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The purpose of this paper is to revisit theoretical positions on gender and the implications for gender in management by building upon current research on doing gender well (or appropriately in congruence with sex category) and re‐doing or undoing gender and argue that gender can be done well and differently through simultaneous, multiple enactments of femininity and masculinity.

This is a theoretical paper.

The authors argue that individuals can perform exaggerated expressions of femininity (or masculinity) while simultaneously performing alternative expressions of femininity or masculinity. The authors question claims that gender can be undone and incorporate sex category into their understanding of doing gender – it cannot be ignored in experiences of doing gender. The authors contend that the binary divide constrains and restricts how men and women do gender but it can be disrupted or unsettled.

This paper focuses upon the implications of doing gender well and differently, for gender and management research and practice, drawing upon examples of leadership, entrepreneurship, female misogyny and Queen Bee.

This paper offers a conceptualization of doing gender that acknowledges the gender binary, while also suggesting possibilities of unsettling it.

This paper aims to study the kinds of methodologies used in studying “doing gender” in working life and organisations. To do so, articles that use empirical research materials from different academic peer-reviewed journals have been analysed. By methodologies, both data gathering tools and the analysing techniques using and concerting the data have been largely understood. In the articles analysed, interviews were the main methodological tool in extracting the “doing gender”, while studies using naturally occurring data, e.g. historical materials and methods in relation to this type of data were in the minority. The following question has been proposed for further exploration: What impact does the domination of interviews as a research method have on the concept of “doing gender”?

Qualitative content analysis, close reading and data were collected from academic peer-reviewed journals with the applied principles of literature review.

The research methodologies adopted in the articles on “doing gender” mostly deal with interview data and their analysis. Interview data are used most often as the primary source for ethnographic analysis. These method choices limit the potential interpretations available for the analysis of the conceptual idea of “doing gender”.

The limitations of this article relate to the journals chosen for the analysis.

This paper contributes toward a deeper understanding of the “doing gender” approach, particularly by exploring the research methodologies that have been used when studying “doing gender” approach empirically.

This study aims to answer two questions: (a) what obstacles and opportunities do Chinese female entrepreneurs face when doing business? And (b) how do they negotiate their entrepreneurial careers and gender identities in different gender-segregated markets?

This study uses qualitative research methods of participant observation and in-depth interviews with 41 female entrepreneurs in China and the theoretical lenses of gender role theory and doing gender in entrepreneurship.

The study findings reveal that Chinese female entrepreneurs face different obstacles and opportunities in gender-segregated industries. Their experiences vary in industries that are mainly occupied by males and females. On the one hand, women in female-dominated industries may be supported by a feminine working environment that is coherent with their domestic roles. However, they may also be questioned on the cultural impurity implied in some industries, which harms their class-based feminine virtue. On the other hand, women in male-dominated industries may be challenged and marginalized due to their gender. However, some find ways to turn the disadvantaged feminine characters into favourable conditions and break out of the stereotypical gender constraints in doing business.

This study contributes to the literature on gender and entrepreneurship in general. More specifically, it contributes to the study of doing gender in gender-segregated markets, and it also illustrates women’s gendered opportunities and constraints in Chinese society that are affected by the long-lasting traditional gender norms.

Gender-diverse people experience unique cultural and interpersonal stigma in mainstream society and sometimes within their own communities; they face allegations of inauthenticity based on their nonconformity to either cisnormative or transnormative gender regimes. Based on 21 in-depth life history interviews, we unveil the intricate interactional process of negotiating identity and authenticity in the biographical work of gender-diverse individuals. In this study, gender-diverse people engaged in a “gender audit” with their gender-diverse interviewer. Gender audits yield verbal performances of gender with oneself and others. Ambiguity was “accounted for” or “embraced and created” in their biographical work to organize their life stories and undermine binary essentialism – a discourse that was “discursively constraining.” Gender audits took place in participants' day-to-day lives, either through self-audits, questioning from others, or both. In the final analysis, we assert that we all engage in gender auditing. Gender audits are intersubjective sites of domination, subordination, resistance, and social change. Gender diversity, then, can be viewed as a product of gender in flux.

The purpose of this paper is to enable the author to discuss some personal experiences from research and teaching that relate to the special circumstances of doing gender research.

When reading about Styhre's and Tienari's experiences, the author is not so surprised by but rather concerned about the resemblance and reflections evoked by the text vis‐à‐vis her own experiences of doing research in the gender field. During recent decades, she had the opportunity to explore various organizing issues in her research, from technology and organizational change to gender and intersectionality. This provided her with both an inside and outside perspective on some of the specificities which recur in the field of gender studies.

Doing gender research enables men and women to “become with” women, men and other people. When able to respond to other people with respect, the researcher can “become with” the studied one. By going into the experiences previously shared by other scholars doing gender studies, and by reflecting upon these, the opportunities for men and women to “become with” will most likely increase.

In a performative way, “doing gender” includes a way of recognizing the context in which the author is situated. When this position is challenged, things start to happen. Whether one is being challenged as a woman, as a man, as a researcher, or for not understanding gender in the proper feminist way, the conditions of one's comprehension of doing gender are called into question. Reflexivity is thus – as Styhre and Tienari claim – a product of social encounters.

This feminist standpoint study aims to make an empirical contribution to the entrepreneurial leadership and HRD fields. Women entrepreneur leaders' experiences of gender will be explored through a framework of doing gender well and doing gender differently to unsettle the gender binary.

Against a backcloth of patriarchy, a theoretical gender lens is developed and a feminist standpoint research (FSR) approach taken in this study. There are five case studies of women entrepreneur leaders operating small businesses across North East England in sectors of IT, law, construction, beauty, and childcare. In each case study a two‐stage semi‐structured interview process was implemented and the women's voices analysed through a framework of doing gender well and differently.

This paper highlights the complexities of gender experiences offering four themes of women entrepreneurs' experiences of gender within entrepreneurial leadership: struggling with entrepreneurial leadership; awareness of difference; accepting and embracing difference; and responding to difference, which are offered to challenge the gender binary and capture the complexities of how gender is experienced.

The field must begin to shift its focus from the dominant masculine discourse to foster understandings of gender experiences by using gender as an analytical category to enable the field to truly progress.

Women are still an under‐represented group within entrepreneurship and within the higher echelons of organisations. This requires greater attention.

This feminist study calls for both scholars and practitioners to analyse critically their underlying assumptions and bring a gender consciousness to their HRD research and practice to understand gender complexities within entrepreneurial leadership and organisational experiences more widely.

Gender and disability are intimately connected as embodied experiences that young people navigate interactionally. Disabilities scholars have theorized that men and women with chronic health conditions face uniquely gendered challenges. Theories of gender and disability centered on youth continue to gain prominence as the population of children and young adults with chronic health conditions grows. This study draws on data from 22 in-depth interviews with young adults diagnosed with chronic health conditions in childhood in the United States. Women, men, and gender nonbinary individuals report that doing disability in interactions in childhood meant doing gender in expected feminine ways. Specifically, interviewees described increased empathy, a deep understanding of their own emotions, and the ability to use adversity to connect with and benefit others as expectations. Interviewees employed or resisted doing gender in ways that reflected individuals' gender locations. Women and nonbinary individuals saw feminine performance as a sign of weakness, often resisting demonstrating it in interactions. On the other hand, feminine performance reportedly impacted men in the sample in positive ways. This study takes a life course approach to illuminate how the ableist expectations expressed to disabled children are gendered and impact how disabled young adults negotiate an ableist world.

This paper aims to explore how gender is “done” on farms in Sweden in the context of increased tourism and hospitality activities. The authors seek to investigate how gender is done vis-à-vis women’s farm tourism entrepreneurship. They seek to answer the questions: What has motivated the farm women to become tourism entrepreneurs? How are the gendered divisions of labor changed through women starting businesses? How does the gendered associated symbolism, as well as the identities, change?

Research has indicated that introducing tourism entrepreneurship at farms may challenge established gender relations, as many of these entrepreneurs are women. The empirical material consists of in-depth interviews with 15 women farm tourism entrepreneurs in central Sweden.

The analysis suggests that the gendered divisions of labor are not changed through the interviewed women starting tourism businesses. The authors conclude that the women build their entrepreneurship and develop some of their products on an image of rural domesticity, including a representation of themselves as traditional farm women. At the same time they are changing how gender is done through identifying as entrepreneurs and changing the use of the farms.

The authors seek to fill the research gap concerning women’s farm tourism entrepreneurship and the potential associated gendered changes. Their theoretical contribution is applying the perspective of “doing gender” and entrepreneurship, for delineating potential changes in gendered relations.

This study aims to identify women professionals' strategies to persist in the male-dominated technology industry situated in the Bangladeshi socio-cultural context.

In-depth interviews with women tech professionals were conducted to identify and explore the strategies. Thematic coding was used for data analysis.

The findings suggest that the complex interplay of macro-, meso- and micro-factors pushes women to defy societal and gender norms in their choice and persistence, yet they simultaneously conform to these norms. By simultaneous expressions of doing and undoing gender, these women dealt with hierarchies and inequalities, navigated masculinized industry and empowered themselves within a patriarchal culture. The strategies effectively allowed them to demonstrate agency and persist in tech occupations.

The study participants were women and recruited using snowball sampling. Future research could benefit from recruiting a larger, more varied sample using random sampling.

The study can inform teaching and policy initiatives to increase women's representation in tech sectors through awareness campaigns, policy interventions and counseling.

The research extends the doing and undoing framework by integrating the relational perspective to explain women's agency and resilience situated in a patriarchal context. The paper focuses on women's micro-individual strategies to navigate macro- and meso-level forces. Moreover, Bangladesh is an under-researched context, and findings from the study can help design potential intervention strategies to increase women's participation.

This study aims to examine how masculinities are (re)produced in project-based organizations. The authors first investigate the doing of masculinities in everyday work practices in construction project management. Second, the authors investigate whether there are opportunities to perceive, or do, gender differently in this specific context.

Data are elicited from a case study of construction project managers working on a infrastructure project. The project managers were interviewed through semi-structured informal interviews regarding their experiences of project work. The analysis was inspired by the competing discourses and practices of masculinity in organizations outlined by Collinson and Hearn (1994).

The results showed how multiple masculinities coexist and overlap in the project organization and in the everyday practices of project management. Both male and female project managers must adjust to these masculine discourses and act in accordance with a particular context. But the results also showed opportunities to challenge the masculine norms by doing gender differently.

The results of this study highlights opportunities for creating a more gender-equal work environment in the construction industry. The multiple ways of doing masculinity, by both men and women, highlights the possibilities to balance between doing it well and differently. Such knowledge can be used in policy and strategies for equal opportunities for men and women in organizations.

This study provides insights into the (re)production of multiple masculinities in construction project management. This study contributes to the criticism of the normative conceptions that have characterized the literature on project management. The authors add to the tradition of organization studies by arguing that the gender analysis of project management is important to increase understandings of how projects are managed and, in this case, how masculine discourses affect everyday work.