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1 – 10 of 67The purpose of this paper is to explore if women who are in positions of leadership are influenced by gender when voting for a party led by a female candidate and if perceptions…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore if women who are in positions of leadership are influenced by gender when voting for a party led by a female candidate and if perceptions of the media's portrayal of a woman candidate influences the voting preferences of women leaders.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reports the results of an online survey of women leaders to provide a pre-election analysis about how they would vote and what was influencing their vote for Gillard, if they chose to vote for her. Data were analysed using Content Analysis and Descriptive Statistical Analysis.
Findings
Although gender does influence the vote of women leaders for a woman candidate, they use different decision criteria to influence their voting preferences of a female candidate, of which the woman candidate's views and priorities play a major part.
Research limitations/implications
The small sample size was not statistically representative and the data were self-reported and not validated post voting. A random and larger sample is required as well as further research comparing how Abbott was portrayed in the media and how men would vote for the party leaders.
Practical implications
The paper highlights that female candidates need to clearly assert their views and priorities during an election campaign and foreshadows women's evaluation of Gillard's achievements for women, in the next election.
Originality/value
Based in a unique time in Australia's political history which led to a woman being elected prime minister of a minority government and it explores how women in leadership perceived and reacted to the electoral environment at the time.
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Isla Kapasi, Katherine J.C. Sang and Rafal Sitko
Leadership theories have moved from viewing leadership as an innate trait, towards models that recognise leadership as a social construction. Alongside this theorisation, gender…
Abstract
Purpose
Leadership theories have moved from viewing leadership as an innate trait, towards models that recognise leadership as a social construction. Alongside this theorisation, gender and leadership remain of considerable interest, particularly given the under-representation of women in leadership positions. Methodological approaches to understanding leadership have begun to embrace innovative methods, such as historical analyses. This paper aims to understand how high profile women leaders construct a gendered leadership identity, with particular reference to authentic leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
Thematic analysis of autobiographies, a form of identity work, of four women leaders from business and politics: Sheryl Sandberg, Karren Brady, Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard.
Findings
Analyses reveal that these women construct gender and leadership along familiar normative lines; for example, the emphasis on personal and familial values. However, their stories differ in that the normative extends to include close examination of the body and a sense of responsibility to other women. Overall, media representations of these “authentic” leaders conform to social constructions of gender. Thus, in the case of authentic leadership, a theory presented as gender neutral, the authenticity of leadership has to some extent been crafted by the media rather than the leader.
Originality/value
The study reveals that despite attempts to “craft” and control the image of the authentic self for consumption by followers, gendered media representations of individuals and leadership remain. Thus, alternative approaches to crafting an authentic leadership self which extend beyond (mainstream) media is suggested.
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Ken McPhail, Robert Ochoki Nyamori and Savitri Taylor
The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: first, what contracts, instruments and accounting activities constitute Australia’s offshore asylum seeker processing policy…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: first, what contracts, instruments and accounting activities constitute Australia’s offshore asylum seeker processing policy in practice? Second, how are notions of legitimacy and accountability mediated through the network constituted by this policy?
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is located in the critical interpretivist approach to accounting research. It is based on an exhaustive documentary analysis. Policy documents, contract documents, records of parliamentary inquiries (Hansard) and legislation were analysed drawing on a network policy perspective.
Findings
The paper finds that the Australian Government has sought to escape its accountability obligations by employing a range of approaches. The first of these approaches is the construction of a network involving foreign states, private corporations and non-government organizations. The second is through a watered down accountability regime and refusal to be accountable for the day-to-day life of asylum seekers in offshore processing centres through a play with the meaning of “effective control”. Yet while the policy network seems designed to create accountability gaps, the requirement within the network to remain financially accountable undermines the governments claims not to be responsible for the conditions in the detention camps.
Research limitations/implications
The paper focuses largely on the period starting from when Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister to the death in Papua New Guinea of asylum seeker Reza Barati on 17 February 2014. Earlier periods are beyond the scope of this paper.
Practical implications
The paper will result in the identification of deficiencies inhuman rights accountability for extra-territorialized and privatised immigration detention and may contribute towards the formulation of effective policy recommendations to overcome such deficiencies. The paper also provides empirical data on, and academic understanding of, immigration detention outsourcing and offshoring.
Social implications
The paper will inform debate regarding treatment of unauthorized maritime arrivals and asylum seekers generally.
Originality/value
The paper provides the first detailed and full understanding of the way Australia’s offshore asylum seeker processing policy is practiced. The paper also provides an empirical analysis of the way national policy and its associated accountability mechanisms emerge in response to the competing legitimacy claims of the international community and national electorate.
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Sharon Anne Mavin, Carole Elliott, Valerie Stead and Jannine Williams
The purpose of this special issue is to extend the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC)-funded UK seminar series–Challenging Gendered Media (Mis)Representations of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this special issue is to extend the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC)-funded UK seminar series–Challenging Gendered Media (Mis)Representations of Women Professionals and Leaders; and to highlight research into the gendered media constructions of women managers and leaders and outline effective methods and methodologies into diverse media.
Design/methodology/approach
Gendered analysis of television, autobiographies (of Sheryl Sandberg, Karren Brady, Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard), broadcast news media and media press through critical discourse analysis, thematic analysis, metaphor and computer-aided text analysis software following the format of the Gender Media Monitoring Project (2015) and [critical] ecological framework for advancing social change.
Findings
The papers surface the gendered nature of media constructions of women managers and leaders and offer methods and methodologies for others to follow to interrogate gendered media. Further, the papers discuss – how women’s leadership is glamourized, fetishized and sexualized; the embodiment of leadership for women; how popular culture can subvert the dominant gaze; how women use agency and how powerful gendered norms shape perceptions, discourses and norms and how these are resisted, repudiated and represented.
Practical implications
The papers focus upon how the media constructs women managers and leaders and offer implications of how media influences and is influenced by practice. There are recommendations provided as to how the media could itself be organized differently to reflect diverse audiences, and what can be done to challenge gendered media.
Social implications
Challenging gendered media representations of women managers and leaders is critical to social justice and equality for women in management and leadership.
Originality/value
This is an invited Special Issue comprising inaugural collection of research through which we get to “see” women and leaders and the gendered media gaze and to learn from research into popular culture through analysis of television, autobiographies and media press.
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The purpose of this paper is to look at the recent history of proposals to tax resource rents in Australia, from Australia’s Future Tax System Report (the “Henry Tax Review”…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to look at the recent history of proposals to tax resource rents in Australia, from Australia’s Future Tax System Report (the “Henry Tax Review”) through to the proposed Resource Super Profits Tax (“RSPT”) and then the Minerals Resource Rent Tax (“MRRT”). The process of change from Henry to the RSPT to the MRRT can best be understood in the context of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) as a capitalist workers’ party. The author argues that it is this tension in the ALP, the shift in its internal balance further towards capital and the lack of class struggle, that has seen Labor preside over what the father of rent tax in Australia, Ross Garnaut, describes as a “problematic” tax.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative research using Marxist tools.
Findings
The paper argues that the poor health of the MRRT is a consequence of the nature of the Labor Party as a capitalist workers’ party, the shifts in power and influence within its material constitution and in essence the ascendency of capital in the capitalist workers’ party.
Originality/value
A very original approach to understanding the nature of the MRRT in Australia.
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Craig Campbell and Lyndsay Connors
The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the history of national education policy through an interview with one of its significant makers and critics, Lyndsay Connors, a former…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the history of national education policy through an interview with one of its significant makers and critics, Lyndsay Connors, a former Australian Schools Commissioner.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper occurs as an interview. The text is based on a revised conversation held as an event of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Conference held at the University of Canberra, on 26 September 2017.
Findings
Australian educational policy is peculiarly complex, and apparently “irrational”. This appears especially so in relation to the government, tax-raised, funding of government and non-government schools. A combination of the peculiarities of Australian federalism in relation to education, political expediency, popular exhaustion with the “state aid” debate, the power of entrenched interest groups and the distancing of democratic decision making from the decision-making process in relation to education all play a part.
Originality/value
The originality of this contribution to a research journal lies in its combination of autobiography with historical policy analysis.
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This chapter examines the changes proposed to the current media ethics and regulation regime in Australia following a government inquiry by former Federal Court judge Ray…
Abstract
This chapter examines the changes proposed to the current media ethics and regulation regime in Australia following a government inquiry by former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein. The inquiry was prompted by The News of the World phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom, which resulted in that publication being closed down by its publisher, News International, and principal shareholder Rupert Murdoch. While finding no evidence of similar misbehaviour by journalists and proprietors in Australia, Finkelstein recommended the establishment of a statutory News Media Council, and the inclusion of online media outlets in this new regulatory regime. This chapter argues that such a regime is unlikely to come into effect, given that it will be opposed by media proprietors and working journalists alike, as well the Federal Opposition, and the taxpayer funded ABC, and that a government with low levels of political capital is unlikely to risk much of that capital in a fight with the media industries in an election year.
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This review is based on “Gender, authentic leadership and identity: analysis of women leaders’ autobiographies” by Kapasi et al. (2016). Given the under-representation of women in…
Abstract
Purpose
This review is based on “Gender, authentic leadership and identity: analysis of women leaders’ autobiographies” by Kapasi et al. (2016). Given the under-representation of women in leadership positions, attempts to uncover reasons why remain of interest.
Design/methodology/approach
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. This paper uses the autobiographies of four high-profile women leaders to understand how they construct a gendered leadership identity, with particular reference to authentic leadership.
Findings
The paper reviewed found that analyses reveal that these women construct gender and leadership along familiar normative lines; for example, the emphasis on personal and familial values. However, their stories differ in that the normative extends to include close examination of the body and a sense of responsibility to other women. Overall, media representations of these “authentic” leaders conform to social constructions of gender. Thus, in the case of authentic leadership, a theory presented as gender neutral, the authenticity of leadership has to some extent been crafted by the media rather than the leader.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.
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The purpose of this paper is to offer a feminography, that is a “narration of a female self in a feminist age” (Abrams, 2017) by presenting a conceptual analysis, derived from…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer a feminography, that is a “narration of a female self in a feminist age” (Abrams, 2017) by presenting a conceptual analysis, derived from experience, of email providing a form of discourse – that the author calls finger-speak – through which unexamined gender positioning caricatures a person’s identity. In so doing, the paper provides an illustrative case of a female manager being positioned through email to “know her place, perform it and feel it” (Hey, 2011).
Design/methodology/approach
An analysis of email foregrounds “finger-speak” as a form of digital conversation and through which people in universities may be positioned publicly but without their consent in relation to unexamined norms and assumptions. For women, it is argued, these norms are ageist and sexist. In this paper, fragments of finger-speak are collated to provide a reading of how mixing gendered norms with apparent differences of opinion constructs, via unexamined sexism, a public identity and then undermines it.
Findings
Through the case presented, the author argues that, because of a shared but unarticulated shadow over women as leaders, email lays the ground for subsequent scapegoating in such a manner that the woman takes responsibility for structural challenges that rightly belong to the organisation.
Originality/value
The contribution that email makes to constructing female identity in public is new, complementing other work that publicly characterises women leaders, through film (Ezzedeen, 2015), and through published writing such as autobiography (Kapasi et al., 2016). Emotional work undertaken by women in university leadership is so far under-represented in public, and email is a site through which this work becomes visible.
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