Gendered Organization

Gender in Organizational Theory

Gender is socially constructed and it is performed—we “do” gender rather than “have” a gender. Joan Acker defines gender as patterns of meaning that are socially produced so as to enable people to distinguish between male and female, and masculine and feminine. Moreover, such meanings influence the ways that organizations are structured, cultures are produced and maintained, and behaviors are enacted. As Acker surmises, distinctions between the masculine or male and the feminine or female pattern the relations between advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, and so forth.

Fiona Wilson argues that because gender has not been a significant variable in organization and management theory, organizations have come to be understood as gender neutral. Critiquing this position, Stephen Linstead has suggested that organizations are better considered as being gender blind because they are dominantly conceived of in relation to the masculine. By this account, organizational meaning is dominated by a masculine norm where the feminine is excluded, marginalized, and rendered abject. Despite claims of gender neutrality in the majority of theories in organization studies, the foundational studies of, for example, Frederick Taylor and Abraham Maslow did actually account for gender, although it has been erased in subsequent uses of these theories. Taylor argued that organizing is about identifying the clearly observable principles on which work is founded, and against which they could be measured. Difference, like gender and ethnicity, does not affect these principles and people should manage according to the one best way. However, Taylor also argued that gender difference does affect the way people manage and work, and thus needs to be corrected for administratively. For example, he advocated allowing women two days' leave from work per month to enable them to cope with the menstrual cycle, therefore highlighting women's biological difference from men. Either way, Taylor's theories were gendered in that he believed scientific management would be beneficial for women by suppressing their difference from men. Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs is infused with an understanding of gender difference. In this model, the “self” in self-actualization is actually a male self, characterized by qualities such as the denial of relatedness and the pursuit of its own individual goals. This contrasts with a female model, which defines its self in relation to others. For Maslow, if women self-actualize, they do it in different ways from men—for example, through motherhood, rather than through organization or as expressed by the hierarchy of needs.

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