Why Can’t I Be You? The Hidden Gender Assumptions in Management Narratives (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Discursive Construction of gender in contemporary Management literature
Journal of business ethics, 2008
This article analyses how the new type of worker is constructed in respect to gender in current management literature. It contributes to the increasing body of work in organisational theory and business ethics which interrogates management texts by analysing textual representations of gender. A discourse analysis of six texts reveals three inter-connected yet distinct ways in which gender is talked about. First, the awareness discourse attempts to be inclusive of gender yet reiterates stereotypes in its portrayal of women. Second, within the individualisation discourse, formerly discriminatory elements of gender lose their importance but a gender dimension reappears within the idea of 'Brand You'. Third, in the new ideal discourse, women are constructed as ideal workers of the future. The article argues that there is little space within this web of discourses for an awareness of the continued inequalities experienced by women in relation to men to be voiced and that this rhetorical aporia contributes to a 'post-feminist' climate.
2003
Focusing on the Nordic context, this article highlights complexities between gender equality discourse established at the societal level and discursive practice in organizations, particularly in relation to management, managing and managers. This research task is carried out by deconstructing a management text, and grounding the deconstruction in critical feminist literature. This analysis illustrates how managerial discourse is challenged and questioned by pro-egaliterian arguments in the Nordic context. However, it also demonstrates the pervasiveness of the gendered elements in managerial discourse, which relies on specific conceptions of parenthood where motherhood is constructed as problematic whereas fatherhood remains absent-and thus unproblematic. It is suggested that the 'Nordic case' provides a fruitful basis for similar studies in other societal contexts in Europe.
Discourses of women in management
Why do men continue to fill most of the senior executive positions and seats in the board of directors in Western corporations? Almost everyone agrees that diversity is good, many women are coming down the pipeline, and companies, states and international organizations and institutions have done extensive work to raise the proportion of women. This has helped slightly, but women remain underrepresented at the corporate top. Why is this so? What can be done to solve it? This article presents five different types of answers relating to five discursive codes: nature, talent, business, exclusion and empowerment. They all have conflicting views on the matter, each expressing its particular 'regime of truth'. By decoding these codes, unfolding their arguments and blind spots, this article reveals the complexity of the debate. The point is that in our efforts to break the glass ceiling with respect to women in management, we must become more aware and take advantage of this complexity. We must crack the codes in order to crack the curve.
Discourses of leadership: Gender, identity and contradiction in a UK public sector organization
Leadership, 2006
This article explores leadership as a discursive phenomenon. It examines contemporary discourses of leadership and their complex inter-relations with gender and identity in the UK public sector. In particular, it focuses on various ways in which managers' identities are constructed within discourse, produced in specific historical and institutional sites within specific discursive formations and practices, by specific enunciative strategies . Drawing from interviews with senior managers employed in a large UK local authority, this article researches the dominant discourses of modernization and the primacy afforded to discourses of leadership in the council. It explores first how these discourses become part of managerial workplace identities, and second, what other discourses help to shape managers' identities. Contradiction, discursive production, plurality and ambiguity feature heavily in the analysis of these managers. Accordingly, the article questions dominant hegemonic and stereotypical notions of subjectivity that assume a simple, unitary identity and perpetuate androcentric depictions of organizational life.
This is ch. 15, pp 245-259 in Critical management studies at work: Negotiating tensions between theory and practice, J., Wolfram Cox, T. Le Trent-Jones, M., Voronov, and D. Weir, (Eds.) 2009. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. The chapter reflects on the challenges and opportunities of introducing critical frameworks into the practice of promoting gender equality in organizations. It introduces relevant theory and then offers a case study of an action research project, written from the perspective of the researcher. The author tells the story of doing the research and describes the methodology developed. She then reflects on the qualities of critical research methodology and the risks and rewards of sustaining a critical stance in action research. In conclusion she considers the slipperiness of change and difficulty of identifying concrete outcomes. How can critical approaches to conceptualising change and specifically to equalities practice be useful to change practitioners
The politics of researching gender in organisations
Management Research News, 2003
This article is based on a study of the experiences of women chief executives in British local government. Our emphasis will be on our experiences of carrying out the study, and, in particular, on encountering and working with the political aspects of our research. Following a brief outline of our main findings, we review some of the dangers of “doing research” on women. We continue by describing our first encounters with the politics of gender research – the voices of discouragement that questioned the need for the research. We then outline our attempts to understand more about how our relations with each other as a pair of researchers enabled us to surface the political properties of our research. The article discusses the role of reflexivity in maintaining awareness of researcher bias, and how this might affect our analysis of the experiences of women in the system being studied. Next, we discuss how action researchers inevitably become part of a political system that is characte...