Issues Of Gender part 2 Essay - 3,462 words

... 144) argues: All of us, men as much as women, are caught up in modes of self production and self observation .... Women are no more subject to this system of corporeal production than men; they are no more cultural, no more natural, than men. Patriarchal power relations do not function to make women the objects of disciplinary control while men remain outside of disciplinary surveillance. It is a question not of more or less but of differential production ... In contrast to the traditional arguments that require women to make their organizational way in a man's world, yet also work to sustain the gender dichotomy, several writers have attempted to argue for the development of the "feminine" organization, which would embody characteristics that are supposedly quintessentially female in its structures, rules, and behaviors. One of the world's best-selling organizational behavior texts cites Rothschild's suggested model of the feminine organization (Robbins, Waters-Marsh, Cacioppe, & Millett, 1994, p.


667). This model encompasses six characteristics-valuing members as individual human beings; being nonopportunistic; defining careers in terms of service to others; a commitment to employee growth; the creation of a caring community; and power-sharing. Rothschild argues that this is the model of choice in organizations that are managed by and for women, including rape crisis centers, domestic violence centers, and entrepreneurial firms catering primarily for the female market such as Avon Cosmetics. Rothschild also suggests that this model may be more economically effective per se. Certainly, Rothschild's organizational model encompasses characteristics that have been argued in human relations theory for several decades by members of both genders. Many organizations have indeed embodied some or all of these in their structures, rules, and so on. This established, the collation of such characteristics in the "feminine" organization seems, first, to simultaneously reverse and preserve the positive-negative gender dichotomy, almost demonizing the "masculine" organization.


Second, this model rather opportunistically picks off the most attractive (i.e., participatory) elements of human resource practice and labels them "feminine." Third, it simplistically equates these elements of practice with a wider process of organizing which is crucially affected by the nature of the task and mission of the organization, the technology it employs, the type of competitive environment in which it operates, its financial structures and its strategies, among other factors. On the one hand, then, this concept of a "gendered" form of organization both distorts the actual behavior of real subjects of either gender in organizations and creates a myth of feminine virtue (Fillion, 1996). On the other, it distorts the idea of organization itself by overemphasizing the influence of one particular dimension of organized life-gender. In other words, the rhetoric of the feminine organization is itself a representation which caricatures both masculinities and femininities in attempting to "drag up" the organization. Recently, more subtle arguments for the "re-eroticization" of the workplace have also emerged. However, it is significant that re-eroticization arguments often turn around a re-affirmation of the degraded feminine, a "welcoming back" of the feminine and the values and behaviors customarily associated with it-sensuality, caring, openness, play, emotionality, etc.


into the public sphere. This tendency, where: "the open and public celebration of sex as a framework for re-energized relationships between individuals" (Brewis & Grey, 1994, p. 67) becomes the core of organizational analysis, is exemplified by Burrell (1992), who argues for the development of a "third face of pleasure" in organizations. He opposes the customary organizational displacement of sensuality such that organizational practice is enriched and individual employees are liberated from the constraints of phallogocentrism. In a similar vein to Rothschild, Burrell (1992, p. 82) argues that alternative organizations such as certain ecological movements, feminist groups, and worker cooperatives embody re-eroticization in their forms.


It is of course possible that a form of feminization/re-eroticization may be achievable which opens up and challenges the gender divide in ways which parallel those embodied in transgressions of gendered appearance, but the specific organizational arguments made by Burrell and Rothschild seem to delimit this possibility by identifying certain types of organizations as exemplars of their particular models. Additionally, the gender divide is problematic yet permeable. It co-exists with a conceptual division of labor which defines gender-appropriate characteristics which may be represented, challenged, or reinscribed through different forms of appearance. However, in privileging eros over logos, feminization/re-eroticization arguments tend to underplay the historical derivation which, at least since Descartes, has associated a particular style of thinking with masculinity (Bordo, 1986). As a result of the embeddedness of this assumption in organizations, people who think differently about organizational problems or forms often find themselves challenged as though they were transgressing the gender divide, which symbolically of course they are. Further, there is a danger that insufficiently reflexive feminization/re-eroticization arguments underrepresent the sensitivity, emotionality, and caring capacities of males. There is increasing evidence that males react to many work situations more emotionally than females, feel more stress, and yet, and this is important, are unable to verbalize or express this.


Females often respond emotionally to organizational situations, yet seemingly without undergoing any of the physical and psychological tensions that males experi ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

...................You are reading a preview................... Visit our Blog and Unlock Full Access to this essay

Continue READING the FULL Essay by clicking HERE

Essay Tags: gender, organizational, organization's, feminine, london

This is an Essay sample / Research paper, you can use it for your research of: Issues Of Gender part 2