Temporality and gendered agency: Menopausal subjectivities in women’s work

Jack, G., Riach, K. and Bariola, E. (2019) Temporality and gendered agency: Menopausal subjectivities in women’s work. Human Relations, 72(1), pp. 122-143. (doi: 10.1177/0018726718767739)

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Abstract

This article advances feminist organizational theorizing about embodiment and subjectivity by investigating menopause at work as a temporally constituted phenomenon. We ask how time matters in women’s embodied and subjective experiences of menopause at work. Theoretically, we draw on feminist writers McNay and Grosz to explore the relationship between gendered agency and time in a corpus of 48 qualitative interviews conducted with women employed at two Australian universities about their experiences of menopause. Our empirical analysis identifies three temporal modalities – episodic, helical and relational – that show how gendered organizational subjectivities are not simply temporally situated, but created in and through distinct temporal forces. We offer two contributions to feminist organizational theory: first, by illuminating the ontological role played by time in gendered agency; and second, by fleshing out the notion of a ‘body politics of surprise’ with implications for feminist studies of organizational embodiment, politics and ethics.

Item Type:Articles
Additional Information:This research was partially funded by a grant from La Trobe University’s Research Focus Area Building Healthy Communities.
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Riach, Professor Kathleen
Authors: Jack, G., Riach, K., and Bariola, E.
College/School:College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Management
Journal Name:Human Relations
Publisher:SAGE
ISSN:0018-7267
ISSN (Online):1741-282X
Published Online:29 April 2018

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