AND ORGANIZATION

Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 13 No. 3 May 2006

Doing Gender unto the Other:

Fiction as a Mode of Studying
Gender Discrimination in
Organizations
Barbara Czarniawska*

Although ‘doing gender’ has been recently defined as an accomplishment,

an element of social practice, this understanding of the concept needs to
be extended to coercive action such as subtle workplace discrimination.
Even though great effort has been invested in revealing the dynamic of
such social practices, the researcher’s task is not easy for a variety of rea-
sons. This type of study is difficult to conduct by following traditional
research design and many alternative approaches have been tried. This
article presents the possibility of using fiction as one possible and rela-
tively unexploited venue of research.

Keywords: ‘doing gender’, coercive gendering, workplace discrimination, fic-

tion, text analysis, poststructuralism

Coercive gendering as a workplace discrimination

W est and Zimmerman (1987, p. 126) spoke of gender ‘as an accomplish-

ment, an achieved property of situated conduct’. Their reasoning can
be extended to situations in which gender is not an accomplishment but a
coercive ascription, a forced property of a situated conduct. One of the most
obvious ways of such ‘doing gender unto the other’ is ascribing gender to
people through discriminatory action. Such discriminatory action, even if
coercive, may be perceived by both the target of the action and society as a
whole as being justified by the situation and as legitimate, such as in obliging
men and women to use two different toilets (although it needs to be added
that what is justified and legitimate changes with time and place, like any

Address for correspondence: *Gothenburg Research Institute, Göteborg University, Sweden,

e-mail: barbara.czarniawska@gri.gu.se

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
DOING GENDER UNTO THE OTHER 235

other social construction: unisex toilets do exist). Other discriminatory

actions might be seen as unjust and harmful, by either the target or by observ-
ers. Further, such discrimination might openly recall gender as its basis
(‘women are not allowed in pubs’) or be hidden, at least according to some
party, behind some other criteria (‘she lacks leadership qualities’). It is this
last case that is of greatest interest for gender and organization studies,
because of the moral imperative to fight against harmful discrimination and
injustice in workplaces and because the silent actions that form the core of
gendering practices in society are taken for granted to such a great extent.
There is a growing body of research showing that women are negatively
discriminated against at work. Many studies are dedicated to gathering
evidence for discrimination: one such is the European Commission, which
places a high value on this type of research; sponsoring it and publishing its
results, both electronically and in the traditional media. But in order for
workplace discrimination to stop, habits of conduct must change as well. In
order to facilitate such a change, researchers try to demonstrate how this dis-
crimination occurs, to examine the dynamics of the social practices that con-
stitute such discrimination and to show how gender discrimination is a part
of modern organizations and is reproduced in daily organizational life.
There is a growing body of studies following the examples of researchers
such as Joanne Martin (1990), Silvia Gherardi (1994, 1995) and Patricia Martin
(2003) that aims to illuminate this issue.1 The reports clearly demonstrate that
this type of study cannot easily be conducted by following the traditional
research design. Although a great many other approaches are being
employed, I suggest in this article one possible underexploited venue for
research. Firstly, however, I focus on the difficulties faced by researchers of
gendering practices in workplaces.

Why is it difficult to lay bare discrimination as an

organizational practice?
Let me begin by reflecting on the character of contemporary workplaces.
Work organizations, seen as a tool for collective action, belong among central
modern institutions. By institutions I mean sets of repeated social practices
that are legitimized by normative justifications (Czarniawska, 1997). Institu-
tions, it has been pointed out, resemble the black boxes in aeroplanes (Whit-
ley, 1972). They are normally taken for granted and are not opened for
inspection by anyone but a specialist — a member of a state investigation
committee, for example. They are opened only in an emergency like a plane
crash or a society in crisis. In the meantime, anybody who opens a black box
and inspects its contents will be punished. A close and unwarranted inspec-
tion of practices that are taken for granted and considered legitimate tends to
provoke punitive sanctions.

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236 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

Formal organizations are supposed to be gender-neutral, well-functioning

instruments permitting the achievement of collective goals. It took a long
time for feminist organization researchers to convince the general public that
work organizations are, in fact, gendered (a fact that Joan Acker had already
noted in 1990) and many people still choose to believe otherwise (Joanne
Martin, personal communication). Although permission to peek into these
black boxes was more or less granted, there still remain many obstacles to
studying gender discrimination as an organizational practice.
First, let us consider the fact that there are many black boxes within black
boxes — many strong assumptions about discrimination that are taken for
granted. One of them is that discrimination means that men treat women
badly. Life experience and the observation of workplaces shows, instead, that
negative discrimination against women means that men and women treat
women worse than they than they treat men. Women have been socialized in
the same society as men and, much as they might consciously oppose the
inferior role ascribed to them in this society, they habitually react in the same
way as their male contemporaries. Judith Rollins (1985) showed early on how
middle-class and upper-class women frequently treat as invisible the women
of colour who clean their houses. In a workplace study by Korvajärvi (2002),
interviewees of both sexes believed that being a woman is a handicap to pur-
suing a career in that company. To admit the commonality of such a per-
ception would probably facilitate an accurate depiction of discrimination
mechanisms, but for a female researcher such a move might symbolize an act
of disloyalty towards other women. This dilemma is not limited to research-
ers: the women who are studied by researchers also feel torn between gender
loyalty and the need to report discrimination accurately, which doubly com-
plicates such research.
Another strong assumption, more typical of organizational practice, or
rather an insider’s interpretation of organizational practice, is that individual
cases ought to be explained by individual differences, in accordance with the
meritocratic ideology that sees success and failure as determined by individ-
ual traits.2 In a small unpublished study of mine, I collected comments by
their co-workers about seven highly educated women in their fifties who
worked in four different European countries. At the time of the conversation
they were either unemployed or had serious problems at work. The cases
were reported to me as an organization researcher, in the hope that I could
provide some advice for these women. No similar cases concerning men
were reported to me. Although my interlocutors readily admitted that gen-
der discrimination exists and is deplorable, they assured me that this was not
the case here. Instead, they offered me what I have labelled ‘alternative inter-
pretations’ — interpretations that excluded the possibility of gender discrim-
ination — although they agreed that the women in question worked under
difficult conditions (Czarniawska and Calás, 1998). I could perhaps be con-
vinced by the attribution of ‘individual differences’, if not for the fact that the

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DOING GENDER UNTO THE OTHER 237

differences were recurrent, as if the women formed a special group. Here is

the list of the interpretations that found an alternative to gender-based
reasons:
• Two women had a ‘difficult personality and were impossible to work
with’.
• Four women were ‘immigrants and had not successfully adapted to the
host culture’.
• One woman ‘had never really understood how the system works’.
• Two were ‘not talented enough or worked too little’.
• Two women were ‘oversensitive; took everything too seriously and had no
sense of humour’.
Although I cannot exclude the possibility that the women in question actu-
ally do have such negative traits, the list seems to be representative of
judgements about unemployed women if we consider that the ‘immi-
grant’ interpretation is but a variation of ‘not understanding the system’,
which is applied to native women. Even if it were so, it is worth remem-
bering that in the field of practice that is the subject of this research, social
and therefore organizational life are constituted by relationships, not by
aggregates of individual characteristics. Rather, these explanations reveal
the desire to keep intact the plot of meritocracy and the narrative of ratio-
nal (which means, among other things, gender-neutral) bureaucracy in the
workplace.
Yet another assumption, perhaps not a strong, but nonetheless a pervasive
one, is that ‘such things do not happen here’. In a study I conducted with
Marta Calás (Czarniawska and Calás, 1998), students commenting on the
vignettes describing discriminatory events that we presented to them often
expressed the conviction that it was happening in another culture; the unspo-
ken assumption being that negative discrimination is typical of ‘primitive’
cultures (a role that is recently being played by Islamic countries). Apart from
the ethnic discrimination that such an interpretation implies, it would, in
general, be safer to assume that, as Latour (1993) put it, ‘we have never been
modern’, or at least, we are not as modern as we imagine ourselves to be. The
neutral, rational instrument of formal organization has never been able to
replace symbolic games and rituals; it has only become the modern setting
for them.3
The second reason behind the difficulties of studying discrimination in
practice is indicated in the definition I suggested at the outset. Unlike ‘doing
gender’, which the target person might be initiating and performing with the
collaboration of others present in the interaction and with the aid of various
more or less explicit ‘gender manuals’, ‘doing gender unto the other’ is a con-
testable terrain. I am not suggesting that the simple doing of gender is
unproblematic: as shown by Hochschild’s (1983) study of female flight
attendants suffering under the burden of a required ‘femininity’, or by

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238 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

McDowell’s (1997) documentation of the ‘masquerade’ that women in

finance must undergo, it is a costly achievement. But coercive gendering is
contestable. It occurs when individuals gender a person in circumstances in
which the target does not see gender as salient; or else perform gendering in
a way that is rejected by the target. Thus there are many elements of the sit-
uation that can be contested: the fact that gendering is being done at all; the
appropriateness of doing gender, and the suitability of a given type of doing
gender. This provokes a multitude of ethical and methodological questions:
who has the right to decide whether gender discrimination has occurred?
All this still assumes that the researcher may find herself in a position
where a practice that could be a candidate for coercive gendering is being
performed at exactly the right time to observe it; a not very likely event. The
third problem is, therefore, a methodological one. Methods and techniques
that are generally available are not particularly suitable here. To begin with,
negative discrimination is rarely, if ever, revealed in interviews unless the fact
of discrimination is the reason for the interview. Consider the following
example from my study of Swedish municipalities (Czarniawska, 1997),
which I claim is typical in both my attempts to detect discrimination and my
interlocutor’s (a man in a senior position) ways of deflecting it:
— The economics department is composed almost entirely of women.4
Sometimes it seems that recruitment was biased, but it wasn’t: it just
reflects the competence of the applicants. Very often the best economists
are women. This is what it says in our personnel policy: ‘The correct bal-
ance between men and women is advantageous to an organization, and
therefore we attempt to achieve it in all units and at all levels, in order to
achieve better efficiency and better working conditions. [Our organization]
desires also, through an achievement of such a balance, to make room for
those special competencies that are connected to both femininity and
masculinity.’ Amen, ha, ha, ha.
BC: Are you saying that there are no problems?
— None whatsoever. I have, perhaps, somewhat more men than women
here but most economists are women. On the other hand, and with good
historical reasons, there are more men among architects and engineers.
Quoting an equal opportunity document or personnel policy is the usual way
of answering questions concerning women’s situation at work. On the other
hand, interviews with victims of discrimination have little credibility, on the
somewhat paradoxical grounds that they must be biased if they have been
wronged (on silencing women voices in interviewing, see Reinharz and
Chase, 2002). An interview with a traumatized person requires both courage
and therapeutic skills that not all organization scholars possess. A third pos-
sible source of information about discrimination, second-hand reports in
interviews, rarely appears, probably because women who report negative

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discrimination are not given much attention by their peers, as the ‘alternative
interpretations’ come into action.
All these problems point in one direction; showing the ‘how’ of negative
discrimination requires prolonged direct observation. Even this method,
however, is not without its complications. One such complication consists in
the fact that the interpretations of the observer might differ from the inter-
pretations of those who are observed. This difficulty is illustrated in Barbara
Ehrenreich’s (2001) remarkable participant-observation study of low-wage
US workers. Her findings were contradicted by her worker colleagues when
she suggested that they were being exploited. Resorting to the ‘false con-
sciousness’ hypothesis in such cases can be seen as both condescending and
defensive, as Reinharz and Chase (2002) rightly point out.
Another set of problems concerns access. It is hardly possible to ask for
open access with the purpose of studying discrimination in practice as this is
likely to invite all kinds of defensive reactions. One solution is to record dis-
crimination when studying something else, as I did while studying city man-
agement in Warsaw, Stockholm, and Rome (Czarniawska, 2002). This is not to
encourage undercover studies or lying about one’s research motives: what I
am saying is that if discrimination is an organizational practice, it will be
revealed in any prolonged study of organizational practice. Here is an
excerpt from my field notes during my study of a municipality of Warsaw
(Czarniawska, 2000). It is situated in a meeting with the following persons
participating: very important official 1 (VIO-1), very important official 2
(VIO-2), professional women 1 and 2 (PW-1 and PW-2) with senior positions,
and an HEW (a woman in a high executive position).
The meeting cannot begin, as a quorum is lacking. PW-1 (a woman aged
around sixty), who is standing across the table from VIO-1 and listening to
his complaints, smiles at him. I would call it a gracious and understanding
smile.
VIO-1: Will you erase that stupid smile from your face, madam.
The smile fades from her face. She tries to explain:
PW-1: Nothing of the kind, I was smiling with understanding . . .
VIO-1: There is nothing funny in this situation.
PW-1 (returns to her chair like a scolded girl. Her chin shakes).
VIO-1 (says in a gloomy voice): Either we wait for our colleagues for God
knows how long, or we will have to meet once more on a Saturday.
VIO-2: Maybe we could meet at 11?
HEW enters: Christ!
VIO-2: You’ll have to cancel your date at 11 and send your lover away.

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240 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

HEW: I don’t have a lover, I have work.

VIO-2: Everybody has work.
...
VIO-1: As to the last suggestion, shouldn’t it have an appendix with the
division of duties?
PW-2: As long as it does not say how to formulate legal acts, because it’s
nonsense.
VIO-1: You are not listening again. Nobody said anything about legal acts.
PW-2: I am listening, but for heaven’s sake stop treating us like children!
While VI0-1 was considered to be generally unpleasant, he discriminated
between men and women in his way of being unpleasant. He was simply
aggressive toward men, while being condescending toward women. In my
eyes, he was not so much doing gender as doing age-on-gender: treating men
badly, albeit as adults; but treating women like children. VI0-2 was, to me,
visibly ‘doing gender unto women’ by introducing constant sexual allusions
in the most improbable contexts. But only I considered this to be coercive and
unpleasant. The women I shadowed spoke, in fact, about ‘doing gender unto
them’, but they would refuse my interpretation of this kind of scene if the
offender was someone they liked. Yet here is a conversation initiated after
reading a newspaper article together on the 8 March:
The capital has 1,643,000 inhabitants. There are more than 762,500 women.
For every 100 men there are 115 women. They are not yet an overwhelming
majority. In our city, 18,190 boys and 17,258 girls were born in 1992. Con-
trary to general opinion, girls are more resistant physically. This is the rea-
son why with time they are going to be in majority.
For the time being, men are still in power in City. So far there has not been
a woman as city mayor or district mayor. There are two ladies in the high-
est authority of the capital — the Union of the Districts Municipalities’
Government. One of them holds the office of City Treasurer.
(Superexpress, 8 March 1994)
I read the article (which was longer that this excerpt) in the company of three
women managers, aged 35 to 50, who were discussing the article in the light
of the pending administrative reform:
W1: . . . and then [after the reform] we’ll have to start worrying.
W2: On the contrary, there will be plenty of new districts, whatever you
want, you’ll be able to pick and choose.
W3: It was said yesterday that there won’t be any city government.

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W1: Exactly. I’m worrying and W2 cheers me up.

W2: It’s my ignorance that makes me cheerful; I don’t know anything. But
there will be many new districts.
W1: But you have to be under 30 and have legs that end under your chin.
And what about me? I could take early retirement, but in order to do that
I would have to be 55 and it’s a bit too early for that.
W3: The journalist who wrote that there are only two ladies in the city gov-
ernment forgot about the lady who was deputy mayor . . .
W2: Well, if the truth were known, in our entire department there is only
one man. Officially there are more of them, but there’s only one who is of
any use.
They were right: I cannot prove the correlation between the length of their
legs and the positions, but after the reform, the City Treasurer was subordi-
nated to the Finance Director, a man recruited from one of the districts.
Thus, they hinted at a possibility of discrimination in a general sense. I
could probably have seen more incidents of coercive gendering if I had
stayed longer, but alas! Fieldwork must all come to an end. The fact
remains that the prolonged direct observation of a workplace is often diffi-
cult to conduct and that discrimination might be a periodic or a tempo-
rary phenomenon, rather than a routine practice and might not be
revealed to the researcher. Or it might be spatially limited to areas that the
observer may not have access to. Additionally, as I myself have experi-
enced, interpreting situations as coercive gendering might be contested.
Thus, whereas participative or direct observation, difficult as they are,
remain our methodological ideals, in this article I would like to suggest
another method of data collection, seldom employed in the study of dis-
crimination in practice. This method includes fiction — literature and film
— as field material.

Policewomen
As the result of the growing popularity of detective fiction and its promotion
to ‘literature’ by many great writers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Paul Auster and
Joyce Carol Oates, the number of police stories, describing in detail police
offices as workplaces, is increasing in fiction. Perhaps unsurprisingly, women
authors (although not only women authors) pay a great deal of attention to
female police officers. This is the reason why I chose detective fiction to exem-
plify my thesis. In what follows, I quote here two such descriptions, one
by a Swedish author, the other by a British author. Both make the coercive
character of gendering clear, as is the prerogative of a fiction author. They

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242 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

also reflect cultural differences in discrimination patterns, which I found of

additional interest.

Gothenburg
The first author is Helene Tursten, a Swedish author, and the novel is called
The Smashed Tang Horse (Den krossade tanghästen), published in 1998. Ander-
sson is the superintendent, the boss of the two detective inspectors, Birgitta
and Jonny. Bobo Torsson is a witness in the case they are solving. The quote
(translated by me) is somewhat long, but contains a succinct review of most
of the problems that a young woman is likely to encounter in her career in the
Swedish police:
‘Hi there! Do sit down’, he said.
‘No thank you! I am too fucking mad to sit down!’
It was only then that he noticed that she was standing with her hands in
her pockets, her feet firmly planted wide apart. Her voice was like viper’s
hiss. He had often been informed by his ex-wife about his lack of any sen-
sibility for women’s feeling, but he could understand that she was angry.
Some colleagues at the next table looked at them with surprise. Andersson
felt uneasy. Imagine if they thought that she was angry with him. She
wasn’t, was she? He asked uncertainly:
‘Do you think that we should go upstairs and talk?’
‘Yes I do.’
...
‘The conceited bloody fool! Such a . . . yokel!’
‘Who? Me?’
‘No, of course not! Bobo Torsson!’
The Chief Inspector’s first reaction was relief, the second, surprise. He
asked, cautiously:
‘Has he irritated you in any way?’
That was when she exploded. Tears run down her cheeks while she cried
out:
‘Irritated? He pushed me against the wall, put his hand between my legs
and bit my breast! I am going to report him!’
Andersson was speechless. The situation did not improve when he heard
Jonny’s teasing voice from the corridor:

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‘So our little Birgitta has been noticed by the fashion photographer! I hope
you showed him the goodies?’
He stood in the open door, leaning nonchalantly against it, a smug
smile on his lips. Him and his big mouth! was all Andersson managed
to think. And then all the hell broke out. Half-choking with anger, she
hissed:
‘Here come the goodies!’
Birgitta flew over the floor that divided them. Jonny reacted too slowly to
see her knee coming with full speed and strength between his knees. He
collapsed with a stifled groan. Birgitta was triumphant:
‘A personal record! Two guys with blue balls within less than half an hour!’
With shoulders straight and head raised high, she stepped over Jonny’s
body and marched out. It was then that Andersson regained his speech.
‘Birgitta! You are not going anywhere! What the heck are you two up to?
Fighting like two children! You are two adult police officers!’
She turned her head to him very slowly and he could see her tear-covered
face. It was difficult to understand what she whispered in an upset voice:
‘You do not seem to understand. I have never been so humiliated in all my
life! Perhaps as a woman, but not as a professional!’
...
‘Ever since I began working here, I have had to tolerate this idiot. At the
beginning he was trying to paw, but when I made it clear what I thought
about it, the taunts started. That I am an easy lay. You heard it yourself:
“the bloody whore”. He gave me “playful” slaps on my backside. My inter-
nal mail contains pictures cut out of porno rags, which show big balls and
lesbian couples. I always knew that it was Jonny but I couldn’t prove it’,
she said in a flat voice.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’ asked Andersson, surprised.
‘And what would you have done?’
‘Well, I would . . .’
...
He got up and went to her. He almost patted her on the back, but her stiff
neck and straight back made him change his mind. Uncertainly, he contin-
ued:
‘This incident with Jonny . . . can’t we forget it for the time being? I will talk
to him. He has no ill intentions, I am sure it is all just a bad joke. And he will

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244 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

certainly understand that you were very upset after what happened
between you and Torsson . . .’
He stopped when she turned her face towards him. It was completely
expressionless. Her eyes were small pools of lead again. Her voice sounded
hoarse and shaky when she said:
‘You don’t get it. You still do not get it’. (Tursten, 1998, pp. 170–6)
In this excerpt Tursten portrays three threats in the young woman inspector’s
work. Firstly, she is not treated by the clients as a professional, but as a
woman, to be humiliated and sexually exploited at will. This is what I called
coercive gendering, with a content repulsive to the target. Secondly, there is
sexual harassment from a male colleague; again, coercive gendering with a
repulsive content. Then there is the uncomprehending attitude of her boss. To
a Swedish reader the portrait of Andersson is all too recognizable. Full of
good intentions, he treats women as ‘mysteries’, in the way perhaps typical
of his generation. A democratic Swede, he accepts the women’s entrance into
the police force, but this does not prohibit him from seeing it as a nuisance,
as he is also prone to avoid conflict. Finally, he is guilty of discrimination by
abstaining from action, which makes his case especially difficult — to Birgitta
and to many other women who are prepared to fight (not always that vio-
lently) against conscious harassment, but who are in fact helpless in the face
of passive discrimination.
Susanne Andersson’s study of municipal police organizations (2003) com-
pletely corroborates this picture. The Superintendent’s mournful musings
have their equivalent in the actual complaints of senior male officers who,
although they do not dare to complain about the entry of women into the
force, bemoan the lack of young male apprentices (Andersson, 2003, p. 139).

London
The second excerpt originates from the novel that was the basis of the
well-known series about Inspector Tennison. Interestingly enough, while
this scene is preserved in the film, it is barely hinted at, whereas the writ-
ten text provides a detailed description, such as is necessary for a film
script, thus providing a realistic picture. The book is Linda LaPlante’s
Prime Suspect (1991). Superintendent Kernan is Detective Chief Inspector
Tennison’s boss.
Kernan toyed uneasily with a felt-tipped pen as he listened to Tennison’s
complaint. He had never liked her, had been against her joining AMIT
from the word go, but she had been more or less forced on him. She had
more experience than at least one of the other DCIs, who was already on
his second case. He cleared his throat and replaced the cap carefully on the
pen.

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‘You want a transfer, is that what this is about?’

‘No, I want to be given a chance. I was available for the Mornay case, but
DCI Shefford was called in from leave to take it over. I want to know why
I have had not so much as a sniff of anything since I’ve been here.’
...
Kernan gave her the same speech he had spouted at her the last time she
had complained, and she sighed. She had the distinct feeling that he
couldn’t wait to get her out of the office. She looked down at her shoes and
seethed as he continued, ‘It takes time, Jane. If you are not prepared to wait
then perhaps you should consider asking to be transferred. As I have said
to you before, we all appreciate your record, and your obvious abilities . . .’
‘But you are not prepared to let me put them into practice, right?’
‘Wrong. Just bide your time, don’t rush things.’
‘Rush, sir? I’ve been here eighteen months.’
‘I’ve said all I intend saying at this point. I am sorry you feel the way you
do, but until a case comes up that I feel is right for you, then . . .’
‘Then I carry on as before, is that what you were going to say, Mike? Oh,
come on, don’t fob me off again. You gave me the same speech last time.’
(LaPlante, 1991, pp. 76–7).
This is a different case from the Swedish one, as Kernan, in contrast to passive
Andersson, is doing quite a lot, although the scene is kept within the limits of
superficial politeness and hierarchical rules. The growing tension is indicated
by the sudden change to first names; a lack of resolution is similarly signalled
by an ironic ending formula. Kernan’s gendering of Jane is not visible, merely
deducible from the knowledge of the context and her narrative. Or perhaps
it does not take place at all? As one of my reviewers pointed out, it could be
that once women are allowed into managerial positions, discrimination
assumes other, more subtle and diffuse forms that are more difficult to com-
bat through anti-discrimination measures. As a result, women may be adopt-
ing less antagonistic coping strategies themselves.
Sandra Tomc discusses this issue thoroughly and I find her reasoning
worth quoting at length. She accords to Prime Suspect an important role as a
typical expression and a carrier of postfeminism:
Heavily based as it is on the real-life experiences of DCI Jackie Malton of
London’s Metropolitan Police Force, Prime Suspect especially seems con-
cerned with the mechanics of women’s entry not just into the workplace
but into the professional managerial positions that became available to
them during the 1980s. At the same time, the compensatory machinery
at work . . . — the redemption of male-dominated institutions, the

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246 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

localization of violence against women — seems to play out . . . the apol-

ogetic and polemical back pedaling of ‘postfeminism’. (1995, p. 58)
In her reading, Prime Suspect is one of the women’s crime stories published in
the early 1990s that combines an aggressive critique of patriarchy with praise
of the virtues of submission and conformity. This paradox is acknowledged
but not resolved in the text. Reflecting the developments in feminism in the
late 1980s, these stories offer to actual women a programme consisting of a
combination of disparagement and acceptance. Although Tomc makes this
observation sound like a criticism of Prime Suspect, in the present context it
adds to its assets: not only does the novel offer a realistic description of every-
day life organizational practices, but also interprets them in the light of one
contemporary theory: that of postfeminism. A postfeminist stance can be
contested as much as discrimination itself, but my point is that the novel
(rather than the TV series) offers a good starting point for discussing both.
For example, it is worth pointing out that although disparagement of the
existing gender regime has been the staple of feminist writing from its outset,
it is puzzling to see it combined with acceptance. This acceptance might be,
as the reviewer suggested, a façade hiding more subtle coping strategies or a
consequence of the realization that there is no way out other than opting out
of a male career — a realization that became clear only after many have tried
to enter male occupations. Tennison moves into her career in an all-male
world; she is cornered and yet unconscious of options. She is victimized, she
is a success: ‘. . . feminism itself ceased to imagine that women had anywhere
to go’ (Tomc, 1995, p. 61, n. 10). This interpretation can be corroborated by the
example of another woman police officer in Helene Tursten’s books: Detec-
tive Inspector Irene Huss. She realizes all Andersson’s faults, but does noth-
ing about the situation; she merely waits for him to retire. She sympathizes
with Birgitta and consoles her, but does not take an active stance. As to sexual
harassment, she has equipped herself with a black belt in karate (this is also
one of the ways that feminism suggested to women to defend themselves).
Irene Huss is not a victim, but maintaining this position depends on her not
sticking out her neck. In time (that is, in a later book called Tatuerad torso
[Tursten, 2000]), Birgitta manages to avoid harassment and yet stay in the
force by marrying one of her colleagues, who is both respected and partly
feared. Are Birgitta and Irene Huss ‘traitors to the cause’?

Organization studies: postfeminism or poststructuralism?

Tomc is right in pointing out that these policewomen are aspiring members
of the very institution responsible for their victimization (1995, p. 47).5 She
contrasts Tennison with Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s
Kinsey Millhone, the two women detectives who opted ‘for an all-out

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rejection of structures of oppression, whether juridical, domestic, or sexual’

(p. 50). But although she notices that they are modelled upon the hardboiled
male rebels of detective stories à la Dashiel Hammet, she fails to observe that
they are American. Tennison, Irene, and Birgitta are European. The ‘urban
cowboy’ type of lonely rebel is not a model in Europe, either for men or
women. P.D. James’s Cordelia Gray attempted to do something similar, but
neither her creator nor her readers (with the exception of US critics, who
granted the book an American Edgar Award) believed in it.6 Credibility is as
important for (realist) fiction as it is for research reports. In the world we
know, there is no space outside institutions: there are only different institu-
tions we can ally ourselves with.
Yet the arguments of postfeminism, and the possibility that the women
portrayed (approvingly) in the fiction I mentioned above have been co-opted
by the institutional order that oppresses them, are worth serious debate. For
many, postfeminism is a product of the conservative 1980s (Modleski, 1991),
projecting into the 1990s the idea that feminism has attained its goals, that
gender discrimination has been successfully reduced by structural measures,
and that to claim anything else is an indication of being old-fashioned (an
accusation often formulated by young women), a proof of a poor capacity for
observation, or a sign of radical, man-hating feminism. Modleski stresses that
the phenomenon is closely connected to North American culture and this
contextualization is, in my view, very important. There is no doubt that gen-
der discrimination is a universal phenomenon, but this is not the same as say-
ing that it is a standardized phenomenon, where the US sets the standards.
Modleski somewhat surprisingly equates poststructuralism with postfem-
inism. Again, this point is worthy of debate, as there are many opinions on
the matter. Bronwyn Davies claims that

Poststructuralist theory, with its roots in Freud, Marx and Foucault, pro-
vides a radical framework for understanding the relation between persons
and their social world and for conceptualizing social change. The struc-
tures and processes of the social world are recognized as having a material
force, a capacity to constrain, to shape, to coerce, as well as to potentiate
individual action. . . . I choose to take it up here because it provides me
with the conceptual tools to make sense of my data and allows me to for-
mulate answers to the questions that I set out with. (1989, p. xi)

To which Modleski says:

It is also easy to see why poststructuralist theories have appealed to fem-

inists. Since feminism has a great stake in the belief, first articulated by
Simone de Beauvoir, that one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman
(for if this were not the case it would be difficult to imagine social change),
thinkers like Lacan and Foucault have provided the analytical tools
by which we might begin the arduous task of unbecoming women.

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248 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

However, as feminists are increasingly pointing out, the once exhilarating

proposition that there is no ‘essential’ female nature has been elaborated to
the point where it is now often used to scare ‘women’ away from making
any generalizations about or political claims on behalf of a group called
‘women’. (1991, p. 15)
Thus, it is not a matter of definitions (although Modleski’s roll call of author-
ities glides from Freud, Marx and Foucault to Lacan, Althusser and Derrida:
definitely a more radical kind of poststructuralism). The difference is in the
purpose to which poststructuralism is put: to a political campaign, or, more
modestly, to ‘make sense of one’s material’. My main reference to poststruc-
turalism is Roland Barthes, as, with all respect due to the great philosophers,
I see it as a literary approach to texts, so well put to work by scholars like
Joanne Martin (1990). It is different from structuralism in that it does not look
for the structure hidden in the text(s) (as in the structural analysis of fairy
tales) and in social practices (as in the anthropology of Lévi-Strauss), sup-
posedly reflecting the universal structure of the human mind, but knows that
the structure is put there by the interpreter, that is, the reader. Now, the
reader, the writer and the text are situated in the same institutional frame
(give or take some centuries in case of historical texts), and this gives readers
the right to impose structures and to search for meaning in such structures.
But the spectre of postfeminism suggests another possible meaning of the
term ‘poststructuralism’. The works of fiction I quote here, and my observa-
tions of everyday working life, indicate the possibility of recognizing the par-
adoxical image painted by fiction writers without forcing us to join the
postfeminists. Structural measures against work discrimination have indeed
been enforced in most western countries. However, structural measures are
a necessary but not a sufficient condition for institutional change. What
remains is the change in practices, requiring more nuanced representations of
reality and subtler measures in practice. Thus, the need for research texts that
depict what I call coercive gendering (as different from ‘discriminatory prac-
tices’, that is, procedures and routines that are easily identifiable and thus
more easily targeted by legal action) and the need for methods that allow
such description — including the poststructuralist reading of fictional texts
that I am suggesting here. This raises, however, yet another problem: Are fic-
tional works legitimate material for scholars?

Novels as field material?

My main argument for using fiction as a kind of field material is simply that
the traditional fieldwork, unless done under cover, does not reveal enough of
this aspect of work practices. Additionally, as my examples from Warsaw
seem to suggest, when a concrete practice is being discussed, it is difficult to

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DOING GENDER UNTO THE OTHER 249

speak about concrete people. One way out used by the women I was shad-
owing was to speak in general terms: my way out is to speak of fictive char-
acters. But it is exactly the fictive, as contrasted to factual, character of a text
that should exclude it from scientific scrutiny. However, as I have pointed out
in another context (Czarniawska, 1999), there is nothing intrinsic to a narra-
tive that makes it fictional or non-fictional: proper names can be invented,
dates faked. It is the fictive stance, as Lamarque (1990) calls it — the invitation
from an author to a reader, which makes a reader believe that this is one
genre and not another. Todorov (1978 [1990]) speaks of a fictional contract: a
tacit contract between the author and the reader in which the author asks for
a suspension of disbelief. In contrast, the scientific author encourages readers
to check their texts, in what might be called a referential contract (Czarniaw-
ska, 2004, p. 9). In treating fiction as field material, readers break their con-
tract with the author, but exercise their right to novel reading (DeVault, 1990).
The reading becomes referential and the text undergoes the same scrutiny as
any other text from the field.
What field is it, then? Fictional texts are always, although not always sim-
ply, reflective of societies in which their authors have been raised (Irons,
1995). To begin with, they are part of the contemporary discourse, which
means that they not only reflect the experience of life in a given time at a
given place, but they also form it and are a part of it. They present for their
readers work environments and situations that readers will rarely know from
their own experience. Additionally, detective novels in a realist tradition set
high standards of credibility in terms of the actual details of detective work,
as a long list of acknowledgements in each such book clearly indicates. They
might invent the course of events and the psychology of the characters, but
their descriptions are truly ethnographical in detail, as there is a whole tra-
dition of pedantic readers checking them.
I would also claim that the usefulness of police detection stories in the spe-
cific context of discrimination is high, because the phenomenon of discrimi-
nation is not their main focus. Fiction focused on a certain social problem
usually entails the author’s theory of that problem (so that, for example, all
Sara Paretsky’s books can be seen as a series of sociological treatises on var-
ious ailments of US society [Czarniawska, 1999]). In such cases social scien-
tists compete with the author of a work of fiction in their attempt to theorize
— a difficult task, as we all know from conducting interviews with interloc-
utors prone to theorizing.
Last but not least, understanding fiction is necessary in order to under-
stand contemporary society. As Karin Knorr Cetina forcefully put it,
‘Modern institutions . . . continuously produce fictions, steer their way
through fictions, work with fictions and become founded upon fiction’
(1994, p. 8). This leads me to my final point: the constructive role of pop-
ular culture in general, and in this case police novels, in the formation of
actual practices.

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250 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

The circular model of culture

My stance is derived from the so-called circuit model of culture (Johnson,
1986–7; Traube, 1992), which suggests that the production, circulation and
consumption of cultural products constitute a loop rather than a line. Expres-
sion becomes control, as popular culture selects and reinforces certain wishes
and anxieties of its audience (Traube, 1992, p. 99); control provokes further
expression, both of submission and of resistance. Thus, while the easiest way
of learning professional practices might be to observe and imitate everyday
routines, popular culture, with its larger-than-life heroes, provides the mate-
rial for dreams and rule-breaking behaviour. As Linda McDowell puts it,
‘Representations of fictional bankers influence the behaviour and attitudes of
“real” bankers, and vice versa’ (1997, pp. 39–40). Other professions, the police
among them, are similar. A female police detective in Martin Amis’ (1997)
Night Train says:
TV, etcetera, has had a terrible effect on perpetrators. It has given them
style. And TV has ruined American juries forever. And American lawyers.
But TV has also fucked up us police. No profession has been so massively
fictionalized. I had a great bunch of lines ready. (p. 18)
Indeed, the role of popular culture in forming criminal professionals have
been thoroughly documented (for a review, see Varese, 2004).
Why can’t young people learn their jobs through reading work ethnogra-
phies, Carl Rhodes and I wondered in another text (Czarniawska and
Rhodes, 2006). We think that it is because contemporary ethnographies are
modernist, as Manganaro (1990) rightly observes: complex plots, experimen-
tal structures, paradoxical resolutions. Popular culture, on the other hand,
more frequently relies on strong narratives and traditional plots (even when
the aim is to subvert those plots). Indeed it is important to point out the sub-
versive role of popular culture. Think of the kind of alternative dialogue so
well provided by Sara Paretsky’s detective, V.I. Warshawski:
You don’t want to frown in that angry way — it’s just as important for a
man to keep his looks these days as it is for a girl, and you’ll get terrible
wrinkles around your eyes if you keep scowling like that. And you’ve got
very nice eyes. (Paretsky, 1998, p. 54)
Perhaps this is not the most uplifting example, but if young mafiosi can learn
their dialogue from Don Corleone, why can’t young women professionals
learn theirs from V.I.?
So in the final count, there are many reasons to take novels — and popular
culture in general — seriously when studying gender as a social practice. In
so far as it reflects actual practices, it provides a field material on par with tra-
ditional interviews and documents. In so far as it shapes actual practice, it
may be priceless in understanding the formation of actual practices. In so far

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DOING GENDER UNTO THE OTHER 251

as it subverts actual practice, it can be a source of inspiration and a model to

imitate.

Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges help and advice received from Nina L.
Colwill, Joanne Martin, Patricia Y. Martin, and the three anonymous
reviewers.

Notes
1. For a recent collection of studies in this tradition representing my home region —
that is, Scandinavia — see Gunnarsson et al. (2003).
2. For more on meritocracy as a ‘strong plot’ in the narrative of rational bureaucra-
cies, see Czarniawska and Rhodes, 2006.
3. For more on rituals of modernity, see Czarniawska, 2002.
4. It needs to be added that this situation is unusual in Sweden. In Poland, in con-
trast, bookkeeping is a woman’s job, although all finance directors are men (Czar-
niawska, 2002).
5. Although it is debatable whether this is a wrong step or not; some would say that
it is an inevitable first step. The dilemma — to join the system and fight it from
within or to remain outside — reverberates through many opposition move-
ments, from the early German Green Movement to the Black Movement in the US.
6. Part of the explanation is, of course, the non-feminist stance openly professed by
P.D. James (Nixon, 1995). Nixon sets Cordelia in the context of P.D. James’s polit-
ical views and the contemporary climate in England: she also notices Warshaw-
ski’s and Millhone’s individualist male predecessors, but is unable to see the
improbability of such characters in a contemporary European milieu.

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