The pressure (not only on Theresa May) for 'respectable business femininity' isn't discussed enough, argue Sharon Mavin and Gina Grand

Grandy, Gina

Mavin, Sharon

LSE Research Online

8/3/2016Stop looking at her shoes!blogs.lse.ac.uk /businessreview/2016/08/03/8278/Nineteenth century norms of respectability are alive and well for women elite leaders in the UK. Women leaders’bodies and appearance are markers for their performance evaluations – both as credible leaders and asrespectable women. This barrier, facing women at work, is not often talked about in organisations.Respectable Business FemininityWomen in leadership face unique challenges relative to men. They must act like leaders (e.g., decisive, ambitious,competitive) but also like women (e.g., nurturing, collaborative, empathetic). Yet, too much of one or the otherdestabilises their credibility.Further, the business ‘suit’ symbolises professionalism and credibility for men elite leaders – it normalizes men asleaders (see images from search term ‘business suit’). However, for women this is less clear. We explain howwomen attempt to navigate these ambiguous ‘body and appearance’ rules, to establish and retain their power,dignity, respect, privilege and credibility. We name these processes Respectable Business Femininity.Based on interviews with 81 women from FTSE 100/250 companies and influential leaders from a UK region, wefound that in terms of their presentation, women elite leaders can’t be ‘too fat’, ‘too sexy’, ‘too informal’, ‘too mother-like’ or ‘too male.’ They can’t be ‘too focused on how they look’ and, at the same time, ‘not focused enough on howthey look.’ For very recent illustrations look to media debates on the credibility and respectability of the new UKPrime Minister Theresa May (e.g.,).Women elite leaders gain privilege through their job positions but face social disadvantage based on their gender.Our research demonstrates how women elite leaders engage in Respectable Business Femininity to manage theseexpectations through processes of conferring, contesting and defending privilege.1. Conferring privilegeWomen elite leaders have to ‘look the part’ to retain their privilege, as leaders and as respectable women. When you‘look’ the part you are more likely to be evaluated and rewarded as a credible leader. One woman put it this way:1/3“Men can shuffle up in creased old suits and unpolished shoes but… you can’t do that as a woman. You need to lookpresentable, nice, that just gets everything off to a good start.”2. Contesting privilegeAs a woman elite leader, if you get ‘it’ wrong, then there are consequences for your credibility and your privilege.When bodies and appearances don’t meet (ambiguous) expectations of what a woman leader ‘should look like,’privilege and respectability are questioned and destabilised. An example can be seen in this account,“I remember one interview I went to and somebody said to me ‘Oh you’re not very sparkly today and you don’t lookthat good’… They wouldn’t have dreamt of saying that to one of the men competitors… You always had to pay muchmore attention to your appearance because you were liable to be criticised for it.”3. Defending privilegeSome women resist sexist expectations of their bodies and appearance. In doing so, they defend their privilege andcredibility and create opportunities for change. As stated by one woman elite leader,“Once in my career some man said to me you should wear less flamboyant clothes and basically my response to thatwas ‘get stuffed, it’s got nothing to do with you what I wear and I am who I am’, I like dressing how I am and I willtake the consequences of how I am and for me that’s an important and genuine part of being me and I bring mywhole self … It’s really important for women to bring their whole self to work”.What can we do?Ask yourself, in terms of Respectable Business Femininity, when are we doing it? Why are we doing it? What arethe implications of this for women’s progress in organisations?We recognise that conversations about bodies and appearance at work are uncomfortable for all of us, butthese judgements create barriers to women’s progress and detract from their credibility as leaders.We can use Respectable Business Femininity as a language to ‘call out’ sexism and situations wherewomen’s credibility, as leaders and respectable women, are based on what they look like. Women should beevaluated on their performance not gendered expectations.We can also use this language in HRM, talent management, leadership development programmes andexecutive coaching to increase awareness to and provoke discussions about, the injustice of sexistevaluations that occur on daily basis. In summaryOur research surfaces how women elite leaders face sanctions and rewards based on what their bodies andappearance say against ambiguous norms. Respectable business femininity is a way of managing sexism. Thesame rules generally do not apply to men, although to see an exception of this, read the article on Hilary Clinton’shusband.Here we have drawn attention to an elephant in the room when it comes to women’s progress in organisations. Whyin the 21st century are we still holding women leaders accountable to 19 th century expectations of respectability?First thing to do – Stop looking at their shoes!♣♣♣Notes:2/3This post is based on the authors’ paper Women Elite Leaders Doing Respectable Business Femininity: HowPrivilege is Conferred, Contested and Defended through the Body, Gender, Work & Organization, 23(4), 379-396 (2016).For more on respectability femininity see Radhakrishnan, S. (2009). Professional women, good families:Respectable femininity and the cultural politics of a “New” India. Qualitative Sociology, 32(2), 195-212; and,Fernando, W. D. A., & Cohen, L. (2014). Respectable femininity and career agency: exploring paradoxicalimperatives. Gender, Work & Organization, 21(2), 149-164.The post gives the views of its author, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School ofEconomics.Featured image credit: DFID – UK Department for International Development CC-BY-2.0Before commenting, please read our Comment PolicySharon Mavin (Sharon.Mavin@roehampton.ac.uk) is Professor of Organization and HRM andDirector of Roehampton Business School, University of Roehampton, London, UK. Recentresearch focuses upon women in leadership, gendered media representations and doing genderand is published in the British Journal of Management , Human Relations, Gender, Work andOrganization and Organization.Gina Grandy (gina.grandy@uregina.ca) is a Professor with the Faculty of BusinessAdministration, University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Her research interests includeleadership, gender and woman’s experiences at work, stigmatized work, identity and competitiveadvantage. Her recent work has been published in Journal of Business Ethics, Human Relations,Gender, Work and Organization, and Management Learning.Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics3/3

Stop looking at her shoes!

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