Globalization and Business Masculinities

Abstract

The idea of "transnational business masculinity" is explored in life-history interviews with Australian managers. Their world is male-dominated but has a strong consciousness of change. An intense and stressful labor process creates multiple linkages among managers and subjects them to mutual scrutiny, a force for gender conservatism. In a context of affluence and anxiety, managers tend to treat their life as an enterprise and self-consciously manage bodies and emotions as well as finances. Economic globalization has heightened their insecurity and changed older patterns of business; different modes of participating in transnational business can be identified. Managerial masculinity is still centrally related to power, but changes from older bourgeois masculinity can also be detected: tolerance of diversity and heightened uncertainty about one's place in the world and gender order. Some support is found for the transnational business masculinity hypothesis, but a spectrum of gender patterns must be recognized in an increasingly complex business environment.

Men, Masculinities, and Gender Relations

“…There have been various analyses of 'business masculinities' (Connell and Wood, 2005) and 'transnational business masculinity' (Connell, 1998): seen as a globally mobile form of masculinity marked by "increasing egocentrism, very conditional loyalties (even to the corporation), and a declining sense of responsibility for others (except for purposes of imagemaking)." It differs from "traditional bourgeois masculinity by its increasingly libertarian sexuality, with a growing tendency to commodify relations with women."…”

Professores discriminados: um estudo sobre os docentes do sexo masculino nas séries do ensino fundamental

“…However, the fact that it is mentioned shows that it cannot be ruled out. On this subject, see the work of Connell (2005).…”

Rock and roll or rock and fall? Gendered framing of the rock and roll lifestyles of Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty in British broadsheets

“…In general, such articles contain references to a 'live fast, die young' lifestyle which focuses solely on the present, including phrases as 'living for the day', 'dedicated to the hedonism of the here and now' (The Guardian, 4 November,2005) and 'living for the moment' (The Independent, 23 February,2005). But whereas journalists drawing on this frame -at best -merely condone Winehouse's conduct, Doherty's behavior is covered much more positively, acknowledging -to a point of near-adoration -his courage to live a rock and roll lifestyle, his willingness to take risks and 'accept the consequences' or even 'dare damnation': Moreover, even broadsheet journalists targeting an elite audience admire rock masculinity's embodiment of risk and neglect, even though it sharply contrasts with business masculinity's treatment of the body as thing to be managed, such as by eating healthy and jogging (Connell and Wood 2005).…”

“…Therefore we must consider the social settings, each with its own embedded type of hegemonic masculinity and patriarchal dividends, in which gender is enacted (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). In alignment with increasing economic globalization and neo-liberalism, transnational business masculinity is often considered the globally dominant form of masculinity (Connell 1998, Connell andWood 2005). Business masculinity is characterized by authority (or control over subordinates) based on the impersonal and technical rationality of management (Kerfoot and Knights 1998).…”