Ruth E. Fassinger, Ph.D. University of British Columbia January 19, 2015

1. BECOMING BI (-METHODOLOGICAL, THAT IS): WHAT HUNDREDS OF WOMEN’S CAREER PATHS TAUGHT ME ABOUT MY OWN Ruth E. Fassinger, Ph.D. University of British Columbia January 19, 2015

2. Overview • Why I began studying career development: My “Cross” to bear • What the nagging problems are in women’s career development • Quantitative studies (SEM) • Qualitative studies (GT) • What I learned and where we need to go next

3. 5 Persistent Problems in Women’s Career Development 1. Underrepresentation, underemployment • Occupational segregation • Occupational stereotyping • Hiring and wage discrimination • Home-work interface • Structural (e.g., lack of childcare) • Attitudinal (e.g., division of household labor)

4. 5 Persistent Problems in Women’s Career Development 2. Underutilization of abilities • Educational bias • Classroom practices, pedagogy • Faculty, peer harassment • Low expectations, lack of support • Curriculum content, methods • Guidance, counseling, testing • Lack of parental modeling, support • Low math/science participation

5. 5 Persistent Problems in Women’s Career Development 3. Barriers to advancement • Employer, co-worker, subordinate biases • Micro-inequities, cumulative disadvantage • “Chilly” workplaces • Evaluation bias, double standards • Harassment • Tokenism, isolation • Exclusion from networks • Lack of mentors, role models

6. 5 Persistent Problems in Women’s Career Development 4. Attitudinal barriers • Self-efficacy, self-concept • Low outcome expectations • Gender socialization 5.Compounded marginalization • Race/ethnicity, immigration status • Social class • Sexual orientation, gender identity • Disability

7. Digression: My Dirty Little Secret Zero was never a hero – at least to me.

8. Structural Equation Modeling Studies • Purpose • Test models • Generate “grand” theory • Three main studies • Fassinger, 1985 (monograph) • 309 diverse undergrad female OSU students • Fassinger, 1990 • 663 diverse undergrad female OSU, UCSB students • O’Brien & Fassinger, 1993 (w/ Karen O’Brien) • 409 diverse private HS female students

9. SEM Method • Expansion of multiple linear regression model • Incorporates path analysis • Incorporates factor analysis

10. First SEM Study

11. First SEM Study

12. Second SEM Study

13. Third SEM Study

14. Conclusions from SEM Studies • Career Orientation is linked to Family Orientation • Career Orientation is distinct from Career Aspiration • Ability is expressed through Agency and Gender Role characteristics

15. Conclusions from SEM Studies • Gender Roles and Attitudes are important predictors of career variables • The Mother-Daughter relationship is important in predicting career variables • Findings appear to hold across demographic groups

16. Digression: I Love Women All women…

17. Grounded Theory Studies African American/Black and White Women (Published 1997) Beth Richie and Sonja Linn Latina Women (Published 2001) Maria Gomez Lesbian Women (Published in part) Merris Hollingsworth and Merideth Tomlinson Women with Disabilities (Published 2004) Brigid Noonan and Susanna Gallor Asian American Women (Published in part) Joann Prosser and Sapna Chopra

18. Overview of the Studies Purpose: *To explore how diverse, prominent, highly-achieving women have overcome challenges (e.g. sexism, racism, heterosexism, ableism) in their career/professional development *To generate “grand” theory

19. Overview of the Studies Participants: *Recruited and selected participants through media visibility, panels of experts, and nominations from professional organizations *20-30 participants in each study (Total=104) *Represented a wide range of occupational fields (e.g., science, law, politics, religion, athletics, arts, humanities, journalism, military, social services)

20. Overview of the Studies Participants (cont’d.): *Average age across samples was 47 *Most had completed college, many had completed advanced degrees *Race-ethnicity included: Black/African American, White/Caucasian, Native American/American Indian, Hispanic/Latina (Chicana/Mexicana, Puerto Rican, South American, Cuban, Mixed), and Asian American (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipina, Indian)

21. Overview of the Studies Participants (cont’d.): *Average number partnered was 12, average number with children was 10; lesbians were most often partnered (20/27), women with disabilities were least often partnered (8/21); women with disabilities were least likely to have children (6/21) *Disabilities included: blind, post-polio, deaf, muscular disorder, limb reduction, spinal cord injury, rheumatoid arthritis, cerebral palsy; 11 had congenital disabilities, 5 acquired, 5 congenital that progressed

22. Overview of the Studies Procedure: *Interviewed each participant for approximately 90 minutes in location of her choice *Interviewed in pairs in order to ensure some degree of match between participant and interviewer *Interview questions covered family and cultural background, education, work experiences, challenges and supports, attitudes about success, mentoring, the home-work interface, stress and coping, personality, leadership, and identity

23. Overview of the Studies Research Method: *Used Grounded Theory qualitative approach, due to limited knowledge base and questionable applicability of existing theory and measures *Used diverse research teams *Analyzed interview data by identifying common themes as well as differences among participants; coded all data then grouped into larger categories of meaning

24. Overview of the Studies Summary of Results: *There are many common experiences across these samples of women related to gender (i.e., being a woman) *There are unique experiences related to intersection of participants’ other demographic locations (i.e., race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability)

25. Selected Results

26. Selected Results

27. A White lesbian medical school professor fired from her job notes how her multiple identities interact: “I have a strong opinion and I speak out in favor of my female patient and I’m also very smart and very quick and some people think I have a tart tongue. But if I were a man, this would be accepted behavior. So after ten years as an assistant professor I was not renewed for a thousand different little reasons, none of which was a strong reason. Which is the typical thing, it’s not racism, it’s not sexism, it’s not homophobia, it’s that you aren’t competent, people don’t like you, you’re not well accepted, you don’t get along well, you don’t bill enough, you know, a thousand different little reasons.”

28. An African American lawyer with a disability shared her childhood experience of multiple identities in an all-White school: “[My] first day I was called ‘nigger’ this, ‘nigger’ that, ‘nigger’ all day long on the playground…. [My] second day it was ‘nigger cripple, cripple.’ I realized that in order to deal with these types of attitudes, I was going to have to effectively get people to engage with me as a person, because violence was not a part of my upbringing so I couldn’t kick ass.”

29. An African American lesbian politician notes her conflicting allegiances: “People perceive me as not being ‘Black’ enough. I get that from some of the gay Black community, based on who my partner is. My detractors say, ‘Well, as long as you sleep with a White woman, I’m not giving you my vote.’ I also get that from the straight Black community who feel I can’t be gay and Black and have equal allegiances to both. You know, you’ve got to have only one allegiance…”

30. A Latina artist/educator comments on the constant stress of “otherness”: “I’ve never had a sense of this protection or stability of the middle class. I always believed that in a given moment if I’m standing on the wrong corner, I could be thrown in a van with a bunch of other people. You know, my English might save me, because they would think I wasn’t [Chicana], but I don’t ever feel totally, really safe.”

31. A White psychologist with a disability reported this experience of aloneness as a result of prejudice: “I had applied for an internship, and I had this lengthy interview with the guy who was in charge, and at the end he said to me, ‘Well, I’ve got to admit, you know your stuff, but you have polio, and no matter what I read in the reports about polio, I think it’s neurological, it’s brain damage. You’re essentially a brain-damaged person. I can’t trust our clients to a brain-damaged person.’ And that was the end of that. I was really furious and upset, and I went to my advisor and the head of the clinical division and told them what this guy had said and their response was to pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘That’s really rough. That’s not fair. Maybe next year you’ll get an assistantship.’ They wouldn’t go to bat for me; they wouldn’t encourage me to fight it or anything. I was very alone.”

32. A White lesbian school teacher speaks of her constant watchfulness: “I guess I’m always reading my environment constantly. Reading people’s faces, watching how people watch me when I’m interacting with kids. Like if wear something to work one day that’s not as ‘butch,’ I always think, ‘Oh, they’ll love this. This is one percent feminine.’”

33. An African American artist discusses the prejudice of her White colleagues: “They were outrageous! I had a [business] partner who did not want me in her private home when she was having professional parties, where I was the assistant on the show! . . . Any policymaking parties I would be totally alienated from. . . African American artists did not have a chance in hell.”

34. A Latina lesbian described her negative feelings at the end of an illustrious military career: “When I got out, after 20 years, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t jubilant that I had finished a rewarding career. I was happy that I got out without getting caught. And that’s unfortunate. When 12 midnight came on my last day, I was happy that I walked out the door by myself, that nobody opened the door and kicked me out. And that’s what I lived with all my career, that I could actually go to jail.”

35. How did these women deal with prejudice and discrimination? *Ignoring it when possible and appropriate *Challenging it, personally, collectively, and legally *Using humor to de-escalate hostility *Persevering no matter what *Educating others, formally as well as informally in day-to-day interactions *”Passing,” i.e., hiding one’s lifestyle or cultural characteristics in order to fit in *Getting support from similar others *Working actively to make the world a fairer place

36. Selected Results

37. A Latina scientist describes success as making a contribution: “Success is feeling that as an individual I have contributed. That validation gives your whole life a flavor that makes you happy to be alive.”

38. A lesbian African American minister also describes making a contribution: “Success for me is related to what I do -- are lives changed -- because that’s what the ministry is really about. Do people come into closer relationships with God? Do they find more joy in living? Or if they’re dying, do they die more peacefully? So, has my life in ministry touched the lives of people? I think that would be more what it is to be successful.”

39. A White journalist comments on her internal standards of success: “I have reached something in this town, which is a very tough town, that I would call success. That I’ve lived by my standards, that I’ve represented a certain brand of journalism, that I have integrity. . . I really feel extremely fulfilled and enriched by the fact that I didn’t compromise or ever sell myself out, that I did what was in my gut always. . . I never judged myself on how much I made, I judged myself on what I did.”

40. A White businesswoman ties success to passion and social change: “I think you can only be successful if you’re tying what you do in your work life with your passions. . . So to me a successful person is a person who is able in their occupation to follow their passions and do those things that they want most in the world to do. What I want to do in life is I want to change the world and make it a fairer place.”

41. An Asian American journalist comments on her approach to social change: “I hope to put my yellow face up there enough every single day so that people understand that I’m an American just like they are, and if somehow I’ve changed their perception of Asian Americans, then that’s great.”

42. A White lesbian comedian, who uses her work to change attitudes, notes: “I get to do what I want to do, which is to change the world, and make them accept gay people and women and all minorities, and to see us not in stereotypes, but to see us as people.”

43. A writer/performer with a disability discusses some of the compromises that come from politically-motivated work: “Everything that I’ve developed in terms of my skill as a performer very much comes from my politics. And that’s a very different kind of art. And as I go along…I don’t want to lose any of the fire, the passion, and the politics. Disability is very much still looked on as a special audience, and there’s a reality about how far you can go if you stay true to the things that are of passion and the heart. And it’s not just cripples who have this problem. It’s women, it’s Black people, it’s queer stuff, it’s all of it.”

44. A Latina artist/educator shares cultural contradictions about success: “Living here prescribes forced choices between being with people that you love and are raised with, and succeeding. Because in order to succeed you have to be different than the rest of your family, community, and culture. Predominant culture teaches that you are successful because of your own unique, particular qualities, so you can’t have collective success here. [But] …the success I’ve had in my career is directly related to my staying connected to a community that I represent in the eyes of other people. And if I had gone it alone, and sort of ‘White-ified’ myself and tried to do that other thing, I don’t think I would have been nearly as successful. It’s an odd sort of contradiction.”

45. A woman with a disability comments on succeeding with a disability: “There are concrete limitations on all of us with disabilities, depending on how heavy duty the disability is. Transportation is always tricky. And I need a personal assistant to get dressed in the morning and other things. That’s always kind of a crap shoot, that person has to be on time for me to be on time. I have to look a certain way to be okay with myself in the day, and if I have somebody else pulling on my pants who isn’t gonna give a sh** about that, I’m in a very upset kind of space. It takes people with disabilities much longer to get ready to face the day. It takes a couple of hours generally for people with severe disabilities and most other people are already on their way to work when we’re just getting out of bed, after having already had a shower and dressed in the bed. I think that sometimes people with disabilities do what everybody else does, but just with much less sleep.”

46. A Latina defines her own success as built on others who went before: “I’m successful because the people who preceded me opened doors. Each generation made a difference. Every generation stood up and said, ‘I won’t put up with this crap anymore’…I got there from a number of men and women. I will never know their names or what they did, but I am the beneficiary of everything they did. It’s a humbling experience.”

47. A Latina college president describes success as a family commitment to social change: “I see advocacy as a commitment – a commitment to certain goals and values, to how you want to live your life. One of those values is to stand up for something, not just to make a lot of money. It’s not about making money, and I feel good. My whole family is out there because we feel we can have impact, give back.”

48. Selected Results

49. An Asian American professor describes the interconnectivity of work and family: “I am who I am because of everything – my family, my friends, my life. So the choices I make, I can’t separate them as saying, ‘these are the sacrifices I make for my family,’ or ‘this is what happened at work.’ This is who I am. These are the choices I make.”

50. A Jewish lesbian attorney and public official asserted the importance of her family to her work: “I wouldn’t have been able to take the chances that I’ve taken. I wouldn’t have been able to disrupt my life in the way that I’ve done to answer this particular calling if it hadn’t been for having a sound and loving and mutually supportive relationship with my partner.”