Masculinity and Femininity

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Masculinity and femininity are discursive constructs (practices and symbols) that provide a means for gender signification. The analysis of masculinity and femininity in the social sciences allows a discussion and interpretation of gender identities that is not tied to the biological sexes. By avoiding a comparison between men and women as distinctive groups, the use of the abstract terms masculinity and femininity permits a focus on behaviors and practices that may be acted by both men and women while being identified as either masculine or feminine. Thus, by allowing some decoupling of masculinity and men and femininity and women, one may suggest that, for example, women in management may often display masculine behaviors. On the other hand, it is often proposed that those men who display more feminine behaviors are not as successful in bureaucratic organizations as the more masculine men.

Emphasis on masculinity and femininity represents a move from an essentialist perspective, [Page 547]which focuses on the analysis of men and women as biological entities. Research engaging with masculinity and femininity and/or masculinities and femininities often draws upon poststructuralism and poststructuralist feminism in acknowledging the cultural and historical contingency, the fluidity and diversity of gender identities. Within such perspectives, gender identities are socially constructed and any categorization of women or men as homogeneous groups is rejected. Similarly, masculinity and maleness and femininity and femaleness are seen as precarious and unstable subjectivities that are contingent upon historical, social, and cultural backgrounds and are influenced by differences in relation to various aspects including class, occupation, age, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality.

Despite the recognition of the socially constructed meanings of the concepts of masculinity and femininity and the further clarification of their fluid and contingent nature, their use in research can still easily draw upon and reproduce cultural stereotypes of men and women. This is particularly evident when they are used with reference to predominant images of what constitute being masculine or feminine. Gender research, which recognizes the multiplicity of masculinity, also frequently emphasizes the dominance in work organizations of a particular form linked to individualism, competitiveness, instrumental rationality, and emotional control. On the other hand, while recognizing the multiplicity of femininity, the dominant form is often represented as emotional, nurturing, empathetic, supportive, receptive, intuitive, and submissive. In the gender and organization literature, often the “hegemonic” form of masculinity (associated with control, rationality, and competitiveness) becomes the singular form, the only focus of analysis and the embodiment of management (management as masculine). Such a position is problematic because it repeatedly reinforces the stereotypical categorization it seeks to overcome.

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