Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Paid work has been dominated by androcentric logic and values, which manifests itself in wage gaps and unequal working conditions. While there are a growing number of social studies on work and gender that portray this situation well, they tend to focus on analyzing working conditions and environments from a descriptive perspective. In this context, the experience of women, as well as the qualitative aspects of it, have been barely explored. This paper highlights the female experience, such as the feeling of being a foreigner, the absence of symbolic references to develop her career, strategies to “disguise” her emotions, and the need to permanently demonstrate her value to the organization. Through the discursive analysis of twenty in-depth interviews with women in top management positions, we seek to understand how these women transfer meaning from their intimate world and home to their work practices. The results show a series of metaphors associated with family ties and the maintenance of the home as central elements in the symbolic production of women’s leadership. In this way, the ethics of care, well-being and the aesthetics of the intimate home are central to organizing their work teams.