Balls, Barbecues and Boxing: Contesting gender regimes at organizational social events

Abstract

What do the relaxed social events held by companies and organizations do for continued gender inequality? This article argues that outings, barbecues and parties offer opportunities for members of an organization to challenge unequal gender regimes. But they can also end up maintaining these inequalities instead. The article draws on Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations, and Judith Butler's notion of gender performativity. Based on 208 accounts of organizations' social events, it identifies the following four areas of gender performativity and their varying significance in reaffirming or challenging unequal gender regimes: gender images, status differences, the body and sexuality. The findings indicate that practices reaffirming unequal gender regimes outnumber practices that possibly balance or break them. Paradoxically, practices that challenge unequal gender regimes, when joined with powerful responses from the hitherto privileged party, can form a vicious circle which again ends up continuing unequal gender regimes. The article provides a more nuanced understanding of ambivalences and the contested nature of gender regimes which is important in identifying avenues for gender equality.

The Identity Regulation of Disabled Employees: Unveiling the ‘varieties of ableism’ in employers’ socio-ideological control

“…Extending current knowledge on the key role of social identities in the (re)production of idealized and normalized notions of workers, often with exclusionary effects (e.g. Acker 2006; Ashcraft, 2013; Liff & Wajcman, 1996; Ortlieb & Sieben, 2019), these findings point to the need to address the complexity of identity regulation regimes targeting specific groups of workers, defined not only in terms of their occupation (e.g. managers in Thomas & Davies, 2005), tenure in the organization (e.g.…”

“…While crucially resting on discourses, organizations’ socio-ideological control of workers ‘are constrained as well as enabled by material conditions, cultural traditions and relations of power’ (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002, p. 628; see also Alvesson & Kärreman, 2004; Zanoni & Janssens, 2007). Recent scholarship has increasingly emphasized the role of materiality, space and the body in socio-ideological control, showing the complex relation between organizations’ discursive and material practices and how they jointly shape workers’ identity work and (embodied) resistance (Courpasson & Monties, 2017; Ortlieb & Sieben, 2019; Symon & Pritchard, 2015). Whereas in some cases discursive and material practices align to regulate identity in clear-cut ways (e.g.…”

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Organizational inclusion and identity regulation: How inclusive organizations form ‘Good’, ‘Glorious’ and ‘Grateful’ refugees

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“I Do Worry That Football Will Become Over-Feminized”: Ambiguities in Fan Reflections on the Gender Order in Men’s Professional Football in the United Kingdom

“…Gender regimes in sport are culturally and historically shaped hierarchical systems of power that embody domination and subordination along the lines of gender and sexuality, but also in terms of ethnic difference, taking white heterosexuality as a norm. They do this normatively through their routine procedures; via images, and ideologies that legitimize inequalities and differences; via face-to-face interactions where group members 'do gender'; and, finally, via identity and the making of the self as an accepted, and suitably gendered, organizational performer (Acker, 2006;Ortlieb & Sieben, 2019).…”