Construction of the female global top manager in The Economist

Abstract

This article analyses the portrayal of the female corporate manager in the economic media. More specifically the article examines the ways in which femininity and gendered power become enacted in feature articles about high level corporate leaders and managers in the global economic newspaper, The Economist, and through that enacted as part of the wider gender asymmetry in the economy. The media has a crucial role in constructing, changing and stabilizing representations, stereotypes and images. The article identifies, categorizes and presents managers as genderspecific social actors and members of elite business groups. Feature articles in The Economist about top managers were analysed over the period 2006–2013 with the help of thematic classifications influenced by critical discourse analysis. The analysis demonstrates that the global economy-focused print media has contributed to fending off and defining a ‘suitable managerial femininity’ for female managers that is aligned with the ideology of the third spirit of capitalism, but does not threaten the reigning masculinity of corporate management elite.

Reason Over Politics

“…Second, the fact that The Economist, established in 1843, presents such core journalistic terms as facts and reason makes it an illuminating case study. The Economist is often characterised as promoting neoliberalism and globalisation (Starr 2004;Poutanen, Kovalainen, and Jännäri 2016), and the aim of the magazine has been to advance free trade and political reforms (Parsons 1989, 25;Edwards 1995, 2-3). However, The Economist has avoided, as Parsons (1989, 26) notes, "right from the start, being too doctrinaire by placing an emphasis on ´facts´ and taking the kind of quantitative approach to economic news to be found in other papers to an altogether more sophisticated level".…”

The boss and daddy’s little girl: on the construction of gender in Swedish business media

“…Researchers have adopted a variety of methods to analyse media’s constructions of gender. Critical discourse analysis is a rather frequent method (Lang and Rybnikova, 2016; Poutanen et al , 2016; Mavin et al , 2016; Tienari et al , 2009). Others have applied analyses based on empathy-based stories (Katila and Eriksson, 2013), discourse analysis (Kelan, 2008; Lämsä and Tiensuu, 2002), reviews of archival and experiment evidence (Ryan and Haslam, 2007), ethnographic semantic method (Holmberg and Åkerblom, 2001), content analysis (Cukier et al , 2016; Rodler et al , 2001; McGregor, 2000) and text analysis (Ross and Srberny-Mohammadi, 1997; Ross, 1995).…”

“…Media also influences society and individuals’ ideas and mental models of, for example, gender. Media plays a significant role in the construction and reconstruction of discourses, producing talk and texts that use a specific vocabulary (Poutanen et al , 2016). Media is far from being gender-neutral phenomenon; in fact, it is highly gendered, much like mainstream management literature (Tienari et al , 2009).…”

“…Often, media portrays both men and women gender biased and ascribes them to gender-specific and historically inherited attributes (Katila and Eriksson, 2013; Kelan, 2008; Tienari et al , 2009; Poutanen et al , 2016). Media texts are also highly dependent on the social arenas and represent fragments of a web of intertextuality and analyses take into account, primarily, historical, economic and institutional references and explanations (Lang and Rybnikova, 2016; Cukier et al , 2016; Tienari et al , 2009).…”

“…In analyses of media texts and media constructions of gender, researchers have adopted a variety of research methods including, for example, critical discourse analysis (Poutanen et al , 2016; Lang and Rybnikova, 2016), ethnographic methods (Holmberg and Åkerblom, 2001), content analysis (Cukier et al , 2016) and text analysis (Ross, 1995). The majority of researchers have come to, irrespective of research method, analyse rather large sections of text and therefore provide rather broad descriptions and analyses.…”