Browsing by Author "Carr, Melissa"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Discord in the gender harmony: Mobilising femininities at work
    (Critical Management Studies, 2017-05-26) Carr, Melissa; Kelan, Elisabeth K.
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    Femininities at work: How women support other women in the workplace
    (British Academy of Management, 2016-09-10) Carr, Melissa; Kelan, Elisabeth
    Recent research has highlighted the negative intra-gender relations that occur between women in organisations, focusing on aspects such as micro-violence, the queen bee syndrome, negative intra-gender relations, and competition and distance between women. Through a thematic analysis of interviews with 16 women, we draw on material where women were asked to consider their intra-gender relationships at work. We suggest that women are actively supporting each other and aligning themselves with each other; they are ‘mobilising femininities’ to help negotiate dominant hegemonic masculinity. However, the women also demonstrate contested femininities, creating distance from women who are not displaying an appropriate femininity. The article thereby examines the affiliated and contested femininities that women bring to bear in the workplace. It makes a contribution towards understanding mobilising femininities, the extent to which this is a conscious or liminal process for women and how, through mobilising femininities, gender as a social practice is demonstrated.
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    Femininities at work: How women support other women in the workplace
    (British Academy of Management, 2016-09-08) Kelan, Elisabeth K.; Carr, Melissa
    Recent research has highlighted the negative intra-gender relations that occur between women in organisations, focusing on aspects such as micro-violence, the queen bee syndrome, negative intra-gender relations, and competition and distance between women. Through a thematic analysis of interviews with 16 women, we draw on material where women were asked to consider their intra-gender relationships at work. We suggest that women are actively supporting each other and aligning themselves with each other; they are ‘mobilising femininities’ to help negotiate dominant hegemonic masculinity. However, the women also demonstrate contested femininities, creating distance from women who are not displaying an appropriate femininity. The article thereby examines the affiliated and contested femininities that women bring to bear in the workplace. It makes a contribution towards understanding mobilising femininities, the extent to which this is a conscious or liminal process for women and how, through mobilising femininities, gender as a social practice is demonstrated.
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    Neoliberal and postfeminist disclosures: constituting and constraining subjectivities within a bank and a network marketing organisation.
    (Cranfield University, 2019-02) Carr, Melissa; Kelan, Elizabeth; Reinmoeller, Patrick
    This thesis contributes towards an understanding of how neoliberalism and postfeminism have become entrenched within organisations as a gendered form of governance. The study contributes to current debates by adopting a poststructuralist approach to explore how discourses of neoliberalism constitute and constrain feminine subjectivities. It is argued that these discourses act as forms of governance to obscure inequalities by: calling on women to ‘work within’ and psychologise; individualising strategies, which divide women and negate collective action, and finally; obscuring inequalities through normalising discourses. The study draws on material collected in two different organisations. First, twenty qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with women managers in a multinational bank with its headquarters in the UK. Second, using an ethnographical-inspired approach, observations and interviews were conducted with sixteen women distributors in a beauty based networking marketing organisation. The analysis of the interviews and field notes is organised into chapters presented in the format of peer-reviewed journal articles. First, I offer poststructuralist reflexivity as a way to consider research practice, research subjectivity, power and regimes of truth. The second article uses the psychic and affective life of neoliberalism to consider how neoliberal spirituality has been co- opted within the network marketing company as a gendered form of governance. Next, I turn to the bank to consider what happens when women collectively mobilise, a solution often offered in the literature to the individualising effects of postfeminism. The final article considers how discourses of competition differ across the two organisations, albeit framed in neoliberal terms which bind women in unique ways. Through examining two different organisations, the thesis extends our understanding of the ways in which fluid and adaptable neoliberal discourses are enacted within organisations. Overall, the thesis seeks to make a contribution to debates about neoliberalism and postfeminism as forms of governance which silence critique and normalise women’s experiences in organisations.