Social structure and intergroup interaction: men and women of the federal bureaucracy

Questionnaire data from female employees in a large federal bureaucracy are analyzed to test two theories on the effects offemales' proportional representation in work groups on intraand intergender relations. In general, the data support hypotheses drawn from Blau (1977a) and Blalock (1967) which suggest that the proportional size of a minority subgroup is negatively related to its frequency of contact with, and amount of social support received from, the majority. In addition, female proportional representation is negatively associated with the amount of encouragement for promotion women receive from their male supervisors. Contrary to Kanter's (1977a, b) theory, token women are not found to face more severe organizational pressures than nontokens. However, it is suggested that the dynamics of tokenism described by Kanter tend to partially offset the negative association between female representation and the frequency and quality of male-female interaction patterns. Female representation is found to have significant, but counterbalancing, effects on mutual social support among female workers.