We have seen that the figure of the “lesbian” is invoked in organisational discourses as a way of controlling women, regardless of their actual sexuality. Yet these same works tend to overlook the sexual orientation of the women studied and render invisible non- heterosexual experience. An intriguing example is Wajcman’s study of senior managers which examines their domestic lives to reveal very different household formations for male and female managers, but nothing about their sexual orientation (see 2.8). A handful of exceptions include Cynthia Cockburn’s (1991: 194-5) study which finds that “careful lesbians” in senior posts were accorded loyalty in the relatively tolerant environment of the civil service, but a lesbian who was open with colleagues about her sexuality believed this would adversely affect her prospects of promotion. Lesbians also make an appearance in Chetkovich’s (1997) study of race and gender in a US fire service, which finds that a number of the women were openly lesbian and suggests that this was advantageous in some respects and disadvantageous in others. On the negative side the environment was described as socially conservative and homophobic with homosexuality a frequent topic of humour. More positively an open lesbian was able to tease and joke with her colleagues without suggesting that she was open to sexual advances. In addition, Chetkovich observed that lesbians were experienced in outsider status and the crafting of non-traditional identities, so were sometimes better prepared to adapt to the male traditions of the fire department than heterosexual women.
There are some indications that non-heterosexual sexuality is beginning to be included in research on women and work as greater attention is paid to the intersections of gender, race, class and sexual orientation. For example, the second edition of Martin and Jurik’s (2007) volume on women in legal and criminal justice occupations in the
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US discusses sexual orientation, and in particular the experience of lesbian police officers, in a way that the original 1996 edition did not. Lesbian officers faced problems of homophobic attitudes from colleagues and the public, making it difficult to decide to come out. They also felt they had to make extra efforts to prove themselves as
competent officers, and sought to gain acceptance by separating themselves from “typical” (heterosexual) female officers and proving themselves to be “tough crime fighters” (ibid: 74).
Additionally, two US articles specifically discuss lesbians working in construction (Denissen and Saguy, forthcoming; Frank, 2001). Both record that building sites are very difficult places in which to be openly lesbian, but also are frequently hostile places for all women, regardless of sexuality. Lesbians in the building trades face heightened visibility and constant suspicion because of the presumption that women in the trades must be gay, and that they thus engage in complex risk assessments before coming out to their co-workers (Denissen and Saguy, forthcoming). Similarly Frank (2001)
observes the difficulties for lesbians in being open about their sexual identity in hostile work cultures, although notes the greater confidence of some younger lesbians as a result of late 1990s affirmative action hiring and apprenticeship policies.
In the UK, Christine Wall (2004) reflected on her experiences of the manual trades during the 1970s and 1980s, also noting the predominance of lesbians, who she believed must have made up at least 50 per cent of the organisation representing tradeswomen, Women and Manual Trades, at the time. However, she says:
“The prospect of being an ‘out’ lesbian in the macho world of construction was never a great ambition for any of us. In 1978 when I started at a Skillcentre on a carpentry and joinery course I had been ‘out’ and living an openly lesbian lifestyle for three years, but had absolutely no qualms about wearing conventionally feminine blouses, letting my hair grow a little longer and passing as straight while I was training at the Skillcentre (ibid: 163).”
However, lesbian experience has been missing from most studies and was remarked upon by a writer on lesbian sexuality of her own earlier work. In an introduction added to an earlier article on women in manual trades (Weston, 1998), Kath Weston points out that she made no direct references to sexuality in it, nor are there any in her earlier book on the subject (1982). Yet she acknowledges the salience of sexuality in the later
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“Sexuality was critical to efforts to get women into the trades… not just in the simplistic sense that many gay-identified women have operated a cutting torch or turned a wrench for cash. No doubt substantial numbers – perhaps disproportionate numbers – of lesbians have pursued blue-collar work over the years, although there are no statistics on the subject… In the firing and hiring, ideas about bodies cannot be separated from the materiality of bodies-in-action…. Reenter sexuality,
intertwined with representations of age, ability and class.” (1998: 96-7)
Weston warns of the risk, however, that stereotyped assumptions and generalisations about lesbians in manual work may “collapse lesbian into mannish, masculine and butch”, noting that: “An analysis that really hopes to relate sexuality to labour and employment can’t afford to stop at stereotyping” (ibid: 97). She perhaps here provides a clue to the reasons for the minimal discussion of lesbian sexuality in typically male work: could it stem from a wariness of indulging in such stereotyping? It is possible that writers have avoided the topic of sexuality for fear of reinforcing stereotypes of “butch” lesbians in “male” jobs, concentrating instead on the difficulties all women face as
women in such work. It is difficult to know, but further reasons relate to the
methodological and ethical difficulties of discussing sexual orientation in the workplace (see 4.7).