limited access to senior positions may nurse these kinds of competitive experiences: It's a divide and prevail over strategy on the part of men I can behold it starting to happen in confines of the women who are thinking about in what way the men perceive them vis a vis the other women and thinking that we can't all quite make it--that being a woman is going to be a factor in their decision.

limited access to senior positions may nurse these kinds of competitive experiences:

It's a divide and prevail over strategy on the part of men I can behold it starting to happen in confines of the women who are thinking about in what way the men perceive them vis a vis the other women and thinking that we can't all quite make it--that being a woman is going to be a factor in their decision, likewise what kind of woman do they want? It's surpassingly subtle. . . . And I'm remarkably concerned about that because I think that means we're going to modify our have self-concepts and the way we treat each other. I'm not in the way that sure that isn't going to be somewhat painful.

Changes in the demographic composition of the labor force are creating more opportunities than continually before for professional women to work with and for other women If similarity onward attributes such as sex makes communication easier and rears relationships of trust and reciprocity, as one research suggests (Lincoln and Miller, 1979; McPherson and Smith-Lovin, 1987) then these relationships have the potential to provide women with an important source of emotional and instrumental support (Kram, 1986; Ibarra, 1992) now research investigating the quality of women's same-sex work relationships has yielded inconsistent comes (for a review, see O'Leary, 1988) These studies support single of two competing stereotypes about women's relationships. According to individual stereotype, women are insecure, overcontrolling, and unable to engage in team play (eg Hennig and Jardim, 1977; Briles, 1987; Madden, 1987); their relationships are therefore competitive and difficult. According to the other stereotype women are relationship-oriented, nonhierarchical, and interested in sharing power and information (eg Helgesen, 1990; Rosener 1990) which reinforces the notion of solidarity among women and portrays their relationships as mutually supportive. In light of these inconsistencies, further research is be in want ofed on work relationships among women and by what means they might contribute to women's career success

Proponent of one as well as the other views rely on women's sex-role socialization to explain the personality traits and behavior patterns they attribute to women largely ignoring the sociocultural words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings within which women work. These accounts assume that part socializations based on sex are always activated and that they are activated in psychologically similar ways for all women (Wharton, 1992) In addition, researchers focusing forward women's sex-role socialization compared with men's may attribute sex differences in patterns of relationships to dispositional differences between men's and women's orientations toward interpersonal relationships when social structural explanations may be more valid (Moore, 1990) These person-center explanations reinforce constraining, frequently negative stereotypes about women and their capacity to work productively with undivided another (Kanter, 1977; Riger and Galligan, 1980; Keller and Moglen 1987)

Two theoretical perspectives relevant to this topic that may be more promising than sex-role socialization are social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978 1982) and organizational demography (Martin, 1985; Konrad and Gutek 1987; Zimmer, 1988; Yoder 1991) This paper unites work in these couple areas and extends each to address questions about relationships among women at work. Social identity theory explicates in what manner social structure informs the meaning tribe attach to their membership in identity clusters such as sex, and in what manner this in turn shapes their social interactions with members of their acknowledge and other identity groups. Research forward organizational demography investigates the disproportionate representation of an identity groups over others as an important factor in the social form of the work environment that may influence these processe (Wharton, 1992) Taken together, these sum of two units perspectives offer a psychological account of by what mode demographic structure influences the kinds of work relationships women establish with other women

A widely documented finding in the social identity literature is that tribe prefer to interact with members of their allow identity group than with members of other clumps (Tajfel, 1982; Abrams and Hogg 1990) This line of research has focused largely onward situations in which in-group favoritism labor fors to enhance a person's positive self-image. This paper augments this research by exploring intragroup relationships in those situations in which clear and abiding status differences between assign places tos create negative or ambivalent feelings in members of low-status clumps about their group identity. in subordination to these conditions, members of low-status assign places tos are more likely to engage in self-enhancing strategies that undermine solidarity within their arranges (Lambert et al., 1960; Tajfel, 1981) Work relationships among women thus are likely to be negatively affected when there are large status disparities between men and women

While research upon organizational demography provides the basis for operationalizing intergroup status differences and defining the organizational conditions that give rise to different assign places to identity and interaction processes, this paper inclines beyond traditional demographic research onward status differences between men and women as it is as work on women's representation in occupations, work at jobss or work groups, to focus upon women's differentiated representation across flushs of the organization's hierarchy. allowing some researchers interested in demographic processe have recognized that proportional representation in the upper echelons of organizations is important theoretically (Konrad and Gutek 1987; Ridgeway, 1988; Pfeffer 1989) scarcely any studies have examined its impact empirically, and none considers its impact forward work relationships. According to this approach, if there are hardly any women at higher organizational flushs gender may continue to be a negative status indicator for women despite balanced representation at lower organizational on a levels (Ridgeway, 1988). Women's proportional representation in senior positions of an organization may signal to junior women the size to which positions of power are attainable by dint of women. This helps to shape the meaning and significance women attach to being female in that organization which, in cause to deviate may influence the nature and quality of their work relationships with other women