Handbook of Gender, Work and Organization

Emma Jeanes, David Knights, Patricia Yancey Martin, Emma Jeanes, David Knights, Patricia Yancey Martin

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781444394726
• eBook ISBN:
  9780470979273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Comportamiento organizacional

This work of reference represents a remarkably complete, detailed and extensive review of the field of gender, work and organization in the second decade of the 21^st century. Its authors represent eight countries and many disciplines including management, sociology, political science, and gender studies. The chapters, by top scholars in their areas of expertise, offer both reviews and empirical findings, and insights and challenges for further work. The chapters are organized in five sections: Histories and Philosophies; Organizing Work and the Gendered Organization; Embodiment; Globalization; and Diversity.

• Theoretical and conceptual developments at the cutting edge of the field are explicated and illustrated by the handbook's authors.
• Methods for conducting research into gender, work and organization are reviewed and assessed as well as illustrated in the work of several chapters.
• Efforts to produce greater gender equality in the workplace are covered in nearly every chapter, in terms of past successes and failures. Military organizations are presented as one of the difficult to change in regards to gender (with the result that women are marginalized in practice even when official policies and goals require their full inclusion).
• The role of the body/embodiment is emphasized in several chapters, with attention both to how organizations discipline bodies and how organizational members use their bodies to gain advantage. Particular attention is paid to sexuality in/and organizations, including sexual harassment, policies to alleviate bias, and the likelihood that future work will pay more attention to the body's presence and role in work and organizations.
• Many chapters also address "change efforts" that have been employed by individuals, groups, and organizations, including transnational ones such as the European Union, the United Nations, and so on.

In addition to its value for teachers and students within this field, it also offers insights that would be of value to policy makers and practitioners who need to reflect on the latest thinking relating to gender at work and in organizations.

Section One

Histories and Philosophies of Gender, Work and Organization

Editorial Introduction

To understand gender, work and organization we first explore the philosophical and methodological approaches that characterise this field. Inevitably this review cannot be exhaustive yet the following chapters demonstrate much of the key thinking that represents the field at the current time. They employ feminist theorising, drawing on sociological and philosophical approaches, and propose methods with which to explore gender in the context of work and organization. In contrasting perspectives, a sense of the field and historical developments in approaches are reviewed. Certain themes run through these chapters, namely power and the striving for resistance and transgression; the personal, lived, embodied understandings of gender; gender as a doing or undoing, not a being; gender that is socially situated; and the narration of that experience.

These chapters expose the ‘apparent’ gender neutrality of organizations and organizing and demonstrate the embedded nature of gender in these structures and practices. Understanding gender as embedded in everyday actions owes much to the seminal article of West and Zimmerman (1987) which itself can be seen to develop from one of the most cited statements in the field of gender, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (De Beauvoir, 1993 [1949]: 281). Gender is socially situated, constructed, performative and embodied; it is the doing rather than being with meanings that are fluid rather than essential, contradicting many earlier (and ongoing) approaches within feminism (the work of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva, discussed in Höpfl’s chapter, bring into sharp relief the notion of ‘feminine’). These chapters also note the significance of work by Judith Butler (1990; 2004), whose ideas have been formative in understanding the performativity of gender and the viability of the gendered subject (invoking Foucault’s view of power as regulative as well as productive) on the field of gender, work and organization.

The need to be recognised as a viable subject, achieved by conforming to the prevailing gendered norms, demonstrates that gender is not something to be added to organizing practices, but is inherent within, constructed by and constitutive of these practices. This lays stress on the effects of power and frames gender as a regulated, ordered viability in addition to noting possibilities for transgressing these boundaries, particularly through parody (Butler, 2004) but also through a return to the feminine and ‘writing as a woman’ (Irigaray, 1985; Cixous, 1975). In that sense these chapters are inherently political, concerned with the nature of gender, and its doing/undoing, the embodied, socially situated performativity of the subject, and its regulation. How does the regulated and ordered self strive to live? What does it mean to be a ‘viable subject’? Why should we seek to resist these power relations? How can we subvert them?

In laying out such fundamental ontological, epistemological and methodological groundings of gender, work and organization research, this section provides theoretical underpinning for many of the subsequent chapters.

In Melissa Tyler’s ‘Postmodern Feminism and Organizational Studies: A Marriage of Inconvenience?’ we explore the nature of postmodernism in relation to organization studies including how it has informed and shaped our understanding of gender in the context of organizations and organizing. Tyler helps to unpack what is meant by postmodern (and poststructural) and the confusion that remains about these terms. As she observes, when there is a rejection of a ‘truth’, it is unsurprising that a finite definition remains elusive. Tyler contextualises the interest in postmodern perspectives by feminists who were unsatisfied with the modernist approaches to organization studies and their tendency to view organizations as gender-neutral, thereby ignoring many of the subtle knowledge-power effects. In Tyler’s view, postmodern approaches provide a means to confront the stereotypes and assumptions of the female/feminine and as a consequence, open up the possibility of challenging and ‘playing’ with these accounts. As she notes, the impact of postmodernism in feminist thought is now, compared to even a decade ago, relatively mainstream which is why we start with it in this text. Yet Tyler cautions readers about the problems and criticisms of postmodern feminism, which often go unreported.

In this, and other chapters, we observe how gender is seen as an outcome not an essential component of practice. This has important consequences for our approach to understanding and analysing gender in favouring a deconstructive approach that looks for hidden or suppressed meanings and recognising meaning (or knowledge) as the outcome of power relations. The communication of meaning through language in turn shapes understanding of gender. Language that conveys taken-for-granted knowledge that is thought of as ‘natural’ rather than recognised as invested with power is at stake. But language is not fixed; it is open to new interpretations, and more crucially here to challenge, what Tyler refers to as the ‘site of political struggle’. Gender, therefore, is open to reconstruction, is a ‘meaning’ in flux, a ‘performative ontology’, and at the same time an outcome of power relations. And yet, political struggle is the site in which postmodernism is itself challenged. Feminism has long relied on a relatively stable, coherent category of ‘Othered’ gendered beings in whose name it can speak. The loss of this category, even a feminist-reconstructed version, raises questions about the nature of feminist struggle. It also requires a new method of analysis which locates the situated performance rather than the ‘subject’ as the focus of analysis.

Tyler contrasts postmodernism with ‘essentialist’ notions of gender which not only suggest what gender ‘is’ but give gender a degree of stability. Postmodernism breaks free from these notions in framing gender as a ‘doing’ rather than a ‘being’; it frames gender as constituted through performance. But this performance is not ‘free’; rather it is compelled through the regulatory effects of language that are perceived as ‘viable’ and ‘normal’ (see Gherardi’s chapter). Consequently it also exposes notions of gender to charges of a socially constructed rather than biological essentialism. However, through deconstruction and parody, postmodernism opens the way for revealing the illusions of truth and for the possibility of the subversion of what is taken as normal (see Pullen and Rhodes’ chapter). Postmodernism is not without its critics and ontological challenges, as Tyler notes. However, to avoid ending on a pessimistic note, Tyler offers a potential way forward through the work of corporeal feminists who stress the materiality and embodiment of gender performativity. Tyler’s chapter relates also to other feminist narratives such as Marxist feminist theories, liberal feminism and radical feminism, and takes a reflective and critical approach to postmodernism, providing an invaluable contribution.

Heather Höpfl similarly works within the postmodern/poststructuralist tradition to explore women’s writing, including what they are ‘allowed’ to write and the consequences of these limits in ‘Women’s Writing’. Employing the work of Kristeva, Irigaray and Cixous, amongst others, Höpfl argues that writing is gendered and, moreover, that the conventions of writing are masculine. For writing to be recognised, she says, it must reflect this patriarchal language and conform to its mode of order. Her analysis raises concerns about the disciplining of text, both in one’s own writing and writing in general. She uses the example of academic writing to expose the rules under which one must write. Höpfl argues that Kristeva’s work is particular apposite because she writes in the ‘authoritative, academic style’ and also experiments with a more personal style of writing. Interestingly, Höpfl contends that it is this latter writing that has been criticised for lack of political insight and for the ‘confusion of the personal’. What Höpfl seeks to demonstrate is the difference between the required ‘mastery’ over one’s text and the personal writing of experience. In doing so, Höpfl, though wary of essentialism, nonetheless distinguishes between masculine and feminine writing in a manner that suggests some essence to these ‘styles’; she suggests that there is a ‘feminine way’. It is this writing that is ‘of flesh and blood, of bodies and experiences’. The embodied nature of gender is explored further in Section Two.

Höpfl demonstrates the political nature of writing and its disciplining effects. Indeed, she demonstrates the difficulty in trying to break free from patriarchal hegemony. She directs us to Cixous to consider the implications of the discipline of writing and the striving for a means of communication that gives ‘voice to the (female) body’ in a feminine mode of writing – that resists and subverts the ‘masterful text’, and is defensive in the way in which it protects itself from regulation and definition. Höpfl draws on two aspects of Kristeva’s writing that seek to achieve this position: the ‘breaking’ of the text – such that the ‘personal’ can enter it and challenge the phallocentric language, and the ‘reproduction’ of the text – that is who can reproduce it (and what can be reproduced – as Kristeva argues, a son). The space-between the mastered and embodied language demonstrates the effect of a ‘masculine’ language, and thus what is concealed by writing in this style.

In her writing Höpfl attempts to equally embody this ‘feminine’ style, acknowledging at the same time the limitations of being able to ‘step outside’ the usual order and the tendency for the feminine in writing to be ‘incorporated’ into the masterful text. Her chapter raises interesting questions about the way in which we write and the purpose of disciplining language and how it is defensive against the incursion of the feminine. What risks are we prepared to take in our writing? What risks can we take in our writing without it being ignored or rejected?

The intersection of gender, power and knowledge is further developed in Silvia Gherardi’s chapter, ‘Ways of Knowing: Gender as a Politics of Knowledge?’ Like in previous chapters, she adopts a postmodern approach and employs a Foucauldian approach in which knowledge is linked with power. Her chapter further develops the themes of narrative and deconstruction of narratives. Gherardi’s argument is that knowledge is the product of a particular discourse (which is historically and culturally specific) and is not a universal truth but a power effect; in this way, gender should be seen in the same terms. In taking this approach we can seek to deconstruct these metanarratives to attempt to reveal its effects. However, Gherardi wishes to go further than to merely point to this revelation. She aims to show and perform an alternative narrative, where ‘another form of knowing’ is possible. She draws on Judith Butler’s notions of performativity and the interactionist/constructionist approaches of ‘doing gender’ to understand gender as practice, not biology. Yet it is the gender-binary, and symbolisms attached (required?) to effectively ‘do’ gender, that both give us the sense of ‘what’ a gender ‘is’ and, at the same time, foreclose the possibility for gender to be ‘done’ differently. Through understanding the narrative constructions of the ‘knowing subject’, Gherardi seeks to provide a way of analysing how gender is performed in organizations and how the gender order (the gender-binary) is reproduced. In this way, she uses narratives as the symbols of the gender order as well as the practice (narrating) of gender. Like Höpfl, Gherardi takes an autobiographical turn to narrate this argument from a more personal – arguably feminine – perspective, and in doing so ‘contraven(ing) this tacit code . . . I first tell my story’. Interestingly her story is brief (perhaps demonstrating, as Höpfl argues, the difficulties in ‘écriture feminine’) and is soon followed by the story of the Thracian girl in Plato’s Theaethetus, which relates the tale of the philosopher Thales who fell into a pit whilst looking upwards and was jeered by the servant girl who mocked his desire to know things in the sky such that he did not see what was before him at his feet. Whereas the male philosopher was looking ‘up above’, the servile, foreign female looked at things ‘below’ – distinguishing the (higher) rationality of thought from the mundane realities of the day-to-day practice and – moreover – placing the everyday practice with the ‘Other’ – female, foreign, ignorant. Here we return to suggestions of embodiment as gendered, that it is in practice that we find, symbolically, women who leave ‘higher levels of thought’ to the symbolism of masculine wisdom, thus separating the body of woman from the mind of man. This leaves women excluded or ‘without signification’ in the world of ‘wisdom’. This kind of ‘invisibility’ of the female, Gherardi argues, is symbolized in organizations and in organization studies. The Thracian’s girl’s laughter, the laughter that mocked the ‘disembodied’ philosopher, can be employed as a symbol of resistance to the power of dominant reasoning, the primacy given to the discourse of strategy/organizing (masculine) at the expense of the world of work and practice which are sensual and experiential (feminine). Gherardi does not seek to ‘turn the tables’ but instead she opens up the possibility for ‘multiple discursive positions’ and explores this through feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint epistemology, and feminist postmodernism.

Power and resistance are also implied in the exploration and critique of gender representation in Alison Pullen and Carl Rhodes’ chapter, ‘Gender, Work and Organization in Popular Culture’. In this chapter the authors discuss the representations of ‘cultural norms and stereotypes’ of gender in popular forms of media, as well as the way in which these norms are parodied and (potentially) challenged and subverted. In contrast to a fixed sense of that which is ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’, this chapter creates a space for ‘play’ with what is meant by gender and opportunities for its transgression. Pullen and Rhodes continue the theme of narrative and storytelling as central to understanding gender to explore representations of gender in film and television, focusing on the themes of: working in the city and in corporations, working in the country and in farming, and sex work and sexuality at work (see Hearn, Section Four). They show how certain themes are dominant but not ubiquitous, and – perhaps more importantly – how these images are not only a site for the perpetuation of ‘classic’ gender stereotypes and ideals but also the space in which they can be challenged, parodied, and suggestive of new role models.

Popular culture, they argue, is often blamed for the perpetuation of stereotypes in society and is thus ‘complicit in the fostering of inequality’. Pullen and Rhodes also argue that popular culture provides a means for these representations to be challenged and potentially subverted. Popular culture provides a useful lens on ‘realities’ in organizations – and in drawing attention to them, the medium of popular culture opens up the potential for social critique and forces us to confront and laugh at issues that marginalise, oppress and maintain inequality. But more than exposure, popular cultur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Editorial Introduction
• Section One : Histories and Philosophies of Gender, Work and Organization
• Section Two : Embodying Organizations, Organizing Bodies and Regulating Identities
• Section Three : Organizing Work and the Gendered Organization
• Section Four : Diversity in/and Management and Organizations
• Section Five : Globalization and Gender in/and Management and Organizations
• Biographies
• Index