14: Engendering Prisons and History of Women Guards: Part I

The theory of gendered organization purports that organizations are not neutral organisms, but have definite identities. These identities give attributes to members of the organization, and play on already present assumptions and roles that are assigned to specific types of people in society and then serves to perpetuate them.

Britton uses this theory to frame her research question in asking how prisons continue to detect and then reproduce gender through their structure, practices, and policies. She is asking why and how women continue to hold lower positions on the proverbial totem pole, while men continue to hold positions of ultimate power and authority in institutions, particularly prisons.

Structure, agency and culture are all interlinked in the ongoing processes of organization gendering. This happens through the rewarding of workers who can take on more shift work, often at hours that are nonstandard, meaning that women who have children cannot do things like pick them up from school or perhaps spend time with them at all. Better, more standard, shifts are designated to workers with seniority, because they have earned their dues. This leaves those same women in an impossible situation: they must start at the bottom, and if they cannot meet the odd structure found there, they cannot be promoted and thereby either remain in menial positions or none at all. That completely exemplifies what Britton meant when stating that "organizations are gendered at the level of structure," (p. 7). Men have the capacity to excel in a prison environment, and women, by and large, do not. Finally, women, either in making their own gendered choices or falling subject to the stereotyping of others, tend to take on work that is considered more feminine. This means women work in cleaning and cooking, which are fields where there is no real authority.

When Britton stated that "organizations are gendered at the level of structure" (p. 7), she meant that

Both public and private spheres become gendered concepts by

These are reflected in labor history, labor practices and labor law via