Second of five articles

By R.H. Melton and Kirstin Downey Grimsley
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 23, 1998; Page A1

Louise Kifer was verbally accosted about being a woman from the start of her 40 years as a glass factory worker in Clarion, Pa.

"The president of the local said, 'Those guys don't want you,' " recalled Kifer, 60, who was raising two children at the time. "It's because women try 100 percent, and it makes men look bad.

"These damn men," she added, "need an attitude adjustment."

John Knight, a mortgage loan officer in Williamsburg, Mich., has an adjusted attitude about the workplace of the late 1990s. "There's been a general wising up," said Knight, 47. "Today, if a group of guys are talking in a circle and a woman walks up, the circle opens."

Men and women are profoundly different, and the workplace – the arena where problems are solved, careers made, salaries earned and home life juggled – can have a curious double effect, flattening but also accentuating gender differences like few things in society.

Whether it's in Kifer's gritty factory or Knight's sleek office building, interaction between the sexes has vastly improved in the blink of a generation, according to a nationwide survey by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. Much of the locker room chatter has evaporated in a climate that is warmer and fairer to female colleagues, and men and women have more finely tuned antennas to sexual harassment.

Some experts believe the good news about the workplace is that more people are willing to confront harassment. But those same observers see a potential downside, the potential to chill the working environment, robbing it of a creative energy that comes from men and women working as peers and colleagues.

"I have hope that men who are now 10, 18 and 22 will be in offices and factories that are better places than the workplace of 25 years ago." said Leslie R. Wolfe, president of the District-based Center for Women Policy Studies. "But it would be tragic if we end up with men who are sensitized but also terrorized."

The survey found strikingly similar numbers of men and woman who said that many everyday facets of working life – from asking a colleague for career advice to speaking candidly in groups – are now more difficult. Nearly half the men and more than one-third of the women said they generally avoided complimenting co-workers of the opposite sex on how they looked.

"You have to pre-plan what you say, it seems like," said James Lindow, 35, a warehouse operations manager in Green Bay, Wis.

The great tide of women into the American workplace has forever changed how it looks and sounds. Within two years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the white males who once ruled the nation's commerce will account for only 45 percent of all workers and 15 percent of new employees. Women, nonwhite males and new immigrants will account for 80 percent of labor force growth, and women of all colors will constitute 47 percent of the work force.

But women's increased presence in the workplace has caused different concerns for the sexes. The poll found evidence of discontent and confusion about the ongoing issues of pay equity and career advancement beneath more recent worries about how to divine the best ways to conduct workday dealings.

Wolfe sees women's growing presence as spurring nothing less than a long-term redirection of corporate and office culture as more companies adopt flex time, child care, working at home, job sharing and special mentoring programs for women.

Transforming Cultures
"Understand the level of stress that women simply cannot leave at the door of the office," Wolfe said. "We must transform our corporate cultures to truly value employees who value both their work lives and their home lives."

But to Bill Elder, 53, a furniture sales representative in Dallas and survey respondent, the change comes down to a list of cautious behaviors he has adopted. "If you're in a conversation with a woman, you don't want to have the door closed," Elder said. "You want to be in threes, not in twos, in larger clusters, so there are more people involved, whether you are out for a drink after work or at dinner. All of a sudden, you're thinking of something that never entered your mind before."

Many workplace experts think confusion and resentment about the interaction of men and women at work adds a new layer of anxiety to already overtaxed employees.

"Men and women are left without the supports they need to get through the incredibly complicated world in which we're living," Jesse Bernstein, a Michigan-based expert on corporate employee assistance programs, said in an interview. "The man-and-woman thing has just heightened the level of complexity."

Human resources consultant Tamara Cagney, whose clients have included major firms such as AT&T, Lucent Technologies and Nationwide Savings & Loan, said that workers today are being asked to work 50- and 60-hour weeks and that women are feeling a special burden because of their many family responsibilities.

"Most of them feel like they're running just to stay in place," she said.

Social Burden
Spending even more time outside the office on job-related activities adds to the burden, though it is still perceived as giving an employee an advantage. Many women in the survey said they are held back if they do not socialize with male colleagues.

Adjusting to women as leaders in a workplace is harder still, some survey respondents said.

"The world's not ready for it," said Bob Fletcher, 60, a property maintenance man who lives near Harpers Ferry, W.Va.

Fletcher said that in property management, although men still hold the highest-paying slots, he believes the only reason some women are moving steadily into middle management is that "they work for less money" than a man would want for the job.

On the other hand, he said, one up-and-coming female vice president at his company "really knows her business." He thinks she may be promoted.

Although the survey found areas where people said their workplaces had improved as gender roles shifted, responses also suggested that some bad old ways persist.

Laurie Clawson, 36, a secretary in Detroit, said working women and men are more sensitive now but added: "It's still harder for the woman's side to come forward. The boss always has the more dominant position, especially if [the employee is] a single mother. She might have to grin and bear it."

Likewise, the survey found large numbers of both sexes saying that they believe women are paid less than men for similar work. Two-thirds of the men polled and 80 percent of the women believe women face pay discrimination.

Yet even success can have unexpected repercussions, said Ann Ford, 59, a married nurse who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Ford said she knows of relationships souring over a woman's successes. She said a close friend of hers, also a nurse, started dating a man who was a heavy equipment operator. Things seemed to be going swimmingly until he learned that the woman was making 5 cents an hour more than he was.

"He said he couldn't take it that she was making more money," Ford said. "Men feel threatened when they think a lady is doing better."

That view among men holds back women, said Carlos Alvarado, 36, of La Salle, Ill. Married with five children, he is a counselor who works with disabled people to help them find jobs.

One couple Alvarado knows divorced when the wife, formerly a homemaker, started a small steel recycling business out of her home that grew successful. Her husband resented her accomplishment, Alvarado said.

"He was a successful mechanic, but not like her," Alvarado said. "The husband didn't want his wife to get to her maximum potential. It was a macho thing."

Most people said working women have made it easier for families to earn enough money to live comfortably. At the same time, substantial majorities of women and men said that development in society has made it harder for parents to raise children and for marriages to be successful.

Large numbers of both sexes – more than half of men and of women surveyed – said they thought harassment of women by men was pervasive; much smaller numbers said men were sexually harassed by women. Six out of 10 women polled said harassment by men happens often, and the majority of women and four in 10 men agreed that the federal government should enact tougher laws to curb sexual discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

"We are in such a transition in the way we talk to each other in the workplace," said Wolfe, of the Women Policy Studies center. "Twenty-five years ago, there wasn't even the terminology for sexual harassment – no language, concept or policy."

Jennifer Ponciano, 45, a payroll coordinator in Orland, Calif., said she once had a boss who demanded sex in exchange for her keeping a job. The young single mother of four quit on the spot, "appalled and insulted," and complained to no one.

"People are more aware" of discrimination, Ponciano said. "When it happens, women are listened to."

Added Clawson, the secretary from Detroit: "It all starts back to how the person was raised and came into the work force. It's the value system and how the boss and secretary deal with each other."

'Found the Perfect Place'
Clawson has worked 12 years for a male boss at an investment counseling firm. "Nothing personal ever comes into the office. I found the perfect place to work."

But elsewhere in America, harassment and discrimination continue to fester, the survey found.

Julie Thompson, 28, of Constantia, N.Y., said sexual harassment was a pernicious "undercurrent" at her former workplace, a plastics manufacturing company.

Lindow, the warehouse manager in Green Bay, said his company's culture does not tolerate harassment of any kind, a policy he views as a sea change in his mostly white, mostly male world.

"We've got female truck drivers and female customer service reps coming through here, and when some of these older guys say something they shouldn't, I pull 'em aside and say, 'You can't say that,' " said Lindow, who is married with a daughter, 7, and a son, 4. "I probably never would have done that 10 years ago."

There is a price, though, he said. "You're definitely guarded. ... And you don't get to know them as well. Everybody's more distant."

John Knight, who works in Traverse City, Mich., for the American Financial Mortgage Corp., said he often witnessed "distasteful behavior" by male colleagues in a previous job at a recording studio.

"What was considered standard operating procedure is now demeaning," said Knight, who is married with a son and two stepsons. "It boils down to simple respect," he said. "If I have to say to myself, 'Boy, I better not touch this person or invade their personal space' – I mean, that's just common decency."

Knight's current company is about 40 percent female, and Knight said he has been "amazed and pleasantly surprised by the regard people have for each other." That corporate culture has paid countless dividends, with a competitive pay scale and respect for female colleagues, he said.

Kifer, the glass factory worker in Pennsylvania, has only one female colleague on her 20-member team and likes the men, "a good bunch of guys, all in all."

However, she said, the two women still are often required to do the dirtiest, most undesirable jobs – the things the men don't want to do. From time to time, she speaks her mind about it.

"Once in a while, I have to unload on them," Kifer said. " 'Oh, you immature little boys, get over it.' "