Gendering the Eye of the Norm: Exploring Gendered Concertive Control Processes in Two Self‐Managing Teams

This article is the result of an ethnographic research project exploring the workplace interactions of two self‐managed teams of recruitment consultants. I use data from participant observation and recorded interviews to show the gendered nature of what Barker terms concertive control: the social processes by which team members regulate each others' conduct in line with negotiated team values. My analysis examines how team members negotiate core team values, translate these into specific actions and regulate these actions through concertive control interactions. I then set out three ways in which gender acts as a resource for these concertive control processes. These are: team members' assumptions about men's and women's relative skills and capacities, the ‘tough’ masculinity of the haulage industry in which one of the teams operates and the regulation of performances of heterosexuality during customer interactions. Building on research by others, I show gender to be not only embedded in the values and managerial style associated with teamwork but also integrated into the collaborative process of team‐working itself. I emphasize that social categories like gender become resources in the regulation of conduct at work and can reify hierarchies even in so‐called participative practices like self‐managed teamwork.     

Gendered Congregations,Gendered Service: The Impact of Clergy Gender on Congregational Social Service Participation

Using data from the 1998 National Congregations Study, I present empirical evidence that shows that the gender of a congregation's leadership makes a difference in the likelihood that a congregation will participate in a social service programme. The results from binary logistic regression indicate that the odds of congregations with women head clergy participating in a social service programme are four times greater than those with men head clergy. In addition, as the percentage of women on a congregation's governing board increases the probability that a congregation will participate in a service project also increases. The specific types of social service programmes a congregation pursues also differ by gender of leadership, with women‐led congregations significantly more likely to pursue service projects that could be labelled feminine while avoiding programmes that are clearly feminist. To explain this gendered behaviour I incorporate Acker's (1990 ) theory of gendered organizations.     

‘The Women Can Be Moved to Fill in the Gaps’: New Production Concepts,Gender and Suppliers

This article wishes to extend our understanding of New Production Concepts (hereafter NPC) induced restructuring in two areas. Firstly, it wishes to further explore the gender distinctions to be made when considering the impact of NPC on the labour process. In turn, this calls for a consideration of the extent to which NPC restructuring perpetuates, recasts and fortifies gendered divisions of labour within organizations. It will indicate how the introduction of NPC within a buyer and two supply organizations intensified prevailing gendered divisions of labour and disproportionately impacted upon women workers. It will also stress that women workers appeared to be more exposed to the implementation of policies designed to secure responsiveness to the satisfaction of customer requirements. However, while the evidence will reveal the importance of exploring distinctions within labour as part of a process of restructuring, it also highlights the linkages between these organizations. Secondly, therefore it aims to extend the territory of existing debates by highlighting a gender distinction across and between organizations. It will conclude by highlighting the importance of constructing an analysis of NPC‐induced restructuring which not only embraces a gendered analysis of change but simultaneously does not privilege research attention to particular ‘hermetically sealed’ workplaces, dislocated from a wider process of inter‐firm restructuring.     

Gendered Leadership: The Effects of Female Development Agency Leaders on Foreign Aid Spending

This article examines the effects of gender on the leadership of bilateral development aid agencies, particularly their official development assistance (ODA) allocations toward gender‐related programming. Drawing on earlier research on gendered leadership, the article tests the hypothesis that female director generals (DGs) and ministers responsible for aid agencies will allocate more ODA than their male counterparts toward gender programming. This existing literature on gendered leadership is divided: some scholars argue that women and men have distinct leadership styles on account of their gender, while others argue that the only distinguishing factor is the institutional context in which they lead. Drawing on data collected on aid flows and agency leadership within the major Western aid donors of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) over the period from 1995 through 2009, we use pooled time series analysis to examine the effects of gendered leadership on aid allocation. Our analysis reveals a tendency for female DGs and ministers to focus ODA on gender‐mainstreaming programs, while male DGs focus ODA on gender‐focused programs. We argue that these divergent priorities reflect the women's desire to reform gendered power structures within their respective aid agencies, and the men's desire to maintain existing gender power structures from which they benefit.     

How Unpopular Policies are Made: Examples from South Africa,Singapore and Bangladesh

In this article we contribute to the emerging knowledge on migration policy‐making in two ways. Firstly, we address the relative lack of research on the gendered nature of migration policy‐making. Secondly we contribute to understanding migration policymaking in postcolonial contexts. Based on case studies from Bangladesh, South Africa, and Singapore, we trace the drivers of policy change in these contexts and how the gendered vulnerability of the intended beneficiaries impacted the policy process. We found that there were four main drivers of migration policy‐making in each of the countries. They were: the role‐players in the policy change process, the debates that shaped the policy change, the research involved, and the political context in which the policy change took place. While our research drew on existing policy frameworks, it also showed that policy development is shaped by complex socio‐political conditions.     

‘Girls Who Do Boys Like They're Girls’? Exploring the Role of Gender in the Junior Management of Contemporary Service Work

This article attempts to explain the clustering of women managers at junior managerial grades in the service sector by focusing on the structuring and organization of work in a call centre. The article is based on an ethnography of an organization and seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate in gender research by exploring and documenting the requirement for the enactment of masculinities at work for successful managers. Central to our account is the role of team leader which, as a junior management position, occupies a key role in understanding and accounting for the gendered hierarchical terrain of contemporary service‐based organizations. In exploring the role of team leader, a position that tends overwhelmingly to be held by female staff, we draw attention to the perception of the gendered nature of the role by subordinate members of the organization, the team‐leaders themselves and more senior managers. The position is also brought into sharp relief in comparison with the subordinate role of the ‘problem manager’, a position overwhelmingly held by men.     

Gender Styles in State Legislative Committees

Abstract

This research focuses on the gendered nature of legislative institutions by examining the conflict resolution styles of state legislative committee chairs. Based on a survey of 285 state legislative committee chairs, focus groups and individual interviews, the study examines a sizeable cohort of men and women engaged in fundamentally similar leadership tasks but under varying institutional circumstances and in more than a single state. The research finds that women committee chairs raise their voices to resolve conflicts in a different way from their male colleagues. More importantly, the study shows how gender composition of the membership, the distribution of gender power, and the extent of professionalization influence conflict resolution style. These data challenge the predominant view of legislative leadership as transactional behavior and suggest the need to consider whether masculine behavior and institutional norms have been conflated.     

Tracing Differentiation in Gendered Leadership: An Analysis of Differences in Gender Composition in Top Management in Business,Politics and the Civil Service

The aim of this article is to discuss the relationship between the gendering of leadership positions and sector‐specific structures within politics, business and the civil service in Denmark in the context of differences between the Nordic countries and other western countries. The analysis is based on data from a survey of top male and female leaders within the three sectors. The theoretical point of departure of this article is constructivist. It looks at gender as constituted by actions in social space, orchestrated by structural processes and a symbolic order of gender. This constitutes a cultural discourse on gender reflected in gender conventions in society and in a range of possibilities of gender positioning. Expressions of this are discussed in the analysis of the patterns of difference in structural conditions for women and men in leadership positions to be found within the three sectors. The structural conditions encompass access conditions and conditions for gendered positioning and are analysed on the basis of data on social background, education, career course, family, children and distribution of housework. The analysis shows that there is a correlation between gender composition of leadership and possibilities of gendered positioning within a sector. The results are finally discussed as possible expressions of an egalitarian culture.     

Joining up children's services: safeguarding children in multi‐disciplinary teams

In this article we reflect on the complexity and the contested nature of the roles of multi‐disciplinary teams working with children. This is an increasingly important issue in the current UK child welfare policy environment. The article uses the theories of Etienne Wenger to understand data gathered from five multi‐disciplinary teams working with children. We explore key issues relating to location; information sharing; models of understanding; and professional identities. We hope to demonstrate that the teams addressed tensions creatively through their engagement with diversity while at the same time developing common team values. We argue that effective strategies for making multi‐disciplinary teams work will combine inter‐agency issues with internal team‐specific aspects. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interlopers in class: A duoethnography of working‐class women academics

This article introduces the concept of the interloper for examining classed and gendered dislocation. Focusing on academia, which we view as a classed and gendered field, we draw on Bourdieu and feminist standpoint theory to account for how we, as women of working‐class origin, have experienced ‘breaches' through which we have come to understand ourselves in classed and gendered terms. Coming from different cultural backgrounds, we also reflect on how understandings of class are context‐specific. We employ a duoethnographic method which emphasizes the value of subjective experiences for organizational and social analyses. The article shows how the concept of the interloper may shed light on the dynamic, relational character of constructions of class and gender; the maintenance work that is performed; and how a sense of permanent inbetweenness characterizes our ongoing movement between the fields of the family and academia.     

Seducing Leadership: Stories of Leadership Development

This article argues that leadership development is a process of seduction. Drawing on some stories of leadership development from my experience as participant, observer and teacher I show the ways in which certain sorts of highly valued leadership teaching contain seductive elements, including sweeping audiences off their feet and, in some contexts, forestalling critique about the content that is offered. The article also considers the extent to which seduction is a gendered performance. I conclude that, while gender and power are defining elements and constraints in how seductive pedagogical relations are constructed, there are opportunities for experimentation and display that potentially subvert gendered stereotypes. Seeing the seduction in leadership can help us understand leadership and leadership teaching better, and can open the way to doing it differently — to experimentation and innovation.     

The Quest for Invisibility: Female Entrepreneurs and the Masculine Norm of Entrepreneurship

The emphasis in research on female entrepreneurship remains focused on the impact of gender on women’s experience of business ownership, often demonstrated through comparisons of male and female entrepreneurs. By contrast, this article explores the differences and divisions between women business owners who are silent about gender issues and those who are not. The main data drawn on in the article are e‐mails conducted through a web‐based entrepreneurial network set up to promote and support women in business, supplemented with interview material derived from an interview study of 19 women business owners. By considering the way in which some women business owners not only treat entrepreneurship as gender‐neutral, but also seek to conceal its gendered nature, we can see how some female entrepreneurs are trying to avoid being identified as different from the masculine norm of entrepreneurship.     

Unsettling Universities' Incongruous,Gendered Bureaucratic Structures: A Case‐study Approach

Recent research shows that women faculty members in academia continue to face systemic barriers to opportunity and advancement and that these barriers are particularly strong in science and engineering, and in university administration. University administrators and faculty members, however, have been slow to recognize that systemically gendered barriers will have to be reduced or eliminated in order for women faculty to advance in their careers. One key problem is that many, if not most, leaders in powerful decision‐making roles in universities continue to embrace women‐centred explanations for gender disparities in advancement through the academic ranks. University leaders' lack of recognition of institutionalized gender barriers suggests the need for greater dissemination of research findings (and training) about how systemic barriers operate and why these barriers disproportionately disadvantage women. In this article I first theorize universities as incongruous, gendered bureaucratic structures. I then outline an intervention strategy for enabling university faculty members and administrators to see incongruous, gendered bureaucratic structures and to then use this knowledge to develop strategies for addressing the problem of women's underrepresentation among science and engineering faculty. The strategy described is a case‐study approach recently implemented at a mid‐sized research‐intensive university in the US Midwest. The workshop was part of a broader university programme aimed at transforming the university's cultures, practices and structures in ways that help to enhance the recruitment, retention and promotion of women scientists. I conclude by discussing the benefits and limitations of the case‐study approach as a method for unsettling accepted knowledge about the gendered structures and normative practices of the university.     

Performing Women: The Gendered Dimensions of the UK New Research Economy

This article explores the development and maintenance of familiar gendered employment patterns and practices in UK universities, which are exemplars of new modes of knowledge production, commodification and marketization. After discussing in detail the evidence of gender discrimination in UK higher education and the changes in the academic labour process consequent to the incorporation of universities, at least at the policy level, into the ‘knowledge economy’, institution‐specific data is used to highlight the gendered aspects of the research economy from the three intermeshing perspectives of research culture, research capital and the research production process. This nexus is constructed in such a way as to systematically militate against women's full and equal involvement in research. Lack of transparency, increased competition and lower levels of collegiate activity coupled with networking based on homosociability are contributing to a research production process where women are marginalized.     

“That's What Makes a Woman”: Infertility and Coping with a Failed Life Course Transition

Becoming a parent remains a key marker for the transition into adulthood, especially for many women. Infertility thwarts this transition. In this research, we investigate one aspect of the gendered nature of adult development within the life course. Specifically, this study examines interview data from 40 infertile women in order to explore how this group of women cope with what they perceive to be a failed life course transition and how it affects their sense of self. We find that this failed life course transition altered these women's relationships with others. Further, this change had a corresponding effect on their self. These women's inability to do gender by being mothers challenges their sense of themselves as normal adult women. Using West and Zimmerman's concept of doing gender, we argue that infertility can be experienced as a failed life course transition among women who desire children. We also demonstrate how this failed transition has a distinctly gendered component.     

‘Why Do All the Women Disappear?’ Gendering Processes in a Political Science Department

The article provides an in‐depth analysis of the gendering processes among PhD candidates in a political science department. It uses Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations operating through four dimensions: the gendered division of labour, gendered interaction, gendered symbols and gendered interpretations of one's position in the organization. The article combines this approach with theories of hidden discrimination. The key theoretical aim is to contribute to gendered organizational theory by examining the ways in which hidden discrimination and the gendered organization work together. This generates detailed and differentiated knowledge about the mechanisms of hidden discrimination that produce gender inequalities in the department. The findings presented in this article point to the role of gendered division of labour and the lack of information about departmental practices. PhD supervision by men is a particularly strong structural barrier for women because of the gendered nature of interaction in supervision and the difficulties that female PhD students have in a male‐dominated environment. The article further contributes to debates on gendered organizations by focusing upon the gendered symbols of expertise in political science. These symbols reproduce the man as the political scientist norm and result in women interpreting their own position as marginal or as outsiders.     

Should I stay or should I go now? Exploring Polish women's returns “home”

At a time when there are more people on the move than ever before, it is pivotal to explore people's motivations and experiences of return migration. Whilst motivations for migration are comparatively well explored, return migrants' experiences are less well‐known and migrants' gender is rarely considered. This article addresses these gaps. It is based on qualitative research and in‐depth interviews with 32 Polish women: 16 migrants and 16 return migrants. Considered through the lens of agency and structure, this research uncovers how fluid the process of migration has become; migration motivations and patterns are blurred and interlinked with one another while classic migration theories seem outdated. The study uses an “intersection of motivations” to show how inseparable migration‐related motivations have become. This article contributes to the growing literature on East–West return migration and highlights women as migrants and the gendered nature of their mobility.     

Against what model? Evaluating women as leaders in the pandemic era

Women at work have long accepted how societal norms and cultural expectations impacted their at‐work behaviour. Despite the fact that no one model has ever universally established a benchmark for women’s leadership, women attempted to become what they perceived others wanted them to be. Between aspiring to achieve ideal worker status and enacting a style somewhere between the stereotypical connotations of agentic and communal behaviours, women leaders expended a great deal of emotional labour to find the perfect balance. Today, the COVID‐19 pandemic has created a new, potentially untenable, challenge: to identify what working women are evaluated against to achieve excellence. This article shares a perspective of how women leaders have been evaluated during tumultuous times using historical research and examples. Based upon our findings, it appears that the communal leadership style most women are thought to naturally display may be an advantage.     

Gendered Projects of Solidarity: Workplace Organizing among Immigrant Women and Men

Drawing on an ethnography of organizing among Latina/o immigrant janitors in Los Angeles, I argue that constructing workplace solidarity between women and men is a dynamic, gendered project. I demonstrate both how this project unfolds and how it can be halted, with varying implications for gender and class inequality at work. Organizational restructuring upsets gender‐segregated divisions of labour making solidarity between women and men possible but restructuring also allows workers to reinforce gendered divisions and cultural distinctions. The mechanism pushing workers one way or the other is the degree to which the process of organizing recognizes gender inequalities.