Jannine Williams

Key issues for gender research in HRD: a Multi-Stakeholder Framework for analysing gendered media constructions of women leaders

Gender research can be a highly political process with significant impact, positively or negatively, on the researcher(s) and research participants. As a result there are key issues for consideration when preparing to undertake gender research in Human Resource Development (HRD). Gender research in HRD requires a mature level of researcher reflexivity in terms of personal understandings of gender; individual researcher values, philosophical positions and standpoints on gender; motivations for research; awareness of how gender research may construct researchers in their own professional settings and how research participants may respond to gender research. We contend that a process of researcher reflexivity, in critically reflecting upon and reviewing individual assumptions and standpoints, is essential before beginning gender research. Gender is a significant dimension of personal life, social relations and culture: an arena where we face difficult practical issues about justice, identity and even survival; where there is much prejudice, myth and falsehood, and where social sciences gender research is producing a relatively new form of knowledge (Connell, 2009). This chapter outlines key issues for gender researchers illustrated through research into gendered media constructions of women leaders. We introduce the importance of women leaders and gender aware learning and HRD and outline understandings of gender; diverse advances in gender research; consistency, harm, pleasure and power; participant-research relationships and the researcher’s position in gender research, by drawing upon our previous studies. We then present the key issues in practice, through our operationalization of a Multi-Stakeholder Framework for analysing gendered media constructions of women leaders. We utilize a mixed method design (Saunders, 2012) of statistical analysis of secondary data on women in senior positions in a UK region (geographies of gender); analysis of three Supplements of the Top 500 Influential Leaders via discourse analysis; a semi-structured interview with a media producer; group and individual interviews with selected aspiring and current women leaders and stages of on-going researcher reflexivity and accountability. We conclude with reflections on the constraints and possibilities of the multi-stakeholder framework approach.

Women’s impact on women’s careers in management: Queen Bees, female misogyny, negative intra-relations and solidarity behaviours

This chapter focuses on the contradictions which undermine solidarity behaviour between women in organizations, it critiques the perpetuation of the senior woman as queen bee (Abramson, 1975; Staines et al., 1973) and progresses research into the concept of female misogyny (Mavin, 2006a) and women’s negative intra-relations (Mavin and Williams, 2011) within the context of senior women’s career positioning. Research into female misogyny and women’s negative intra-relations offers alternative understandings as to why senior women in organizations are blamed for not supporting other women in their careers and why senior women are often perceived as ‘too male’ and/or the wrong type of career role models for other women. The argument here is that as senior women attempt to navigate the complexities of being both women and managers in the gendered context of senior management, they face misogyny, including female misogyny, and negative evaluations from men and other women in management. Female misogyny and negative intra-relations between women undermine expectations of solidarity behaviour and constrain women’s opportunities to openly engage in competition whilst collaborating and supporting each other.

A Beginning and not the End: Work After a Diagnosis of Dementia:

While there is a growing literature on the experiences of disabled workers, this article presents an account of a work experience not frequently documented: being employed while living with dementia. It does this through the account of Elizabeth Draper, an NHS Hospital Trust manager, who received a diagnosis of dementia while employed. The article offers new ways of conceptualizing the struggles of disabled workers to continue with their project of self-becoming through work. It shows how work practices can enact violence through ‘non-recognition’ and how workers can subvert this violence to create opportunities for future development.

‘Woman as a project’: Key issues for women who want to get on

The following chapter explores senior women’s key issues for women who want to get on as managers and leaders. We present analysis drawn from a wider qualitative study of 81 senior women who hold UK FTSE 100/250 executive/non-executive director and/or influential leader positions, set against a background assumption that ‘male-defined constructions of work and career success continue to dominate organizational research and practice’ (O’Neill et al., 2008, p. 727). The senior women participants have achieved a traditionally ‘masculine strategic situation’ (Tyler, 2005, p. 569) in breaking through the gendered glass ceiling (Morrison et al., 1987) and in doing so may be viewed as no longer ‘the organizational second sex’ or ‘others of management’ (Tyler, 2005, p. 572). The study, following Ellemers et al. (2012) and Chesterman et al. (2005), therefore explores experiences of women in high places who have overcome gendered barriers to achieve senior leader positions, and advances Terjesen et al.’s call for ‘truly innovative research into the female directors’ experiences’ currently lacking in the literature (Terjesen et al., 2009, p. 332).