De la ségrégation sexuelle des postes à la mixité au travail : étude d’un processus

Résumé Fr En

À partir de deux études de terrain conduites dans une administration d’État et dans une grande entreprise nationalisée à vocation industrielle et commerciale, cet article s’efforce de montrer que la féminisation des emplois (au niveau de la société globale) n’est pas forcément synonyme de « mixité sociale » au travail (dans les bureaux et les ateliers). L’égalisation des positions respectives entre hommes et femmes ne semble pas assurée pour une série de raisons que l’auteur passe en revue. Au final, la mixité apparaît moins comme un simple ratio que comme un processus, dont les formes et la signification appartiennent largement aux acteurs… et dans une moindre mesure aux actrices.

Field work in a civil service administration and a big nationalized firm is used to show that the ‘feminization’ of jobs in society as a whole is not necessarily synonymous with social mixing in offices and workshops. Men’s and women’s positions are still apparently unequal for several reasons. First of all, the trend toward mixing has occurred at a time when women are being ‘over-recruited’ into jobs and as a hold is being put on their careers. Secondly, mixing far from making the stereotypes associated with each sex disappear sometimes reinforces them (with the help of men but also women). Thirdly, women –and especially those who hold white-collar jobs– seem less inclined than men to form a group and assert their sexual identity. Finally, the degree of mixing at the local level may be used as a tool for managing human resources. Mixing turns out to be not so much a simple ratio as a process, the forms and meanings of which belong to the men involved in the process and, to a lesser degree, to the women.