HIERARCHIES, JOBS, BODIES:

TLDR

Hierarchical organizations are widely recognized as sites of male dominance, yet feminist scholarship often treats organizational structure as gender‑neutral, a stance that rests on abstract, disembodied concepts of jobs and hierarchies that reinforce a capitalist control strategy built on gender difference. The article contends that organizational structure is gendered, with gender assumptions embedded in the documents and contracts that shape and theorize organizations. The gendered nature of organizational structures is obscured by concealing the embodied aspects of work, which are framed around a male worker whose bodies, sexuality, and reproductive relations are integrated into the worker image. These gendered images of men and masculinity permeate organizational processes, marginalizing women and sustaining gender segregation.

Abstract

In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work. Abstract jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in organizational thinking, assume a disembodies and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodied organizational structures and work relations is part of the larger strategy of control in industrial capitalist societies, which, at least partly, are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference.