Managing Gender Role Conflicts in Interactions with Clients: Women’s Experiences in PSFs

Abstract

Professional service firms have been described as male-dominated and client-oriented organizations. This article focuses on role conflict management for women during interactions with clients. Building on Goffman’s work on interactions, roles, and gender, we aim to understand how female professionals manage role conflicts during interactions with their clients and which gender dynamics underpin these interactions. The methodology combines observations of client-professional interactions, semi-structured interviews with professionals and their clients, and documentary collection. Our sample consists of a total of 66 informants. Data collection took place from 2011 to 2021, enabling insights into the impacts of the #MeToo movement on practices and discourses in professional service firms. Our findings suggest that female professionals engage in seven different ways of managing role conflicts during interactions with clients, especially mother-professional and sexual object–professional role conflicts. The typology we propose enriches the existing literature, which focuses mainly on role conflict management with internal stakeholders, and on the practice of women masculinizing themselves. Although most of the ways female professionals manage role conflicts reveal conformity to the established masculine order and contribute to reproducing male domination, the emerging voicing strategy we identify may challenge it.