THE INFLUENCES OF GENDER, RACE AND ETHNICITY ON WORKPLACE EXPERIENCES OF INSTITUTIONAL AND SOCIAL ISOLATION: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF UNIVERSITY FACULTY

ABSTRACT

Racial and ethnic minorities and women in the professoriate have already achieved a level of career success to overcome obstacles and negotiate the educational process. Still, their experiences differ from their white male counterparts. They lag behind in terms of pay and mobility, and research on other occupations reveals that even “successful” minorities experience the workplace organization differently from white men (Nkomo and Cox 1990; Yoder and Aniakudo, 1997).

Our study extends research in this area in two ways. First, we ask, to what extent do women and minorities in the professoriate experience the workplace differently from white men as evidenced in feelings of institutional and social isolation, and intention to turnover? Second, we avoid homogenizing racial and ethnic minority groups into a single “nonwhite” category. Thus, in exploring experiences of isolation, we distinguish among a wider range of racial, ethnic and gender groups. While we had insufficient numbers to look at a large number of minority groups, our findings indicate the importance of examining feelings of different types of isolation and the significance of the gendered and racialized nature of workplace organizations.

Notes

¹For detailed discussion on scale development and the psychometric properties of the subscales, refer to Smith and Markham (1998).

²Particularly in the analyses that involved race and gender subgroups sample sizes diminished. Standard deviations across these groups were comparable, and observation of the ranges of mean scores within subgroups indicated that overall group means were not distorted by outliers.

¹significant Duncan's, p < .05 in comparison with whites.

²significant Tukey's, p < .05 in comparison with both whites and Asian-Americans.

³significant Tukey's, p < .05 in comparison with whites.

⁴significant Duncan's, p < .05 in comparison with men.

¹significant Duncan's, p < .05 in comparison with white men.

²significant Duncan's, p < .05 in comparison with all other groups; significant Tukey's, p < .05, in comparison with Asian-American men and all whites.

¹significant Duncan's and Tukey's, p < .05, in comparison with white men.

*p < .05

*p < .05

**p < .001

³Recognizing that rank might also influence some of these relationships, we sought to include this in our analysis. However, outside of white men, there were too few members of race and gender subgroups within ranks to do an analysis at this level. When we examine rank without the subgroup analysis, we find no significant relationship to institutional isolation (F = 1.70, p = .1934), but we do see a relationship to social isolation (F = 6.26, p > .01). In addition, individuals with lower rank report significantly lower levels of affective commitment (F = 2.60, p = .035) and greater intentions to turnover (F = 10.38, p = .001). White men, who represent an overwhelming majority of the sample, are disproportionately located at higher ranks as follows: professors, 205; associate professors, 131; assistant professors, 78; adjuncts/lecturers, 6. Thus, without more members of racial, ethnic and gender subgroups in different ranks, we are unable to show how rank might influence the dependent variables within subgroups.