Managing the Maternal Body: A Comprehensive Review and Transdisciplinary Analysis

Abstract

This paper comprehensively reviews transdisciplinary and critical perspectives on the employed maternal (pregnant and post-birth) body in the context of management studies. It highlights the disparities between equal opportunities policies and everyday management practices in relation to pregnancy and new motherhood. In so doing, the review examines the contradictions between equal opportunities policies aimed at protecting pregnant and newly maternal employees and the discouraging treatment that such women receive in practice at work. In analysing the disparity between policy and practice, the review identifies gaps within the field of research on the employed maternal body. It then shows how perceptions about the pregnant and newly maternal body are based more on myth than on evidence. In keeping with policies encouraging family friendly working practices and aimed at enhancing parental health, the paper argues that research on the maternal body is integral to management studies.

Always different?: exploring the monstrous-feminine and maternal embodiment in organisation

“…Riad notes the ways in which children can become objectified as accessories to professional image: "Exhibit A -family" (Riad, 2007:211) and this erases signs of the maternal in neatly framed boxes. The implications of Riad's analysis expose ways in which the (uncontrollable) maternal is contained, seductively reproducing many of the stereotypes of the maternal-feminine and work (Riad, 2007) such as idealised notions 9 of mothers as gentle and selfless (Gatrell, 2008(Gatrell, , 2011. In addition, forms of reverse discrimination or feminine organising principles that privilege restrictive views of femininity become reproduced.…”

“…This includes the negative assessment of firm, decisive behaviour or perceived lower job commitment in which the monstrous archetype of the emotional, excessively irrational pregnant manager is reproduced. Clear decision-making skills, as opposed to nurturing, are more likely to be seen as domineering and dictatorial (Gatrell, 2011). Similarly, Haynes (2008a) describes the subtle practices mothers are subjected to in accountancy, with its emphasis on rationality and emotional detachment, such as questioning work commitment and belonging (Haynes, 2008a).…”

“…This is demonstrated in studies of the maternal and motherhood in organisation (Gatrell, 2011;Höpfl and Kostera, 2003;Riad, 2007) which draw attention to this dissolution and its effects for gendered subjectivity. Such liminality has prompted scholars to question the politics of marginality (Shildrick, 2002;Thanem, 2011), equality and inclusion to which this special issue attends.…”

“…I attend to hitherto less developed discussions at the intersections between the monstrous-feminine and maternal-feminine in organisation (Dale, 2001;Gatrell, 2011;Haynes, 2008aHaynes, , 2008bHöpfl and Kostera, 2003;Longhurst, 2001Longhurst, , 2008Riad, 2007). Feminist contributions have hitherto explored psychoanalytic approaches to demonstrate the power of the monstrous, its excesses or lack (Creed, 1993), and the emancipatory potential of recognising one's own monstrosity by embodying the 6 monster (Shildrick, 2002).…”

“…Feminist debates on the maternal body explore how our bodies are always already capable of being monstrous (Gatrell, 2011;Riad, 2007;Thanem, 2011) and this is no more apparent than when the body seizes our attention at times of dysfunction, appearing to us in an alien form (Williams, 1998:61). As Betterton (2006:81) writes, "what if that otherness is enclosed in our bodies, as yet unknown, neither friend nor enemy, growing inside our own flesh and blood?"…”