Under the Desk: On Becoming a Mother in the Workplace

Always different?: exploring the monstrous-feminine and maternal embodiment in organisation

“…In this section I explore in more depth the relationship between the monstrous, maternal-feminine and organisation. The wealth of literature on women's lived experience, maternal subjectivity and (pre-and post-birth) maternal bodies in management and organisation primarily highlights social explanations for the repressive and oppressive dynamics experienced by mothers in paid employment (Riad, 2007). These studies serve to highlight the monstrous-maternal in action, or indeed ways in which the monstrous-maternal is tamed, co-opted or utilised in organisations.…”

“…This is demonstrated in studies of the maternal and motherhood in organisation (Gatrell, 2011;Höpfl and Kostera, 2003;Riad, 2007) which draw attention to this dissolution and its effects for gendered subjectivity. Such liminality has prompted scholars to question the politics of marginality (Shildrick, 2002;Thanem, 2011), equality and inclusion to which this special issue attends.…”

“…Arguments of inclusion, for example, are often based on the utility of the maternal-feminine in terms of gender balance or positive assumptions for organisations of the maternal as synonymous with being gentle and kind. Riad (2007) provides an interesting embodied autoethnographic account of motherhood and work and highlights the ambiguities and ambivalences of being a mother at work. In her account, organisations reproduce particular notions of discrimination and marginalisation of mothers which either work to silence or excise maternal subjectivity or reproduce problematic assumptions of motherhood.…”

“…I attend to hitherto less developed discussions at the intersections between the monstrous-feminine and maternal-feminine in organisation (Dale, 2001;Gatrell, 2011;Haynes, 2008aHaynes, , 2008bHöpfl and Kostera, 2003;Longhurst, 2001Longhurst, , 2008Riad, 2007). Feminist contributions have hitherto explored psychoanalytic approaches to demonstrate the power of the monstrous, its excesses or lack (Creed, 1993), and the emancipatory potential of recognising one's own monstrosity by embodying the 6 monster (Shildrick, 2002).…”

“…Feminist debates on the maternal body explore how our bodies are always already capable of being monstrous (Gatrell, 2011;Riad, 2007;Thanem, 2011) and this is no more apparent than when the body seizes our attention at times of dysfunction, appearing to us in an alien form (Williams, 1998:61). As Betterton (2006:81) writes, "what if that otherness is enclosed in our bodies, as yet unknown, neither friend nor enemy, growing inside our own flesh and blood?"…”