Women Elite Leaders Doing Respectable Business Femininity: How Privilege is Conferred, Contested and Defended through the Body
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: This paper offers a theory of respectable business femininity. Respectable business femininity is theorized as a discursive and relational process that explains tensions women elite leaders experience at the nexus of being both One and Other and sometimes privileged, embedded notions of leadership as masculine and wider expectations of acceptable embodied femininity. Such tensions manifest through a disciplining of women leaders’ bodies and appearance by self‐and‐others, as a means of appraising women as credible elite leaders and respectable women. Through a qualitative study we show how, within sites of ambiguity, embodied leadership and subjectivities are both enabled and constrained. Accounts highlight how privilege is fluid and (de)stabilized in that it is conferred, contested and defended through women's bodies and appearance. We advance understandings of contemporary respectable femininity, privilege at work, and body work, and consider practical implications for women leaders and management education.
Source: Gender Work and Organization
DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12130
Authors: Sharon Mavin, Gina Grandy
Institutions: Newcastle University, University of Roehampton
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2461242456