Gendered Power at Work: Constituting Moral Worth in a Hyper-Masculine Organizational Culture

Abstract

How do powerful women in a hyper-masculine organization talk about power? To answer this question, we should explore both cultural contents and gendered politics that inform women’s discourse about social power. This article investigates how women morally evaluate their own and others’ power. Based on in-depth interviews with 34 women serving in senior military positions, I argue that they achieve a sense of self-worth and professional subjectivity through moral work. This symbolic work involves three main discursive strategies regrading power: (1) Drawing symbolic moral boundaries between themselves and the morally ‘degenerate’ military environment; (2) Using ‘performances of authenticity’ to constitute their moral worth; and (3) (Non-)apology to counter the accusation implicit in the social expectation that they must apologize for their power as women. These strategies allow these women to talk about power in moral terms, bring power closer to themselves, and at the same time claim moral subjectivity. By morally justifying the use of military power, they make the internalized ‘brass ceiling’ transparent. Thus, I argue that although women are agentic in constituting their worth, this is not necessarily done by way of ‘resistance’, but rather through discursive maneuvering that relies on the same oppressive discursive patterns designed to restrict their power. Accordingly, their efforts to constitute their selves and ‘do power’ are carried out within, rather than outside, the gendered moral logic of the organizational culture.

Keywords

Gendered power hyper-masculine culture recognition symbolic moral boundaries value and worth

Introduction

Historically, representations of powerful women have often included misogynistic imagery and moral denigration. The figures of the witch, the whore and the bitch became embedded in culture, and had a disiplining and normalizing effect on the feminine behavioral repertorie with regard to power (Beaed, 2017; Vachhani, 2009). These imageries have often been accompanied by strict social sanctions against women with power, involving both brutal physical and concealed symbolic violence. Enduring perceptions separating women and power may have particularly harsh consequences for powerful women in hyper-masculine organizational contexts, such as the military, where women are expected to exercise the power entrusted to them by the organization and at the same time might be penalized for that very exercise.

This article explores how women talk about their power and constitute their selves and their subjectivity within an extremely gendered organizational culture, where physical and symbolic power resources are allocated almost exclusively to men. Specifically, I analyze the moral logics used by powerful women in the military to justify the organizational power vested in them. I address the following questions: How do women in positions of power in a hyper-masculine organization manage the cultural barriers to their power? What symbolic strategies do they use to confront normative cultural imperatives that shape their experiences of power?

The literature on women with organizational power refers mainly to their leadership styles and ethics (Mavin et al., 2014; Pullen and Vachhani, 2020; Stainback et al., 2016); structural obstacles to promotion (Bell and Sinclair, 2016; Calás et al., 2014; Ridgeway, 2011, 2015); and practices to overcome them (Ford et al., 2008; Pullen and Vachhani, 2018; Pullen et al., 2017). Few studies, however, have directly addressed the narratives used by powerful women to talk about their own and others’ power, or the phenomenological meanings associated with power in cultural spaces where their self-worth is under serious threat.

To address this gap, and on the basis of in-depth interviews with 34 women serving in senior military positions, I argue that they achieve a sense of self-worth and professional subjectivity through moral work. This symbolic work involves three main discursive strategies regrading power: (1) Drawing symbolic moral boundaries between the women and the morally ‘degenerate’ military environment; (2) Using ‘performances of authenticity’ to constitute their moral worth; and (3) (Non-)apology to counter the accusation implicit in the social expectation that they must apologize for their power as women.

I draw on two distinct theoretical perspectives: the cultural sociology of worth and recognition (Lamont, 2012, 2019; Lamont et al., 2014), and poststructural feminist analysis of the constitution of recognition and subjectivity (Allen, 2008a, 2008b, 2010; Butler, 1997, 2004, 2005; McNay, 2008). The sociology of worth theorizes symbolic structures of social inequality but usually does not fully analyze the ambivalent meanings of power and its role in constituting subjectivity and selfhood. Conversely, poststructural feminism foregrounds the ambivalence of gendered power but often ignores the role of structural barriers in in the subjective experiences of power. Accordingly, there is significant analytical value in combining these perspectives, allowing in-depth understanding of the moral positioning of women vis-à-vis gendered power in a hyper-masculine culture.

Equipped with these interpretive lenses, this article makes two major arguments. First, moral issues are part of the cultural problem women face in powerful positions, as well as of the solution they find. In other words, I offer a pragmatic analysis (Lamont and Thévenot, 2000; Silber, 2003; Swidler, 1986, 2001) where culture is seen not only as a barrier but also as a repertoire for creative solutions. Women’s cultural toolkit enables them to find certain solutions under certain organizational circumstances in their discourse of power. Second, I argue that women’s strategies of claiming worth and recognition are limited byproducts of a subjection, defined by Judith Butler (1997) as the ambivalent process whereby one is constituted as a subject in and through the process of being subjected to disciplinary norms.

Thus, this article makes a double analytical contribution. First, it contributes to the literature on power and gender in organizations, which understates the role of culture in constituting women’s agency, by exposing the pragmatic use women make, as subjects, of the available cultural repertoire. Second, it contributes to the literature on the cultural sociology of worth and recognition by showing how culture produces not only ongoing moral challenges for powerful women, but also a repertoire of pragmatic solutions for the construction of subjectivity, thus deepening the interpretation of the paradox involved in the agentic constitution of power and recognition among women. The approach proposed in this article unveils the degree to which power is rooted in processes of subjection and associated with the constitution of the individual sense of morality and humanity – and how all these are tightly bound with deeply set cultural gender norms.

Cultural Representations of Women and Power

The present-day insults heaped upon women with power match traditional rhetorical frameworks designed to maintain their separation from power. For example, in their notorious televised debate, Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton a ‘nasty woman’, an insult particularly effective as it combined cultural reference to dirt (ugliness) and to the moral turpitude that infected Clinton due to her political power (Johnston, 2016).

In the workplace, powerful women experience a double bind: when they assert power, they receive negative responses, as opposed to the positive responses received by men behaving the same way, often directed at their body or sexuality (or lack thereof). When in power, women violate the enduring convention that they are only supposed to ‘help’ the man in charge. Conversely, non-assertive conduct on their part confirms gender stereotypes and may make them seem less talented (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Ford et al., 2008; Stainback et al., 2016).

Perhaps more than in the civil labor market, women in the military encounter gendered models of power, and their double bind is exacerbated. Throughout history, military power has been constructed as essentially masculine (Connell, 1987; Koeszegi et al., 2014), leading to the traditional feminist approach that views peace as a ‘women’s issue’. Women who exercise violence are usually not characterized as criminals, soldiers, or terrorists, but rather using stereotypical images that consistently ignore their agency and confirm their sociocultural subordination (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007): mothers, monsters, and whores. The first explains women’s violence by their need to belong, to nurture others, and to care for men – a kind of disrupted motherhood. The second rejects any ideological motivation for women’s violence, and brands them as pathologically vindictive and as actively denying their femininity. The third image associates power with sexuality and describes violent women as sexual predators of unrestrained and brutal eroticism (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007).

The endurance of these images indicates that women with power are not only underappreciated or ridiculed but also shamed. Indeed, much of the media coverage of violent women focuses on their morally ‘corrupt’ sexual preferences, or ‘femme-fatale’ beauty (Caldwell and Mestrovic, 2008; Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007), conveying to powerful women that they violate gender norms and to society that they are inappropriate. Within and against these cultural imperatives of powerful women, they struggle to claim moral worth and recognition, in order to talk about power as their own.

Politics of Moral Worth and Recognition

The cultural sociology of morality usually focuses on the ways in which morality shapes cultural action, on its effect on the formation of social identities, and on its role in producing symbolic boundaries and negotiating worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Hitlin and Andersson, 2015; Lamont, 1992; Lamont and Molnár, 2002; Schwarz, 2013, 2016; Tavory, 2011; Vaisey, 2009). Similarly, according to Gabriel Abend (2011), whereas thin morality refers directly to moral judgments, thick morality deals with the ongoing formation of moral identities and symbolic practices that become part of social institutions.

The approaches to morality in cultural sociology usually transcend perceptions of fairness or moral judgments to include a rich array of virtues and vices such as dignity, integrity, piety and so on (Abend, 2011; Hitlin and Andersson, 2015; Hitlin and Vaisey, 2013). Based on this approach, the present article does not evaluate the morality of women with military power or as managers of military violence, but examines the categorizations, representations and meanings they attribute to their power, thereby unveiling the discourses that allow them to feel worthy in a hyper-masculine culture.

Accordingly, the article examines women’s moral recognition claims regarding their power in terms of the way they are constituted according to certain cultural logics – within certain structural boundaries (Cohen and Dromi, 2018; Hitlin and Andersson, 2015). Michèle Lamont (1992, 2000) addressed the constitution of self-worth by individuals of various classes through symbolic boundaries vis-à-vis other individuals or groups, real or imagined. In the USA, for example, working-class men marked clear moral boundaries between themselves and the poor, and emphasized hard work, responsibility and efficiency in defining their selves (Lamont, 2000).

Similarly, individuals lacking in concrete resources such as money or social connections often boast morality as a resource that produces a kind of ‘market value’ for them (Bourdieu, 1984). For example, Beverley Skeggs (1997) addressed the way low-class women highlighted certain moral aspects of their actions – particularly their caring as wives and mothers – in an attempt to produce a respectable self-presentation in the face of the middle class’s judgmental gaze.

Several researchers have addressed social blaming in relation to the degree of authenticity of subjects (as an axiological principle in the moral evaluation of others). Internalizing the perceptions of an imaginary audience often leads individuals to prove their authenticity by using identity elements that implicate them in their own subjugation (Grazian, 2004; Harris, 2013; Schwarz, 2013, 2016, 2019). Namely, using moral discursive positioning as a defense strategy enables individuals to challenge social hierarchies and seek dignity, worth and symbolic resources that would otherwise be inaccessible, or so they feel (Lamont, 1992; Paul, 2011; Vasquez and Wetzel 2009). At the same time, their use of subjecting power in the process confirms the normative social order.

Despite the centrality of these pragmatic ‘solutions’, I argue that the contemporary cultural sociology of worth and recognition usually assume the meanings of power without addressing them directly. What we lack is a direct and satisfactory analytic attention to the ambivalent meanings of power as both productive and oppressive in the process of constituting worth and recognition, particularly in a gendered organizational culture that poses a real threat to women’s sense of worth.

Following Foucault, Butler (2004) viewed recognition as a dual mechanism of subjecition and confirmation used by gender disciplinary regimes. According to Butler, an ‘I’ that is non-normative becomes ‘to a certain extent unknowledgeable, threatened with unviability, with becoming undone altogether, when it no longer incorporates the norm in such a way that makes this ‘I’ fully recognizable’ (2004: 3). As all social relations implicate us in the struggle for recognition, all are ultimately relations of power (Allen, 2008a). Butler (2004) argued that individuals yearn for recognition so much, that they would adopt almost any type of recognition available, even when it is based on their own subjugation (see also Allen, 2008a, 2008b). More specifically, these women’s subjectivity is formed by way of morality and accountability within a heterosexual matrix, wherein the performance of gender ultimately reproduces normative scripts and gender binarisms (Butler, 1988; De Coster and Zanoni, 2019).

Against this background, I propose combining two analytically separate but conceptually related theoretical traditions: the cultural sociology of worth and recognition (e.g. Lamont, 2012, 2019; Lamont et al., 2014) and poststructural feminism of recognition (e.g. Allen, 2008a, 2008b, 2010; Butler, 1997; McNay, 2008). This combination will enable the examination of subject formation as integral to (particularly gendered) power relations. Through these lenses, the interviewees’ moral work can be seen as a gendered politics of worth and recognition, filling the analytical gap with regard to the ways worth is embedded in gendered processes of power and subjection.

Thus, I argue that although women are agentic in constituting their worth, this is not necessarily done by way of ‘resistance’, but rather through discursive maneuvering that relies on the same oppressive discursive patterns designed to restrict their power. Accordingly, their efforts to constitute their selves and ‘do power’ are carried out within, rather than outside, the gendered moral logic of the organizational culture. In what follows, I show how the two theoretical lenses informing this study help explore the moral challenges involved in performing a gender identity within a hyper-masculine organizational culture. This issue will be examined within the gendered organizational space of the Israeli military.

The Hyper-Masculine Culture in the Israeli Military

Unlike most western countries whose armed forces have become professional and volunteer-based, Israel still imposes mandatory service (for Jews) and is the only western country that imposes this obligation on both genders. Consequently, the number of servicewomen in the Israeli military is relatively high, and in that sense at least, it is considered a more egalitarian space. Armed forces are considered androcentric spheres not only because they rely mainly on male personnel but also because they construct hegemonic heteronormative male identities and exclude women (Bonnes, 2017; Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2020). Compared to civil organizations, the military is unique in that its gender inequality policy is public and formal, and inherent to many of its fundamental components.

Since the mid-1990s, armed forces worldwide, and particularly in Israel, have become significantly less homogeneous, with the abandoning of gendered structures, such as segregated courses and the restriction of women to dedicated women’s corps and supportive roles. Moreover, there is growing evidence that the military can serve as an arena where femininity and masculinity are transformed or redefined, and where women cross gender boundaries, if only tentatively (Sasson-Levy, 2011).

Despite these developments, military organizational cultures have retained significant aspects that remain highly resistant to change. Women’s integration remains largely limited to the legal and structural level, whereas at the organizational culture level, the military continues to function as an extremely gendered organization (Sasson-Levy, 2011). The simultaneous presence of two contradictory processes – degendering and regendering – suggests that women’s status in the military organization is still low (Sasson-Levy and Amram-Katz, 2007): they are still considered ‘outsiders within’ and the greater their presence in military space and the more structural gender boundaries are crossed, the greater the need to mark them as Others. Seen as ‘contaminating’ the masculine space, they are consequently subject to harassment and other violent practices (Doan and Portillo, 2017; Lomsky-Feder and Sasson-Levy, 2018).

Women officers in the Israeli military embody the principle of limited inclusion. Not only is their contribution considered peripheral, they are also subject to a rank ceiling. While representing more than half of the junior officers, they represent only 6–7% of the colonels and brigadier generals – the rank where the brass ceiling is reached (Women’s Affairs Advisor to the Chief of Staff, 2016). Officially, therefore, while the military system is committed to gender equality and to fighting sexual violence, in practice, an unofficial but no less dominant cultural structure perpetuates power relations and ‘sees’ to it that women’s recurring devaluations continue. It is a structure made of daily micro-interactions, discursive patterns and physical and symbolic practices in the ‘underbelly’ of military culture (Tirosh, 2014) – a culture whose rules may be difficult to pinpoint but with which women must comply in order to survive in the military, and even in Israeli society after their discharge from active service (Karazi-Presler, 2020; Karazi-Presler et al., 2018).

The military is not only extremely gendered but also hyper-violent by definition. For the purposes of this article, note that the violence exercised by the military is not directed only outwards at the enemy, but also inwards at its own soldiers. Violence, including sexual violence, is central to its organizational cultures, and seeps deep into its arteries in various implicit and explicit forms. Outward and inward violence feed upon each other and their expressions are gendered. The military is therefore a unique strategic site for examining sociological and cultural questions of gender and power. In what follows, I delve into the subjective power perceptions of women in formally powerful positions and demonstrate how a practice of moral distinction or even disavowal of the organization’s internal violence enables them to seek symbolic belonging to and ownership of spaces of power.

Methodology

This article is based on 34 in-depth interviews with women career officers (majors and lieutenant colonels) in the Israeli military. All the interviewees were Jews from middle-class backgrounds, aged 37–48, with either a bachelor’s or a master’s degree. They served in a variety of environments, but mostly in combat support roles (engineers, programmers, lawyers, organizational consultants, psychologists, and HR managers).

The interviews were conducted up to two years after their discharge, because the interviewees could be expected to talk more frankly about controversial issues while not on active duty, and in order to avoid the need for the military’s approval. All were recruited using snowball sampling, the only criteria being gender and rank. All interviews were recorded and transcribed in full; pseudonyms were used. I completed mandatory service in the IDF, which contributes to a sense of familiarity with the field and the extremely gendered organizational culture.

This article is part of a larger research on the phenomenology of power among women in various institutions in Israel. The project focuses on questions such as: How do women understand power? How do they judge it? What meanings does it hold for them? What narratives do they share on their own and others’ power?

During the interviews, I began identifying the significant role played by recurring justifications for power in the women’s narratives. They were strongly intent on persuading their imaginary audience (including me), that they are ‘good’ and morally ‘worthy’ women, fearing that this imaginary audience would denounce them morally should they ‘fail’ as women. As I delved into and analyzed the interview transcripts, a coherent interpretive framework began to take shape: I discovered an inductive structure of moral differentiation using symbolic boundary-work, authenticity performances and (non-)apology. Subsequently, I managed to integrate these discursive formations and conceptualize them analytically as part of moral work designed to produce distinction, but in order to bring power closer. In other words, I conceptualized a discursive and symbolic work motivated by a perceived lack of moral entitlement to power.

Throughout this discursive work, even if the interviewees spoke of power in ‘socially desirable’ terms, precisely therein lay my research interest. References to ethical or moral personhood arose inductively, without my having asked about them directly, which made ‘thick morality’ (Abend, 2011) so central and fascinating in the interviewees’ phenomenology of power. Thick morality is also a powerful indication of the role of culture in the interviewees’ narratives about power. The the discourse emerging from the interviews was an interpretive space where representations, classification systems, boundary-work, fantasies, imagined realities and cultural ideals were constructed together (Lamont and Swidler, 2014; Tavory, 2020) – with regard to their own and to others’ power. The dialogue with the interviewees opened an ethnographic window unto cultural sense-making, reflecting the contours of the hyper-masculine space where their cultural activities took place.

Given their perceived need to be part of military culture, this moral work may seem inconsistent if not paradoxical, as we have been exposed to their desire to remain distinct from their military environment. Nevertheless, inconsistencies and paradoxes are important interpretive tools for highlighting the emotional charge around gendered power, offering an analytical clue for what is difficult for the interviewees to argue more directly (Pugh, 2013; Sølvberg and Jarness, 2019) – the cultural challenge that they face with relation to power.

Symbolic Moral Work in a Hyper-Masculine Culture

Three discursive strategies – drawing moral boundaries, performances of authenticity, and (non-)apology – shape the interviewees’ moral work and their discursive maneuvering around power. I argue that this discursive work is the women’s response to an implicit moral accusation that emerges as part of an imagined dialogue that organizes their experiences of gendered power in a hyper-masculine culture.

Drawing Symbolic Moral Boundaries

Boundary-work is the cognitive practice of interpreting classification categories to define social groups, and mark the limits of belonging through which people distinguish themselves from others; namely, boundaries produce self-perception (Lamont and Molnár, 2002; Lamont et al., 2015). When the interviewees talk about themselves as commanders wielding power, they undertake intensive boundary-work, through which they draw their ‘negative image’ –what they are not. Julia, lieutenant colonel who served as a lawyer demonstrates this well:

I never lost my ability to use my hands to dial, despite advancing up the ranks. I hated the ‘get me [someone on the phone]’ and these military games. I never did it, even when I had to talk to one of my officers who is [just] a captain, OK? Who gives a f**k about his rank? I need to talk to him? So, I’ll dial him myself. But in the military, some people not only don’t get over it, it gets worse . . . the more you advance, the more extreme the trappings of rank and power become. It’s a man-eat-man world; it must be something that’s ingrained much deeper in the man’s predatory DNA than in the women. For me, power means responsibility, authority – not power for its own sake. The way some people in the military react to authority is truly intoxicating.

Julia’s description sheds light on the moral boundary-work vis-à-vis the power men wield in the military. The tendency to use power offensively is presented as inherent to men. They are ‘predators’ unable to control themselves, who enjoy ego power games. Compared to ‘them’, she positions herself as challenging the hierarchic organizational culture by consciously choosing to reject military mannerisms, since her interpretation of power is different from theirs.

In a similar vein, Lieutenant-Colonel Shimrit, a commander in the Computer Service Directorate, provides a generalized description of male commanders, used to distinguish herself from them:

Male commanders tend to maintain distance, to play honor games. They have a very powerful ego. I had a commander who started every discussion by saying ‘I’ll make it short’, and then did not let anyone talk, [and] went on to shout at people, if someone dared say something he didn’t like. I mean he really drew power from humiliating. Many commanders appreciated me, only none of them had any say about it. They knew what was going on and told me, what he did to you was targeted killing. Because I dared talk about a strictly professional matter against his opinion. I think he is also a male chauvinist. Mainly because he gathered men around him, and had a very Stalinist approach. He operated against the entire ethical code I believed in as a commander.

The metaphors suggestive of violence that Julia and Shimrit use to describe the male commanders clearly convey their message: we are their mirror image. While they are scary predators, we maintain a humane and moral core. The interviews included many other descriptions similar to theirs: ‘Simply not a nice man, capable of insulting’, ‘he’s being feared’, ‘only I could stand his whims’, ‘he simply lashed out at everyone. It was really scary’.

Thus, fear recurred in the descriptions of the interviewees’ boundary-work. Ahmed (2004) addressed the way fear helped structure distance between bodies and argued that actors use fear and the discourse of fear as a condition for establishing relationality – a necessary condition for separateness. For example, recurring use of racial stereotypes to justify fear of blacks. In this case, the interviewees use gender stereotypes about men, in an apparent attempt to take what is valued in the military and frame it as normatively inferior in order to distinguish themselves morally as well as professionally.

Despite the moral distinction they assign themselves, the interviewees also describe the importance of the power they used to advance up the ranks. Many refer – usually indirectly, as in the following quotation – to the tutelage of male commanders as contributing to their professional success, as well as their need to be similar and close to those who are seen as the true sources of power in the military – men.

I never gossiped and tried to stay away from rumors. There’s no need to trample over people in order to get things done. Look, there is much use of power in the military. But power doesn’t interest me, really. You know, the whip. What is important to me is that the system works, giving the best service to the units and finding solutions for people . . . So what if I have power? And what kind of power do I have? The fact that I sit next to the head of military intelligence, I don’t know, three to four hours a week? I tried very hard not be aggressive, very. (Lieutenant-Colonel Anat, HR manager, intelligence corps)

Anat’s boundary-work is expressed by keeping a distance from ‘rumors’ and ‘gossip’. This is a common gendered defense strategy that the literature identifies with women’s attempts to defend their moral position in masculine work environments. Women are arguably well aware of the way rumors, particularly about personal relations at work, function as a form of sanction against them, as opposed to their male colleagues (Martin, 2003; Rodriguez, 2013; Wright, 2016). In addition, avoidance of aggression is presented by Anat as involving an effort. Nevertheless, the meaning of power for her (and for others) remains ambiguous. It appears her perception of power is related to her closeness to those who wield ‘real’ power in the military, whom she refers to only tangentially.

While attempting to distance themselves from the military’s power-hungry men, the interviewees also distance themselves from other women. As an extremely gendered organization, the military forces binary gender perceptions on its officers, forcing both men and women to meet extreme standards of gender identity (Sasson-Levy, 2011). Indeed, the interviewees’ boundary-work is directed at both men and women in an attempt to avoid both poles, of both the female and male caricature. Thus, they draw boundaries vis-à-vis two main types of women in the military: those representatives of female stereotypes and those who imitate men. According to Anat, ‘Women in the military simply don’t back you up. First, they need to turn you into a doormat and only then pick you up. A man will never do that to you’.

Whereas the discourse that ties male stereotypes and fear together is used for moral separation from the male commanders, this time, the the discourse of fear connects to female stereotypes that attribute envy, pettiness, and even wickedness to women in general, representing the internalization of the male gaze by women. Moreover, it appears that the moral discourse the interviewees used to describe themselves collapses completely when they describe other women in the military environment – no integrity, no friendliness, no caring, and disproportionate use of power.

When I would call a woman officer in a different position, if I needed some information from her, I would always be suspicious. I knew she wouldn’t give me all the information – no way would a woman come to me and say, listen, you did wrong . . . Either out of competition or because of their fear of me. Women are evil. My husband says women are a ‘sack of snakes’ and he’s right. Lots of men have told me, listen, calm down, your officer will stop breathing, just one more second. My reputation among men is that of a bitch – they had the guts to tell me that’s what people think about me. (Lieutenant-Colonel Mary, training commander in the GOC Army HQ)

Mary accepts the stereotyping of women as ‘snakes’ without hesitation. This metaphor, grounded in the traditional archetype of femininity as dangerous and uncontrollable, arises in references to powerful women in many cultural and mythical contexts. Mary doubts the morality of the women around her – their ability to be honest and tell her the truth – while attributing the same moral courage to her male colleagues.

Another way in which the interviewees sought to distinguish themselves from other women was mimicking masculinity:

Women in the military adopt more male aspects. I use a different dosage. This is why they become integrated in the organization much more than me – with their masculine behaviors and rituals, their tone of voice. I always stay a little different from them. It’s important to them that their femininity remain completely marginal. (Lieutenant-Colonel Anette, organizational consultant, GOC Army HQ)

Most officers I knew in the military were masculine women. And they really got very far. I was somewhat of an oddball. I did not advance in the managerial area, and kept opening my mouth not exactly when other people wanted me to, and that probably did not suit them. (Lieutenant-Colonel Gilly, software engineer, Air Force)

Like Anette and Gilly, many interviewees associate becoming like men with the ability to climb up the organizational ladder. It appears that by marking boundaries vis-à-vis other women perceived as masculine, they try to shake off the accusation of mimicry or impersonation. Indeed, one of the imagined accusations with which they have to cope is that whatever they do they will never be men – at best, only a cheap imitation. Therefore, women in the military are often perceived as exceptional and as violating traditional perceptions of femininity. They are required to perform various discursive and physical adaptations to enable them to wield power and influence in an organizational culture where the hyper-masculine symbolic order determines the criteria according to which they are valued. Surprisingly, in their moral discourse on the power they had as commanders, they reinforce their difference compared to the military environment, thereby making yet another step in their discursive purification by repeating, in different variations, that they are ‘real’ in comparison to others, both men and women.

Performances of Authenticity

I believe in getting down to brass tacks. I’m a very authentic person, which is my weakness, by the way. I shoot straight. I’m very honest but also very direct, and sometimes it’s overkill. (Lieutenant-Colonel Ayelet, organizational consultant)

I have always said what I have to say, which is not always the smart thing to do. It’s better not to say everything you think, this way you become less of a nuisance for the organization. But I always have and they have never liked to hear me. (Major Galit, HR manager)

There’s nothing to do about it. I go all the way with my beliefs, not for anyone and not in order to prove to anyone or anything. (Lieutenant-Colonel Inbar, officer academy battalion commander)

These statements present an additional expression of the construction of an authentic and ethical self as part of the interviewees’ self-positioning as having a unique moral identity. Whereas in the previous subsection I presented the negative image they painted in order to describe what was immoral for them, here they provide the moral image of the ideal commander. They point to authenticity as a moral pathway that has characterized them during their service and at the same time emphasize that they have made this choice despite the fact that authenticity is not at all appreciated in the military field, where ‘playing games’ and ‘faking it’ are valued. They talk about the emptiness of military power rituals as opposed to their moral-ideological activism that consistently serves the good of the organization through practices of self-representation as authentic, as whistleblowers or even justice champions.

Thus, the authenticity discourse is often organized around the moral suspicion of inauthenticity, directed at an identity component liable to be seen as unreal. I argue that this is particularly relevant to images of powerful and violent women whose assertiveness is attributed to their looks, brutal sexuality, irrationality, or a ‘natural’ tendency to please others, while completely ignoring their agency. It therefore appears that the interviewees’ claim for authenticity is made against the background of a prevailing social suspicion that something in their femininity is not real, that they are masquerading power – a suspicion that is especially meaningful in a hyper-masculine culture. The use of authenticity as a cultural tool becomes a kind of bridging strategy in their coping with an experience of discomfort with using power in a hyper-masculine arena characterized by yawning cultural and inter-organizational gaps with regard to the use of military power.

In the followingquotation, Lieutenant-Colonel Merav, who served in the Chief of Staff’s HQ, makes symbolic use of ‘truth’ as an indication for her moral uniqueness:

I’m not a buzzword person. I’d like to think of myself as singular and unique. It’s not a Merav who dresses up like one who fights, or a Merav who dresses up like one who gets mad. It’s me and I won’t change it because maybe they’d get mad at me. Cause at the end of the day, whoever I’m mad at will be able to appreciate my perseverance. That I have a single truth. I’m not special in my total devotion to the organization, perhaps, I’m not special in my willingness to be constantly available to my unit, I’m not special in my desire to promote the professional areas under my responsibility. But I am special in that I look people right in the eye – I invite them to a truly critical and authentic dialogue, and that doesn’t happen in the army every day.

Indeed, authenticity as a marker of uniqueness emerges powerfully from Merav’s words, mainly as a factor of value and evaluation; other imagined individuals are presented as testing the coherence of her character. In that, she also exposes the explicit accusation directed at her as making ‘unusual’ and ‘inauthentic’ use of her power when she is angry and assertive. Merav describes the use of authenticity as part of her claim for acknowledgement, as a kind of unending struggle for persuasion, that thanks to her persistence she would finally be evaluated morally, based on a constant comparison with the military environment that fails in that regard, as she sees it.

Gilly also describes ‘self-loyalty’ as a source of moral worth:

In the military, you are constantly self-critical. I kept asking myself what added value I offer on a daily basis. You keep having to show that you’re moving things forward . . . and because of that difficulty, my way of showing was to raise a flag. When things were not in order, I’d say it up front, and then fight to the bitter end.

As opposed to the discourse of authenticity and an internal, spontaneous act, natural or unconscious, Gilly states that her constant need for respect and evaluation has led her to a ‘performance of authenticity’ (Liu et al., 2015). Her authentic symbolic positioning is based on qualities such as persistence, professional ethics, and proactivity.

Major Tamar from the Women’s Affairs Advisory unit talks similarly about speaking her mind, about daring to act upon her thoughts, as a practice that has resulted in her exclusion:

I was seen as a troublemaker. I’m the one who always shouts that the emperor is naked. And they don’t want that. I have often felt that this was why they let me go, because I believe in educating everyone. OK, you’re part of the organization but if may lose your personal, real and internal things in life. I felt that, they never said it to me right in the face, but they wanted me to shut up. And I have paid quite a lot for choosing to speak up.

In his book on silences, The Elephant in the Room, sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel (2006) argued that in The Emperor’s New Clothes, a child pointed at the emperor’s nudity, since his naïve character stood for the non-internalization of social norms. Whereas in Andersen’s story, the child eventually wins over the crowd, popular culture and real life are replete with situations where characters who break the silence are ridiculed and castigated, and often ostracized. Accordingly, it appears that the interviewees’ objective in constantly demarcating the boundaries of morality and authenticity is to emphasize their difference compared to the military environment, their childlike non-internalization of what they see as corrupting organizational norms.

Note, however, that their marking of their otherness usually does not transgress gender norms and appeals to their self-image and others’ perception of them as women. In other words, we have an interesting phenomenon of self-positioning as authentic whistleblowers, almost martyrs, designed to provide moral justifications for their exclusion or otherness. I find this a defense strategy that allows them to achieve self-worth and protect themselves against the symbolic violence exercised against them as powerful insted of strong women in a hyper-masculine organization. As mentioned, this modus operandi often characterizes subaltern groups that seek to maintain their self-worth by appropriating the norms and stereotypes attributed to them (Schwarz, 2016, 2019).

The interviewees’ self-positioning as more authentic and thus more moral is also explainable in terms of their struggle to constitute subjectivity in an extremely gendered organization. Individuals’ use of symbolic resources is always subject to general cultural repertoires (Lamont, 1992; Lamont at al., 2014). As we have seen, the emotionally charged cultural attitude to women with power (particularly violent military power) involves images of vindictive women, ‘witches’, and ‘bitches’. These cultural narratives often reject any ideological rationale or motivation for their behavior, and attribute it to their sexuality or femininity, or lack thereof. I therefore argue that these recurring cultural images have a disciplinary and normalizing effect with reference to the women’s (assumed) limited behavioral repertoire with regard to wielding power, which may motivate them to present a kind of authentic inner narrative and thereby constitute their selfhood through morality or accountability.

Morality is a powerful element in subjection processes. For Michel Foucault (1990), the ethical self is not created ex nihilo; rather, it occurs through the demarcation of the self with one’s moral practices. Likewise, Charles Taylor (1989, 1992) assumes that every self-epistemology is grounded in moral sources and that humans are interpretive subjects motivated by love and respect to what is seen as good. Subjects are constituted when they apply external self-restrictions, when they imprison themselves inside their conscience. All moral acts refer to moral imperatives, all moral imperatives call for the formation of the self as an ethical subject, and all ethical subjects emerge with forms of subjectification and aesthetics or self-practices that support them (Butler, 1997, 2005; Foucault, 1990).

Thus, it seems that the interviewees’ claims for moral worth and recognition are part of a quest for what is normatively appropriate. However, the interviewees are an integral part of an organizational culture where the principles of evaluation directed at them are in no way universal, but rather deeply embedded in gendered power relations. They realize they need to respond accordingly, and counter devaluating messages that reduce their power. Hence, their own moral recognition claims become highly gendered, often embodying the ideal of benevolent and caring womanhood.

(Non-)Apology for the Use of Power

The third discursive strategy is (non-)apology – a common Israeli act in response to the perceived demand that the interviewees apologize for their power. Apology is a speech act where one party takes action towards another that violates a shared moral code. If the violator recognizes the violation and promises to make amends, and if the victim of her actions accepts the apology, the two parties may resume their normal social interaction, and thereby continue affirming their consensual moral codes. In that sense, apology is integral to maintaining standards that normalize social interactions in the community (Saito, 2016).

This compensatory act represents, in my view, a more direct way of coping with an implicit social accusation regarding power. In the following passage, Major Jeanette, an organizational consultant in a technological unit, points directly to power as a resource that can deter others: ‘People see power in me, and I think they trust me. This power can also be daunting. It can deter some people. Being so powerful [means that] mainly I’m not afraid, I don’t apologize for anything I do’.

Lieutenant-Colonel Rinat, a technological unit commander, associates (non-) apology with the absence of a direct and inquisitive patriarchal gaze: ‘It was precisely after [my father’s] death that I suddenly found myself, for some reason, not apologizing for who I am. For being ambitious – today it’s right on the table, I very much want people to know that I don’t apologize’. Like Rinat, Merav associates (non-)apology with maturation in the organization: ‘I grew up in the military, and I have already managed to build up my self-confidence, my ability to be a commander without apologizing for it’.

Lieutenant-Colonel Netta, software expert in the Air Force, repeated the (non-)apology theme in different formulations throughout the interview: ‘I learned not to apologize, just to be, to look for the point where I am at peace with myself as a commander and from that moment on say, that’s it, everything’s fine’. And similarly, ‘on the one hand, it’s like I’m very feminine and on the other hand I’m very sure of myself, I don’t apologize for what I am, for who I am. I think that’s a bit hard to swallow, people don’t really know how’. Netta points to the social and gendered limitations of authenticity, as a woman with power.

Thus, in not apologizing for their power, the interviewees actually want to apologize. This is because as women, they are often required to apologize to society for having and wielding resources such as power. Thus, for example, a report in a popular Israeli newspaper on women lieutenant colonels read in the headline and sub-headline ‘Three commanders march at the head of the battalion: This is how the feminine revolution looks like in the IDF . . . Women who have reached senior positions at the Transportation Center of the Logistics Corps, they don’t apologize’ (Ynet, August 2015). Note that in the report itself, there is no mention of apology or non-apology by the commanders. The headline thus reflects an implied societal expectation or moral duty that as women in powerful positions they must apologize.

In writing about apologies as speech rituals, Goffman (1971) argued that people use apology as an act of healing a broken interaction, in response to a direct or implied accusation. The participants’ apology, or rather (non-)apology, is one of the rhetorical responses to a virtual offense regarding their power that is not spelled out but is intrinsic to an ongoing and implicit social dialogue with which they have to cope. Accordingly, the interviewees perform an act of double symbolic meaning-making: by literally not apologizing, they convey the desire or need to maintain their image of dominance and strength. Their implied apology, on the other hand, confirms or rather compensates for the gender violation inherent in their self-identity as both women and commanders, as a kind of preemptive strike to thwart any potential accusation regarding their power.

Discussion

This article analyzed the discursive strategies through which former officers in the Israeli military constitute themselves as moral agents. These strategies represent the interviewees’ efforts to construct a moral self in a hyper-masculine culture – a self that is morally distinct, authentic and (non-)apologetic. At the same time, the study reveals the various virtual accusations directed at them – the cultural delegitimation of female power and their ways of coping with it. The interviews expose not only an objective reality, but also, and mainly, normative criticisms directed at women in power positions in a hyper-masculine culture, against which they feel they have to defend themselves.

The interviewees used a moral discourse in their symbolic positioning project because they cross gender boundaries by using power that is supposedly preserved for men in the military’s organizational field. Although formally they occupy senior power positions, their recurring need for social validation and legitimation betrays their sense of being subjected to the constant masculine gaze supervising their use of power.

Sometimes, in a discursive action akin to a preemptive strike, these women feel they have to address implicit accusations related to the way they wield their power – a moral affective backlash (Okimoto and Brescoll, 2010) to the (imagined or real) contempt directed against them in their organizational environment due to their supposed divergence from traditional norms regarding women and power. Accordingly, the moral work arising from the interviewees’ discourse enables them to claim moral selfhood and subjectivity without giving up on worth and recognition as powerful women within an organization that offers them formal power as senior officers but also punishes them for it, as women.

The theoretical combination of the cultural sociology of worth and recognition (Lamont, 2012, 2019; Lamont et al., 2014) and the poststructural feminist approach to the formation of recognition (Allen, 2008a, 2008b 2010; Butler, 1997, 2004, 2005; McNay, 2008) enabled me to argue that culture produces not only a challenge for women, but also a solution. As subjects in a hyper-masculine organization, the interviewees perform cultural work to cope with this challenge. Their specific cultural toolkit enables them to find effective solutions under particular organizational circumstances when talking about power. The solutions themselves and the way the women’s subjectivity evolves with relation to their claims of worth are, arguably, largely an effect of subjection. This is because the pragmatic solutions are constituted within and according to a normative gendered repertoire wherein women can claim moral recognition and self-worth.

Thus, the findings shed light on women’s agentic capability to claim worth under cultural circumstances where the threat of devaluation is real, and where they face gendered violence both symbolic and concrete – as in sexual harassment and various gendered rituals of degradation in the military. They do so using the same oppressive patterns that limit their power, so that they constitute themselves and do power within rather than outside the gendered logic of power. Accordingly, moral issues are part of the problem facing women in power positions – and also part of the solution.

The juxtaposition of culture and power in the present article offers a double analytic contribution. First, the article contributes to the sociological literature on gender and power in organizations by revealing the power of culture in the ability of female agents to deal pragmatically with cultural imperatives and challenges using the gendered organizational repertoire available to them. Second, it contributes to the cultural sociological literature of worth and recognition in exposing the ambivalence of power as significant to constituting subjectivity and agency, since according to Butler’s analysis of recognition, the subject is ‘neither fully determined by power nor fully determining of power (but significantly and partly both)’ (Butler, 1997: 17). Thus, in their power narratives, the interviewees have reappropriated the same discourse they seek to resist. In this manner, the analysis enables a discussion of the moral challenges entailed in performing a gender identity in a hyper-masculine organizational culture.

Together with the gender aspect, the moral symbolic positioning is also related to a broader narrative, which binds the military establishment and particularly the power of command with violence and moral turpitude. Although the interviewees have almost completely ignored the external violence that is the core activity of their organization, they frequently and directly emphasized its internal violence. Their stories shed light on an in-depth reflective perception of the morality of the military organization and what it makes people do when they are part of it; but again, they ignore its external violence. This silence is not coincidental and derives from powerful cultural mechanisms within the militaristic society in Israel, which tends to ignore and deny the occupation and related injustices committed by the Israeli military. A feminine viewpoint on those injustices is often perceived as transgressing into the forbidden masculine city, and is therefore illegitimate. In any case, it seems that due to the link between hyper-masculine culture and military violence, the interviewees felt they had to distinguish themselves morally in order to speak of gendered military power as their own – as women – and at the same time be recognized and valued for it as commanders.

Through the analytic perspective proposed in this article, the discursive strategies of senior women officers in the Israeli military attest to profound self-regulation. Their narratives about power are seemingly free of external hegemonic interference, but in fact, their need for discursive maneuvers justifying or legitimizing their power exposes the brass ceiling internalized in their subjective perspectives of this resource. In these maneuvers, the interviewees reveal how complex it is to constitute an experience of ‘naturalness’ or ‘normalness’ vis-à-vis power, a sense of entitlement to it. Together, these attest to the obscure limitations with which women have to cope even today while holding privileged organizational positions. Thus, I reveal the ways in which micro processes of constituting worth and recognition shape the meso processes of occupational spheres (Lamont, 2018, 2019; Lamont et al., 2014) and perpetuate mechanisms of gender inequality in access to power.

Cecilia Ridgeway (2011, 2015) asked how gender inequality could persist. Her answer to that ‘puzzle of persistence’ was that despite tremendous progress, gender remains an organizing category of social hierarchy through micro-level organizational and cultural arrangements, processes and routines. Thus, I offer a possible explanation to a key problem with which contemporary feminism is grappling: the incompletion of the gender revolution in organizational spheres. I argue that it is rooted, among other things, in symbolic and concealed gendered power structures manifested in daily struggles for recognition, value, and legitimacy. While singling themselves out by describing themselves as different not only in comparison to men but to other women as well, the interviewees still associate other women’s assertion of their power as immoral. Thus, while they may rescue their own worth and secure moral recognition, they simultaneously contribute to the reproduction of women’s exclusion from powerful positions. Gender inequality largely involves subjective obstacles internalized by women, and is expressed in their need to conduct discursive maneuvers when talking about their power. In these respects, the findings demonstrate how inequality processes on the micro level – such as women’s narratives vis-à-vis power – perpetuate gender inequality in relatively obscure ways that we, as feminist cultural sociologists, must expose.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Orna Sasson-Levy, Edna Lomsky-Feder, Ori Schwarz and Gilly Hartal for their comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this article. Special thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and to Angélica Thumala for her encouragement and help.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

I affirm this article has not been published or accepted for publication elsewhere, nor is it under editorial review for publication elsewhere. I declare no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article. I also affirm that I have complied with the APA’s ethical principles regarding research with human participants.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tair Karazi-Presler

Author biography

Dr Tair Karazi-Presler is a teaching fellow at the department of sociology and anthropology and the center for cultural sociology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Her PhD investigates the phenomenology of power among women in different organizational environments in Israel. Through a comparative study of organizational practices and cultural structures, Tair examines how varied configurations of patriarchy shape the sense of value and worth of women and men in power positions from different social backgrounds. Tair’s current research is entitled Contemporary Masculinities in Hi-tech Organizations: Comparative Analysis of Gendered Politics of Worth in the United States and Israel.

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