Wielding womanly wiles
in the workplace is unwise

It's just too much in the workplace, according to a study presented at a symposium yesterday at the Hawaii Convention Center. The exception may be a so-called "Bazoom girl" who works in a "popular American restaurant," or Hooters, the study said.

The symposium, part of the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, was titled, "Doing the Taboo: Studying Sexuality in the Workplace." It featured three studies on the subject that is otherwise little-researched.

The first study, "Sex as a Tool: Does Utilizing Sexuality at Work Work?" answered its own question with a definitive "no."

Presenter Suzanne Chan-Serafin said flirting for success equates to flirting with disaster.

The Tulane University researchers who prepared the study used the pop culture example of "The Apprentice" TV show as to illustrate their findings. Some of the young female executives battling for a $250,000-a-year job blatantly used their sexuality to sell lemonade to gain a business advantage over their male competitors. Small cups of lemonade were overpriced and sold along with kisses and phone numbers. Yet, there were no female finalists by competition's end.

"Using your sexuality to get ahead will backfire," concluded Tulane's Arthur P. Brief, who conducted the research with Chan-Serafin, Jill Bradley and Marla Watkins.

The second study, "Sex through the Ages: Considering the Intersection of Gender Identity, Sexuality and Age," was a case study of one workplace. The third study, "The Sanitized Workplace," called for a better legal interpretation of sexual harassment laws and suggested that society allow people to be more human in the office.

The "Sex as a Tool" study did not seek to make moral judgments, but nevertheless found that the more women used sex to benefit themselves at work, the more they suffered fewer promotions and lower salaries.

The team also coined the term "benevolent sexism" for workplaces where women are viewed as needing "to be protected and put on a pedestal." The darker side of the seemingly positive attitude is the reinforcement of the stereotype that women are weak and vulnerable, the study says.

"While there's nothing wrong with men's being courtly, our findings suggest that women should be wary of a place where men make a great show of opening doors for them or lifting boxes that aren't particularly heavy," Brief said.

Chan-Serafin noted that there is a "general devaluation of femininity in the workplace and that using sex as a tool triggers and confirms the feminine stereotypes."

The Tulane study parallels findings of other research showing that girls with low self-esteem are more likely to use sex, rather than other assets, to get what they want.

Women with low self-esteem are more likely to use sex as a workplace tool and to endorse or encourage benevolent sexism, the study says.

For the "Sex through the Ages" study, researchers studied an Internet media company, Girls Chat. They found that the identities of 23- to 31-year-old female workers were based more on sexuality than age.

However, that finding might have had something to do with the company's mission: to provide Internet content and commerce for girls and women ages 13 to 30.

Sexual conversations are generally frowned upon in the workplace, but being a woman at Girls Chat meant "being sexually adventurous" and being explicit about it, said Debra Meyerson of Stanford University. She prepared the report with Nicole Kangas, also of Stanford.

For the 20-something women in that office, "sex was actively a part of their self-identity," Meyerson said.

When the women wandered over to the male side of the office, conversation also was sexually driven.

Meyerson encouraged further study of the subject, which appeared to raise more questions than it answered.

Moderator Robin Ely of Harvard University presented the paper "The Sanitized Workplace," by Yale University researcher Vicki Schultz, who was unable to attend the Hawaii meeting. Schultz is a legal scholar who has studied workplace harassment.

The current environment stifles workers, Schultz said in her paper.

"Work is not just a way to make a living," she said. Rather, the goal should be "to create a workplace that accommodates all aspects of human life."

Her study calls for "rejecting the sanitizing impulse and allowing people to become more fully human."