Management, women and gender capital

Anne Ross-Smith, Kate Huppatz

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    77 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    A generation of women have sustained careers in senior management. We use Bourdieu’s concepts of field together with contemporary feminist interpretations of embodied cultural capital to analyse a group of such women’s narratives of their own managerial experiences. We extend feminist analyses of gender capital and argue it may be an important cultural resource by which women develop and sustain their careers in senior management. Drawing on selected findings of an empirical study of senior managers in Australian organizations and a recent theoretical analysis of women’s narratives using Bourdieu and feminist interpretations of Bourdieu, we examine whether women wield gender capital in the management field. We propose that gender capital, as articulated in contemporary feminist theory, provides an unexplored but potentially powerful explanatory mechanism for furthering our understanding of the complex and different ways the presence of women in senior managerial roles may shape contemporary management discourses and practices.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)547-566
    Number of pages20
    JournalGender, Work and Organization
    Volume17
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2010

    Keywords

    • gender capital
    • management

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Management, women and gender capital'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this