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Through an examination of the everyday organisational and social practices, this paper aims to consider gender performativity and hegemonic masculinity within front office investment management. At the core of this research is the need to understand the interactions between gender, power and patriarchy.

An interpretivist philosophical stance underpins the study. A theory-building approach using 19 semi-structured interviews with investment management employees based in Ireland was undertaken.

The findings highlight a sector in which gender is performed in line with sectoral expectations, which place men in positions of dominance with hegemonic masculinity inherent. The organisational structures and daily interactions are imbued with male norms, which dictate how gender is to be performed, and which places women firmly as “different” and “outsiders”. These mechanisms of inequality are further supported by men’s “blocked reflexivity”.

The findings of this study indicate clear evidence of a “patriarchal dividend”, which is underpinned by the maintenance of closure regimes and gender blindness particularly, among senior male gatekeepers. Such results call for policymakers to go beyond goals of numerical parity and ensure transparency and equality across all aspects of work. A holistic and multifaceted approach to addressing issues of gendered culture and the normalisation of men’s privileged relationship with power positions is needed.

This paper is situated within a relatively under-researched labour market space, that of investment management. The findings conceptualise gender as a social process, thus facilitating traditional assumptions about gender at work as a single entity to be challenged. The results also advance theoretical insights of misogynistic work cultures and hegemonic masculinity through the analysis of gendered behaviours within this traditionally male environment.

To analyse the relationship between China, patriachy, ageing, and social theory grounded in Judith Butler's notion of performativity.

This is a novel theoretical framework to examine instances of patriachal identities by using China as a case study.

Performativity, we suggest, offers productive insights into the processes of subjection and the nature of power relations that may be usefully incorporated into studies of the elderly in China.

This is a theoretical paper.

It raises questions to relationship of patriachy to understanding Chinese culture.

It is an original paper in that an application of Butler's conceptual tools have bot been applied elsewhere to examining China and ageing.

This paper aims to understand the dialectical relationship between place-making and identity formation of factory women in a free trade zone (FTZ) in the Global South.

Inspired by Judith Butler’s notions of performative acts and performativity, the paper uses poststructuralist discourse analysis to analyze data – oral and written texts – generated through a fieldwork study conducted in an FTZ in Sri Lanka.

Performative acts and the performativity of the occupants in the FTZ demarcate the boundary of the zone and articulate the identities of its occupants. Furthermore, the study shows that, in this process, such performativity and performative acts function as a form of “glue” to amalgamate the places of the zone space as kalape, a complex socio-geographical landscape in flux.

This study provides a new insight into the relationships between discursive-performative acts, place-making and identity formation of (factory) women in the neoliberalized (zone) space(s) of the Global South.

By articulating the FTZ as a (neoliberalized) space in a perpetual present, the study provides new insight into the relationships between performative acts, place-making and identity formation (of factory women) in the zone space.

Purpose – This chapter responds to interdisciplinary debates regarding studies of sex, sexuality, and gender. I briefly examine how the sex/gender paradigm of the 1960s shaped feminist theory in the social sciences and explore two feminist frameworks that have contested the sex/gender paradigm: West and Zimmerman's “doing gender” and Butler's performativity. I situate this literature, and related debates about intersectionality, in the context of Margaret Andersen's (2005) Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) feminist lecture.

Methodology/approach – Using empirical analyses of brief television excerpts, I develop an ethnomethodological study of practice and poststructural analysis of discourse to demonstrate how trenchant forms of cultural knowledge link together gender, sex, and sexuality.

Findings – Sex and gender function as disciplinary forces in the service of heterosexuality; consequently studies of gender that do not account for sexuality reproduce heterosexism and marginalize queer sexualities. These findings, considered in relationship to Andersen's analysis of intersectionality, illustrate both a narrow conceptualization of the field rooted to a 19th century European model and a methodological mandate that must be examined in relationship to the politics of social research.

Practical implications – A more fruitful conceptual starting point in thinking through intersectionality may be citizenship, rather than systematic exploitation of wage labor. In addition, a more full analysis of intersectionality would also require that we rethink our methodological orientations.

Originality/value of paper – The chapter illustrates some of the analytic effects and political consequences that commonsense knowledge about gender, sex, and sexuality holds for feminist scholarship and advances alternative possibilities for future feminist research.

This purpose of this paper is to draw on theatre theory to develop the notion of gender performativity in organisational contexts. It presents an interdisciplinary approach that is fruitful in an era of increasing organisational aestheticisation and persistent aesthetic discrimination.

Theatre theory and performance analysis is used to develop aesthetic approaches to gendered organizations.

The interplay of different elements in the aesthetic situation of real‐life performances for the constitution of a subject is revealed, highlighting the very complex nature of gender and its reproduction in organisations.

The paper suggests that theatre theory can be an addition to existing research which analyses facets of the gendered nature of behaviour.

The importance of an awareness of aesthetics and performativity at all organizational levels is emphasised. Insights into performance theory may affect individual perception and behaviour.

Research on gender and impression management is complemented by an unusual theatre studies perspective.

This study aims to explore the experience of performing androgynous leadership approaches by New Zealand women leaders within the context of everyday conflict situations.

The research question “How do women leaders experience gender in conflict situations?” was explored through the facilitation of 4 focus groups with 19 senior female leaders in New Zealand. Poststructural discourse analysis was used to explore how participants negotiated positions of power within their environments and in accordance with competing gendered discourses.

Participants described taking a flexible, balanced, androgynous leadership approach to managing conflict situations. While the expectations to be “empathetic”, “sympathetic”, “gentle”, “nurturing” and “caring” resonated with the participants preferred approach, they remained firm that if conflict persisted, they would “cross the line” and adopt stereotypically masculine behaviours to resolve the situation. However, participants describe that when perceived to be crossing the line from feminine to masculine approaches, they experienced significant backlash. This demonstrates the tensions between the approaches women leaders would like to take in managing conflict and the experiences of doing so within a prescriptively gendered organisational context.

This research contributes to a gap which exists in understanding how gender is experienced from the viewpoint of the woman leader. This research presents a nuanced view of gendered leadership as a contested ground, rather than a series of strategic choices. Despite an increase in the acceptance of women into leadership positions, the authors seemingly remain bound by what is considered a “feminine” leader.

This chapter examines the nexus between women's experiences of domestic abuse and their subsequent violent offending, as viewed through the lens of keyworkers in a women-only charity. The role of female subjectivity, stereotypes of femininity and the gendering of behaviours is discussed, alongside an exploration of the paradox of the female ‘victim-offender’. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with the keyworkers, drawing on the author's experience of working in the system, enable individual voices to be captured in detail, resulting in a rich narrative piece. This is analysed thematically and framed conceptually by the work of Judith Butler on gender performativity and precarious existence, and Jessica Benjamin on the ‘Third’ and the potential of recognition to transcend the experience of gendered violence. The discussions lead to the conclusion that the keyworkers' attention to interpellatory dynamics and intersubjectivity effects powerful individual change. However, the impact of this is limited, as the criminal justice system itself acts as Benjamin's ‘moral Third’, maintaining its status quo of inequality and gendered violence through patriarchal attitudes and a corresponding language of exclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodological implications of queering organizational research. The author examines three related questions: what does queering organizational research entail?; how have organizational scholars queered research to date?; and how does queering organizational research and methodologies advance our understandings of organizing processes?

The paper begins with an overview of queer theory, which is followed by a review of the ways in which organizational research and methodologies have been and can be queered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of queering organizational research and methodologies and offers research questions that can guide future research that draws from queer theory.

The author claims that methodologies are queered through a researcher’s commitment to enacting the philosophical assumptions of queer theory in a research project. Much of the value of queering methodologies lies in its disruption and critique of conventional research practices, while enabling us to explore new ways of understanding organizational life.

Queer theory is still nascent but growing in organizational research. To date, there has been little consideration of the methodological implications of queering organizational research. This paper discusses these implications and can thus guide future research that is informed by queer theory.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate enterprise social media systems and quantified gender and status influences on emotional content presented in these systems.

Internal social media messages were collected from a global software company running an enterprise social media system. An indirect observatory test using Berlo’s “source–message–channel–receiver” model served as a framework to evaluate sender, message, channel and receiver for each text. These texts were categorized by gender and status using text analytics with SAP SA to produce sentiment indications.

Results reveal women use positive language 2.1 times more than men. Senior managers express positive language 1.7 times more than non-managers, and feeling rules affect all genders and statuses, but not necessarily as predicted by theory. Other findings show that public messages contained less emotional content, and women expressed more positivity to lower status colleagues. Men expressed more positivity to those in higher positions. Many gender and status stereotypes found in face-to-face studies are also present in digital enterprise social networks.

Limitations include generalizability: all data were collected from a single enterprise social media system.

Managers establishing codes of conduct for social media use will find this research useful, particularly when promoting awareness of emotional expressiveness in online venues with subordinate colleagues.

This study offers a behavioral measurement approach free from validity issues found in self-reported surveys, direct observations and interviews. The collected data offered new perspectives on existing social theories within a new environment of computerized, enterprise social media.