Being female doing gender:narratives of women in education management

The paper explores gender relations in academia and discusses how gender is constructed within academic institutions. It is based upon the study of a business school, part of a British university. The construction of gender relations within this institution was of special interest because the majority of managerial roles were occupied by women. All female academic managers (dean, associate deans and heads of department) and a random selection of female and male academics were interviewed. The process of construction of gender relations is investigated through the analysis of the discrepancy between the ‘masculine culture’ of high education institutions and the dominance of women managers within this organization. It is suggested that the numerical dominance of women managers may create tensions between their individual identities as women and their managerial identities, due to the predominance of masculine practices and values within the organization. Additionally, it emerged that the maintenance of masculine ideals and practices is also associated with downplaying women’s achievements.

An exploration of female leadership language:case studies of senior women in Bahrain

This is a multiple case study of the leadership language of three senior women working in a large corporation in Bahrain. The study’s main aim is to explore the linguistic practices the women leaders use with their colleagues and subordinates in corporate meetings. Adopting a Foucauldian (1972) notion of ‘discourses’ as social practices and a view of gender as socially constructed and discursively performed (Butler 1990), this research aims to unveil the competing discourses which may shape the leadership language of senior women in their communities of practice. The research is situated within the broader field of Sociolinguistics and the specific field of Language and Gender. To address the research aim, a case study approach incorporating multiple methods of qualitative data collection (observation, interviews, and shadowing) was utilised to gather information about the three women leaders and produce a rich description of their use of language in and out of meeting contexts. For analysis, principles of Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) were used to organise and sort the large amount of data. Also, Feminist Post- Structuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA) was adopted to produce a multi-faceted analysis of the subjects, their language leadership, power relations, and competing discourses in the context. It was found that the three senior women enact leadership differently making variable use of a repertoire of conventionally masculine and feminine linguistic practices. However, they all appear to have limited language resources and even more limiting subject positions; and they all have to exercise considerable linguistic expertise to police and modify their language in order to avoid the ‘double bind’. Yet, the extent of this limitation and constraints depends on the community of practice with its prevailing discourses, which appear to have their roots in Islamic and cultural practices as well as some Western influences acquired throughout the company’s history. It is concluded that it may be particularly challenging for Middle Eastern women to achieve any degree of equality with men in the workplace because discourses of Gender difference lie at the core of Islamic teaching and ideology.

'Your situation is critical...':the discursive enactment of leadership by business women in Middle Eastern and Western European contexts

Women remain in a small minority as business leaders in both Middle Eastern (ME) and Western European (WE) regions, and indeed, past research indicates that ME women face even greater challenges as leaders than their Western counterparts. This article explores sample findings from two separate case studies, the first of a ME woman leader and the second of a WE woman leader, each conducting a management meeting with their teams. Using interactional sociolinguistic analysis, we examine the 'contextualisation cues' that index how each woman performs leadership in their respective meetings. We found that both women utilise relational practices in order to enact leadership with their subordinates, but with varying results. Whereas the ME leader deploys a confident and commanding interactional style with her colleagues, the WE leader's style is evasive and uncertain. On the basis of these two cases, the WE leader appears to face greater challenges in a male-dominated business world than the ME leader. Whereas the ME leader can rely on long-established ties of loyalty and organisation-as-family, the Western leader, within an apparently more open, democratic context, has to negotiate overwhelming turbulence and change within her company. © 2014, equinox publishing.

The scrutinized priest:women in the Church of England negotiating professional and sacred clothing regimes

This article examines the integration of women priests in the Church of England through the lens of dress. Clothing is a salient dynamic in occupational cultures, particularly in relation to the regulation of gendered bodies. Women's ordination to the priesthood was only sanctioned in 1992. Complex clothing regimes are negotiated, for ordination bestows upon the priest certain clothing rights and responsibilities. However, such attire has traditionally been associated only with the male body, creating tension in relation to women's appropriation of this sacred and professional dress. Based on in-depth interviews with 17 Anglican clergy women, this article will focus both on the scrutiny the women experienced in relation to their clothing choices, as well as the relationship the women themselves negotiated with their clothes. It will be argued that as representatives of both a sacred and professional domain, clothing had to be carefully managed by clergy. Dress functioned as a key test in women's integration into the organization, often operating as a constraining and exclusionary mechanism. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Lexico-grammatical portraits of vulnerable women in war:the 1641 depositions

The 1641 Depositions are testimonies collected from (mainly Protestant) witnesses documenting their experiences of the Irish uprising that began in October 1641. As news spread across Europe of the events unfolding in Ireland, reports of violence against women became central to the ideological construction of the barbarism of the Catholic rebels. Against a backdrop of women's subordination and firmly defined gender roles, this article investigates the representation of women in the Depositions, creating what we have termed "lexico-grammatical portraits" of particular categories of woman. In line with other research dealing with discursive constructions in seventeenth-century texts, a corpus-assisted discourse analytical approach is taken. Adopting the assumptions of Critical Discourse Analysis, the discussion is extended to what the findings reveal about representations of the roles of women, both in the reported events and in relation to the dehumanisation of the enemy in atrocity propaganda more generally. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Women in Europe between the wars:politics, culture and society

The central aim of this interdisciplinary book is to make visible the intentionality behind the 'forgetting' of European women's contributions during the period between the two world wars in the context of politics, culture and society. It also seeks to record and analyse women's agency in the construction and reconstruction of Europe and its nation states after the First World War, and thus to articulate ways in which the writing of women's history necessarily entails the rewriting of everyone's history. By showing that the erasure of women's texts from literary and cultural history was not accidental but was ideologically motivated, the essays explicitly and implicitly contribute to debates surrounding canon formation. Other important topics are women's political activism during the period, antifascism, the contributions made by female journalists, the politics of literary production, genre, women's relationship with and contributions to the avant-garde, women's professional lives, and women's involvement in voluntary associations. In bringing together the work of scholars whose fields of expertise are diverse but whose interests converge on the inter-war period, the volume invites readers to make connections and comparisons across the whole spectrum of women's political, social, and cultural activities throughout Europe.

“An Ebbing Tide Lowers all Boats” How the great recession of 2008 has affected men and women in Central and Eastern Europe

In this paper we explore the impact of the economic recession of 2008 on gender inequality in the labor force in Central and Eastern European countries. We argue that job and occupational segregation protected women’s employment more than men's in the CEE region as well, but unlike in more developed capitalist economies, women’s level of labor force participation declined and their rates of poverty increased during the crisis years. We also explore gender differences in opinions on the impact of the recession on people’s job satisfaction. For our analysis we use published data from EUROSTAT and our own calculations from EU SILC and ESS 2010.

Generational change among women in rural Valencia

The demise of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in 1975 and the subsequent democratization of Spain and its inclusion in the European Community have profoundly altered the patriarchal traditions of Spanish society. This study focused on the changes that women in Moixent, a rural village in Valencia, Spain, have experienced as a result of this liberalization of government policies, modernization, and economic development. ^ The purpose of this research was to illuminate the changing lives of two generations of women and their families in rural Valencia. The qualitative research techniques of participant observation, in-depth interviewing, and narrative analysis were used to present the different frames of reference of the two generations. Young working women in this rural community have come to rely on the help and support of their mothers in their attempts to work outside the home and improve their standard of living. As they enter Spain's modernizing economy their consumption patterns increasingly mimic those promoted by the global media, and especially television. As these young women take jobs outside the home they are having fewer children and dramatically altering the nation's demographic profile. ^ The older generation of women, who lived through decades of deprivation during the Spanish Civil War and Franco's long regime, support their daughters' new independence by assuming the arduous tasks of providing informal day care for their grandchildren and performing a variety of unpaid services for their daughters, including shopping, cooking, and housecleaning. This older generation of grandmothers is assuming a more difficult and demanding workload in what otherwise would be their retirement years. Hence they are the true enablers of their daughters' economic progress and modern patterns of consumption. ^ Other influences from the outside world have altered family farming practices. The participation of women in the harvests has declined, and most harvesting is now done by migrant foreign workers. As young women enter the workforce grandmothers strive to impart traditional values to their grandchildren, in the face of a rapidly changing world. ^

Women in Athletic Training: Striving for Equity

The demands of athletic training are unique to the profession and many of the concerns of women in the NATA are similar to those of female executives in other professions. The purpose of this paper is to identify challenges for women in athletic training and reveal areas of inequity.

Women in Nontraditional Career and Technical Education

The purpose of this research is to outline several of the issues that serve as barriers to women participating in nontraditional career and technical education in an effort to prompt solution based strategies on the part of career and technical instructors, adult education practitioners, and administrators.

Epidemiologic Features of Vulvovaginal Candidiasis among Reproductive-Age Women in India

Background. Vulvovaginal candidiasis is characterized by curd-like vaginal discharge and itching, and is associated with considerable health and economic costs. Materials and Methods. We examined the incidence, prevalence, and risk factors for vulvovaginal candidiasis among a cohort of 898 women in south India. Participants completed three study visits over six months, comprised of a structured interview and a pelvic examination. Results. The positive predictive values for diagnosis of vulvovaginal candidiasis using individual signs or symptoms were low (<19%). We did not find strong evidence for associations between sociodemographic characteristics and the prevalence of vulvovaginal candidiasis. Women clinically diagnosed with bacterial vaginosis had a higher prevalence of vulvovaginal candidiasis (Prevalence 12%, 95% CI 8.2, 15.8) compared to women assessed to be negative for bacterial vaginosis (Prevalence 6.5%, 95% 5.3, 7.6); however, differences in the prevalence of vulvovaginal candidiasis were not observed by the presence or absence of laboratory-confirmed bacterial vaginosis. Conclusions. For correct diagnosis of vulvovaginal candidiasis, laboratory confirmation of infection with Candida is necessary as well as assessment of whether the discharge has been caused by bacterial vaginosis. Studies are needed of women infected with Candida yeast species to determine the risk factors for yeast’s overgrowth.