Complexities in Navigating Inequality at the Workplace

Abstract: Organizations and its members play a role in producing and reproducing the gender and racial inequality reflected in larger society. Organizational gatekeepers can perpetuate these disproportionately unequal outcomes, while marginalized employees process and act in response to unequal treatment. Drawing on multiple methods and theories, the present symposium investigates how both gatekeepers and marginalized employees perceive, process, perpetuate and experience the complexities of such inequality in the work context. Across four papers, we consider the nuances of how inequality is perceived and perpetuated by gatekeepers (including skin tone and ideology), while also asking how certain contexts can exacerbate the experience of inequality for marginalized employees (such as resource allocation and organizational culture). Taken together, this symposium presents novel insights into the understandings of gender and race within the context of inequality and appeals to a broad range of scholars, including those in the fields of diversity and inclusion, conflict management, leadership, and teams.

Keywords: diversity, inequality, discrimination