Female academics: Wives of the organization?
Describes how gendered interactions in the workplace subvert success for female academics
As a young academic in the early 1990s I received a copy of Anne Huff's "Wives of the organization", which describes how gendered interactions in the workplace may subvert success for female academics. And with "copy" I do mean an actual paper copy that was grey from being photocopied again and again! Remember "the Web" didn't really exist back then and few people even regularly used email. Heck, it was only a few years earlier that I still did my university assignments on a typewriter.
Surely things have changed?
Although I found the paper interesting, like many young women then and now I naively thought the patterns described in the paper would not apply to my generation. And of course I was wrong, very wrong! In the next 15-odd years of my academic career I noticed that, although things were undoubtedly improving for women in many ways, traditional gendered interactions were still very much present in the workplace. And yes they did prevent many women from achieving what they wanted. Every time I read the paper again (I still had that hard copy) it acquired more meaning for me.
In 2009 - as PhD director at the University of Melbourne - I wanted to share the paper with a group of PhD students in my seminar series Academia Behind the Scenes. But running off even greyer photocopies probably wouldn't appeal to the younger generation. Thus I contacted Anne and asked her whether she had an electronic version, and if so, whether she would allow me to put it up on my frequently visited website. That would mean everyone could read her work.
Anne readily agreed, but by a very fortuitous coincidence was able to offer something even better: a set of four papers around the general theme of the role of women in the workplace. The papers were originally meant to be published elsewhere, but this initiative fell through and the authors were happy with an alternative outlet.
The result: a very exciting exchange
As a result you can now read all four papers on my website, introduced by an interview exchange between Anne Huff and Alison Konrad. Happy reading!
- Introduction to Wives of the Organization
- Wives of the Organization
- Wives, Woes and Good Work: Untangling the Contradictions
- Does Everybody Still Want a Wife?
- Citizens of the Organization
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Copyright © 2022 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Thu 14 Apr 2022 10:28
Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
