Abstract
As a scholar whose research is framed by post-structural and critical perspectives, and as a teacher who attempts what is called ‘research-led teaching’, I am asked, with fair regularity, how I accomplish the feat of communicating to students the theoretical perspectives underlying my research. The answer is ‘with some difficulty’. The Social Life of Gender is a text that can potentially address some of these difficulties for myself and other university teachers eager to acquaint students with nuanced understandings of power and to discuss how multiple social injustices and inequalities can be both exposed and addressed.
The title of the book, The Social Life of Gender, is rather innocuous in that it does not seem to reflect the explicit and forceful political message to be found inside. The notion that gender is a social construct and thus lives a ‘social life’ rather than existing outside social processes is by now widely accepted in academic circles. While this theme may not have historically been a key focus of Organization Studies, it has certainly been discussed extensively on the pages of this journal in the past 20 years (e.g. Benschop & Doorewaard, 1998; Fotaki, 2013; Tienari, Quack, & Theobald, 2002). For this reason, the title of the book does not appear to offer anything surprising. The contents, however, do not correspond to this appearance. Rather than speak about a singular social life of gender, the book reveals its multiple lives. This is done through an explicit focus on how gender intersects with other markers of difference such as class, skin colour, ethnicity and sexual orientation to produce multiple divergent constructions. The resulting message is highly political. The book challenges and invites often uncomfortable reflection not only on the broadly understood structural gender-based social inequalities, but also on feminist thinking itself. One of the key messages is that feminist theorizing always emerges from particular positions of power and may exclude and silence those who do not already occupy those positions. It contributes to the growing opening up of the academic feminist conversation present in this journal to perspectives that are not white, Western, heterosexual and predominantly middle or upper class (Essers & Benschop, 2007; Riach, Rumens, & Tyler, 2014).
The intersectional spirit of the book is reflected in its authorship. It is authored and edited by a diverse team that includes many women of colour – Raka Ray, Jennifer Carlson and Abigail Andrews – with an addition of authored contributions by Oluwakemi M. Balogun, Dawn M. Dow, Kimberly Kay Hoang, Katherine Maich, Katherine Mason and Gowri Vijayakumar. Together, these scholars represent a powerful all-female team of eminent researchers serving in major universities in the United States and researching a wide range of subjects such as migration, race/ethnicity, globalization, politics, family, inequality and sexuality using feminist and post-colonial perspectives.
While the authors do not state this explicitly, the book appears to be targeted towards undergraduate students in sociology, cultural or gender studies or masters students who work in the same or related areas but perhaps do not possess substantial prior knowledge of gender studies. The book uses very accessible language, explains basic (but by no means simple or one-dimensional) concepts and tackles fundamental topics. Each chapter begins with a summary of the contents and helpfully ends with a brief index of key terms and a non-overwhelming list of additional readings. The authors also include, for each chapter, a set of questions designed to help students evaluate their understanding and develop it further by applying the concepts from the chapters to a range of life experiences. Many chapters contain illustrative vignettes.
The authors ground their thinking in two broad theoretical traditions: feminist and post-colonial theory. The presented analysis integrates these two perspectives, with post-colonial theory helping expose the mechanisms of power and privilege, not only in social structures, but also in some dominant forms of feminist theorizing. The authors detail how historical and contemporary feminist thought often ignores how varied markers of social difference such as national origin, religion, skin colour and sexuality intersect to produce particular and diverse forms of inequality. They emphasize the central importance of intersectional theorizing for developing analytical approaches and practices that provide a potential for critical exposure and examination of many forms of power and oppression.
The broad conceptual thrust of the argument relies on two ways of thinking about gender. The first concerns gender as a category or a set of norms and stereotypes, namely ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’, that are used to determine and define the roles, positions, abilities and entitlements of various categories of individuals in society. The second, and the one that is more important or interesting for the authors, refers to using gender as an analytical lens. This involves examining how various ideologies of gender are employed to produce and legitimize diverse social practices and to make sense of social events. Using gender as an analytical device can help students and scholars develop nuanced understandings of social processes that link macro-environmental conditions such as globalization, neo-liberalism, colonial history and deindustrialization with micro-level social and individual practices and choices. It is the discussion of gender as a lens in particular, and the methodological tools it provides, that critically minded teachers of management can employ to illustrate to students how social inequalities and also particular forms of social organizing are produced and sustained.
The orientation of the book generally does not have an organic fit with the traditional management curriculum. It does not offer, for instance, an extensive discussion of workplace gender-based discrimination or workplace inequality regimes that could smoothly slot into a critical session on diversity in a human relations or a cross-cultural management module. Instead, it uses gender to provide a critical examination of a diverse range of broader sociological topics such as the legacy of colonialism, sexuality, crime and justice, reproduction and economic exploitation. Nonetheless, the text could be a great resource for management students. One important function it can play is uncovering and challenging the hegemonic nature of Western thought. The discussion of the notion of position underpinned by intersectional theorizing (or how social realities appear very differently from the positions of individuals of differing backgrounds) and colonial legacy in feminist thinking and activism can encourage management students to think critically about the nature and effect of Western models and understandings of national culture, corporate responsibility and business ethics. The chapter on decolonizing gender in particular could provide theoretical tools that would help students construct a critical view on how developing countries and people outside ‘the global North’ are represented in the international business, economics and development texts and also assess the possible outcomes of these representations. Overall, The Social Life of Gender can help students de-naturalize many aspects of the contemporary Western management discourse and identify practices that would allow more inclusive discussions within business schools.
In addition to an explicit acknowledgement of how intersections of differences create various forms of oppression and discussion of alternative feminist discourses, The Social Life of Gender considers the constructions of gender in relation to the dominant economic forms of organizing. On one hand, the text brings to students’ attention the gender-based economic inequalities and how they are created by the neo-liberal ideologies and practices that are taught and often taken for granted in business schools – cost-cutting, treating workers as ‘human resources’, strict separation between the work and home spheres and the social invisibility of domestic labour. On the other hand, it looks at how various understandings of gender work together with the neo-liberal and capitalist discourses to legitimize and reproduce current forms of organizing. For instance, co-opting women, and women of colour in particular, into low-paid, insecure and exploitative jobs may be presented and justified as increasing female participation in the workplace. ‘Third world woman worker tropes’ or views of impoverished women from developing countries as obedient, diligent and patient support their exploitation and continued subordinate positions, while public emasculation is used as a strategy to keep male workers in line.
The Social Life of Gender also encourages a critical examination of business practices that purport to promote diversity in the workplace and equality in broader society. The book invites us to question the corporate commitments to diversity and pay critical attention to how various constructions of gender may operate through these discourses to reproduce social inequalities. The feminist, intersectional and post-colonial perspectives presented by the authors point to the continued importance of examining structural social inequalities that are experienced by individuals because they are members of particular categories – women, men, women of colour, men of colour, etc. This stands in contradiction to current individualizing corporate discourse of personal aspiration, achievement and choice exemplified by the call for women to ‘lean in’ or for fathers to ‘choose’ to spend more time with their families. The book is also a powerful reminder that, as students and researchers, we should be concerned with social justice as opposed to understanding diversity foremost in relation to its contribution to the organizational bottom line.
While recognizing its valuable contribution and engaging narrative, I imagine that The Social Life of Gender will not be an easy read for many. This is not because it uses complex academic jargon. On the contrary, the authors excel in putting forth complex concepts in a way that will be accessible not only for graduate but also undergraduate students. The key discomfort that students and researchers may experience when reading this text is connected with the threat it may present to their own assumptions and identities. In particular, the authors’ intersectional and post-colonial stance exposes the harm that ignorance of power and privilege does not only through practices already widely regarded as exploitative, but also through social movements that claim to be grounded in an ethical impulse. For instance, the authors offer a scathing critique of Western efforts to ‘do good’ in other parts of the world. They call for us, as scholars, to turn a critical gaze upon ourselves and re-examine what we take for granted as universally ethical and progressive. The discussion of female genital surgeries that closes the book, specifically, will force some fundamental and painful re-evaluation of ingrained assumptions that exist in the West.
In consequence, the text certainly invites readers to ‘check their own privilege’. However, it does so in a sensitive manner. For instance, the review and discussion questions that close each chapter are careful not to force students to talk about potentially painful experiences or to reveal more about their private reflections than they would feel comfortable with. This would be especially relevant in the context of a class discussion. The text also offers hope that some readers who never felt entirely at home within the most visible and dominant Western cultural discourses will find a sense of recognition and validation in its pages.
The only possible limitation of the text is that it is largely (but not entirely) focused on examining and critiquing the events, practices and discourses in the United States. Students in other parts of the world may find it harder to relate to the examples and discussion questions than US-based students. Nonetheless, this does not detract from the power of the theoretical tools offered by The Social Life of Gender that would allow readers to view themselves and the world from a more liberating and inclusive perspective.