchers have shown that black individuals encounter an enormous amount of racial discrimination in the workplace, including but not limited to exclusion from critical social networks, wage disparities, and hiring disadvantages. But fewer studies examine the extent to which black workers believe racial discrimination is a salient factor in their occupational mobility or the factors that might explain their divergent perceptions of racial discrimination. Based on 60 in-depth interviews with black medical doctors, nurses, and technicians in the healthcare industry, we show that black workers’ status within an organizational hierarchy fundamentally informs perceptions of the nature and type of workplace racial discrimination. These findings have implications for understanding how racial dynamics at work are linked to mental health, occupational satisfaction, and organizational change.

PUBLICATION

Wingfield, Adia Harvey. 2009. "Racializing the Glass Escalator: Reconsidering Men's Experiences with Women's Work." Gender & Society 23 (1): 5-26.

ABSTRACT

Many men who work in women’s professions experience a glass escalator effect that facilitates their advancement and upward mobility within these fields. Research finds that subtle aspects of the interactions, norms, and expectations in women’s professions push men upward and outward into the higher-status, higher-paying, more “masculine” positions within these fields. Although most research includes minority men, little has explicitly considered how racial dynamics color these men’s encounters with the mechanisms of the glass escalator. In this article, the author examines how intersections of race and gender combine to shape experiences for minority men in the culturally feminized field of nursing and finds that the upward mobility implied by the glass escalator is not uniformly avail-able to all men who do “women’s work.” The author concludes that the glass escalator is a racialized concept and a gendered one and considers the implications of this for future studies of men in feminized occupations.