Gender and Management: New Directions in Research and Continuing Patterns in Practice

Management and managing are characteristically
gendered in many respects. Over the last 30 years
there has been a major international growth of
studies on gender relations in organizations in
general and in management in particular. This
applies in both empirical research and more
general theoretical analyses. The area of gender,
organizations and management is now recognized
in at least some quarters outside of itself as a
legitimate, even an important, area. This is to be
seen in the current market in publications, in the
activities of mainstream international publishers,
in journals,1 in courses within degree programmes,
and in research groups, networks, and conferences
and conference streams. Nevertheless, the field of
activity is still somewhat precarious, in some ways
very precarious. The vast majority of mainstream
work on organizations and management has no
gender analysis whatsoever or if it has it is very
simple and crude. In business schools and
university departments the position of genderexplicit
work is very far from established. Even
critical management studies, which may be concerned
with, for example, power, class, labour
process, resistance, discourse, deconstruction, does
not necessarily take gender into account.