A view from the top: An examination of postfeminist sensibilities in women leaders’ constructions of success and responses to gender inequality in English football

Abstract

Abstract Using data from biographic interviews with women leaders in English football, this article examines women’s constructions of success in the face of gender inequalities and analyses the conditions under which women leaders challenge or repudiate gender inequalities. Through the lens of postfeminist sensibilities, I find that women face an “ideological dilemma” between acknowledging unequal access to football leadership and narrating their success through a discourse of personal choice and merit. Consequently, women leaders were unlikely to reflect on their privileged access to leadership or support institutional changes to address gender equality. Nonetheless, women leaders invested in personal strategies to support future women leaders in football by reclaiming negative narratives about football’s treatment of women and performing acts of “tempered radicalism” to challenge unequal gender relations. These findings show that a postfeminist sensibility in the football workplace can be simultaneously beneficial and detrimental to gender equality efforts as women leaders work to reconcile a collective feminist consciousness with a neoliberal subjectivity. These findings suggest that it is a mistake to position postfeminist sensibilities in opposition to radical gender equality efforts. Instead, we must focus on ways to support women leaders to navigate their complex, fragile, and contradictory positions and capitalize on the ruptures in neoliberal thinking within postfeminist sensibilities that offer opportunities to challenge gender inequalities.