Metaphors as entry points to emotions in gender equality work in organizations
Author(s): Maja Herstad
Thursday 15 | 11:20-11:40
Room: TP41
Session: Gender inequalities
Feeling like you are getting a cancer diagnosis by a doctor, or like you are being trapped in a cage? The aim of this article was to analyse emotions in gender equality work in organizations. The analysis used metaphors as entry points to emotions and emotionally charged issues (Moratti, 2020), focusing on metaphors that describe conflictual situations, with the potential to accentuate the unspoken (Clarke 2005). More specifically, the article asked: how does participants’ situatedness relate to emotions in gender equality work?
The empirical base consisted of 24 interviews with staff involved in a gender equality project in their respective organization. The organizations encompassed six private companies and a university in a region in Sweden, and the participants included managers, employees and external gender experts, of different genders. The metaphors were approached as experientially grounded condensed stories (Küpers, 2013), with embedded emotions. Theoretically, emotions were treated as embodied meaning-making that requires attention to both bodily and social dimensions (Wetherell, 2012). The article introduced situated emotions as a sensitizing concept that recognize participants’ emotions as partial and locally situated truths (Haraway, 1988, p. 579), where emotion-laden condensed stories highlight social identities and their relation to something or someone. The concepts of gender (West and Zimmerman, 1987), gendered identity work (Alvesson and Due Billing, 2009) and a contextual understanding of class (Gobo, 1995) were also employed to further interpret the data.
The metaphor analysis showed that participants who identified as men and who worked in middle-class professions that value creativity and independence, expressed strong clashes between gender equality work and organizational ideals. They also positioned gender equality work and gender experts as from above, sometimes with more negatively valued emotions, such as anger and resentment. The metaphors also suggested a demand for identity work among men, involving both guilt and shame. Women and participants who worked in companies that involve more working class professions communicated more acceptance and gratefulness towards external gender experts. Possible interpretations of these locally classed and gendered differences indicate how participants who identify as middle-class men expressed greater surprise and pain in a perceived pressure to both see and accept themselves as forming part of “the problem” in gender equality work. The use of metaphors ripe with intense emotions among these participants can indicate a clash between injustices highlighted in the project, and a more gender equal personal and organizational self-image. The findings also speak to a possible sense of entitlement among this group in articulating an emotional-laden critique in comparison with other participants. Despite the differences, a common emotional theme in participants’ metaphors was the desire to feel supported in a joint exploration, where you get a welcome surprise in noticing gender inequalities.
The article contributes to an increased understanding of emotions in gender equality work in organizations, by the use of metaphors. This understanding can facilitate working through common resistance and lip service, and support reflections on the “doing” of gender equality work in different contexts.