Purpose
Unequal workplace gender outcomes continue to motivate research. Using the prism of work-life-(im)balance, the purpose of this paper is to show how identity salience and motivation contribute to a subject position that for many reproduces socially gendered practices of workplaces.
Design/methodology/approach
After initial inductive computer-assisted text analysis, the authors innovatively move to deductively analyse data from focus group and semi-structured interviews of 18 female and 19 male Australian managers in the financial and government sectors.
Findings
The authors find that a gendered sense of reflexivity is virtually non-existent among the female Australian managers and professionals interviewed in this research. The inductive stage of critical discourse analysis revealed a substantial difference between men and women in two concepts, responsibility, and choice. These form the axes of the typological model to better explain how non-reflexive gendered workplace practices are “performed”.
Practical implications
This empirical research provides a foundation for understanding the role of choice and responsibility in work-home patterns for women.
Social implications
The absence of a reflexive gender-based understanding of women’s work-home choice is explained in Bourdieusian terms.
Originality/value
By not specifically using a gender lens, the authors have avoided the stereotypical understanding of gendered workplaces.
Using a computer-assisted content analysis, this study analyzes a 32,000 word corpus drawn from mediated political statements made in response to the July 2005 London bombing. This grounded research led to a focus on the deontic nature of these statements, and also revealed a relative absence of condoling. Although condemnatory, statements did not specifically attribute the ‘evil’ to particular people. Particularly mindful of Widdowson’s (2004) distinction between analysis (text) and interpretation (discourse), the paper first identifies the textual features, but then “hermeneutically” interprets their meaning within a wider context of international political discourse. The paper concludes that the statements performed a positive epideictic purpose, although it tended to occlude the compassionate element of public grieving.
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