Challenging Women: Gender, Culture and Organization

The influence of male gender cultures on men, women and institutions is tacitly accepted, but its effect on women in senior management positions and their creativity is little acknowledged. In a climate of corporate change in which traditional institutions, hierarchies and working practices face pressure to adapt, the role of the innovator and the new manager from outside established hierarchies can become an important catalyst.

Based on research into the public sector, this book offers a radical reassessment of organizational forces for change, the barriers these encounter and the role of `challenging women' - senior women managers who are faced with the task of transforming their organizations. The implications of the study go far beyond the public sector to embrace the experience of women managers in organizations everywhere.

Much has been written about women at work, the `glass ceiling', discriminatory employment practices. This study is seminal in the linkage it makes between gender, innovation and organizational transformation.

Challenging Women provides new evidence for understanding and analyzing organizational change in the context of the gender culture at work. Policy-makers, as well as students of organizational behaviour and management, public sector reform and gender studies will find this essential reading.