This edited book inserts postfeminism (PF) as a critical concept into understandings of work and organization. While the notion of PF has been extensively investigated in cultural and media studies, it has yet to emerge within organization studies - remaining marginal to understandings of work based experiences and subjectivities. Understanding PF as a discursive cultural context not only draws on an established epistemological orientation to organizations as discursively constructed and reproduced but allows us to highlight how PF may underpin and be underpinned by other discursive regimes
This book, as the first in the field, draws on key international authors to explore: the contextual ‘backdrop’ of PF and its links with neo-liberalism, transnational feminism and other hegemonic discourses; the different ways in which this backdrop has infiltrated organizational values and practice through the primacy attached to choice, merit and individual agency as well as through the widespread perception that gender disadvantage has been ‘solved’; and the implications for organizational subjectivity and for how inequality is experienced and perceived.
This book introduces postfeminism as a critical concept with contemporary importance for the study of organizations, arguing for its explanatory potential when:
Exploring women’s and men’s experience of managing and organizing;
Investigating the gendered aspects of organizational life;
Analysing the contemporary validation of the feminine and the associated feminization of management/leadership and organizations;
Tracing the emergence of new femininities and masculinities within organizational contexts.
The book is ideal reading for researchers working in the area of Gender and Organization Studies but is also of interest to researchers in the areas of Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Women’s Studies and Sociology.
Part 1: Introduction Postfeminism: Negotiating Equality with Tradition in Contemporary Organizations Patricia Lewis, Yvonne Benschop and Ruth Simpson Part 2: Postfeminism and Organization 1. Postfeminism and Gendered (Im)mobilities Patricia Lewis 2. Doing-it-all: Exploring Work Life Balance in Nigeria through a Postfeminist Lens Itari Turner and Ruth Simpson 3. Keep Calm and Carry on Being Slinky: Postfeminism, Resilience Coaching, and Whiteness Elaine Swan 4. Postfeminism, Queer and Work Nick Rumens 5. Contested Terrain: The Power to Define, Control and Benefit from Gender Equality Efforts Elisabeth K. Kelan 6. Postfeminism and the Performance of Merit Savita Kumra and Ruth Simpson 7. Analysing Entrepreneurial Activity through a Postfeminist Perspective – A Brave New World or the Same Old Story? Helene Ahl & Susan Marlow 8. How Postfeminism Plays Out for Women Elite Leaders Sharon Mavin and Gina Grandy Part 3: Future Directions in Postfeminism and Organizations 9. Make Do and Mend? Working Postfeminism and Vintage Philip Hancock and Melissa Tyler 10. Postfeminism as New Materialisms: A Future Unlike the Present? Marta B. Calás, Linda Smircich and Seray Ergene
Patricia Lewis is a Reader in Management at Kent Business School, UK. Yvonne Benschop is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Department of Business Administration at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Ruth Simpson is a Professor of Management at Brunel Business School, UK.
