Constructions of equality and discrimination in professional men's talk

Abstract

The contradiction between support for egalitarian employment practices and the maintenance of occupational androcentrism was examined by discursively analysing constructions of equality and discrimination from 46 interviews with professional men. Accounts of equality were produced through the interpretative repertories of 'interchangeability', 'individual ability' and 'pragmatism'. This enables, first, an understanding of discrimination as 'non-individualism', a term used to describe the treatment of social group memberships as salient, and second, defined interventions based on a structural analysis of equality as discrimination. These repertoires minimized the gendered nature of men and women's experiences and negated the use of context in favour of an abstract principle of individualism. Participants warranted their accounts through feminist arguments, two-sided argument formulations, and the construction of a dichotomy between individualist-equality and structuralist-discrimination-supporting the material practice of 'affirmative non-action', the active support of non-action. Relating the findings to equal opportunity policy, occupational cultural analyses and the discursive production of 'new sexism', the article identifies the absence of an account that conceptualizes both individual and structural facets of equality.

Standards and Separatism: The Discursive Construction of Gender in English Soccer Coach Education

“…Adam's assumptions pay no attention to, and therefore undermine, the differences in men and women's opportunities and choices in English football. This modern sexist discourse only serves to mask the gendered nature of experience (Riley, 2002) and render the fierce masculinity that has resisted the entry of women (Bryson, 1987;Meân, 2001) as neutral.…”

“…Softeners are a common feature of modern discourses of prejudice as there is a concern within such accounts not to be heard as prejudiced, leading to disclaimers and softeners framed within a liberal and egalitarian rhetoric (Wetherell & Potter, 1992;Gough, 1998;Riley, 2002). However, the word choice of "elitist" is also problematic for Simon as it could be interpreted as meaning that women participating in separatist coach education are good, given the connotation that the elite are the best.…”

“…The symmetry of gender based groups allows men to present the non-existence of an official men's group as something that is missing and, therefore, unjust (Riley, 2002). This is also a form of extrematization in that these men are taking this point to an extreme position in order to further their argument which fails to recognize that existing masculinized sporting discourses exclude women with great ease, rendering any such actual legislation frivolous.…”

The effortful citizen: Discursive social psychology and welfare reform

“…Schegloff, 1997;Wetherell, 1998;Wooffitt, 2005; and the debates following Sims-Schouten, Riley &Willig, 2007 andSpeer, 2001). It is not my intention to rehearse these debates here, but it is nevertheless important to point out that the present analysis proceeds from the assumption that in dealing with specific instances of situated discourse and discursive psychological matters, we are also dealing with the themes of commonsense, something which Billig et al (1988, p. 28) have termed 'lived ideology'.…”

“…Although, as Potter (2007c) has recently pointed out, a focus on interpretative repertoires is less a feature of current work in DP, they remain central to much discursive work addressing social psychological issues (e.g. Croghan & Miell, 1999;Lawes, 1999;Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003;Reynolds, Wetherell & Taylor, 2007;Riley, 2002).…”