Metamorphosis: From ‘Nice Girls’ to ‘Nice Bitches’: Resisting Patriarchal Articulations of Professional Identity

This article explores the random strategies women adopt in resisting
patriarchal articulations of their professional identity and the kind of
organizational discourses women's resistance brings about. The focus is
on describing the context, dynamics of contradictory tensions and ambivalence
inherent in situations of resisting. The article draws upon the
authors' own experiences in academia. In addition to participatory observation,
the authors are using themselves as research instruments that
enable them to highlight the emotions and ambivalent dynamics in the
construction of gendered identities and power relations in organizations.
The study indicates that there are several sets of rules in motion in one
and the same social situation, such as the rules of organizational
behaviour, rules of friendship and the rules of gender relations in public
places. By describing two overtly sexualized discourses that women's
resistance brought about, the article highlights that organizational
sexuality does not necessarily differ in kind or in degree from `street
sexuality' or sexuality in semi-public places. The study's findings argue
that it is important to extend research to both informal and semi-formal
organizational gatherings. These liminal spaces are important sites of
communicative struggles over organizational meanings and identities.