Managers’ Responses to Gender Equality Policies: Gendered Constraints in Role Performances

Abstract

This paper develops grounded theory on how managers’ gender shapes their implementation of practices and policies aimed at improving gender equality. I draw on ethnographic data of a policy aimed at improving gender equality—specifically, a flexible work policy—at a STEM professional organization. I identify how gendered constraints in role performances shape managers’ policy implementation. Specifically, women managers encountered barriers to developing technical expertise and client relations, and their formal authority was often disrespected. Facing these constraints, they responded by focusing their day-to-day activities on subordinates, which allowed them to internally broker information (as an alternative to technical and client-facing tasks) and cultivate cooperation (as an alternative to formal authority). The flexible work policy threatened to undermine these interdependent activities, and women managers generally opposed it. In contrast, men managers generally did not experience these same constraints, and instead focused on technical and client-related work that was largely independent of subordinates. The policy maintained these activities, and they implemented it. By identifying gendered constraints in role performances, this study forwards theory on managers’ implementation of gender equality-related practices and policies. It also furthers theory on gender, management, and leadership by demonstrating how gendered constraints in role performances shape managerial actions.