Abstract

Many women professionals traverse settings beyond the office in their work, but research on women professionals rarely follows them out of the office. Using a large, archived data set of focus groups with sales professionals, the authors ask how work in out-of-the-office settings affects women’s careers. The authors distinguish between two types of settings. In “heterosocial” settings, interaction rules are traditionally and normatively gendered; women and men are understood by others as heterosexually linked pairs, women become targets of gossip, and some women report sexual advances and sexual harassment. In “homosocial” settings such as golf courses and strip clubs, women’s disadvantage takes the form of exclusion.