Paper proposal

23^rd Nordic Sociological Conference

University of Turku

Finland

Malin Wreder

PhD Sociology

Karlstad University

Dept of Social Studies

651 88 Karlstad

Sweden

malin.wreder@kau.se

Women, Management and Gender – How Female Managers Deal with Power

Sweden is often considered a fairly gender equal country. However, women managers are still rare and managers and management are words with masculine connotations. To handle the problems female managers face, networking has become popular. Interviews with female members in a Swedish network for women with top positions at work and participant observations show both gender awareness and gender blindness among the interviewees. Exercising power in traditionally male settings, women are required to reflect upon and at the same time deny their gender. In one sense revolutionary and path-breaking, they are also gender conservative, reproducing stereotypical femininities connected to white middle-class values. Power therefore becomes problematic, due to its’ inconsistency with the specific female gender-role expressed by the interviewed. However, power can be executed either as just power, or in specific gendered ways and women consciously alter between both strategies. Employing Foucault’s concepts of power and Bourdieu’s habitus, this study shows how power is situated in gender and social class and discusses some consequences of it.