VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY

Visibility and Invisibility

Visibility and Invisibility

Introduction

Work plays an important role in helping individuals find their true identity as well as helping one builds their self-esteem. However, in the past women were not encouraged to work "real jobs", instead they often stayed at home and are often labeled as house wives. The truth is women do work, they always have worked, but the work that they do are often unpaid labor work. Before men assumed that women didn't really want to work; they didn't need the money; and that they have different interest. (Kimmel) So it was assumes that women either couldn't do a job, or, if they could, they would neither want to nor need to do it. Now in the twenty-first century things have changed dramatically, more women are educated, and more determine to search for their identity and in order for them to do that, they seek out for work. Women participation in the labor force has grown such an extend that society can no longer ignore and view women as unimportant. "The role of women in the workplace has been expanding steadily in recent years in most countries.

Discussion

Issues of visibility and invisibility are becoming increasingly apparent in empirical and theoretical work on gender and organizations. Early work on gender, such as the prolific women in management literature, while not necessarily discussing (in)visibility in explicit terms, sought to make visible women's experiences in organizations. Such work has investigated, among others, the lives of ethnic minority domestic workers often hidden within the private domain; of the service proletariat whose experiences are concealed within the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy; and of workers involved in caring roles rendered invisible by essentialist associations with femininity. One continuing and fruitful area of research on (in)visibility and gender therefore explores the lives of marginalised or 'hidden groups, making visible and accountable their experiences. Other work has helped to make visible those 'suppressed' aspects of organizational life, hidden by dominant management and masculine discourses, such as violence and sexuality, bullying, or sexual harassment.

From a different perspective, Kanter's (1977) seminal work on 'tokens' in organizations has led to a body of literature which has explored the implications of heightened visibility and numerical disadvantage for experiences in the organization. Visibility can be encountered differentially - often as constraining and detrimental for women but potentially advantageous for men through the affording of privilege and opportunities. Less understood are the lived experiences of 'marking' and the implications for subjectivity. How do men, for example, as tokens in 'non-traditional' roles experience the frequent marking of their bodies as disruptive and potentially dangerous in some of the caring work they do? How is this visibility and marking accommodated within the broader management of a gender identity?

Conceptualisations of (in)visibility can usefully explore the power of 'invisibility' that accompanies the norm. Following from Foucault, work on the link between normativity and in(visibility) suggests that men in particular have maintained their position of power partly because they ...