Search results
1 – 10 of over 90000The 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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a theoretical paper.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
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.
Originality/value
This paper offers a conceptualization of doing gender that acknowledges the gender binary, while also suggesting possibilities of unsettling it.
Details
Keywords
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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?
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
Details
Keywords
Nicola Patterson, Sharon Mavin and Jane Turner
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
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.
Social implications
Women are still an under‐represented group within entrepreneurship and within the higher echelons of organisations. This requires greater attention.
Originality/value
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.
Details
Keywords
Jatta Jännäri and Anne Kovalainen
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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”?
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative content analysis, close reading and data were collected from academic peer-reviewed journals with the applied principles of literature review.
Findings
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”.
Research limitations/implications
The limitations of this article relate to the journals chosen for the analysis.
Originality/value
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.
Details
Keywords
Gunilla Olofsdotter and Lena Randevåg
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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).
Findings
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.
Practical implications
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.
Originality/value
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.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Design/methodology/approach
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.
Findings
Women who progress up the managerial hierarchy disturb the gendered order, invoking the wrath of both men and women who are acculturated to associate management with masculinities and men. Understanding this situation is complex. Women who progress to senior management continue to be evaluated as women and when they conform to the masculine manager stereotype they are vilified by both men and women.
Practical implications
The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.
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.
Details
Keywords
Samina M. Saifuddin, Lorraine Dyke and Md. Sajjad Hossain
This study aims to identify women professionals' strategies to persist in the male-dominated technology industry situated in the Bangladeshi socio-cultural context.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to identify women professionals' strategies to persist in the male-dominated technology industry situated in the Bangladeshi socio-cultural context.
Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interviews with women tech professionals were conducted to identify and explore the strategies. Thematic coding was used for data analysis.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
The study participants were women and recruited using snowball sampling. Future research could benefit from recruiting a larger, more varied sample using random sampling.
Practical implications
The study can inform teaching and policy initiatives to increase women's representation in tech sectors through awareness campaigns, policy interventions and counseling.
Originality/value
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.
Details
Keywords
Sharon Mavin, Patricia Bryans and Rosie Cunningham
The purpose of this paper is to highlight gendered media constructions which discourage women's acceptability as political leaders and trivialise or ignore their contribution.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight gendered media constructions which discourage women's acceptability as political leaders and trivialise or ignore their contribution.
Design/methodology/approach
Media analysis of UK newspapers, government web sites, worldwide web relating to the UK 2010 government election, women MPs and in particular representations of Harriet Harman and Theresa May.
Findings
Media constructions of UK women political leaders are gendered and powerful in messaging women's (un)acceptability as leaders against embedded stereotypes. Being invisible via tokenism and yet spotlighted on the basis of their gender, media constructions trivialize their contribution, thus detracting from their credibility as leaders.
Research limitations/implications
UK‐based study grounded in opportune “snapshot” media analysis during election and resultant formation of UK coalition Government. Focus on two women political leaders, results may not be generalisable.
Practical implications
Raises awareness of the numerical minority status of UK women political leaders, the invisibility‐visibility contradiction and the power of the media to construct women leaders against gender stereotypes. Call for continued challenge to gendered leader stereotypes and women's representation in UK political leadership.
Originality/value
Highlights power of media to perpetuate gender stereotypes of UK women political leaders.
Details
Keywords
Nicola Patterson, Sharon Mavin and Jane Turner
The purpose of this paper is to explore the convergence of female entrepreneurship, women in management and leadership fields from a gender perspective to bring a gender…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the convergence of female entrepreneurship, women in management and leadership fields from a gender perspective to bring a gender consciousness to the development and construction of the emerging entrepreneurial leadership theory base.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual paper that argues for the convergence of the entrepreneurship and leadership fields to enable an interchange of ideas, and learn from the developments within each field from a gender perspective. Whilst scholars have recently begun to explore the concept of entrepreneurial leadership, these early developments have remained gender blind, gender defensive and gender neutral.
Findings
A central argument is that female entrepreneur leader's experience social role incongruity. In order to be perceived by their followers as credible and legitimate entrepreneurial leaders, women are expected to manage their dual presence across the symbolic spaces of femininity and masculinity, doing gender well and doing gender differently to meet social role expectations of being a woman, whilst also meeting dominant masculine constructions of leadership and entrepreneurship.
Practical implications
This paper extends understandings of entrepreneurial leadership, highlighting the importance of foregrounding gender, to make visible and integrate the historical developments of gender within the entrepreneurship and leadership fields. Both scholars and practitioners must “unlearn” and “rethink” our learnt state of being in relation to gender, leadership and entrepreneurship in order to move beyond the “given” and disrupt masculinities' hierarchical superiority.
Originality/value
The paper argues that blends of agentic and communal behaviours must be recognized as accessible to both women and men for effective entrepreneurial leadership. This will provide female entrepreneurial leaders the fluidity to do both and be something else as a person. Offering understandings of gender to extant gender blind, gender neutral and gender defensive constructions of entrepreneurial leadership will progress understandings of the framework emerging from this conceptualization.
Details