Ruth Simpson

Patricia Lewis

Yvonne Benschop

This edited book inserts postfeminism (PF) as a critical concept into understandings of work and organization. While the notion of PF has been extensively investigated in cultural and media studies, it has yet to emerge within organization studies - remaining marginal to understandings of work based experiences and subjectivities. Understanding PF as a discursive cultural context not only draws on an established epistemological orientation to organizations as discursively constructed and reproduced but allows us to highlight how PF may underpin and be underpinned by other discursive regimes This book, as the first in the field, draws on key international authors to explore: the contextual ‘backdrop’ of PF and its links with neo-liberalism, transnational feminism and other hegemonic discourses; the different ways in which this backdrop has infiltrated organizational values and practice through the primacy attached to choice, merit and individual agency as well as through the widespread perception that gender disadvantage has been ‘solved’; and the implications for organizational subjectivity and for how inequality is experienced and perceived. This book introduces postfeminism as a critical concept with contemporary importance for the study of organizations, arguing for its explanatory potential when: Exploring women’s and men’s experience of managing and organizing; Investigating the gendered aspects of organizational life; Analysing the contemporary validation of the feminine and the associated feminization of management/leadership and organizations; Tracing the emergence of new femininities and masculinities within organizational contexts. The book is ideal reading for researchers working in the area of Gender and Organization Studies but is also of interest to researchers in the areas of Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Women’s Studies and Sociology.

Postfeminism and Organization

Jason Hughes

Natasha Slutskaya

This insightful new study explores an emerging and growing interest in Sociology and Organization Studies which concerns the meanings and experiences of ‘dirty’ work. Based on a unique study of male street cleaners, refuse collectors, graffiti removers and butchers, and drawing on Bourdieu as a theoretical frame, it presents an ‘embodied’ understanding of ‘dirty’ work. Gender, Work and Occupation explores new avenues of workplace studies, highlighting how material conditions both support and constrain processes of occupation-based ideological constructions. Using original field research, the authors put forward a different agenda in terms of how we think about dirty work, and how we can explore and understand the ‘lived experiences’ of dirty workers.

Working Class Men doing Dirty Work

Gender, Class and Occupation

Heather Höpfl

This book explores new understandings and contemporary experiences of dirty work – tasks or roles that are seen to be disgusting or degrading. Through novel empirical sites that include nursing, medicalization, sex workers, sex call operators, financiers and women's magazines, the book offers new theoretical insights into a form of work that is increasing in significance in the contemporary labour market. By drawing on concepts such as staining, embodiment and 'whiteness', it complicates the clean/dirty divide in the context of work and contributes to understandings of dirty work as contingent, fluid and socially constructed. It offers rich insights into the complex ways in which such work is experienced and the variety of strategies drawn on as dirty workers seek to manage identity.

Concepts and Identities

Dirty Work

Savita Kumra

Ronald J. Burke

The issue of gender in organizations has attracted much attention and debate over a number of years. The focus of examination is inequality of opportunity between the genders and the impact this has on organizations, individual men and women, and society as a whole. It is undoubtedly the case that progress has been made with women participating in organizational life in greater numbers and at more senior levels than has been historically the case, challenging notions that senior and/or influential organizational and political roles remain a masculine domain. The Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organizations is a comprehensive analysis of thinking and research on gender in organizations with original contributions from key international scholars in the field. The Handbook comprises four sections. The first looks at the theoretical roots and potential for theoretical development in respect of the topic of gender in organizations. The second section focuses on leadership and management and the gender issues arising in this field; contributors review the extensive literature and reflect on progress made as well as commenting on hurdles yet to be overcome. The third section considers the gendered nature of careers. Here the focus is on querying traditional approaches to career, surfacing embedded assumptions within traditional approaches, and assessing potential for alternative patterns to evolve, taking into account the nature of women's lives and the changing nature of organizations. In its final section the Handbook examines masculinity in organizations to assess the diversity of masculinities evident within organizations and the challenges posed to those outside the norm. In bringing together a broad range of research and thinking on gender in organizations across a number of disciplines, sub-disciplines, and conceptual perspectives, the Handbook provides a comprehensive view of both contemporary thinking and future research directions.

Ruth Simpson

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