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Women in management are marginalised by the continuing pervasiveness of heroic masculinism, the traditional and hierarchical form of management, which depicts executives as solitary (male) heroes engaged in unending trials of endurance. This theme of leadership as archetype is strengthened through official organisational myths and stories which function as vehicles of communication management to support organisational goals and to provide role models for aspiring executives. Calls have been made for new forms of writing and more women’s voices in women and management scholarship. Paradoxically, storytelling, which currently supports executive male norms, also provides a potential approach for women in management to break through the dominant masculinist appropriation of leadership. This paper examines women managers’ stories of gender within the context of organisational storytelling and heroic masculinism. These transformational narratives provide parallel but distinctive archetypes to heroic masculinity. At the same time, they present parodic inversions of the “slaying of monster” myths of traditional executive culture. These stories which women tell other women, create resilient images of women’s identities in management.

Executive leadership is constituted as a predominantly male domain, placing women in an antithetical position to executive power. In theorising this situation, a social constructionist model of gender suggests that in the corporate world, as elsewhere, perceptions of the behaviour of men and women are “automatically filtered through a gendered lens” and reconstituted within a more general discourse on gender difference, tapping into subconscious images of leadership to reinforce a masculinist construction of executive power. Yet today women are increasingly in executive roles. This study explores the relationship between a social constructionist model of gender and executive discourse by drawing on interviews with ten male and ten female New Zealand executives. Given that these executives hold comparable organisational status and power, the study examines whether or not a gendered lens still operates in their representations of one another, and if there are indications of gender and social change in the discourse.

Official organisational myths and storytelling constitute a powerful, persuasive force in both the public representation and the internal shaping of executive identity. Leaders of corportate culture are aligned with legendary heroes to promote images of the senior manager as a heroic and transformational leader. This process plays upon subconscious images, beliefs and expectations to reinforce the concept of leadership as archetype. Much of the persuasive power of leadership as archetype arises from the continual reclaiming and honouring of past and present leaders, within the ongoing stories of executive identity. For the most part, this process involves an active role of gendering that reiterates a hierarchical and masculinist paradigm of leadership, while it leaves female leadership as absence or “other”. In this paper, rather than focus on the issue of female leadership as “other”, the ongoing, if shifting nature of gendered organisational lives is taken to be a continuing given. From this given, examines the self‐representations of male and female executives within a framework of leadership as archetype. Argues that these self‐representations provide similar and parallel male and female paradigms of leadership, while they depict the “gendered heroes” of executive culture.

Research into “corporate masculinity” suggests that executive men position their difference, status and power through discourses which involve the strategies of “identification with some men and differentiation from others, including women”. While these processes apparently place women in an antithetical relationship to power, women are increasingly achieving executive leadership. This paper examines the career representations of 30 senior women executives. Drawing on a social constructionist approach to gender and identity, examines women's positioning of self within the discourse and discusses how they deal with the apparent paradoxes or contradictions of female identity within a world dominated by corporate masculinity. Our findings suggest that women engage in processes of identification and differentiation comparable to those of men. Perhaps unexpectedly, these processes often involve an assertion and celebration of female difference that includes distinctions between “the wo‐men and the boys”. They also involve a more tentative process of differentiation from corporate masculinity through the construction of an emerging new culture, the culture of women in business.