Hierarchies jobs bodies a theory of gendered organizations

Critically Discuss The Following Statement With Reference To Relevant Theory And Practice: ‘Gender Equality Is Not Just Good For Women In Organizations It Is Good For All Organizational Members’.

The Masculine Organization

Lecture 6

In this session...

To explore the gendered nature of organizations.

To question the dominance of masculine forms of organization.

To analyse the implications for individuals working in organizations.

When you think of ‘masculine’ what comes to mind?

Traditional Gendered Distinctions in Society

Masculine

Public

Outside

Work

Work

Production

Independence

Power

Feminine

Private

Inside

Home

Leisure/pleasure

Consumption

Dependence

Lack of power

Masculine industries and jobs

What industries and jobs are seen as masculine?

Are masculine industries and jobs problematic? Why?

Gendered Stereotypes in Management

Logical

Rational

Aggressive

Exploitative

Strategic

Independent

Competitive

Intuitive

Emotional

Submissive

Empathetic

Spontaneous

Nurturing

Cooperative

Adriana Huffington

“The work culture in Silicon Valley needs to change. The machismo signals to women that they’re not welcome. I was surprised and shocked to hear the allegations of sexual harassment at Uber [Huffington is a board member]. I’m committed to making whatever changes are necessary.

I used to live under the delusion that I had to burn out to succeed. In 2007, when I was two years into the Huffington Post and had been working around the clock as well as being a mother to two teenage daughters, I collapsed from exhaustion. It was a wake-up call.”

19/3/2017 The Guardian

Female engineer sues Tesla, describing a culture of 'pervasive harassment'

It’s very difficult for women to come forward.

They’re concerned that their career is going to be jeopardized

Therese Lawless, lawyer for AJ Vandermeyden

28/2/2017

Sex and Gender

Biological differences between male or female.

Social constructions of appropriate behaviours, displayed qualities etc. (based on ascriptions of sex).

Sex

Gender

Gender is “The socially produced pattern of meanings which distinguish man, men and masculine from woman, women and feminine” (Acker, 1992)

Gender is socially constructed and it is performed - we ‘do’ gender rather than ‘have’ a gender (Gherardi, 1995).

Acker, J. (1992) Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organziation, Gender and Society, 4(2): 139-158

Gherardi, S. (1995) Gender, Symbolism and Organizational Cultures, London: Sage.

Gender as Performance

Gender as something we do, rather than something we are (Pullen, 2006).

Doing and undoing (Pullen and Knights, 2004).

Gender is like putting on drag (Judith Butler (1990) Gender Trouble. London: Routledge)

The Gendered Organization

“To say that an organization… is gendered means that advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine”.

Acker, J. (1992) Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organziation, Gender and Society, 4(2): 139-158

Five Processes of Organizational Gendering

Gendered Division of Power – men almost always in the highest positions of organizational power.

Gendered Symbolism – through language, dress and popular culture – e.g. association of business leaders as masculine.

Patterns of Interaction – communication in organizations that support that idea that men are ‘actors’ and women are ‘supporters’.

Gendered Identity – assumptions that men and women must enact particular identities through choice of work, language use, clothing, gendered self presentation.

Gendered Structures – assumptions of rationality, hierarchy and separation of public and private spheres.

Acker, J. (1992) Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organziation, Gender and Society, 4(2): 139-158

Gender issues in the past?

Vertical division of labour e.g. women working in lower levels of the organization.

Women in administrative roles, and jobs associated with women’s work (eg personnel management and nursing).

Women unable to break into the higher echelons of management.

Gendered assumptions – in language and humour, behaviour, identity of actors, dress of actors.

Gendered cultures - difference marginalised, sameness reinforced, group think of dominant assumptions.

Gendered Hierarchy

Gendered Occupations

Glass Ceiling

Gendered Assumptions

Gendered Cultures

Types of Organizational Masculinity

traditional authoritarianism (bullying and a culture of fear).

gentleman’s club (protectionism, paternalism, based on the assumption that men are born to rule and obliged to ‘protect’ women).

entrepreneurialism (task-oriented, a workaholic culture).

informalism (schoolboyish, ‘larrikin’, attached to sporting and sexual rituals).

careerism (values expertise and bureaucratic career progression).

gender-blind (everyone regardless of gender is ‘treated like a man’).

feminist pretenders (supportive of equality but the onus is on women to take the responsibility for developing equality).

smart macho (highly competitive, driven by performance, discriminates against those who cannot work at the desired pace or who question the competitive ethos).

“Studies of workplaces have increasingly revealed how masculinity is interwoven into the cultural and institutional presumptions of management and organizational leadership, while organization is reinforced by particular masculine practices and expression”.

Sinclair, A. (2005) Doing Leadership Differently, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Fathers 'afraid to ask for flexible working'

Research suggests 44% of dads have lied about family-related responsibilities.

The Women and Equalities Committee inquiry aims to find out how much support fathers receive at work.

Tina Miller, Professor of Sociology at Oxford Brookes University, noted that while the introduction of Shared Parental Leave was an important signal of a commitment to change, it was simply not the case that men and women now had an equal choice over who would work in a family.

"It's much more complex than that, because people need money when a baby is born, usually because of the motherhood penalty, when the mother doesn't earn so much, there are all sorts of financial reasons it makes sense for the father to stay in work."

The government forecasts that between 2% and 8% of eligible fathers will take up Shared Parental Leave, a flagship policy introduced in 2015.

"Many fathers want to be just as involved in their children's lives as mothers do, which is good for children too."

But she said there were "significant questions about whether culture at work has changed enough" to enable the shared leave policy to be effective.

22/3/2017 BBC News

Masculinity at work (Knights and Pullen, in process)

From the 1970s onwards, discourses of managerialism and masculinity have been pre-eminent in organizations within neo-liberal economies.

Since the turn of the 21st century, they have become increasingly manifest and gained mass support in a range of autocratic reactionary and macho developments or consolidations within China, Russia, North Korea and much of Europe.

Aggressive masculinity seems almost respectable or at least immune to the legitimate challenges of those damaged by it.

Masculine discourses and practices thrive on disembodied and phallogocentric modes of rationality (Derrida, 1982; Irigaray, 1985), compulsory heterosexuality (Foucault, 1977) or heterosexual hegemony (Butler, 1990) and the glorification of power (Pullen and Rhodes, 2015).

This rationality is tunnel visioned in its pursuit of strategic and instrumental goals designed to increase economic wealth for citizens, shareholder value in private corporations and cost effective efficiency in public organizations.

Masculinity in organizations

Masculine managerialism of ‘conquest, competition and control’ (Kerfoot and Knights, 1994).

Inequalities of power and gendered subjectivities (Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Knights, 1990).

Highlighted and theorized the subordination of gendered others in organizations that privilege hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995;Fotaki, 2012) as well as identifying its costs (Messner, 1997).

Heteronormal masculinity is the default and dominant social order, e.g. male Israeli combat soldiers - the male body becomes a site or resource for status, prestige and dominance in military organizations (Kachtan and Wasserman, 2015).

The dominance masculinity in organizations sustains a predominantly white, middle class, able-bodied, heterosexual and homosocial hegemony (Knights and Pullen, forthcoming).

Minority masculinities e.g. female masculinity asks us to read masculinity outside of the male body (Halberstam, 1998).

Female leaders

The ways in which feminine and masculine have been mapped onto male and female bodies in the leadership literature are rather outmoded (cf. Ladkin, 2008, 2012; Sinclair, 2005).

The feminine or hyper feminine leader who may or may not masquerade to conceal masculine, rational styles and outcomes, OR

The masking of femininity to portray desired masculine attributes.

Or, it appears that another option to ‘take account of oneself’ as a means to provide authentic leadership (Ford and Harding, 2011; Ladkin and Taylor, 2010)?

The ethical and political potential of living a ‘liveable life’ (Pullen and Vachhani, 2017).

Gendering Management Knowledge

Is management knowledge ‘mainstream’ or ‘malestream’?

Gender not considered a significant variable

So… organization and management theory are assumed to be gender-neutral

E.g. classical theory – set of functions.

E.g. relationships to employees – human relations.

But this knowledge is gender-blind rather than neutral

Always based on the masculine – a masculine norm .

Feminine excluded, marginalised and rendered abject.

Wilson, F. (1996) Organization Theory: Blind or Deaf to gender?, Organization Studies, 17(5): 825-843