Top women managers navigating the hybrid gender order in Mexico : subjective resistance between local/global divides

Abstract

In this thesis, complex questions in relation to the process of identity construction by women managers will be addressed. First, I focus on how top women managers make sense of their identities through hybrid gender orders. Second, I explore the role these women play, by resisting the gender order, in other women’s managerial careers. For the first part, I draw on the notion of the gender order, which refers to the institutionalized gender arrangements embedded in a society. These arrangements can create visible and invisible barriers for women’s careers. For example, institutionalizing images of what it constitutes to be a woman, a man, a manager, etc. These images work as available scripts for individuals when engaging in defining who they are. However, global capitalism is bringing interconnectedness to local and global gender orders, which creates hybrid gender regimes. These new regimes offer alternate scripts for identity construction. Then, I explore how 19 top women managers in Mexico, working in a hybrid gender order, navigate between local and global discourses to make sense of who they are. These women faced the image of a totally committed manager, in contraposition to the image of the dedicated mother. Accordingly, they resist some of these local/global discourses. They also engage in presenting different ideas on equality and how to achieve it, when talking about other women’s careers. When they do so, they evoke, subjectively, different politics of resistance. In some instances, they consider women and men equal, in others different, and at some points they challenge these stereotypes. I draw on a feminist poststructuralist framework by placing the focus on the assumptions constructed through language, and their consequences. The narratives enacted by these women are analyzed through critical discourse analysis. A major contribution of this work is in understanding the process of identity construction by professional women in a globalized context.