Joan Acker's review of the contributing papers, edited by Susan Sayce

Celebrating Joan Acker's contribution to theorising gender and organisation

Edited by Susan Sayce [University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK]

A theme that comes through a review of and Benschop's and Doorewaard's as well as Berry's and Bell's paper is the difficulty of making the invisible practices that create inequalities whether gender, race or an intersection of these. For me, this has been one of the most persistent barriers in my efforts to improve equality in organizations, how do you make visible the invisible?

Benschop and Doorewaard discuss the development of the concepts of "gender and organizations" and "gendered organizations". They examine the concept of "gender subtext" as "the set of often concealed power based processes (re)producing gender distinctions in social practices through organizational and individual arrangements." Referring to their two oft under-referenced works in a US context ([4] Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998a, [5] b) Benschop and Doorewaard expand and complicate the concept. For example, the notion of the ideal, ostensibly gender neutral, worker, is part of the gender subtext. The image of the ideal worker resembles images of masculine workers, not of women workers. As Benschop and Doorewaard point out, the characteristic of the ideal worker vary with the organizational and occupational contexts. Thus, there may be more than one ideal worker: however, he is always masculine.

The gender subtext is reproduced by complex practices that are usually invisible. Consequently, the meanings they construct often replace open and easily identified discrimination. As a result, widespread beliefs that gender equality has been achieved in developed economies coexist with actual practices that continue to (re)create gender inequality. These authors identify the gender subtext as an example of hegemonic power processes, although other types of power, e.g. bureaucratic power, also help to maintain and reproduce the gender subtext. I think that the conceptualization of the gender subtext as a form of hegemonic power is useful, as it points to the "taken for granted" nature of many of the beliefs about gender that contribute to the ongoing gender inequality. Acceptance by both men and women of inequalities as just the way things are contributes to the invisibility of these inequalities.

I argued in my 1992 work that the gendering of organizations takes place in structural, cultural, inter relational, and...