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Performing Gender at Work

verfasst von: Elisabeth Kelan

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

Providing a unique insight into how gender is performed in contemporary high-tech work and introducing a creative and novel way of analyzing the fluidity and rigidity of gender at work through discourse analytic methods the author highlights how changes in the world of work interact with changes in gender relations.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

1. Introduction

Abstract

In the mid-1990s a radical shift in economic production took place. This shift is often compared to the introduction of steam-powered machines, which changed the economic mode of production. Like the steam engine, information communication technologies¹ (ICTs) transform the way in which economic value-added is created. These new technologies are the pivot of the changing economy because surplus value is created through the application of knowledge to information. Technologies speed up this application of knowledge on information and are a result of these knowledge-generating processes (Castells, 2000; 2004a). This means that these new technologies are shaped by and shape society (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999b). The new economic formation is referred to as ‘the information society’, ‘knowledge society’ or ‘new economy’,² or sometimes as ‘the weightless economy’ (Quah, 1999) or ‘software capitalism’ (Bauman, 2000).

Elisabeth Kelan

2. Changes at Work and in Gender Relations

Abstract

Currently, we appear to be witnessing radical changes in the world of work and gender relations. With changes in the economic mode of production, organisations are believed to become flat, flexible and even feminised. Organisations are now operating in network-like structures. Work is becoming flexible in terms of its mode, time and location, and workers are often granted the right to manage their own work independently. Biographies take new shapes, and a standard career pattern is no more. Gender relations are supposedly changing, with more women excelling in education and entering paid employment. At the same time, the job market is segregated by gender. In this chapter changes in the world of work and in gender are outlined and interrelations highlighted.

Elisabeth Kelan

3. Theorising Performing Gender

Abstract

In many everyday discussions and social science research, gender is perceived as static and as a property of people. To challenge this essentialism, which constructs men and women as fixed entities, the notion of the social construction of gender has become central to gender theories over recent decades. However, this theoretical insight is often difficult to translate into research practice. Instead of showing how gender is constructed, many studies claim to see gender as socially constructed but then treat gender as a stable, self-evident category within the research (Alvesson and Billing, 2002; Cameron, 1995; Hagemann-White, 1994; 1995; Speer, 2005). Cameron expresses this as follows:

[A] huge proportion of empirical investigations begin by repeating the axiom that gender is constructed and then blithely proceed to ignore it. The question they pose is not how social subjects come to be constituted as women and men, but rather how these already constituted and gendered subjects behave, and especially how their behaviour differs. … This is to assume the very thing you ought to be explaining. (1995: 143)

Elisabeth Kelan

4. Ideal Workers, Ideal Gender

Abstract

As we saw in Chapter 2, there have been substantial changes in the world of work. With these changes, individuals are being encouraged to work flexibly and to operate like small firms (Beck, 2000b; Castells, 2004a; Pongratz and Voß, 2003; Sennett, 1998). Whereas in old employment relations the ideal worker was regularly conceptualised as masculine (e.g. Acker, 1990; Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998a; 1998b; Gherardi, 1995; Puwar, 2004; Wajcman, 1998), the new skills profile that is emerging appears to be saturated with femininity (Adkins, 2000; 2002; Castells, 2000: 12). This is also the case in technical work (Donato, 1990; Funken, 1998; Panteli et al., 2001; Wright and Jacobs, 1995). However, as I argued in Chapter 2, the skills attribution and recognition process is a gendered one (Cockburn, 1983; Fletcher, 1999; Frenkel, 2008; Peterson, 2005; 2007; Phillips and Taylor, 1980; Woodfield, 2000; 2002). Therefore, I provide insight by exploring, first, how ICT workers themselves construct the ideal worker and, second, how they position themselves in relation to the ideal worker. Third, I show how flexibility is enshrined in the ICT labour process, before I explore, fourth, how skills in ICT work are gendered. I pay particular attention to how gender is performed by constructing the ideal worker and positioning oneself in relation to the ideal worker. I thus show how the work environment itself is changing and what these changes mean in terms of gender. Further detail on the companies discussed here and how the research was conducted can be found in Appendix 2.

Elisabeth Kelan

5. Performing Gendered Work Biographies

Abstract

Individualisation as an ability to craft one’s own life path should have been nowhere more explicit than in the way ICT workers narrated their biographies in this study. In current academic and popular discussions it is often emphasised that individuals are now in the driving seat in terms of shaping their own biographies. Through self-improvement, adaptability and becoming an entrepreneur of the self, people’s lives are said to be becoming increasingly organised on the basis of market values (Beck, 2000b; Pongratz and Voß, 2003; Sennett, 1998). This entrepreneurial self has been heralded as the new model for the neoliberal subject (Lemke et al., 2000). Although some claim that traditional markers of life courses such as gender, class and race are less important in the constitution of neoliberal subjects, gender continues to structure life courses (McDowell, 1997; 2002; Skeggs, 1997; Walkerdine et al., 2001; Wetterer, 2003). One way of studying how gender influences the life course is to explore how gender matters in people’s lives over time. Dausien (1998) theorised this by describing how individual enactments of gender ‘add up’ over the life course to form gendered biographies. However, the gender dimension of neoliberal subject constitution processes in relation to biography can also be conceptualised in another way.

Elisabeth Kelan

6. Gender as an Ideological Dilemma

Abstract

On the one hand, gender relations appear to be in flux; on the other hand, they seem to have changed little. Institutional gender discrimination is supposedly a thing of the past in most parts of the Western world (Beck, 2002; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002a; Castells, 2000; 2004a; 2004b). As success at work is now allegedly based on individual abilities rather than gender, it is often asserted that gender matters less there. Most people talk about their work environment as gender egalitarian and downplay the importance of gender (Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998b; Gill, 2002; Henwood, 1998; Jorgensen, 2002; Korvajärvi, 1998). Gender seems to be passé, and feminist claims appear to have been incorporated into the modern world. However, Gill (2007; 2008) analyses how feminist claims are not only incorporated but also repudiated and rendered ineffective by current media discourses. As I show in this chapter, this tendency can also be observed in the work context.

Elisabeth Kelan

7. Conclusions

Abstract

It is now time to weave the different threads together. This book started with the aim of showing how changes in the workplace and changes in gender relations are intertwined. Gender was seen as something that is done and performed but also as something that is performing people. To study performing gender, I developed a discourse analytic model for performing gender and applied it to ICT work. In this concluding chapter I summarise the approach and the key contributions of the book. I also take a look at how the area of gender, technology and work might develop in the future.

Elisabeth Kelan

Backmatter

Titel: Performing Gender at Work
verfasst von: Elisabeth Kelan
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN: 978-0-230-24449-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36745-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244498

Springer Professional

Über dieses Buch

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

1. Introduction

2. Changes at Work and in Gender Relations

3. Theorising Performing Gender

4. Ideal Workers, Ideal Gender

5. Performing Gendered Work Biographies

6. Gender as an Ideological Dilemma

7. Conclusions

Backmatter

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