Women’s Leadership by Carole Elliott Valerie Stead

Women’s Leadership by Carole Elliott Valerie Stead

Author:Carole Elliott Valerie Stead [Valerie Stead, Carole Elliott]
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave macmillan


A contextual approach to gender: Gendered processes

The impact of gender upon women’s leadership practice and their learning of leadership can be analysed in more depth by exploring a further contextual understanding of gender as embedded in and reproduced through social practices and structures (Wharton, 2005).

This understanding of gender foregrounds what Gatrell and Swan describe as ‘gendered processes’ (2008: 38). As we noted in the introduction to this chapter, Gatrell and Swan describe such processes as the ‘concrete formal and informal activities and events in the workplace; what people say and do, and how they think’ (ibid.). This description has distinct overlaps with the notion of gender being created through social interaction. However while the previous discussion focused on the interactional, in this section we focus on the organisational. By the organisational we mean the formal and informal workplace and organisational practices, structures and processes such as promotion, decision-making, recruitment and selection and gaining access to positions of influence.

While the previous section focused particularly on how expectations and perceptions of women might be deemed appropriate or in-appropriate for women and how these were played out, this section takes a closer look at how formal and informal organisational structures, practices and procedures impact upon women’s leadership. We have already noted how workplace expectations are produced and reproduced through gendered processes, for example, working excessively long hours. Such norms, we observe, assume an ‘ideal’ typically male worker with minimal domestic commitments and thus work to penalise women who traditionally have additional domestic responsibilities. In this way we can see how expectations and perceptions of women are inextricably intertwined with workplace practices and procedures. This intertwining of expectations, perceptions and gendered processes is particularly stark in accounts from women leaders of seeking promotion, and of gaining access to positions of influence.

The opaqueness of gendered processes

In our study of women leaders Rennie Fritchie talked about her experience of seeking a managerial role in her early career. She found that there was no formal route for her to progress. Although this lack of opportunity wasn’t explicitly articulated, the managerial environment was largely male and so by implication managerial roles were associated with men. This environment had the effect of marginalising her chances of gaining formal promotion. What is particularly striking about this example is the opaqueness of organisational processes. Here, there was a distinct lack of clarity about whether managerial positions are open to all and how a woman might gain advancement. This opaqueness is further illustrated by Eagly and Carli’s (2007) work. In their exploration of barriers to women’s advancement they note that women may not be given challenging enough work that will enable them to move into senior roles. They cite an example from Erkut (2001) of a female executive who was prevented from progressing her career by being denied the opportunity to travel:

She should have been the director of the office in about 1985 but what happened was that they brought some man in from another place and put him above her. They gave as a reason that she didn’t travel.



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