This paper addresses the continuing tension between focusing on identities and categories rather than processes and systems in intersectionality research, based on a study of the identity work of South African Indian women managers. We wed intersectionality theory with extant understandings of managerial identity work in organizations to demonstrate the dynamic interaction between both identities and categories and the institutionalized processes and systems by which they are formed, shaped and reshaped over time. Specifically, we demonstrate through life story interviews of 13 South African women managers how an individual's managerial identity is not formed solely by personal and social identities in the workplace but by the socio-historical political and cultural contexts within which individuals and groups are embedded. These contexts shape not only the racio-ethnic and gender identities of individuals but also the processes of racialization, gendering and culturalization that create and reinforce particular social locations in society and in the workplace.

Although women worldwide are increasingly taking on breadwinner roles, little is known about the experiences of unmarried breadwinner daughters, particularly those in non-Western societies who belong to cultures with rigid gender role prescriptions. This study uses a life-story interview approach to explore the gender and cultural identity work of seven unmarried South African Indian daughters who are the breadwinners in their natal families. The findings of this study illuminate the gender and cultural identity work these women engage in to negotiate the contradictions between cultural prescriptions and their new roles as family breadwinners. In contradiction to the idea that women breadwinners who earn high salaries gain power in their families, the present study found financial control did not result in the kind of power traditionally associated with the breadwinner role. This research also demonstrates the ways in which the women resisted the constrictions of their family roles despite the fact that they were the breadwinners in their families.

There is a dearth of research on how women managers engage in hybrid identity work during their career transitions, and the aim of this study was to fill this gap. Interviews were conducted with 13 Indian women managers in senior and top managerial positions, and the data obtained were analysed using thematic analysis. The narratives indicate that previously disadvantaged groups (Indian women in this case) are caught between subscribing to cultural values and concurrently conforming to organisational norms. Participants’ answers to the question: “Who am I as an Indian female manager?” reveal that during their career ascendency these women engage in a tremendous amount of hybrid identity work and rework related to their self-concept of being an “ideal” Indian female and simultaneously being a “perfect” manager. Nevertheless, in their career transitions to managerial positions, these women are selective in the hybrid identity work they engage in.

This study explored black employees" experiences of racial profiling by their white peers through the medium of gossip at a historically white South African university. Participants consisted of 24 black employees (males = 50%, females = 50%; support staff = 50%, academic staff = 50%). The employees completed a semi-structured interview that elicited their perceptions of the settings in which gossip about black employees occurred, the perceived intentions of such gossip, and their responses to it. The data obtained was thematically analysed. Findings suggested that the gossip targeted black employees who were absent from meetings, and that such gossip undermined the work performance and morale of these employees.