Managing Masculinity in Contemporary Organizational Life: A Managerial Project

Abstract

This paper seeks to theorize managerial discourses and practices in terms of their effects upon sexuality, intimacy and power in organizations. While accepting the real and immediate gendered material and social inequalities that are reinforced by the recent resurgence of unadulterated `free market' capitalism, the authors focus here on certain limited aspects of femininity and masculinity that are important for an understanding of gender identity and sexuality. Acknowledging the multiplicity of masculinities and femininities, they speak of a predominant form of masculinity that is elevated and privileged in everyday life, not least in organizational settings. This form of masculinity offers many men a secure and `comfortable' identity in generating and sustaining feminine dependence and a sexuality of men that displaces intimacy. By contrast, as a socially privileged yardstick by which women are judged, and judge themselves and one another, the model of what womanhood has come to be is bound up in an image of passivity. Feminine passivity then, may be understood as an often `reluctant collaborator' in what can be seen as a silencing of women's authority and fuller participation in organizations. The authors argue that the idealized conception of passive femininity and this silencing of women's authority has the effect of privileging men over women both materially and socially.