IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v21y2016i1p51-64.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond ‘Token’ Firefighters: Exploring Women's Experiences of Gender and Identity at Work

Author

Listed:
  • Tamika Perrott

Abstract

Despite the increasing percentage of women entering masculinized workplaces, certain organizations consistently see little change in the gender makeup of their staff. Contemporary scholarship suggests that women in rigidly gendered organizations are often assigned a token status and are victimized due to their gender. This study relocates the conversations of women as tokens towards a fresh conversation of women's agency in masculinized workplaces. This paper uses ten qualitative interviews and ethnographic fieldwork to discuss how female firefighters navigate their gender at work. This article draws on reflexive accounts of everyday gendered negotiations to look at how the female firefighters ‘do gender’ within a specific fire service in Australia. I argue that emergency services, such as firefighting, create a contradictory field where women are located in (1) a paradoxical environment where the ‘female body’ is problematized (2) a work environment where they have to repeatedly prove their cultural competence in order to confirm their professional identity. The findings suggest that while female firefighters do have agency, tokenism locates many of them in a ‘never quite there’ bind that challenges their ability to progress into leadership roles within the service. This article concludes that the nuanced difference between, and at times, within the women's narratives problematizes the bounds of personal agency and cultural change. This consequently results in resistance to policies by some women that may benefit like-situated women, such as affirmative action.

Suggested Citation

  • Tamika Perrott, 2016. "Beyond ‘Token’ Firefighters: Exploring Women's Experiences of Gender and Identity at Work," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 21(1), pages 51-64, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:51-64
    DOI: 10.5153/sro.3832
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5153/sro.3832
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5153/sro.3832?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Katherine Sang & Andrew Dainty & Stephen Ison, 2007. "Gender: a risk factor for occupational stress in the architectural profession?," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(12), pages 1305-1317.
    2. Andrew Dainty & Barbara Bagilhole & Richard Neale, 2000. "A grounded theory of women's career under-achievement in large UK construction companies," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 239-250.
    3. AfDB AfDB, . "Annual Report 2012," Annual Report, African Development Bank, number 461.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Craig Garthwaite & Tal Gross & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2014. "Public Health Insurance, Labor Supply, and Employment Lock," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(2), pages 653-696.
    2. Tarek Roshdy Gebba & Mohamed Gamal Aboelmaged, 2016. "Corporate Governance of UAE Financial Institutions: A Comparative Study between Conventional and Islamic Banks," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 6(5), pages 1-7.
    3. Clarete, Ramon L. & Villamil, Isabela Rosario G., 2015. "Readiness of the Philippine Agriculture and Fisheries Sectors for the 2015 ASEAN Economic Community: A Rapid Appraisal," Research Paper Series DP 2015-43, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
    4. Li, Xi & Yu, Biying, 2019. "Peaking CO2 emissions for China's urban passenger transport sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    5. Alleyne, Dillon & Emanuel, Elizabeth & Phillips, Willard, 2013. "An assessment of fiscal and regulatory barriers to the deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in Saint Lucia," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38502, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    6. Cristian Pana, 2013. "The National Central Bank’S Management Of Reserve Requirements," Working papers 16, Ecological University of Bucharest, Department of Economics.
    7. Junlakarn, Siripha & Kittner, Noah & Tongsopit, Sopitsuda & Saelim, Supawan, 2021. "A cross-country comparison of compensation mechanisms for distributed photovoltaics in the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    8. McMahon, Rob, 2020. "Co-developing digital inclusion policy and programming with indigenous partners: Interventions from Canada," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 9(2), pages 1-26.
    9. John V. Duca, 2013. "Regionally, Housing Rebound Depends on Jobs, Local Supply Tightness," Annual Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    10. Divya Ravindranath, 2017. "Visa regulations and labour market restrictions: implications for Indian immigrant women in the United States," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 60(2), pages 217-232, June.
    11. LametK.Maika & Kevin Wachira, 2020. "Effects of organizational culture on strategy implementation in water boards in Kenya," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 9(4), pages 15-28, July.
    12. Kanbayashi, Yoji., 2015. "The situation of non-regular public employees in Japan," ILO Working Papers 994861763402676, International Labour Organization.
    13. Jose Cuesta & Jon Jellema & Lucia Ferrone, 2021. "Fiscal Policy, Multidimensional Poverty, and Equity in Uganda: A Child-Lens Analysis," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 33(3), pages 427-458, June.
    14. Zhang, Zibin & Yang, Wenxin & Ye, Jianliang, 2021. "Why sulfur dioxide emissions decline significantly from coal-fired power plants in China? Evidence from the desulfurated electricity pricing premium program," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 148(PB).
    15. Katherine O. Baer, 2013. "What International Experience Can Tell Us About the Potential Challenges of Administering a U.S. Vat," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 66(2), pages 447-478, June.
    16. Wang, Can & Zheng, Xinzhu & Cai, Wenjia & Gao, Xue & Berrill, Peter, 2017. "Unexpected water impacts of energy-saving measures in the iron and steel sector: Tradeoffs or synergies?," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 1119-1127.
    17. Tyler Atkinson & David Luttrell & Harvey Rosenblum, 2013. "How bad was it? The costs and consequences of the 2007–09 financial crisis," Staff Papers, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Jul.
    18. Christine Greenhalgh, 2013. "Science, Technology, Innovation and IP in India: New Directions and Prospects," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2013n37, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    19. Pieter Serneels & Stefan Dercon, 2021. "Aspirations, Poverty, and Education. Evidence from India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(1), pages 163-183, January.
    20. Doan, Quang Hung & Vu, Hoang Nam & Dao, Ngoc Tien, 2013. "Sub-National Institutions and Firm Survival in Vietnam," MPRA Paper 63653, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:51-64. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.