Gender
Management and managing are characteristically gendered in many respects. (Broadbridge and Hearn, 2008)
It’s difficult to know if things would’ve been different had I been a man. (Olivia)
I think [the organisation’s] well meaning … If you were pushing against a macho culture you could actually get angry. It’s very difficult to get angry without seeming to be just one of those old feminist types causing trouble for no reason. (Ruth)
My predecessor was a woman … so this institution … is very used to a senior woman in my role. I think it would’ve been different if my predecessor had been a man. (Gill)
Introduction
This chapter looks at the question of gender. As Broadbridge and Hearn (2008) note:
The area of gender, organisations and management is now recognised in at least some quarters … as a legitimate, even an important, area … [with] recent research and literature on the gendering of management … strongly influenced, though sometimes indirectly, by debates around feminism and critical studies on gender, and on recognising women and women’s situations, experiences and voices in organisations and management.
Bendl (2008) summarises a significant quantity of literature from the point of view of the ‘gender subtext’, demonstrating the ‘law of the father’, where males are the norm and women are ‘the other’ (see also Pringle, 2008). With this in mind, we consider differentiation between men and women – and between women – and the possibility of different sets of behaviours between the two genders across a broad spectrum. The chapter then considers the ways in which the women in our study view the world from a gendered perspective. It also looks at the extent to which being a woman can be a help or a hindrance in career progression.
Difference and differentiation
As Broadbridge and Hearn (2008) caution, ‘many complications remain in conceptualising gender’, not least because of ‘the persistence of dualisms and dichotomies’ which, while they relate to ‘important differentiations, they only speak to part of the possibilities of what gender is or might be in different situations and societies’. Mindful of this and aware of the many ‘gendered processes’ (Acker, 1992) in organisations, we nevertheless asked the participants in our study whether or not they thought being a woman influenced what they – and others of their gender – brought to their work. We had a wide range of answers. Olivia felt that it was difficult to answer this question, ‘because I only see things as I see them and as I’ve experienced them’:
I don’t think I’ve lost out being a woman so … I don’t think it’s influenced it badly. I think I’ve achieved what I’ve wanted to achieve, so it hasn’t stopped me either. It’s not as if I’ve had any bad experiences that have put me off; it’s all been very positive.
Andrea felt that ‘the extent of the differentiation’ was ‘probably overstated’:
I think it overlays with the extent of personality so I can’t judge … how much of that is the consequence of them being differently gendered or how much it is the consequence of the way we’re conditioned into those roles and the life experience that those different people have had.
But on the other hand, she – as did a number of the women – recognised as ‘probably true’ that there are ‘a range of different behaviours which we can conveniently label with maleness and femaleness’. She summed up this range with the word ‘palette’, arguing that the broader it was, the more likely the manager would be successful, because different approaches would be required, depending on the context and the circumstances:
So at a point where an institution needs some very sharp financial management, downsizing, people being made redundant, one set of things in your palette may be more valuable than another – especially where there’s a need to do a lot of very developmental growth, so I think there are different times and different circumstances suiting different ‘gendered’ behaviours.
Lillian wondered whether she had really experienced being a woman at work, given the almost complete role reversal with her husband (referred to elsewhere), or whether she had been in her words – and those of Jessica – ‘a substitute man’:
I’ve wondered time and again whether I’m in any way an example of a woman dealing with gender issues in her career or whether I’ve just stepped into being a substitute man in many ways … I appointed a computer manager who was a woman, very good she was. She had a husband who was an accountant and he was moving to the finance department at the same time. They had two children while they were there and both of them stayed in full-time careers; they had nannies and things. They had a very different pattern. They didn’t have the reversal that we had, which is probably more normal … there are things that I simply haven’t experienced.
Andrea referred to the psychology of gender difference:
It’s more psychological and more in situations where there’s kind of a risk of bullying I suppose and the kind of aggressive male behaviours that basically mean you don’t want to be with that person. And, conversely, they probably don’t want to be with you either in some cases (laughs), but I’ve managed those situations … perfectly reasonably and I don’t think they wouldn’t necessarily have been perceived too much in that way but I do have just a sense that … I should have perhaps done something differently at an earlier point in my interaction with that individual that would have made them be less inclined … to push me about and to push somebody else instead.
As did Fiona, in the sense of determining how to behave:
I’ve always had sort of strongish views about how I would behave and what I would say or whatever, the way I would interact with people. But if there’s only one of you, other people might not even recognise that. I think lots of men for a long, long time just thought I didn’t know the rules; just thought I didn’t know how to do it. Whereas actually I was pretty determined to do it differently; do it my way, because how else could I do it if I didn’t have anyone else?
Bella cautioned about ‘being over-stereotypical in terms of responses to different genders’:
It’s too easy to do it. It’s very easy to slip into that and I do slip into it very easily and I have to pull myself back because I get very irritated when other people do it; I just think that’s not accurate. Particularly that one about … women have to be twice as good as men. I’m really not convinced by that, and yet it’s one of these things that [are] trotted out … and I’ve done it as well.
Having said that, Bella had to admit that the experience of her own children ‘has made her speak more in terms of stereotypes’:
I’m now more prepared to come out with stereotypical views having had two boys. I don’t know whether its nature or nurture … but it’s impossible not to see how boyish the boys are and how interested they are in boyish things and how they behave like the men … it’s depressing really. As I say, it may well be nurture in which case these things can change … [But] my two are so male boys – I mean to an incredible extent – the things they like. I don’t know whether they’re getting it from school, I don’t think they’re particularly getting it from [my partner] and me; it’s coming from somewhere and to deny that is to deny reality … They enjoy transport and football and skateboarding and being on the streets with their mates and they spend a lot of time tussling on the floor.
Gendered perspectives
We also looked at the question of gendered perspectives, noting that, according to Gherardi (2003), gender ‘has to do not only with bodies, and power, but also with the politics of knowledge, and therefore with organizations as containers of different bodies and sexualities’. Again, some of the participants in our study felt more strongly than others about the extent to which gender was a factor. Bella, for example, looked at the world ‘filtered through the idea, through the lens, of being female’:
I analyse loads of scenarios in terms of men and women, partly because of my background, because of the job, and I think it explains a huge amount. So yes, I’ve got a very gendered perspective on the world … I’m always thinking about whether somebody is a man or a woman. It’s probably not very healthy actually, but it’s something I’ve become acutely conscious of and I’m very aware of the context in which people work, whether they’ve got children and dependents, that whole broader context – I think that’s a very female approach … I’m not feminine in the sense of being girlie, but just feminine in the sense of being related to being female – I think it’s a subconscious value apart from anything else. I’m very conscious when I’m speaking to women, I relax much more with women, I would never have this sort of conversation with a man, it’s quite interesting, with a man it would be very interesting, it would be very different, I don’t know why but it would. I’m much more honest, I find it much easier to be honest with other women than with men. It’s always a slight sort of front in terms of how you present. I think it’s common, I don’t think I’m remotely exceptional or different there. You have different sorts of conversations with women, they tend to be more sort of personal … you don’t have to put up so much front. I don’t think I’m alone in saying this.
Andrea pointed out that, for her, being female affected the way in which women related to men and the extent to which they asserted themselves more generally, though this varied, in her view, depending upon a range of factors such as upbringing and environment:
I mean the way you look and how much you choose to be sexually visible or sexually neutral and some people quite deliberately using a very strongly sexual attractiveness, let’s maybe not call it sexual but certainly playing strongly on their feminine attractiveness to their male colleagues. And maybe you know underlying that is how strong a personality you are anyway, and how much appetite you have for fighting … In a ‘top of institutions’ environment, fighting is something that’s done for fun in some institutions and in many organisations so that’s another dynamic and some females are actually quite interested in fighting and so they play differently within that kind of dynamic … I certainly saw very different behaviour in a woman who had been brought up in a family with three boys compared to another woman who was an only child or wasn’t, you know, and I think it’s about how much the dynamic is one where you won’t let something go you know, a dynamic where someone, if I said … ‘it’s blue’ and you said, ‘no its black’ would I go ‘well I suppose it’s kind of bluey black’ or would I go ‘it’s blue’ (laughs).
Being a woman: help or hindrance?
As part of our exploration of the challenges facing female senior executives, we asked the participants in our study whether they thought being a woman was, or had been, a help or a hindrance in their work and career progression. Helen was the most definite in saying that her gender had not affected her professional life in any way at all. The other women who commented were much more equivocal in their views. Olivia found it difficult to comment, as she could ‘only see things as I see them and as I’ve experienced them’, not being able to compare her experiences with those that she would have had ‘being a bloke’. However, her experiences had ‘all been very positive’ and she did not feel she had ‘lost out being a woman’. Indeed, she had often found that men were willing to accept feedback from her rather than other men, given that they regarded her approach as less ‘aggressive’ or not as ‘competitive’. While Andrea stressed that she had never been in ‘an unequal pay situation’, she talked about situations where there was ‘a risk of bullying’ because of being a woman in the company of men. While she had managed such situations ‘reasonably well’, she did comment that she could perhaps have done more:
I do have just a sense that I should have perhaps done something differently at an earlier point in my interaction with that individual, that would have made them be less inclined to push me about and to push somebody else instead.
There was a similar feeling of regret about some of Carrie’s comments, so that while she said that being a woman did not hinder her when she was younger, she felt that she did not live up to ‘all my potential’. She attributed this to the ‘physical nature of showing my emotions’. She did admit later in the interview it was not necessarily because she was a woman that she showed her emotions but just ‘me as a person’. She did feel that her gender had made her more caring and nurturing, attributes that had helped in her career, while since the menopause she had also been ‘much calmer than I was when I was a younger woman’. This made her more approachable, not least – as Carrie had found – by men:
I think people … know that they can come to me and something will get done and I don’t know if that is the fact that I was a mother. I think men react differently to women than they do to other men. So some of the traditional female caring, nurturing, I think that’s been a real plus for me.
The person-centred approach described by Carrie was also something raised by Gill, though she was keen to stress that this was something that was a result of ‘necessarily being female’:
I think there are men that fit in the same box as I would. But I think nevertheless it is accepted … that women by and large are more person-centred in terms of wanting people to work well together, creating harmony, creating teams and so on.
Ruth had similar experiences. As a woman she had chosen to work in a female-dominated profession and her ways of working had to be modified – she described her approach as a ‘balancing act’ – when she encountered teams that had a majority of men in them:
It’s a cliché, but I do believe that women have ways of working … they have more consensual ways of working that perhaps can work in a profession that’s largely women too … When I went to [an organisation] where, bizarrely, some teams had more men than women because of the IT influence; you had to … adjust your … communication style because men do work in a different way.
Some of the women raised the question of other attributes and the extent to which they had been a help or a hindrance. Kate did not think that being a woman had made any difference to her, but having worked as a nurse meant that now that she had a senior role in the National Health Service it brought:
All sorts of credibility with the people I work most with. You can almost see them thinking, ‘oh she understands our work because she was a nurse’.
Kate made two other important points. Firstly, her height was a bonus. She herself referred to research undertaken to suggest that taller people were more likely to be noticed and, arguably, to be appointed to senior roles. Secondly, having children – rather than being a woman – was what made a significant difference to her career, which was ‘derailed’ for a time in consequence. She comments:
I think, bizarrely, but there is some work on this, I’m 6’ tall and I think being tall is as important as being a woman … because I think that does make a difference … you cannot not make a presence if you’re a 6’ tall woman. People will notice even if they only think ‘that very tall woman at the back’ … I think having children and feeling that that made a series of choices closed to me has been more influential than being a woman, which sounds a bit contradictory … Whether that was about having children, or having two very close together and losing your brain for about two years I’m not sure.
Lillian did not feel that being a woman had hindered her career either, though in her case perhaps – as she also noted elsewhere in her interview – it was because she had ‘never been a particularly feminine woman’ able to accommodate male groups and be accommodated by them through the adoption of ‘male behaviours’. ‘I’m this very acceptable woman in that sense; I sort of justify their choice’. She commented:
It’s partly because, as a scientist, mathematically biased, I was actually very happy in an engineering environment. You read things about women in groups and how they’re talked over. I’ve never been talked over. People have to ask me to shut up … I remember going to a meeting of engineers, a big one, because I was involved in the professional organisation … by a very odd route, and the chap there was a chief distribution engineer addressing from the podium ‘gentlemen’. There was me and about 400 others, and looking at me and saying ‘we think of you as a gentleman Lillian as a compliment’. And it was in his terms.
Diane had a very different experience, working in a sector that she saw as being ‘female friendly’, where advancement was on merit:
If you gain respect from your colleagues it’s because of what you do not because of the fact that you’re the one with the frock on … I think I’ve been lucky in that academia … is less gender driven than perhaps other places.
Eliza had a whole series of problems, not only because she was a woman, but also because she was black and did not have a degree:
In my time, if you were a graduate you were automatically promoted to a manager, so I felt I paid the price for not being a graduate … that was one thing against me. And I do personally feel that colour did go against me … I remember my boss being on the phone to somebody who had phoned up to compliment [me] … And I wasn’t Eliza, I was the black girl … I had no identity. And I know it is like when you have other people … you say, ‘oh the fat person, the fat girl’, but it really hit home then that I was still just a black girl, I wasn’t Eliza. And I wanted to be recognised as Eliza.
Conclusion
This chapter has focused on questions of gender as revealed and discussed in the interviews with the participants in our study. We began by looking at the issue of differentiation between men and women, noting that across a broad spectrum of behaviours women were likely to have different sets from men working in similar positions, although a number of the women cautioned against stereotyping, not least because the appropriateness and effectiveness of particular approaches would vary depending on the context and the circumstances. We observed that some of the women referred to uncertainty as to how to behave in some work situations. They related to being female and therefore to other females in different ways from the ways in which they interacted with men.
We then looked at the extent to which the women felt that being female was, or had been, a help or a hindrance in their working lives and career progression. We received a wide range of views on this topic. For the most part, the women felt that either being a woman had made no difference or had actually helped them. We noted that some of the women felt that men were more easily able to relate to them than to other men because of their more caring, nurturing approaches. Others felt that in the long term, being a woman had not been problematic for them, but in the earlier parts of their career, a lack of confidence or assertiveness had held them back. Other attributes – such as relevant professional experience, height, having had children, colour and lack of a degree – were also raised as possible advantages or disadvantages in the women’s experiences.
References
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Bendl, R. Gender subtexts: reproduction of exclusion in organizational discourse. British Journal of Management. 2008; 19:50–64.
Broadbridge, A., Hearn, J. Gender and management: new directions in research and continuing patterns in practice. British Journal of Management. 2008; 19:38–49.
Gherardi, S. Feminist theory and organization theory: a dialogue on new bases. In: Tsoukas H., Knudsen C., eds. The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory: Metatheoretical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2003:210–236.
Pringle, J.K. Gender in management: theorizing gender as heterogender. British Journal of Management. 2008; 19:110–119.