THE EFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL DEMOGRAPHICS AND SOCIAL IDENTITY ON RELATIONSHIPS AMONG PROFESSIONAL WOMEN

This paper examines the impact of women's proportional representation in the upper echelons of organizations on hierarchical and peer relati onships among professional women at work. I propose that social identi ty is the principal mechanism through which the representation of wome n influences their relationships. Both quantitative and qualitative an alyses of interview and questionnaire data are used to compare women's same-sex relationships in firms with relatively low and high proporti ons of senior women. Compared with women in firms with many senior wom en, women in firms with few senior women were less likely to experienc e common gender as a positive basis for identification with women, les s likely to perceive senior women as role models with legitimate autho rity, more likely to perceive competition in relationships with women peers, and less likely to find support in these relationships. These r esults challenge person-centered views about the psychology of women's same-sex work relationships and suggest that social identity may link an organization's demographic composition with individuals' workplace experiences.