Gender and Workplace Relationships

In 2009 Winstead and Morganson published a chapter on “Gender and Relationships at Work” tor Wright and Morrison’s Friends and Enemies in Organizations: A Work Psychology Perspective. That chapter explored the complexities of studying gender and relationships at work and reviewed the research literature on the role of gender in workplace friendships, social networks, mentor relationships, cross-sex relationships, and negative relationships at work. This chapter updates what we know about these topics and expands the scope of discussion to other aspects of gender and relationships at work, including gender’s role in workplace romances, leader/member relationships, virtual relationships, and relationships in family businesses. Gender is an undeniably critical factor in many aspects of the psychology of work, including the types of jobs and careers that individuals seek and receive, their promotions and career paths, and the ways in which individuals are perceived and evaluated as employees and employers. In day-to-day interactions we cannot escape the fact that we not only behave and respond in ways that are to some degree a function of our gender, but we are also perceived and responded to in ways determined in part by our gender. Psychology has a long tradition of studying sex differences and gender; and researchers have drawn numerous and sometimes contradictory conclusions about the importance of these gender differences and certainly about the sources of these differences.