This thesis was initiated by the question how the women in organizations with victims' passiveness could reposition themselves as self-controlling and active subjects of transformation. It seeks for theoretical and practical clues to this question on ...
This thesis was initiated by the question how the women in organizations with victims' passiveness could reposition themselves as self-controlling and active subjects of transformation. It seeks for theoretical and practical clues to this question on the basis of empirical data on women managers in public and private sectors, particularly of their gender-identity and practical autonomy reflected in their everyday lives in the organizations where traditional gender system still is effective.
The following research questions were posed. If women leaders do not succumb to the suppression of gender system, what kind of autonomy do they actually demonstrate? If they have actually manifested relative autonomy in their everyday lives, does this practical self-regulative behavior is in line with such feminist values as women's empowerment and the ideal of an alternative social order? In what way does this autonomy actually disclose itself, and what effects it makes in the empirical reality? If their practical autonomy contribute to reproducing the existing gender system rather than transforming it, how can we interpret this type of women's autonomy? Furthermore, in what ways women leaders with different modes of subjectification can communicate among themselves?
In short, the aim of this thesis is to secure empirical grounds for identifying different types of gender-identity and their relationships to strategic autonomy hat women leaders in organizations manifest and for discovering the ways in which they are transformed into active subjects in the process of surviving and succeeding under the structural barriers within organizations.
Empirical data were collected through in-depth interviews with 13 middle- and high-level women bureaucrats in the central government and 16 middle-and high-level managers in large corporations with 1,000 employees or more. All the interviewees were college educated, and 21 out of 29 had master's or doctoral degrees. Their age ranged from 28 to 53, and all except for two were married. The interviews were carried out from April to June, 2007.
Major findings of the research are as follows:
Firstly, the pattern of subjectification of women can be conceptually categorized into three prototypes: (1) the de-feminized, (2) the feminine, and (3) the feminist. These three types of gender identity and practical strategies represent three modes of women's subjectification. The de-feminized resist to be identified as feminine subjects, freeing themselves from the negative notion of "feminine characteristics." The key strategy is to control and manage women's ego so as to prove their de-femininity and to be approved as "honorary members" of the boys' club. These women try to nurture "psuedo-manhood" in them and take an assimilation strategy accepting the existing androcentric organizational norms and revealing royalty to the system without criticism. This is their own strategy to survive and to pursue career development, and in the process, they differentiate themselves from the other types of women.
The feminine type of women, unlike the de-feminine, take advantage of the minority status, aggressively utilizing it as a resource for their organizational lives. Their key strategy is to maximize privileges of their distinctive token position utilize the gaps that males do not make use of or if they do, the effect is seriously adverse. This type compromises with the existing gender system in the respect that they accept the existing signification system and select utility values within the system, pursuing to be "the exceptional women."
The feminist, the last category, are dissatisfied with the existing gender system of the organization and try to pursue the third path, demonstrating a strong altruism and relation-oriented attitudes. This is contrasted with the other two types of women leaders who pursue individual goals of career success within the gender system. They position themselves apart from the ordinary lives of organizational man and formulate an autonomy, re-signifying and re-contextualizing the existing gender system and androcentric principles. Some are definitely oriented to the feminist values directed to an alternative sociocultural order.
The self-regulation of former two types can be conceptualized as "limited autonomy," in the sense that they accept and compromise with the existing gender system. On the contrary, the last type of feminist self-regulation can be defined as "alternative autonomy"or "transformative autonomy." While strategies and self-regulations based on de-feminization and femininity utilization are accepted as not threatening in the organization and therefore are of help in the individual career development, they show limitations by bringing frustration and dismemberment of self-identity. On the other hand, the autonomy of feminist subjects, while giving a hard time for career success, functions as a catalyzer that leads steadily to changes of the organization's cultural structure.
Secondly, the actual form of autonomy which women leaders show is multiple and complex. Individual women leaders reveal more than one type of gender-identity and practical strategy rather than committed to one type. For instance, they mobilize one or another strategy selectively or simultaneously in accordance with the situation or issues with which the are confronted. Therefore, the formulation of identity in the empirical dimension is proceeded in the selective and simultaneous mobilization process, and this process of identity formulation reflects a flexible rather than a fixed subjectification. While the characteristics of subjectification mode of individual women shows multiplicity and flexibility, one of the three types appears more dominant than the other, thus enabling us to differentiate among women in their subjectification mode and their autonomy type.
The third outcome of this research is about how these multiplicity subjectification and autonomy existing within a person and among women are transformed into "the third way," in other words, if it is possible for the multitude of inner subjects can converge and for the differences among women can narrow the gaps toward a mode of feminist subjectification and transformative autonomy.
To begin with, the possibility of convergence of differences located inside of individual female subjects are laid in the very mode of existence of the differences. Different types of gender identity and strategy coexist and are prepared to be revealed. Furthermore, it is ascertained that most of the women reflect on the existing gender system. The de-feminine type and the femininity utilizers are experiencing the splits and confliction of self-identity brought about by collisions with the androcentric principle of organization in various ways, which indicates the possibility of individual transformation.
In case of differences among female subjects, the "ontological limits", women as minority in power relationship of the gender system, are universally shared. Different types of self-regulation mean differences in way of life chosen by each woman to overcome their limits as belonging to a minority. Recognition on the structural minority and disadvantaged position is laid at the bottom of separate strategies selected by women. The recognition of women as minority can become powerful to doubt the Otherness in themselves, the distance from the center. Establishment of feminist network and accumulation of social capital can be positive media to encourage these contacts and communications.
As mentioned above, the possibility of convergence and conjunction of differences provides with an empirical clue to remove dilemmas of feministic strategy which have considered on the differences for maintaining resistance and possibility of feminist subjects. In addition, this research, seeking to empirically identify different types of relative autonomy of female subjects and differences among them through interviewing women leaders, has laid a base to overcome abstractive and rhetorical characteristics of previous approaches to autonomy and differences between subjects as doers and to pursue theoretical elaboration.