IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/gender/v28y2021i1p301-317.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Maneuvering within postfeminism: A study of gender equality practitioners in Danish academia

Author

Listed:
  • Ea Høg Utoft

Abstract

In Denmark, gender equality in academia has seen limited progress during the past 30 years. To improve our understanding of this persistent problem, this article examines gender equality practitioners in relation to the wider discursive context of Danish society. Theorizing Denmark as a “postfeminist gender regime,” I analyze how practitioners negotiate a space for action in a context which generally opposes gender equality initiatives. I introduce the notion of “maneuvering” as a way to understand this negotiation between hegemonic, postfeminist discourses, on the one hand, and marginal and potentially subversive discourses on the other. Practitioners may maneuver in how they understand inequality and potential solutions, and in the meetings between them, their work and the postfeminist gender regime. Successful maneuvering enables the use of more radical change strategies than postfeminism otherwise allows. Practitioners' ability to maneuver rests on their critical reflexivity, which in turn is conditioned by their knowledge of gender and power dynamics. The study thus points to the centrality of selecting highly qualified individuals as gender equality practitioners.

Suggested Citation

  • Ea Høg Utoft, 2021. "Maneuvering within postfeminism: A study of gender equality practitioners in Danish academia," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 301-317, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:301-317
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12556
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12556
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/gwao.12556?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yvonne Benschop & Patricia Lewis & Ruth Simpson & Rosalind Gill & Elisabeth K. Kelan & Christina M. Scharff, 2017. "A Postfeminist Sensibility at Work," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 226-244, May.
    2. Yvonne Benschop & Patricia Lewis & Ruth Simpson & Patricia Lewis & Yvonne Benschop & Ruth Simpson, 2017. "Postfeminism, Gender and Organization," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 213-225, May.
    3. Patricia Lewis & Ruth Simpson, 2017. "Hakim Revisited: Preference, Choice and the Postfeminist Gender Regime," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(2), pages 115-133, March.
    4. Debra E. Meyerson & Maureen A. Scully, 1995. "Crossroads Tempered Radicalism and the Politics of Ambivalence and Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(5), pages 585-600, October.
    5. Yvonne Benschop & Patricia Lewis & Ruth Simpson & Nick Rumens, 2017. "Postfeminism, Men, Masculinities and Work: A Research Agenda for Gender and Organization Studies Scholars," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 245-259, May.
    6. Mathias Wullum Nielsen, 2017. "Reasons for Leaving the Academy: a Case Study on the ‘Opt Out’ Phenomenon among Younger Female Researchers," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(2), pages 134-155, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ingeborg C. Kroese, 2023. "Sex/gender‐blind training maintains and creates inequity," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 917-936, May.
    2. Jennifer C. Davis & Eric Ping Hung Li & Mary Stewart Butterfield & Gino A. DiLabio & Nithi Santhagunam & Barbara Marcolin, 2022. "Are we failing female and racialized academics? A Canadian national survey examining the impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on tenure and tenure‐track faculty," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 703-722, May.
    3. Micaela Stierncreutz & Janne Tienari, 2023. "Shaped by resistance: Discursive politics in gender equality work," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 1178-1198, July.
    4. Soline Blanchard, 2022. "Feminism through the market? A study of gender‐equality consultants in France," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 443-465, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anna Alexandersson & Viktorija Kalonaityte, 2021. "Girl bosses, punk poodles, and pink smoothies: Girlhood as Enterprising Femininity," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 416-438, January.
    2. Larissa Petrucci, 2020. "Theorizing postfeminist communities: How gender‐inclusive meetups address gender inequity in high‐tech industries," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 545-564, July.
    3. Fitri Hariana Oktaviani & Bernard McKenna & Terrance Fitzsimmons, 2021. "Trapped within ideological wars: Femininities in a Muslim society and the contest of women as leaders," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 1152-1176, May.
    4. Karen Jones & Jonathan Clifton, 2018. "Rendering sexism invisible in workplace narratives. A narrative analysis of female entrepreneurs’ stories of not being talked to by men," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 557-574, September.
    5. Grace Gao & Linna Sai, 2020. "Towards a ‘virtual’ world: Social isolation and struggles during the COVID‐19 pandemic as single women living alone," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(5), pages 754-762, September.
    6. Claudia Balan & Marieke van den Brink & Yvonne Benschop, 2023. "New fathers, ideal workers? New players in the field of father‐friendly work organizations," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 957-981, May.
    7. Helen Delaney & Katie R. Sullivan, 2021. "The political is personal: Postfeminism and the construction of the ideal working mother," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 1697-1710, July.
    8. Udeni Salmon, 2023. "“How did they protect you?” The lived experience of race and gender in the post‐colonial English university," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 510-528, March.
    9. Linda Colley & Sue Williamson & Meraiah Foley, 2021. "Understanding, ownership, or resistance: Explaining persistent gender inequality in public services," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 284-300, January.
    10. Karin Berglund & Helene Ahl & Katarina Pettersson & Malin Tillmar, 2018. "Women's entrepreneurship, neoliberalism and economic justice in the postfeminist era: A discourse analysis of policy change in Sweden," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 531-556, September.
    11. Michel Anteby & Curtis K. Chan, 2018. "A Self-Fulfilling Cycle of Coercive Surveillance: Workers’ Invisibility Practices and Managerial Justification," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(2), pages 247-263, April.
    12. James Traeger & Carolyn Norgate, 2015. "A safe place to stay sharp: action learning meets cooperative inquiry in the service of NHS OD capacity building," Action Learning: Research and Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 197-207, July.
    13. Inga SHALEV & Adriana PRODAN, 2018. "Limiting Terms of Office for Directors as a Policy Change in the Israeli Nursing System," REVISTA DE MANAGEMENT COMPARAT INTERNATIONAL/REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 19(2), pages 109-123, May.
    14. Carl Rhodes, 2017. "Ethical Praxis and the Business Case for LGBT Diversity: Political Insights from Judith Butler and Emmanuel Levinas," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(5), pages 533-546, September.
    15. Chatterjee, Ira & Cornelissen, Joep & Wincent, Joakim, 2021. "Social entrepreneurship and values work: The role of practices in shaping values and negotiating change," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 36(1).
    16. Lorna Treanor & Susan Marlow & Janine Swail, 2021. "Rationalizing the postfeminist paradox: The case of UK women veterinary professionals," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 337-360, January.
    17. Johansson, Kristina & Johansson, Maria & Andersson, Elias, 2023. "All talk and no action? Making change and negotiating gender equality in Swedish forestry," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    18. Stewart, Alex, 2020. "Family control, ambivalence, and preferential benefits," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 11(4).
    19. Kathryn L. Heinze & Klaus Weber, 2016. "Toward Organizational Pluralism: Institutional Intrapreneurship in Integrative Medicine," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 157-172, February.
    20. Mariam Mohsin & Jawad Syed, 2020. "The missing doctors — An analysis of educated women and female domesticity in Pakistan," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(6), pages 1077-1102, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:301-317. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0968-6673 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.