Hannah and her sisters: Theorizing gender and leadership through the lens of feminist phenomenology

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

Arendt’s work is steeped in the phenomenological tradition, but she has a distinct approach to the topic. Trying to categorize her writing is difficult, since her work is so wide-ranging. In a comment to a student Arendt stated that she viewed herself as a kind of phenomenologist, but not in the same way as Husserl and Heidegger (Young-Bruel, 1982). Arendt’s work is also influenced by Immanuel Kant, and Walter Benjamin, a great friend of hers. Through Benjamin, Arendt (1968) learned the importance of ‘pearl diving’, that is, looking to historical accounts to find the hidden gems that can help us offer meaning in our lives.

A German-born Jew, the events of the Second World War, specifically the Holocaust, were an ongoing theme in Arendt’s writing, as she tried to understand why such atrocities occurred. In her first major work, Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt (1951) maintains that lying is the key characteristic of totalitarian regimes. In these regimes, politics becomes ‘a game of cheating’ (p. 382), whereby leaders give out statements one day, which they then refute on another occasion. Facts do not matter, it seems, because the leader is always right. A chief goal of totalitarian regimes, she argues, is to dismantle governing structures. These structures are regarded as barriers to their future aim, which, as in the case of the Nazis, was world-domination. For Arendt, there is a profound distinction between tyrannical and totalitarian regimes. In her view, the authoritarian dictator differs from the totalitarian leader in that the former wants to restrict people’s freedom whereas the latter wants to abolish freedom altogether. The tyrant is not necessarily ideologically motivated; neither does he have a grand vision, as in the case of a totalitarian leader.

For Arendt, the essence of totalitarianism is terror, which emerges as fear of the other. This fear created ongoing confusion on the part of the populace. Moreover, to keep control the Führer’s orders were vague. People were supposed to ‘execute the will of the leadership’ (p. 400) but what that ‘willing’ consisted of constantly changed, creating even more confusion. Within a totalitarian system, the Leader’s actions contradict what they say. This is no accident, as the Leader gains further control through confusing others by their contradictory statements.

Elsewhere, Arendt (1958, 1971) traces the totalitarian tendencies in philosophical thought. She regards the tendency for philosophers to engage in solipsistic thinking to be a result of their retreat from the public world into the private world of ideas. Such solipsism is dangerous to the public realm. Moreover, since Plato, Western philosophical conceptions of leadership have focussed on the singular leader, rather than a more relational way of thinking about leadership. This distinction between leader and led is dangerous, according to Arendt (1958), since it encourages hierarchical ways of thinking and acting. Further, a solipsistic approach to leadership led to the emergence of totalitarian modes of ruling. This type of sovereign rule is not leadership as Arendt perceives it, but rather a type of mastery.

Thinking about leadership as mastery is predicated on the self-made man (or woman) having the strength, vision, and capacity to lead others, because of their self-mastery. But Arendt (1958) maintains leadership understood as mastery undermines collective freedom and is detrimental to human flourishing, understood as the ability to engage openly in dialogue and debate.

Conversely, Arendt (1958) provides us with an account of leadership as collective action. She argues leadership functions best when it arises out of individuals working together over common cause, since they discover the strength of collective action. As such, it is the actions that emerge when a group of committed individuals work together toward a common goal that constitutes a robust sense of leadership. Yet, over time, leadership understood as collective action has been erased. Now, it is the leader as sovereign individual that dominates our thinking.

In addition, Arendt (1958) is interested in how narrative is fundamental to understanding how we live in the world as distinct individuals in a plural environment. Each person’s individual uniqueness unfolds within the interwoven fabric of life that Arendt refers to as ‘the web of relationships’ (p. 183). Her relational approach offers us a richer understanding of human togetherness. However, she was less insightful when it comes to the topic of women leaders. In response to an interview question, Arendt (1994) replied ‘It just doesn’t look good when a woman gives orders. She should try not to get into such a situation if she wants to remain feminine’ (p. 3). Arendt’s comments highlight a seemingly ageless debate between those women who perceive themselves as feminists, and those who prefer to maintain their ‘feminine’ advantages. Yet it is noteworthy that Arendt followed up her comment by saying that she always did exactly as she chose.

Although Arendt may sound like a contrarian, her work offers valuable insights into leadership, especially in relation to collective action and freedom. Additionally, her political insights into totalitarian ways of thinking and acting illustrate the dangers for human freedom when leaders have too much control over others. As such, her thinking is still pertinent today. That said, Arendt’s seeming lack of interest in gendered ways of being is in sharp contrast to the next theorist I discuss.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1996)

For most of her life, Beauvoir was reluctant to use the term ‘feminist’, seeing its Anglo-American roots in contradiction to her existential standpoint. Only in the 1970s did Beauvoir change her negative stance toward feminism (Kruks, 2012). Revisiting Beauvoir’s oeuvre can add a conceptual richness to work in gender and leadership, not least because she shows how women’s lives have often been regarded as less ‘valuable’ than their male counterparts. The historical legacy of gender inequality influences not only on our social imagination, but also our thinking about leadership.

Alongside Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir played an important role in rethinking philosophy through an existential lens, informed by Husserlian phenomenology and Hegelian thought. In The Second Sex, first published in France in 1949, she traces what it means to be a woman through mythological, historical, psychological and sociological aspects. Beauvoir adapts Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the phenomenal body to describe women’s experiences (Stoller, 2017). She pursues the theme of gender constraints, arguing that freedom is at odds with marriage and the family. Conservative family values, Beauvoir states, work to restrict women’s lives, as they are taught to put family before self, which in turn limits their sense of possibility.

Although Merleau-Ponty (1962, 2007) argues that we always live in the world as embodied subjects, Beauvoir contends his analysis ignores gender in favour of a neutral body subject. In contrast, she focuses on women’s lived experience. Furthermore, her trenchant critique of women’s roles in society, and discussion of oppression are helpful to obtaining a broader understanding of systematic inequity as it relates to leadership. Although Beauvoir’s work has been criticized for taking bourgeois white women as the norm, this criticism ignores how it was particularly situated, gendered, and embodied experiences that were her primary concern.

Beauvoir’s work is not only valuable because of her detailed analysis of women’s lived experience, her writing also offers insights into racism. In describing her experiences in America, for example she shows how African Americans were treated as objects of disdain by white people. In one instance, travelling on a bus in the American South, Beauvoir witnessed a heavily pregnant African American woman in severe distress because of the heat. Yet no-one offered this woman a seat on the bus. Beauvoir comes to the realization that if she offered up her seat to this woman, as she wanted to do, this gesture could make the situation dangerous for both of them. Contra Sartre, her example illustrates that we cannot always act as we choose, because this ignores our place in the social hierarchy.

Not everyone is able to transcend their circumstances. Therefore, Beauvoir (1948) argues we must not conceive of freedom in an abstract way, but rather consider the concrete conditions that create oppression. Only then will we be able to develop strategies to help move beyond oppressive social systems such as racism and sexism. She maintains it is our ethical imperative to will the freedom of others by striving to eradicate injustice. As Beauvoir states in The Ethics of Ambiguity, ‘the cause of freedom is not that of others more than it is mine: it is universally human’ (p. 48). Although freedom is supposedly ‘universally human’, the situation is somewhat complicated when we consider people’s lived experience.

For Beauvoir (2009), each individual’s ability to succeed is affected by their gender, and gender prejudice is deeply engrained in Western society. Echoing Arendt, she observes that ‘[N]either man nor woman like working under a woman’s orders’ (p. 739). In effect, what this means is that women leaders will have to work harder to obtain people’s confidence. Often, employees regard women leaders with suspicion. As Beauvoir notes, ‘at the outset she is suspect; she has to prove herself’ (p. 739). In addition, male and female leaders are perceived differently ‘[T]he man is used to being imposing; his clients believe in his competence; he can let himself go; he is sure to impress. The woman does not inspire the same feeling of security in others’ (p. 740). Because of our traditional ways of connecting leadership with masculinity, it is more difficult for women to be accepted in a leadership role. Moreover, gender hierarchies affect our sense of self such that to be regarded as accomplished ‘today’s woman needs above all forgetfulness of self: but to forget oneself one must first be solidly sure that one has already found oneself’ (p. 740). Beauvoir suggests leadership can be more difficult for women because many have been socialized to be carers in the private sphere, rather than trained to be leaders within the public realm.

Additionally, Beauvoir illustrates how women’s freedom from their situation as Other can only be achieved through collective liberation. Such liberation demands ‘the economic evolution of the feminine condition be accomplished’ (p. 664). As she states, ‘[w]hat is beyond doubt is that until now women’s possibilities have been stifled and lost to humanity’ (p. 751). It is, therefore, in society’s interest that women are perceived as men’s peers, but this requires that society affords women the same respect, and opportunities as their male counterparts. In short, for women to succeed within organizational life, the future needs to be radically different from the past.

Beauvoir’s theoretical framework helps leadership theorists comprehend how particular circumstances and structural conditions affect women’s agency, a topic of interest to the next theorist I consider.

Iris Marion Young (1949–2006)

Young was a committed feminist and social activist. Influenced by Beauvoir, she explores female embodiment through essays on pregnancy, menstruation and questions of home and belonging. Young’s most famous essay on female embodiment is ‘Throwing like a Girl’, where Young (1990) argues that ‘human existence is defined by its situation’ (p. 142). In keeping with Beauvoir, Young views women’s situation as located in ‘a given sociohistorical set of circumstances, despite individual variation in women’s experience, opportunities and possibilities, has a unity that can be described and made intelligible’ (p. 142).

Young (1990) maintains that male phenomenologists have paid little attention to the specificity of women’s lives. She critiques Merleau-Ponty (1962, 2007) for taking the male body as the norm. Although Young agrees that our subjective understanding of the world results from how the body is oriented towards things, nonetheless, she argues there is a contradiction between women’s lived experience and their ability to transcend their situation, because of patriarchal limitations imposed upon them. These limitations affect bodily comportment, motility and spatiality. Indeed, for women, there is an ongoing lived tension between ‘transcendence and immanence, between subjectivity and being a mere object’ (Young, 1990: 144). Because of this tension, some women fail to put ‘their whole bodies into engagement in a physical task with the same ease and naturalness as men’ (p. 145). Consequently, some women do not trust their bodies as men do theirs, and this lack of trust means that some women underestimate their achievements and potential.

One reason for this underestimation of a young woman’s talents is a result of social conditioning. As a girl grows up, she is encouraged to view herself as fragile (Young, 1990). But seeing oneself as fragile may negatively affect a young woman’s ability to act in a confident manner. Yet whenever a woman opens ‘her body in free, active, open extension and bold outward directedness’, this invites sexual objectification (Young, 1990: 155). Although Merleau-Ponty describes the lived body as ‘pure fluid action’, she contends this is not how most women encounter the world. Instead of an open intentionality, women exhibit what Young describes as an ‘inhibited intentionality’, whereby the ‘I can’ too often becomes the ‘I cannot’ (p. 148). Hence, women’s lived experience shows that Merleau-Ponty’s unity of body and world is experienced as a contradiction, which derives from how women’s bodies are often objectified by others, and even themselves. Like Beauvoir, she contends woman ‘remains rooted in immanence, is inhibited and retains a distance from her body as transcending movement and from engaging in the world’s possibilities’ (Young, 1990: 153).

In regards to leadership, Young (1990) argues that women’s mistrust of their bodies may be a reason why many doubt their abilities. She writes: ‘I have an intuition that the general lack of confidence that we frequently have about our cognitive or leadership abilities is traceable in part to an original doubt of our body’s capacity’ (p. 156). If she is right, then it seems important to recognize how gendered embodiment influences leadership potential.

Two decades after first publishing ‘Throwing like a Girl’, Young revised her views on female modality, acknowledging that her daughter’s generation had opportunities and confidence in their abilities her own generation lacked. But Young reaffirmed her argument about the connection between the materiality of gendered embodiment and inequality. Similar to Beauvoir, she argued our situation, both present and past, influences women’s ability to transcend normative ways of thinking about gender roles. Thus, Young’s work can help us understand why many women fail to achieve their potential. Specifically, her focus on female modality enriches the work of Merleau-Ponty, because of her emphasis on the gendered aspect of bodily interaction.

Young offers insight not only into gendered embodiment, but also into structural injustice. She brings feminist theory and phenomenological inquiry into dialogue to examine the continuance of gender inequities on an individual, societal and global scale. Young (2006) argues we need to consider how ‘social structural processes’ enable some bodies to flourish while constraining others. The social structures we encounter on a daily basis, such as rules or laws, appear neutral. Yet this seeming neutrality is erroneous, for these structures produce and reproduce gender inequities, and are a causal factor in continued injustice. Young maintains that we must be willing to call organizations to account for continued injustices. This is exactly the kind of accounting that our next theorist pursues.

Sara Ahmed (1969–)

Ahmed is a queer theorist, critical race scholar and feminist phenomenologist. Here, I focus on her work on queer phenomenology and her writing on the problems with discourses of diversity. Although some theorists argue that Ahmed brings a poststructuralist perspective to phenomenology (Berggren, 2014), Ahmed (2014) argues hers is a ‘practical’ phenomenology.

In Queer Phenomenology, Ahmed adopts Husserlian ideas to show that it is not just how we orientate ourselves to objects that matters, but also that when we focus on a particular object, other objects recede into the background. When bodies are comfortable in their spatial orientation, they will be more likely to act in particular ways. She argues that we are always occupied by different things. For example we have an occupation, but we are also occupied by our thoughts. When we are occupied with one thing, we fail to occupy ourselves with another. For example, she shows how, in Ideas, Husserl focuses on his writing desk, a key piece of equipment for a writer. Husserl imagines what he cannot see; in this case, his children playing in the summerhouse. What Husserl does not imagine is the kitchen, since the domestic sphere is unimportant to him. As with many male philosophers, his needs and wants are cared for by others. Such care enables him to direct his attention to his writing, and to be comfortable doing so.

Ahmed contrasts Husserl’s experience with that of the poet, Audre Lorde. Lorde describes how her desire to write was thwarted by her children. Each time she tries to orientate herself to her writing, little fingers start tapping on Lorde’s typewriter, willing her away from her writerly occupation, and back into their lives. We focus on what matters to us; the problem is that, for many women, what matters is often in conflict, as a result of familial responsibilities.

Because of the challenges of reconciling personal and career priorities, this may, in turn, limit some women’s desire to take on leadership roles. That is they take themselves out of the running for top jobs, because of the difficulties in bridging multiple responsibilities. The key point is that prescribed gender roles not only influence our ability to occupy ourselves with what matters, that which matters to us may well be in conflict. And this conflict will have an effect not only on what we can do, but what we are able to do given the situation. Many women still bear the greater responsibility for family matters, and this state of affairs puts additional pressure on what they are able to achieve in the public sphere.

We saw earlier that dominant social norms may negatively affect people’s ease of movement within particular surroundings (Ropo et al., 2013). Similarly, Ahmed shows us how our spatial surroundings are never neutral, and this is why it is necessary to queer our lived environment. A queer phenomenology helps us further understand how space is never neutral, but full of past gestures, assumptions and intentions. Taking Merleau-Ponty’s work in new directions, Ahmed (2006) argues that ‘heterosexuality functions as a background’ (p. 87). That is, bodies take on ‘shape of norms that are repeated over time and with force’ (p. 91). In so doing, our bodies sediment their histories; we are influenced by our past experiences, which leave a bodily imprint. Furthermore, historical sedimentation not only has an impact on the present, it also has a future impact on what bodies can do. Queering spaces can open up our understanding of different modes of being-in-the-world. Structural limitations work on the body in a visible way, but we are also habituated into modes of being. These normative ways of thinking become imprinted on our bodies through institutional practices.

In terms of gender and leadership, we could argue that normative practices affect how we orientate ourselves to our spatial surroundings. Who feels ‘at home’ in one surrounding may experience discomfort in another environment. When we feel uneasy, this influences how we move through space. For those who feel marginalized by their surroundings, there is a double bind in that we are not only silenced by the discomfort we feel, we may also silence ourselves. Sometimes, silencing can be a gesture of defiance but, at other times, silencing is an effect of marginalization from dominant societal, and organizational norms.

In many organizations, racism and sexism (as well as other forms of inequality) continues to flourish. If we do not account for how institutional discourses fail to deal with inequalities, it will be difficult to foster systemic change. Ahmed’s resignation from the university she worked at, because of what she saw as a failure to address gender and racial inequities, is indicative of a certain frustration at the neoliberal university. What it shows is that being willing to fight against social inequity comes at a personal cost. Although her action illustrates leadership, it is not the kind of public gesture that most of us choose. Yet if we are not willing to fight for organizational change, then the prospects for radical change in organizations seem extremely dim.