‘lift as you rise’- union women’s leadership talk

http://hum.sagepub.com/Human Relations

http://hum.sagepub.com/content/65/8/979The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0018726712448202

2012 65: 979 originally published online 15 June 2012Human RelationsGill Kirton and Geraldine Healy

'Lift as you rise': Union women's leadership talk

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

The Tavistock Institute

can be found at:Human RelationsAdditional services and information for

http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://hum.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

What is This?

- Jun 15, 2012OnlineFirst Version of Record

- Jul 23, 2012Version of Record >>

by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012hum.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://hum.sagepub.com/

http://hum.sagepub.com/content/65/8/979

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://www.tavinstitute.org/index.php

http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://hum.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://hum.sagepub.com/content/65/8/979.full.pdf

http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/06/15/0018726712448202.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml


human relations65(8) 979 –999

© The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.

co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0018726712448202

hum.sagepub.com

human relations

‘Lift as you rise’: Union women’s leadership talk

Gill KirtonQueen Mary, University of London, UK

Geraldine HealyQueen Mary, University of London, UK

AbstractThere is now an abundant and rich literature on gender and leadership in the corporate context, where concepts of masculine and feminine leadership are widely debated. This article provides a bridge between this literature and the women and unions literature, where women’s leadership is under-researched but where feminist strategies are widely discussed. The article uses the relatively novel lens of masculine, feminine and feminist leadership for interpreting the leadership talk of an ethnically diverse group of American and British union women. We argue that when women lead in heavily masculinized settings, their leadership discourses and orientations are almost bound to reflect the dominant culture. The study reveals that while there is a discursive space within unions for alternative (feminine and feminist) visions of leadership, in practice women union leaders also engage in different combinations (often simultaneously) of (masculine) status quo and (feminine and feminist) transformative leadership talk.

Keywordscareers, feminism, gender in organizations, leadership, industrial relations, participation and workplace democracy, trade unions

Introduction

Union leadership has often been caricatured as ‘male, pale and stale’, and there can be no doubt that historically women, and especially black and minority ethnic (BME) women,

Corresponding author:Gill Kirton, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London El 4NS, UK. Email: [email protected]

448202 HUM65810.1177/0018726712448202Kirton and HealyHuman Relations2012



980 Human Relations 65(8)

have experienced exclusion. This article discusses women’s under-representation in union leadership and identifies the social construction processes that produce and repro-duce this phenomenon. The article provides a bridge between the women and leadership literature and the women and unions literature. The former is mainly focused on the corporate sector and rarely on political settings, and generally does not take an intersec-tional, racially inclusive perspective (Ospina and Su, 2009). The latter typically neglects leadership (exceptions include Briskin, 2006; Eaton, 1992; Kaminski and Yakura, 2008; Ledwith et al., 1990), in favour of a broader conceptual framework of participation and activism (e.g. Bradley and Healy, 2008; Kirton, 2006). The article thereby contributes to filling a knowledge and theory gap that is timely, given women’s increasing incursion into union leadership.

We focus on women’s leadership talk to reveal the complexity of gendered and racial-ized meanings, understandings and beliefs about leadership (see Fairhurst, 2009) held by American and British women union leaders. Our purpose is not to describe the individual union contexts that women encounter, but to situate the discussion of women’s leadership within the broader context of the union movement cross-nationally. Kelly and Frege (2004) classify the UK and US as the liberal market variety of capitalism and place the two coun-tries broadly within the same variety of unionism based on strong similarities – weak insti-tutionalization, decentralized bargaining structures and relatively strong ties to mainstream political parties. This similar context has the effect of creating analogous goals between UK and US unions: organizing workplaces; bargaining for conditions above the floor pro-vided by legislation; mobilizing member voting in political elections. The two union move-ments also have similar individualistic leadership structures where the peak level general secretary’s (UK) or president’s (US) power is said to be similar to that of a company CEO (Kelly and Frege, 2004). Below the peak level there is a range of paid and lay leadership positions where women are better represented and play their part in delivering union objec-tives (as workplace, branch, local, regional and national officials).

Unlike corporate organizations, unions are ostensibly democratic, yet union structures of power and leadership in both countries are historically white-male-dominated, although significant change started to occur in the early 1970s as unions began to be influenced by other social movements, including the women’s, civil rights and anti-racist movements (Cobble and Michal, 2002; Kirton, 2006). In the UK among the ten larger dominant unions, there are now four women general secretaries (of feminized education unions); in three unions women are at least proportionally represented among paid national officials and only two unions have achieved proportionality on the national executive (Labour Research Department, 2012). There are few concrete data on BME women, but all the available evidence indicates their under-representation in leadership (Bradley and Healy, 2008).

Data are gathered less systematically in the US, but the picture is not dissimilar according to the available evidence (Cobble and Michal, 2002; Milkman, 2007). Again, women’s representation among union leaders has increased dramatically since the 1970s, but men continue to dominate the top and most powerful positions. In nine major US unions with significant female membership, women comprise 24 per cent of top leaders, but in none of these unions does the female proportion of leaders equal the female pro-portion of members (Milkman, 2007). The increasing leadership of black and Latina



Kirton and Healy 981

women is particularly notable in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and in organizing campaigns (Dickerson, 2006). Despite some positive signs, leadership change in US unions is notoriously slow as posi-tions are held on to, often for life, and may even be inherited by incumbents’ offspring.

Thus, the feminization of union membership of the last decades has not translated into proportional feminization of leadership in either country. Generally, the literature finds that unions continue to be strongly white masculinized contexts often unwelcoming and unreceptive to women and BME people (Bradley and Healy, 2008; Fletcher and Hurd, 2000: 67). A privileging and valorizing of masculine union identities (aggressive, domi-neering, tough, etc.) may sometimes include male BME workers, but exclude BME women (Moccio, 2009). The AFL-CIO identifies among other barriers ‘push back’ from male leaders as inhibiting women from entering leadership, while the suggested solu-tions all point to the need for gendered cultural change (AFL-CIO, 2004).

This history of gendered and racialized exclusion leaves the legacy at both discursive and lived levels of a white masculinist culture that stands in opposition to feminist identi-ties and mitigates the transformative potential of feminist praxis (Cobble, 2004; Kirton, 2006; Williams, 2002). Further, class, as discourse and identity, is highly salient within the union movement and is deeply embedded in the forms of masculinity that infuse unions, especially blue-collar and male-dominated ones, even if today women are far more numerous in membership and leadership than formerly (Cobble, 2004; Williams, 2002). This article reveals how this cross-national gendered, racialized and classed con-text impacts on union women’s leadership talk. First, the article outlines its conceptual positioning within the leadership literature, before proceeding to outline the methods and discuss findings.

Women and leadership

How women lead, and to what ends, have become prominent questions in the literature where two dominant interconnected discourses have been extensively explored: (i) two opposing models of feminine and masculine leadership; and (ii) female leadership advantage. Feminine leadership is defined as interpersonally oriented, democratic, col-laborative and transformational, which contrasts with masculine leadership, defined as task-oriented, authoritarian, controlling and transactional. Socially and culturally, femi-nine leadership is typically ascribed to women and masculine to men (Fletcher, 2004). Women are often seen to choose participative management styles and to be willing to share available resources owing to their lack of social power rather than owing to essential (biological or psychological) characteristics (Fairhurst, 1993). Traditionally, though, it is masculinity that provides the dominant interpretive frame for acceptable organizational behaviour, while femininity is frequently marginalized and associated with peripheral rather than core organizational functions (Mumby, 1998; Mumby and Putnam, 1992). This is the case in unions where specifically white working class masculinity is often at play, particularly in male-dominated unions and unions representing blue-collar occupa-tions (Williams, 2002).

Paradoxically, changes at organization level towards participatory work structures are said to call for feminine leadership, such that there is now allegedly a female leadership




advantage (Eagly and Carli, 2003; Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001). Critical research in the communication field exposes flaws in the female leadership advantage thesis. Fairhurst (1993), for example, found that even though some female leaders might have high organization status, their social status as female (and perhaps black and/or young) created a gender hierarchy where white males of lower organization status made it difficult in everyday leader−follower interactions for women to exercise positional power. Thus, women can occupy leader roles simultaneously and still function within the constraints of their gender roles (Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001).

For feminist scholars, the idea that women make better leaders than men is as prob-lematic as the conventional belief that men make better leaders than women. The notion of feminine leadership and its ascription to women reinforces the same essentializing gender stereotypes that help to create and sustain organizational gender inequalities (Billing and Alvesson, 2000; Briskin, 2006; Fournier and Kelemen, 2001). Further, gen-der stereotypes create a double bind where ‘highly communal’ women leaders are vul-nerable to criticism for not being authoritative enough, but ‘highly agentic’ women are criticized for lacking ‘communion’ (Carli and Eagly, 2011: 108). Agency is, of course, exercised in context against existing gendered organizational discourses and practices that, combined, produce gendered realities. For example, women in male-typed leader-ship positions (‘gender-incongruent’ leaders) may be perceived by followers as well as by other leaders to lack leadership skills and authority, which may influence a ‘choice’ of more masculine leadership practices in an attempt to compensate and to display leader-ship competence (Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001: 791; see also Fairhurst, 1993).

Despite a discourse of feminine leadership and female leadership advantage, leaders are traditionally seen as heroic individuals. Heroism is generally taken to consist of mas-culine characteristics, hence the symbolic Great Man in many leadership stories (Binns, 2008; Cockburn, 1991; Pacholok, 2009). This has salience in the union context where the task is for the symbolic male hero to ‘save’ others by dint of his mental and/or physical toughness (e.g. firefighting − see Pacholok, 2009). At surface level, there seems little space for normative femininity or for heroines in traditional union leadership discourses. Further, heroic femininity seems an oxymoron when the idealized feminine way is to lead collaboratively, not to be leading battles to ‘save’ others. The heroic individualistic model of leadership is also at odds with feminist value orientations (discussed below). Yet, in order to measure up as a (heroic) leader, again women might perceive the need to adopt masculine practices that appear at odds with their supposed preference for a femi-nine leadership style (Binns, 2008). Even the newer and more feminine post-heroic model, which emphasizes leadership as a social process, dependent on social networks of influence, is often presented as gender and, to a lesser degree, power neutral, not only in theory, but in practice (Fletcher, 2004). Moreover, authors argue that the idealized images of sex-linked attributes and inclinations, while they may not match reality, oper-ate at the level of discourse to have a powerful effect on how we enact – and are expected to enact − our gender identities when engaged in leadership work (Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004; Fairhurst, 1993; Fletcher, 2004).

The feminine/masculine dichotomy is further complicated when we consider the inter-sections of gender and race identities. An inclusive view of feminine/masculine leadership attempts to deconstruct the taken-for-granted whiteness of feminine and masculine




(Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004; Parker, 2005). For example, Parker (2005) discusses the cultural assumptions about feminine and masculine leadership, arguing that Great Man theories are actually about the Great White Man and that the predominant vision of femi-nine leadership is implicitly based on an ideal (middle class) white woman. Thus, the race and class neutral feminine/masculine leadership stereotypes do not encompass the lived realities and histories of BME and working class women. Black leadership scholars have identified leader behaviours that draw from cultural resources to resist discrimination and racism so that race/ethnicity is seen to play a role in constructing the collective work of leadership (Dickerson, 2006; Opsina and Su, 2009; Prindeville, 2003). Prindeville’s study of American Indian and Hispanic women political leaders finds gender identity to be sali-ent, but race/ethnicity to be more so, while Dickerson’s (2009) study of black and Latina women union leaders finds a deep sense of responsibility and duty to representing and advocating for BME women. The case of BME women is a salutary reminder of the necessity of thinking in terms of multiple masculinities and femininities and the possibil-ity for the subordination of specific forms (Connell, 1995).

Given the union context of our study and the significant influence of feminism on union women, it is also important to consider the concept of feminist leadership as a value orientation. Feminism is not a unitary set of beliefs and values and contemporary feminist scholarship has been profoundly influenced by black feminist thought and theories of intersectionality that have exposed the white middle classism of much classic feminist theorizing (Crenshaw, 1991). Thus, while two concerns are identified as central to most variants of second-wave feminism − (i) ‘opposition to the domination of men over women, and (ii) a belief that women share a status as members of a subordinate group’ (Riger, 1994: 275) − following Crenshaw, we add that an intersectional sensibility should be a central theoretical and political objective of feminism (Crenshaw, 1991: 1243).

There is a paucity of literature specifically on feminist leadership, but collective empowerment and social change/justice goals are central (Lau Chin et al., 2007; Porter and Daniel, 2007). Some feminists advocate rejection of the masculine values that situate leaders as ‘heroic’ or authoritarian, in favour of a system of more democratic governance involving flatter, less hierarchical and more participative decision-making structures. In this vision, leadership is a collective activity. However, other feminist scholars have criticized the egalitarian model of organization, arguing that the women’s movement erred in its condemnation of leadership and that rather than an absence of leadership, what was needed was a system for making leaders accountable (e.g. Freeman; Hartstock, cited in Riger, 1994: 276).

Despite some feminist ambivalence towards leadership itself, and while feminine lead-ership places more emphasis on processes than social change outcomes, there are links between discourses of feminine and feminist leadership. For example, scholars have noted feminist activists’ desire for nurturance from female leaders and the role of the mother has been proposed as a model of feminist leadership (see Riger’s, 1994, discussion), which by implication is the binary opposite of ‘father’, potentially leading down the essentialist path. Further, the principles of feminist leadership resonate with Cliff et al.’s (2005) account of feminine organizations created by female entrepreneurs, as flat, downplaying rules, exhibiting attentiveness to the needs of others, expressing relational orientations, in




contrast to masculine organizations as hierarchical, reliant on rules, adopting an instru-mental orientation and viewing members as a means for goal-accomplishment.

However, since women, especially BME and working class women, tend to lack the power to determine or shape the culture/structure of organizations, a discussion of femi-nist leadership must necessarily confront the gendered asymmetries of power that reside within most organizations, including the union context of our research. Power – how it is exercised, to what ends and with what effects/consequences – is at the heart of theories of both leadership and feminism. Power is not only gendered but also racialized, in that men tend not to see their gender privilege and white men and women tend not to see their race privilege (Acker, 2006b: 452).

To summarize, women’s leadership in white male-gendered, egalitarian, democratic contexts such as unions is under-researched. The concepts drawn from the leadership lit-erature of masculine, feminine and feminist leadership provide a relatively novel lens for interpreting the leadership talk of union women. Combining this lens with previous research (including our own) on women and unions, which in privileging activism has neglected to foreground leadership, has drawn our attention to four neglected questions: (i) ‘What do women believe it takes to be a union leader?’; (ii) ‘What are the implications for union women of being a “gender-incongruent” leader?’; (iii) ‘Do women believe that there is a distinctive women’s way of leading?’; and (iv) ‘How do women envision good leader-ship?’. These questions organize the findings of our research study to which we now turn.

Research approach

The article draws on a two-year (2008−2010) cross-national (UK/US) research project on women’s union leadership involving some 130 women, including some of the UK’s and northeastern USA’s most senior union women, in interviews and small focus groups. We position this study within a feminist research paradigm where the aim is to make women visible as a sex category. We were conscious of the importance of intersectional-ity for feminist scholarship (Acker, 2006a; Crenshaw, 1991; Healy et al., 2011), and our strategy of recruiting BME women to the study and highlighting their specific leadership experiences and discourses reflects this.

To simplify the cross-national comparison, we used standard, semi-structured inter-view and focus group schedules that allowed for flexibility according to respondents’ narratives within their national contexts. Thus, we did not attempt to ‘lock’ respondents by forcing them via our questioning into certain reaction patterns (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2009: 231). This article draws on two main interview themes that encouraged respondents to offer reflections as well as concrete examples of: (i) what it is like being a woman activist/leader; (ii) their views on, and definitions of, union leadership. In this article we explore the findings within these themes through the lens of masculine, femi-nine and feminist leadership and the four specific questions outlined earlier.

The interviewees’ age and ethnicity characteristics are shown in Table 1, and these broadly reflect the skew towards older white women, who make up the greatest propor-tion of women union leaders in both countries. Nevertheless, one-third of our sample were BME women. The interviewees held a range of union leadership positions at work-place, branch, local, regional and national levels, and came from a mix of female- and




male-dominated unions that organize white collar and manual workers in communica-tions, construction, education, government, healthcare, hotels and catering, transport, light manufacturing, retail and entertainment. To enable the reader to contextualize respondents’ leadership talk, we show key demographic/biographical information after each quote, except where confidentiality/anonymity could be breached.

Interviews and roundtable discussions were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The qualitative research software NVivo was used to code, sort and prepare the transcripts for thematic analysis. Initially, the transcripts were coded according to the responses to the interview questions. A number of themes were then identified as emerging from these responses, and further searches were then carried out to enable us to refine our under-standing of respondents’ leadership discourses.

We concentrate on respondents’ leadership talk because talk offers an alternative jour-ney into studying the context of leadership − one that is less concerned with impact and outcomes and, as stated earlier, more with meanings, understandings and beliefs (Fairhurst, 2009). Following Fairclough (2005), we see discourses as different perspec-tives on the world that depend on people’s positions in the world and on their identities. We focus on gender and on how race intersects with gender in women’s discursive fram-ing of union leadership. We regard discourses as powerful resources that can have mate-rial consequences, although as stated above the latter are not the subject of this article (Fairclough, 2005). Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize our underlying interest in portrayals of ‘real life’ and ‘lived experiences’.

In this article, we do not present a country-by-country comparison of women’s leader-ship talk. We found that, at the discursive level, UK and US women’s views on union leadership were so similar as to encourage us to foreground gender, including its inter-sections with ethnicity/race, and the concepts of masculine, feminine and feminist lead-ership as the analytical foci (see also Briskin, 2006). In contrast, in other publications based on this study we focus more on grounded contextual differences in leadership practices (Kirton and Healy, forthcoming).

Table 1 Interviewee characteristics

UK N = 63

USA New Jersey N = 31

USA New York N = 35

Totals N = 129

Ethnicity BME 18 7 18 43 Hispanic 0 0 5 5 White 45 21 13 79 Unknown 0 2 0 2Age 18−25 0 1 0 1 26−35 6 4 4 14 36−45 17 5 6 28 46−55 22 13 12 47 56−65 14 3 12 29 65+ 3 3 1 7 Unknown 1 1 1 3




Findings from the research

The findings are organized around four questions identified earlier: ‘What does it take to be a union leader?’; ‘Is there a women’s way of leading?’; ‘Are women gender-incongruent leaders?’; and ‘How do women envision good leadership?’. The ideas and views expressed by respondents are illustrated with indicative quotations.

What does it take to be a union leader?

In answer to this question, some women cited characteristics found in traditional (masculine) models of leadership, including: charisma, strength of character, risk-taking, foresight and vision. The quote below is from one of the UK’s most senior union women and its emphasis on clarity, fixity and toughness is suggestive of traditional or idealized masculine leadership:

I believe leadership means that you are clear about where the organization needs to go, that you are confident in your articulation of that clarity, that you listen to a variety of opinions. But you are not blown in the wind by different voices, that you have fixity of purpose so when things get tough, you stand there … against the storm. (UKCS2)

However, respondents also cited other more idealized feminine qualities, including: self-lessness, empathy, patience, valuing and respecting others, listening skills, good people skills, being collaborative, recognizing your own weaknesses, being prepared to be wrong and open to changing your mind. The following American woman’s ‘true leader’ is someone who exhibits many of these stereotypically feminine leadership qualities:

I think a true leader is someone who believes in it … they are not trying to further their own political career … people who believe in fairness and equity and do it for the right reasons and not just to propel themselves in the workplace as someone running their area, that it’s all about personal payoff instead of really being committed. (NJ3, white, age 36−45, paid official, public sector union)

The idea of commitment to social justice expressed by the above quotation was a widely held ideal and not simply a white female subject position. It was notably resonant with BME women, who often use social movement activism as a means of serving their com-munities (Bradley and Healy, 2008; Ospina and Su, 2009). Further, the characteristics associated with feminist leadership − of respecting, including and valuing members − featured strongly in many definitions of a leader offered; for example:

I think they need to be in touch with the members and sometimes I get the impression they are not … they need to be more focused on the grassroots so you get a general idea of what everybody is thinking and not just the activists, so someone that is able to engage at all levels of the union. (UK10, Black Caribbean, age 46−55, national union official, public sector)

Is there a women’s way of leading?

This question is asked in the light of the mix of stereotypically masculine and feminine qualities that were seen as important for leadership. On the one hand, many women




talked about themselves as believing in participative, non-hierarchical leadership; for example, one BME interviewee said:

[W]omen are … creating their own models in terms of how they negotiate … so you would not find women banging the drum at the first meeting … they would be making the case. That is not to say men don’t make the case but they say ‘there is a dispute, let’s get it out there’. Women say ‘yes there is a dispute, let’s gauge where the members want to go’, so it’s bringing people with them. (UKCS5)

The above woman’s depiction of women’s union leadership is one of collaboration with members rather than masculine domination. Thus, rather than following a ‘Great Man’ approach to leadership, many of the UK and US women articulated the need for women to develop their own leadership model, which they described as more sensitive to opening lines of communication and building consensus from the bottom up. However, many also saw that this implicitly feminist approach was not practised by all women:

I would say my predecessor was more queen bee than I am … the office conference would be the whole group around her. I work with a large group of people and I encourage those who need it, but I don’t think I am a queen bee. I want to develop others rather than focus on me. (UK13, white, age 56−65, regional official, general union)

However, the interviews revealed many examples of women asserting their readiness to adopt the more masculine practices associated with traditional models of leadership because they found them efficient and effective. Some stated that they were prepared to take harsh, unpopular, even ruthless decisions if they believed it was the right thing to do for the union, particularly in a crisis situation: for example, cutting staff jobs, chang-ing internal management structures, getting rid of people who stood in the way of change efforts. One senior British respondent expressed it as being prepared to say ‘just f****** do it’, when she wanted something doing quickly with little consultation. This approach obviously weakens the premise that there is a distinctive feminine/feminist leadership.

In contrast, we found that most respondents contrasted their own consultative (femi-nine/feminist) approach to the more authoritarian, dictatorial (masculine) one they had observed in men. For example, the British respondent below, a self-defined feminist, resigned as president of her branch when she went on maternity leave. She explained how her attempts to involve members and thus to reshape leadership had been entirely reversed by the new male president:

I have been checking my email while on leave and I have had five emails the whole year from the union … I was sending emails out all the time and I was having questionnaires, doing surveys, organizing AGMs and … newsletters every term. I just went back to work and there was some really horrible issue going on … And there was a motion put and he [the president] said ‘let’s vote on that’, but there was an amendment and I said ‘you have to vote on the amendment first’ and he said, ‘no I am a dictator’. OK, so he’s not a dictator, but he doesn’t care very much about participative democracy. (UK2, white, 36−45, former Branch President, education)




She saw this as indicative of masculine and male leadership. However, while some of our respondents did believe that women typically do lead in a more feminine way, they emphasized the socially constructed, rather than essential nature of women’s subjectivi-ties, often drawing on the potentially female-unifying discourse of motherhood as a role that spilled over into the union role. As one BME woman said:

I think they [women] are a bit more caring than men. You know they are mothers and they are nurturing, so part of that comes right into the job. I’m concerned about the workers out there. If something happens to them out there, I am sure that means more to me than the average man. (USCS3)

The above interviewee talks of women ‘nurturing’ their members, but she also indicated her willingness to act on their behalf. There is a race reading of this insofar as black women in the US (and the UK) are more likely to be in agentic, self-determining roles as heads of households or lone mothers, inevitably infusing the concept of motherhood with expanded meaning as nurturer and provider. The above woman had climbed to the top by simultaneously tactically forging alliances with and battling against both white and BME men and this had influenced her perspective on gender difference and the ‘average man’.

An awareness of the gendered nature of organization was apparent in other respond-ents’ explanations for why women seemed to lead differently:

Women’s power typically has come from a group. Women tend not to have that kind of immediate power put on them … if you want to get stuff done, stick to your sisters … men don’t get it done that way, they tend to have singular power and that makes for difficult politics because if there are six guys in the room, they are all trying to figure out who’s the tough guy and I don’t think women do that instinctively. (USCS1)

The above comment is insightful and reflects this woman’s experience of the differential gendered power base of union leaders. She uses the female unifying discourse of sister-hood and implies collective, rather than individual agency − a position that perhaps is founded on her white, middle class identity. Further, critics might argue that some of the above views present a rather romantic, perhaps middle class, version of womanhood and femininity that not all women match up to all of the time. The other lived reality pre-sented to us was that many respondents, particularly in blue-collar unions, were prepared to shout, swear, thump the table, etc. in the time honoured manner of their male working class counterparts.

Are women gender-incongruent leaders?

Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt (2001) place women in strongly male-typed leadership roles as ‘gender-incongruent leaders’. Our diverse sample indicated both gender and race incongruence. As discussed above, the role of union leader remains not only male-typed, but white male-typed, as the following quotation graphically demonstrates:

I am the first African American for this job, so I look different, I talk different, so until people started to get to know me, I had to muscle my way through … to get the respect … if I had a




dime for every time you talk to people and then they meet you and the surprise is all over their face, it’s like ‘oh, she’s black!’ … the first time I attended the meeting, the only one who knew me was the president and I walked into the hotel and it was me and 42 white males … I will always remember that number ‘42’. There was not another African American or woman … in that meeting and … I said, ‘OK girl go on’. (NJ5, African American, age 36−45, paid union official, public sector)

The above quotation raises the image of BME women as gender-race incongruent union leaders and demonstrates that BME women practise leadership from multiple marginal-ized subject positions that may challenge the supremacy of white, working class males.

As well as BME women being acutely aware of their race, the vast majority of respondents (BME and white) were highly conscious of their gender in the union envi-ronment. Many, particularly those in male-dominated unions (typically blue-collar), spoke to the issue of union leadership remaining infused with masculine meaning – a man’s world or a boys’ club. Moreover, their gendered or intersectional sensibilities may come to the fore in particular spaces. For women leading female or BME female-domi-nated locals/branches, stepping into regional or national union forums often meant enter-ing a white-male-dominated, masculinized context. Respondents reflected on whether to be taken seriously as a woman meant adopting stereotypical masculine forms of behav-iour or whether it was possible to present what might be seen as a more feminine approach to union leadership and still be respected and command authority. The following quota-tion illustrates the potent symbolism of women’s dress and the way it is often conflated with leadership competence:

[O]ur president is a woman and half the flak she is getting is because she is a woman … she is an introspective, she thinks, she’s soft-spoken, she wears comfortable shoes, not high heels. What she says when she says it, is on point. Her policies are on point. She listens to her members. (US Focus Group participant)

whereas the following woman observed how union culture shapes women’s leadership style in the blue-collar context of a male-dominated transport union:

Although there are a lot of women, the union I work for is very macho and can be very aggressive in all aspects … and sometimes the women can get sucked into that. I found that unless you as a woman go and shout with the rest of them, you can be pushed aside a bit so yes, there are difficulties. (UK12, white, age 26−35, Senior Regional Organizer, transport)

These quotations illustrate the multiple dilemmas women face. The first reveals wom-en’s consciousness of presentation of self, whether through feminine modes of speech or an informal dress code, and how this may attract the criticism of being perceived as simultaneously unfeminine and lacking authority. The second quotation demonstrates how gendered union culture is influenced by class positioning, which is powerful in reproducing among women specific masculine modes of behaviour.

Thinking about the consequences of gender incongruence and intersections with other identities, it was notable that most BME and some working class women in the study presented themselves as able to withstand criticism and marginalizing treatment. They




often invoked positive female family role models as providing a model of womanhood as equalling strength of character and independence rather than middle class feminine passivity, and they talked about themselves as having ‘big mouths’ − talk that resonates with Bradley and Healy’s (2008) study of BME union women.

Feeling out of place (gender/race-incongruent) left many women believing that they had a responsibility to encourage other women into leadership positions for longer-term change as well as mutual support. Resonating with previous research (Bradley and Healy, 2008; Dickerson, 2006), it was BME respondents from both countries who argued most strongly for a collectivist approach, thus revealing specific racialized leadership dis-courses. In the quotations below this occurred within blue-collar male-dominated union contexts:

… somebody who is looking out for the best interests of everybody that they are leading … but also bringing somebody along because we are not always going to be here. And grooming or teaching or encouraging people to do the best they can for the people they are representing. (NJ4, African American, age 46−55, paid official, manufacturing)

You have to be willing to nurture people, step aside and let people fill your shoes. If you think you are that important, you can’t do everything by yourself. You have to build some kind of internal coalition with your staff … and I think a leader recognizes that. (NYC2, Hispanic, age 56−65, paid official, public sector)

Nevertheless, it was a white British respondent who used the phrase made popular by Black American feminist Angela Davis (1994), stating that the aim for a woman union leader should be to ‘lift as you rise’. However, some of the more senior leaders we inter-viewed had had poor experiences of female leaders as they were rising up the union lad-der themselves. The narrative below, coming from an African American woman speaking about her former white female boss, hints again at the racialized culture of unions:

At the time I was hired, the secretary treasurer was a woman … and she was the worst and it’s bad because when we as women forget that we have to stick together. Someone does well, that’s good. You bring someone else along. You don’t forget … we can’t sustain without one another. We go through a lot of things in our life, women, we need one another. She is one that forgot that … And she was far worse than any male boss that I had. (NJ5, African American, age 36−45, paid union official, public sector)

Thus, gender incongruence produces a variety of responses among diverse women, not all reflecting feminist values. For some respondents, being an outsider had not been an entirely negative experience. There were some accounts of progressive white male lead-ers (practising feminine and pro-feminist leadership) encouraging and mentoring others, including BME women, rather than simply working for their own or their identity group’s political ends as in white masculine leadership. At the same time, a reality experienced by senior women was male opposition to having ‘too many’ women. As gender-incon-gruent leaders, women often found themselves competing with other women for token-istic space. Consequently, one woman’s rise could mean another’s suppression. A senior British leader described her strategy to being marginalized:




I just carry on and completely ignore the hateful way in which they [men] try to marginalize powerful women. If you try to engage with it, it’s very disempowering … for other women you have to be strong. (UKCS1)

This woman explained how she had been blocked from an upwards move by senior men for publicly supporting another woman’s appointment to a senior position. In masculin-ized contexts, women often learn from bitter experience that alliances between women can be damaging, so it is hardly surprising to find that some women distance themselves from, rather than lift, other women as they climb upwards.

How do women envision good leadership?

Here we consider how women discursively construct ‘good’ leadership. Many of the respondents, including some of the most senior, rejected traditional masculine leadership (power and authority over others) and saw good leadership as an empowering and influ-encing relationship with members. This feminist discourse seemed to frame many respondents’ actions, particularly UK (white and BME) women, who articulated their desire to bring about incremental emancipatory change. For example, they talked in vari-ous ways about wanting to bring a new ‘woman-friendly’ culture to their unions. Some saw themselves as modelling a more flexible, family-friendly kind of approach to union leadership roles that contrasted with the masculine model they had learnt as they made their way up the hierarchy. Articulating that paid work is only one aspect of life is often seen as a feminist principle. One senior woman explained:

I spent the first two years trying to do it as I thought it ought to be done, which was following a very male way of doing things, which meant my family suffered, working long hours and thinking … you had to turn up at events to be seen. That only works if you have strong backup at home and support that is very gender based. I didn’t like that I was turning into something I didn’t respect very much, because I didn’t see the point of being in a role like this if I just carried on doing it the same way. So I shifted … to a different way of working and it’s been much more comfortable for me. (UKCS3)

This interviewee thus used her senior position to personalize the professional (Ashcraft, 2000) and to create a space for challenge to and recasting of the traditional masculine leadership discourse of presenteeism and long hours within which she had climbed the ladder.

Feminist values were more apparent among the British compared with the American women; the latter were more likely to present a feminine vision of empathetic and caring leadership, but not necessarily a feminist one that valued greater power sharing with activists and members. The exception was a number of older BME women from New York whose backgrounds in civil rights activism in the 1960s seemed to have influenced a more progressive and less hierarchical vision of leadership that echoed feminist notions. This enduring legacy of race struggle undoubtedly influenced their leadership and was transmitted through their leadership talk to younger generations of activists (see Parker, 2005). In contrast, many of the white American women seemed to support an individu-alistic, apolitical post-heroic model of leadership, but with idealized feminine values




added in. They often emphasized service to members and securing member support for their endeavours, rather than member involvement. This is also consistent with the goals of US-style business unionism, with its instrumental emphasis on collective bargaining gains.

Despite awareness of the leadership barriers faced by union women, the UK and US respondents were united in expecting higher standards of moral leadership behaviour from women. It was clear from their narratives that, when a woman shows that she is prepared to be ruthless or dictatorial or when she has an aggressive personal style (mir-roring masculine leadership practices), this can meet the severe disapproval of other women and was heavily criticized for failing other women. A more fatalistic acceptance that men typically lead in authoritarian ways with self-interest or the interests of other men at heart was evident in the women’s talk. This resonates with Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt (2001), who suggested that prejudice against female leaders stems from the widely held beliefs about how women ought to behave. Here, women leaders were con-demned by other women if they failed to exhibit feminist or at least feminine leadership practices. This is highlighted by the words of one British respondent:

Our first female [general secretary] – not once has [she] made any engagement with the staff to say this is who I am. That should have happened … you should make an effort to know the staff … I don’t even bother [anymore]. I am not saying hello to anyone who is not saying hello to me. I don’t care who are you are, general secretary or cleaner. (UK51, African Caribbean, age 36−45)

Women typically expected other women leaders to be less hierarchical, more supportive and encouraging of other women, more altruistic, more inclusive, etc. and that they should want to change the very context that for so long had excluded women. Most of the more senior UK and some of the US respondents stated that one of the most satisfying aspects of their role was mentoring others, especially women; the ultimate goal was to work towards gendered cultural change, rather than simply maintain or reproduce the status quo, but with female bodies. Linking again with the feminist idea of lifting as you rise, this suggests that some women leaders do not simply see their role as preserving their own power:

There is a saying in feminism that it’s not enough for a woman to be president … or whatever, she has to do things different and pull other women up … and give them opportunities. (US Focus Group participant)

Discussion

This article has discussed the complex, multiple and sometimes contradictory ways a diverse group of American and British women talk of union leadership. Our intention was not to compare unionism in two geographical places, but to understand the some-what different gendered leadership discourses between two countries that sit within the same macro-level variety of capitalism and unionism (Kelly and Frege, 2004). Since the union movements of the two countries are characterized by similar gender regimes, at a




certain level of abstraction, it is not surprising to find similar experiences and views of gendered leadership among union women (see also Briskin, 2006). In many ways, we find that the gender order in unions supersedes national boundaries.

However, we also uncovered cross-national differences in discursive leadership activ-ity that are interwoven with each country’s history of gender, race and union struggles. We argue that the respondents’ leadership talk tells us much about UK and US union women’s construction of leadership and by extension the kind of leadership practices that they seek to enact and to what ends. Following Ashcraft and Mumby’s (2004) under-standing of discourse, we see women’s talk as a function of their lived experiences of leadership interaction processes, the specific organizational form they operate within and wider societal narratives about women and their roles combined. Thus women’s indi-vidual narratives illuminate the way that gendered leadership discourses and ultimately practices are constructed through everyday communicative activities and interactions. Aware of the danger in the literature of the over-generalization of women’s leadership orientations, practices and experiences (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2009), this article deepens our understanding of the complexities of leadership by focusing attention on the talk of a diverse group of women in a specific organizational and comparative context.

US and UK women did invoke stereotypical masculine and feminine characteristics when talking about their own and other women’s leadership, but did not use the labels of masculine and feminine. Thus, by applying the concepts of masculinity and femininity as an analytical framework, we have shown how dominant gendered ideologies shape actors’ practices in ways that are perhaps not always readily apparent to actors them-selves (Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004). The study also demonstrates the importance of see-ing plurality and diversity in constructs of masculine and feminine − that is, multiple masculinities and femininities are present in union women’s talk. Although in this article we foreground gender and race, it is also clear from our respondents’ talk that class is never far away from union women’s lived experiences of union leadership.

Our study shows that barriers and opportunities for women’s union leadership are reflected and embedded in gendered leadership discourses that contain the ‘logic of effectiveness’ (Fletcher, 2004). However, not all roads lead back to reproducing barriers. As reflected in the title of this article, there was a strong feminist discourse of ‘lifting as you rise’, which perhaps explains some of the belief in gender difference, but without reference to essentialist ideas about women (Briskin, 2006). The BME women simulta-neously utilized similar and subtly different gendered leadership discourses compared with the white women, indicating a fluid but constant subtext of race-ethnicity in leader-ship work (Ospina and Su, 2009; Parker, 2005). It was quite clear that past and current experiences of racial exclusion influenced the BME women’s leadership talk. However, women’s talk indicated that female unifying discourses might sometimes be a way of managing the potential tensions and conflicts between race and gender in white mascu-linized unions where the necessity for unity across social divisions is a powerful discourse (Cobble and Michal, 2002; Kirton, 2006; Williams, 2002) but through an inter-sectional sensibility (Crenshaw, 1991; Healy et al., 2011).

Our study underlines that gender is a property not just of individuals, but also of organizations and organizing processes (Acker, 2006b), and the gender and inequality regimes in which union women practise leadership are relatively resilient and are often




antithetical to feminist praxis. This undoubtedly results in tension between union wom-en’s discourses and abstract ideas about how women’s (feminine and feminist) leader-ship might contribute to gender transformation, and their own leadership practices in the context of everyday lived experiences. Moreover, at the micro-level of this study, American women were more likely to display individualistic ‘post-heroic’ feminine leadership narratives, whereas the British women tended to adopt more collectivist femi-nist narratives. We account for these differences by the different meso-level union con-texts and union and societal gender structures operating in the two countries (see Kirton and Healy, forthcoming).

We have sought to show how the gendered and racialized character of unions and wider social roles traditionally ascribed to women influence women’s leadership talk rather than valorize women’s leadership as a distinct phenomenon. This study is an exam-ple of how ‘discursive activity continuously creates, solidifies, disrupts and alters gen-dered selves and organizational forms’ (Ashcraft, 2004: 275). Whilst many American and British, BME and white women union leaders want to and even claim to practise what might be characterized as feminist leadership, we also find that in certain conditions mas-culine leadership may be favoured by women. While women may be highly critical of masculine leadership approaches, they sometimes see them as effective given the gen-dered union context or as mitigating their isolation as women and the gender-race incon-gruence within which they might find themselves located. However, it was clear from our study of women’s talk that individually and collectively women leaders at certain times in certain places believe they can and do make a positive difference to the gender culture, particularly when they practise feminist leadership. We identified a strong discourse that masculine leadership (whether exercised by men or women) was failing women. Thus, it was the type of leadership that mattered, not simply the leaders’ gender.

By showing the contradictory gendered discourses that union women display, we have attempted to avoid casting women leaders as either mother figures or bitches as is so often the case in popular media representations of women leaders. Instead we show the tensions and complexities of women’s leadership as lived. Moreover, we found that American and British women union leaders expressed a strong sense of accountability, not just to mem-bers generally, but specifically to other union women – they wanted to lift other women as they climbed. This was a dominant discourse in the sample, but notably expressed strongly by BME women. In fact, ‘lifting as we climb’ was the motto of the National Association of Colored Women formed in 1895 in the US, emphasizing commitment to community (Parker, 2005). Similar to other studies, in relation to race/ethnicity there was an understanding among our respondents that leadership geared towards social change is collective work (Dickerson, 2006; Ospina and Su, 2009; Prindeville, 2003).

The senior women leaders were regarded by many at the lower levels as trail blazers and role models. Reflecting a feminist value orientation, they were clearly aware of the responsibility that this carried, and many wanted to contribute to the growth of other women. While British women were more likely to articulate stronger feminist positions explicitly, respondents generally engaged positively with feminist leadership practices towards feminist goals. For example, women articulated agentic capacities, particularly their own seniority status, to ensure that women are heard against a hierarchical and bureaucratic union culture, which could deter women from fully participating. Thus,




giving women voice was another prominent discourse among our respondents. However, awareness of the unequal gender context in which women lead means that some union women were regarded as adopting defensive, even narcissistic practices, in order to pro-tect themselves – implicitly, at least − from the greater risk of criticism and attack that women leaders often face (Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001). It is noteworthy that holding instrumental goals may facilitate goal accomplishment in a harsh climate, whereas some of the tenets of feminine and feminist leadership (e.g. consultation; collec-tive decision-making) might in practice hinder goal accomplishment (see Ashcraft, 2001; Riger, 1994 on the limitations of feminist organization). Further, when women lead in white masculinized contexts, their leadership discourses and orientations, as well as practices, are almost bound to reflect to some degree the dominant culture and discourses. In the union context, it is traditionally women who are expected to change to fit in (Williams, 2002). From our study we conclude that most women union leaders in the UK and US do not intend to imitate stereotypical masculine approaches to leadership, but some may end up doing so because that is the approach that they see as tried and tested for survival and success. This is particularly the case where the masculine individualistic leadership structure and model are individually taken for granted rather than collectively challenged or resisted – the former being the more common orientation among the American women. There were certainly reports of women leaders allegedly deliberately keeping other women down either in the real or mistaken belief that there is only limited room for women at the higher levels. Echoing previous research (Binns, 2008; Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001), the women’s narratives suggested greater expectations of women leaders, believing that they should not lose touch with members’ needs and con-cerns in the way that can happen once someone reaches a powerful, elite position and surrounds herself with only like-minded, even sycophantic people. This was the conven-tional masculine model that most recognized, but rejected, at least in the abstract, in their discourses.

Conclusion

To conclude, the study has shown that theoretically there is no necessary connection between feminine/ feminist leadership and women, or masculine leadership and men. It was clear from the interviews that leadership in the union movement is plural, not uni-tary, and there were many examples given to us of men who sought to lead in ways that resonate with feminine and feminist leadership. However, from this study, whether or not women were more likely to practise what could be classified as feminine leadership and men masculine is a moot point. Some women believed this to be the case, but at the same time they and others related experiences that pointed in the opposite direction. Thus, respondents’ talk positioned feminine leadership as a normative construct and perhaps as an ideal, but only to some extent as an empirical phenomenon (see Billing and Alvesson, 2000). Our findings indicate that the contradictory talk has to be seen in the gendered union context, whereas its normative nature is also underpinned by women’s lack of social power (Fairhurst, 1993). Moreover, it was evident that minority women’s dis-course was also shaped by an intersectional sensibility that was resonant of the gendered and racialized union context of which they talked, but also of their different societal and




domestic contexts and histories. Thus women leaders in unions, where voice is built into structures, demonstrate the same forms of power deficits as are evident in more conven-tionally hierarchical organizations.

Second, against the incursion of women in union leadership, the discussion of gen-dered leadership discourses among union women serves to remind us that ‘organizing processes that create and re-create inequalities may have become more subtle, but in some cases, they have become more difficult to challenge’ (Acker, 2006b: 458), espe-cially if it is women enacting marginalizing processes in environments where women have been let in. Women can and do lead in ways that marginalize and exclude other women, either inter- or intra-racially, resulting in women feeling more let down than when it is men doing the excluding. A study comparing women’s and men’s union lead-ership discourses and orientations would further unpack gendered leadership in this changed and evolving context.

Although our discussion is situated in one specific white masculinized context – trade unionism – it has resonance with other work within the field of gender and leadership that sees masculinity and femininity as inherent features of leadership dynamics (e.g. Collinson, 2005; Fournier and Kelemen, 2001) and that sees race/ethnicity as woven into the collective work of leadership (Ospina and Su, 2009; Parker, 2005). It is clear that union women often engage in different combinations (often simultaneously) of (mascu-line) status quo and (feminine and feminist) transformative leadership practices. Women also draw on multiple marginalized identities to find strength to resist and challenge the status quo. Although we believe that discourse and materiality exist in a dialectical rela-tionship, it was beyond the scope of this article to explore outcomes of different types of gendered leadership, for example in terms of policy and practice – this is something that future research could usefully tackle by taking a union-by-union case study approach, which might also unpack in more detail the class dynamics of leadership in different types of unions.

Acknowledgements

We must acknowledge the invaluable contribution to the project of our American colleagues: Sally Alvarez, Legna Cabrera and Risa Lieberwitz (Cornell University, USA), and Mary Gatta and Heather McKay (Rutgers University, USA). Others at both universities also participated in discus-sions with us, and they are also thanked. Thanks are also warmly extended to all the union women who participated so willingly in interviews and focus groups.

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, grant number F/07 476/AJ.

References

Acker J (2006a) Class Questions: Feminist Answers. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Acker J (2006b) Inequality regimes: Gender, class and race in organizations. Gender & Society

20(4): 441−464.AFL-CIO (2004) Overcoming Barriers to Women in Organizing and Leadership. Report to the

AFL-CIO Executive Council. Washington, DC, AFL-CIO.Alvesson M and Skoldberg K (2009) Reflexive Methodology, 2nd edn. London: SAGE.




Ashcraft K (2000) Empowering ‘professional relationships’: Organizational communication meets feminist practice. Management Communication Quarterly 44: 1301−1322.

Ashcraft K (2001) Organized dissonance: Feminist bureaucracy as hybrid form. Academy of Man-agement Journal 44(6): 1301−1322.

Ashcraft K (2004) Gender, discourse and organization: Framing a shifting relationship. In: Grant D, Hardy C, Oswick C and Putnam L (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse. London: SAGE, 275−298.

Ashcraft KL and Mumby DK (2004) Reworking Gender: A Feminist Communicology of Organi-zation. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Billing Y and Alvesson M (2000) Questioning the notion of feminine leadership: A critical per-spective on the gender labelling of leadership. Gender, Work & Organization 7(3): 144−157.

Binns J (2008) The ethics of relational leading: Gender matters. Gender, Work & Organization 15(6): 600−620.

Bradley H and Healy G (2008) Ethnicity and Gender at Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Briskin L (2006) Victimisation and agency: The social construction of union women’s leadership.

Industrial Relations Journal 37(4): 359−378.Carli L and Eagly A (2011) Gender and leadership. In: Bryman A, Collinson D, Grint K, Jackson

B and Uhl-Bien M (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Leadership. London: SAGE.Cliff J, Langton N and Aldrich H (2005) Walking the talk? Gendered rhetoric vs. action in small

firms. Organization Studies 26(1): 63−91.Cobble D (2004) The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern

America. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Cobble D and Michal M (2002) On the edge of equality? Working women and the US labour

movement. In: Colgan F and Ledwith S (eds) Gender, Diversity and Trade Unions. London: Routledge, 232−256.

Cockburn C (1991) In the Way of Women. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Collinson D (2005) Dialectics of leadership. Human Relations 58(11): 1419−1442.Connell RW (1995) Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.Crenshaw K (1991) Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics and violence against

women of color. Stanford Law Review 43: 1241−1299.Davis A (1994) Black women and the academy. Callaloo 17(2): 422−431.Dickerson N (2006) ‘We are a force to be reckoned with’: Black and Latina women’s leadership

in the contemporary US labor movement. WorkingUSA 9(3): 293−313.Eagly A and Carli L (2003) The female leadership advantage: An evaluation of the evidence. The

Leadership Quarterly 14: 807−834.Eagly A and Johannesen-Schmidt M (2001) The leadership styles of women and men. Journal of

Social Issues 57(4): 781−797.Eaton S (1992) Union leadership development in the 1990s and beyond. Discussion Paper 92-05,

Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Fairclough N (2005) Peripheral vision: Discourse analysis in organisation studies: The case for critical realism. Organization Studies 26(6): 915−939.

Fairhurst G (1993) The leader-member exchange patterns of women leaders in industry: A dis-course analysis. Communication Monographs 60: 321−351.

Fairhurst G (2009) Considering context in discursive leadership research. Human Relations 62(11): 1607−1633.

Fletcher B and Hurd RW (2000) Is organizing enough? Race, gender, and union. New Labor Forum, Spring/Summer, pp. 59−69.




Fletcher JK (2004) The paradox of postheroic leadership: An essay on gender, power, and trans-formational change. The Leadership Quarterly 15: 647−661.

Fournier V and Kelemen M (2001) The crafting of community: Recoupling discourses of manage-ment and womanhood. Gender, Work & Organization 8(3): 267−290.

Healy G, Bradley H and Forson C (2011) Intersectional sensibilities in analysing inequality regimes in public sector organizations. Gender, Work & Organization 18(5): 467−487.

Kaminski M and Yakura E (2008) Women’s union leadership: Closing the gender gap. The Jour-nal of Labor and Society 11(4): 459−475.

Kelly J and Frege C (2004) Conclusions: Varieties of unionism. In: Frege C and Kelly J (eds) Varieties of Unionism. Strategies for Union Revitalization in a Globalizing Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 181−196.

Kirton G (2006) The Making of Women Trade Unionists. Aldershot: Ashgate.Kirton G and Healy G (forthcoming) Gender and Leadership in Trade Unions. London: Routledge.Labour Research Department (2012) Women leaders on the rise. Labour Research, March,

pp. 10−13.Lau Chin J, Lott B, Rice J and Sanchez-Hucles J (eds) (2007) Women and Leadership. Transform-

ing Visions and Diverse Voices. Oxford: Blackwell.Ledwith S, Colgan F, Joyce P and Hayes M (1990) The making of women trade union leaders.

Industrial Relations Journal 21(2): 112−125.Milkman R (2007) Two worlds of unionism: Women and the new labor movement. In: Cobble D

(ed.) The Sex of Class. Women Transforming American Labor. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 63−80.

Moccio F (2009) Live Wire − Women and Brotherhood in the Electrical Industry. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Mumby D (1998) Organizing men: Power, discourse, and the social construction of masculinity(s) in the workplace. Communication Theory 8: 164−183.

Mumby D and Putnam L (1992) The politics of emotion: A feminist reading of bounded rational-ity. Academy of Management Review 17: 465−486.

Ospina S and Su C (2009) Weaving color lines: Race, ethnicity, and the work of leadership in social change organizations. Leadership 5(2): 131−170.

Pacholok S (2009) Gendered strategies of self: Navigating hierarchy and contesting masculinities. Gender, Work and Organization 16(4): 471−500.

Parker P (2005) Race, Gender and Leadership. Re-envisioning Organizational Leadership from the Perspectives of African American Women Executives. Mahwah, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Porter N and Daniel JH (2007) Developing transformational leaders: Theory to practice. In: Lau Chin J, Lott B, Rice J and Sanchez-Hucles J (eds) Women and Leadership. Transforming Visions and Diverse Voices. Oxford: Blackwell, 245−263.

Prindeville D-M (2003) Identity and the politics of American Indian and Hispanic women leaders. Gender and Society 17(4): 591–608.

Riger S (1994) Challenges of success: Stages of growth in feminist organizations. Feminist Studies 20(2): 275−300.

Williams C (2002) Masculinities and emotion work in trade unions. In: Colgan F and Ledwith S (eds) Gender, Diversity and Trade Unions. London: Routledge, 292−311.

Gill Kirton is Professor of Employment Relations and HRM in the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London, UK. One strand of her research investigates stakeholder perspectives on the development and implementation of diversity management in UK organizations. Another strand of her research




explores women’s participation in unions and unions’ gender and race equality strategies. Gill Kirton’s work is published in major international journals such as British Journal of Industrial Relations, Gender, Work & Organization, Human Resource Management Journal, Human Relations, International Journal of Human Resource Management and Work, Employment & Society. Her books include: The Making of Women Trade Unionists (2006) and Diversity Management in the UK (2009) with Anne-Marie Greene. Gill sits on the editorial boards of Gender, Work & Organization and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion. [Email: [email protected]]

Geraldine Healy is Professor of Employment Relations and Director of the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED) in the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Her recent work has explored the intersectionality between gender and ethnicity, equality policies and practices, inequalities in low paid and highly qualified health work, and a UK/US comparative study of women and trade union leadership. She has published widely in leading international journals, including British Journal of Industrial Relations, Human Relations and Work Employment & Society, and her books include: Diversity, Ethnicity, Migration and Work: International Perspectives (2011) with Franklin Oikelome, Equality, Inequalities and Diversity: Contemporary Challenges and Strategies (2010) with Gill Kirton and Mike Noon (eds), Ethnicity and Gender at Work – Inequalities, Career and Employment Relations (2008) with Harriet Bradley, The Future of Worker Representation (2004) edited with Ed Heery and Phil Taylor, and Women and Trade Union Leadership with Gill Kirton, which is forthcoming in 2012. [Email: [email protected]]



‘lift as you rise’- union women’s leadership talk

Documents

leadership literature

feminist leadership

feminine leadership

leadership discourses

leadership talkpublished

feminist visions of

british union women

comhuman relations http