Two meta-theoretical approaches can be distinguished in the gender and organisation literature (Calas, Smircich & Holvino, 2014, 19). The first adapts a more naturalistic orientation towards gender: it understands sex as biological and gender as a social or cultural categorisation usually associated with a person’s sex (Calas et. al 2014, 19). This branch is mostly interested in women in management and the conditions and difficulties they face in organisations and management because of their differences from men (e.g. Calas et. al 2014;
Broadbridge & Simpson, 2011). In this approach, the system itself is assumed to be gender neutral. In the other meta-theoretical approach, the point is not that women are different, ‘but that gender difference is the basis for the unequal distribution of power and resources’ (Wajcman, 1998, 159-160). Hence, the second approach understands gender as a social institution, which is socially accomplished through gender relations (Calas et. al 2014, 20). In this study I have chosen to follow the second approach for two reasons. Firstly, it is because it ‘‘´de-naturalizes’ the common sense of gender using processual, social constructionist theoretical approaches” (Calas et. al 2014, 20). This theoretical approach directs attention to seeing men’s work-family issues not only as individual problems, but also as part of larger social structures of inequality in their social context.
Secondly, unlike the first approach, which has a functionalist and positivist
orientation, this one understands gender as something people do, not something one has (e.g. West & Zimmerman, 1987; Calas et al., 2014).
Gender as a concept became increasingly applied in the social sciences in general, and in organisation studies, in the 1970s and 1980s as a way of understanding individuals socially rather than biologically (Miller, 2011).
Masculinity and femininity are a major part of the concept of gender. This study does not attach masculinity to the male sex or femininity to the female sex, but blurs the lines between them by broadening the concept of social gender. In addition, there is no intention here of reinforcing heteronormativity, that is, assuming that the overwhelming majority of sexual relationships in society are heterosexual, rather than acknowledging the diversity of sexualities. However, we still need some concepts that refer to gendered and gendering practices (Connell, 2000, 16–17). According to Connell and Messershmidt (2005), gender is always relational, and models of masculinity are socially defined in contra-distinction to some model of femininity: the one cannot be understood without reference to the other (Kimmel, 1987, 12). Connell’s (2000, 40) concepts include the idea that masculinity and femininity are produced together in a process that makes the gender order. It has also been extensively documented in feminist work that the world gender order is patriarchal, privileging men over women (Connell, 2000, 46). According to Pease (2000, 12), the concept of patriarchy is an umbrella term to describe men’s dominance over women. He sees patriarchy as institutionalised male power and argues that it is best understood as a historical structure with changing dynamics, allowing opportunities for intervention (Pease, 2000, 13). However, he recognises that radical change in gender relations depends on material and structural changes in the conditions in which patriarchy lies. This means that the structures of patriarchy go beyond the individual actions of particular men (Pease, 2000, 13). Even though a man may change his behaviour and become more equal with his female partner, this change does not challenge structured patriarchy. Men have a choice as to whether they accept patriarchy or work collectively against it, but before men can organise collectively, they need to change their subjectivities and practices (Pease, 2000, 14).
Many researchers working on gender and organisations have been interested in studying gender as a social practice (e.g. Alvesson, 1998; Korvajärvi, 1998; Gherardi, 1994; Gherardi & Poggio, 2001; Martin, 2001, 2003). These researchers are not interested in theorising gender in organisations; rather, they are theorising gendering organisations (Calás, Smircich & Holvino, 2014).
According to Martin (2006), gendering practices are the repertoire of actions, including speech, bodily and interpretive, that society makes available to its members for doing gender. Poggio (2006) notes that attention to gender has increasingly focused on gendering processes, that is, on how gender is constantly redefined and negotiated in the everyday practices through which individuals interact. In order to examine gendering processes, we need to accept the principle that gender is actively constituted (Martin, 2006) in everyday practices.
Organisational practices are one field where a gendered substructure is negotiated and often contested in everyday life, and where gendering processes
may become visible (Acker, 1990). Organisational research has therefore also moved beyond the reduction of gender to binary biological categories towards a more complex understanding of gender as social practice (West and Zimmerman, 1987; Billing & Alvesson, 2000; Knights & Kerfoot, 2004; Liu, 2017).
According to Calas et al. (2014, 34) the gendering organizations approach has the most potential for intervening on gender inequality in organisations and society. One theme within this approach is the idea of ‘doing gender’ formulated by West and Zimmerman (1987) in the late 1980s. West and Zimmerman (1987) claim that doing gender involves socially directive, interactional and micro-political activity, which divides certain kinds of objectives into express masculinity and femininity. At the same time, the individual does his or her gender him- or herself, but still inevitably in interaction with others who are also part of doing his or her gender. West and Zimmerman do not see gender as the property of an individual, but they understand it as features that are formed from social orders and as a means to legitimise society’s most fundamental dichotomy.
West and Zimmerman emphasise that gender is not the sum of characters or a role, but a product of social action. They are interested in seeing how gender is represented as a natural part of the world, even though it is a produced and socially organised result. Masculinities (or femininities) are not programmed within a human’s genes or fixed by the social structure; rather, they are actively produced in a given social setting (Connell, 2000, 12). At the centre of doing gender is establishing the difference between boys and girls and men and women with regard to issues that are not determined by biology (West and Zimmerman, 1987). Every newborn baby is placed in a gender dichotomy and treated in a gender-specific way thereafter (Badinter, 1993, 65–66). West and Zimmerman (1987) claim that once this divide has been constructed, it is used to reinforce the essence of gender.
In the early 1990s, Butler (1990, 1993) added the idea of the performative nature of gender. According to Poggio (2006), Butler viewed performance as doing an activity that creates what it describes. Butler (1990) argues that discourses provide positions that individuals can adopt. However, the hegemonic discourse limits the positions available. Gender is not given but rather performed, in a performance in which we express our social identities and gender roles, both of which are more or less learned, mostly unconsciously. Everyone grows up in a particular cultural context that has its own conventions about being a boy or a girl or a woman or a man. We almost automatically reproduce these unconscious models in our daily activities. These roles and behaviour models are not the outcome of our biological readiness; instead, they are social roles that have been formed in us and have become part of our identities. As a result of them we have binary concepts such as woman and man, boy and girl, femininity and masculinity, but gender itself is not binary: gender is various, a varied phenomenon that cannot be divided into two opposing categories. Dividing people clearly into either men or women narrows people’s diversity. So although there are clear social categories and different gender roles, this does not mean that everyone identifies themselves either as a man or a woman.
In addition to the concept of doing gender, we need the concept of undoing gender. According to Butler, gender binary can be destabilised and can thereby come undone (Butler, 1990, 2004). In other words, if we understand how gender is done and produced in social practices, this enables us to undo gender in the social, everyday practices in which we take part and to which we contribute. The individual can take a transformative attitude towards them (Butler 2004). On the other hand, according to West and Zimmerman (2009), gender is not undone so much as redone. Butler and West and Zimmerman have partly differing perspectives on the concept of (un)doing gender; Butler focuses on how discourses influence the formation of subjects, while West and Zimmerman emphasise how gender is done in interactions (Kelan, 2010). West and Zimmerman’s approach draws on ethnomethodology, while Butler’s has its origins in poststructuralism (Kelan, 2010).
Kelan (2010) suggests that studies could produce multiple forms of masculinity and femininity and show the multiplicity of options that people have available, thereby breaking down the idea of single and unitary gender meanings.
In both public debate and the academic literature, fatherhood and leadership are easily associated with the traditional masculine gender. To demolish this direct connection, we need the concept of (un)doing gender as well as the concept of redoing gender. By ridding ourselves of the idea that there is so-called ‘natural’
behaviour for men and women, and especially for mothers and fathers, gender would get new and more diverse meanings, and this could lead to the availability of more diverse identities for both fathers and mothers. What we can say for certain is that both fatherhood and leadership can be done in different ways, but some forms of fatherhood and leadership are more acceptable in particular social and historical contexts.
On the whole, recognising that fathers confront work-family issues differently from women in the organisational context is not enough. According to Calas et al. (2014), there is a need for scholars to adopt more processual gendering organisation approaches. The doing gender concept as well as the whole gendering organisations approach offer situated understandings of processes and practices leading to gender inequalities (Calas et al., 2014, 36).