IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v173y2021i2d10.1007_s10551-020-04526-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Feminist Ethics and Women Leaders: From Difference to Intercorporeality

Author

Listed:
  • Alison Pullen

    (Macquarie University)

  • Sheena J. Vachhani

    (University of Bristol, Howard House)

Abstract

This paper problematises the ways women’s leadership has been understood in relation to male leadership rather than on its own terms. Focusing specifically on ethical leadership, we challenge and politicise the symbolic status of women in leadership by considering the practice of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. In so doing, we demonstrate how leadership ethics based on feminised ideals such as care and empathy are problematic in their typecasting of women as being simply the other to men. We apply different strategies of mimesis for developing feminist leadership ethics that does not derive from the masculine. This offers a radical vision for leadership that liberates the feminine and women’s subjectivities from the masculine order. It also offers a practical project for changing women’s working lives through relationality, intercorporeality, collective agency and ethical openness with the desire for fundamental political transformation in the ways in which women can lead.

Suggested Citation

  • Alison Pullen & Sheena J. Vachhani, 2021. "Feminist Ethics and Women Leaders: From Difference to Intercorporeality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 173(2), pages 233-243, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:173:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-020-04526-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-020-04526-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-020-04526-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-020-04526-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joyce K. Fletcher, 2001. "Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262561409, April.
    2. Ciulla, Joanne B. & Knights, David & Mabey, Chris & Tomkins, Leah, 2018. "Guest Editors’ Introduction: Philosophical Contributions to Leadership Ethics," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 1-14, January.
    3. Jessica Nicholson & Elizabeth Kurucz, 2019. "Relational Leadership for Sustainability: Building an Ethical Framework from the Moral Theory of ‘Ethics of Care’," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 25-43, April.
    4. Munro, Iain & Thanem, Torkild, 2018. "The Ethics of Affective Leadership: Organizing Good Encounters Without Leaders," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 51-69, January.
    5. Dawn Eubanks & Andrew Brown & Sierk Ybema, 2012. "Leadership, Identity, and Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 107(1), pages 1-3, April.
    6. Rhodes, Carl & Badham, Richard, 2018. "Ethical Irony and the Relational Leader: Grappling with the Infinity of Ethics and the Finitude of Practice," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 71-98, January.
    7. David Knights & Majella O’Leary, 2006. "Leadership, Ethics and Responsibility to the Other," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 125-137, August.
    8. Ciulla, Joanne B. & Knights, David & Mabey, Chris & Tomkins, Leah, 2018. "Guest Editors’ Introduction: Philosophical Approaches to Leadership Ethics II: Perspectives on the Self and Responsibility to Others," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(3), pages 245-250, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brigitte Biehl & Katerina Schönfeld, 2023. "Writing differently with film: An animated video on gender, leadership, and language," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5), pages 1611-1630, September.
    2. Jennifer L. Berdahl & Barnini Bhattacharyya, 2024. "Do White Women Gain Status for Engaging in Anti-black Racism at Work? An Experimental Examination of Status Conferral," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 193(4), pages 839-858, September.
    3. Kayla Stajkovic & Alexander D. Stajkovic, 2024. "Ethics of Care Leadership, Racial Inclusion, and Economic Health in the Cities: Is There a Female Leadership Advantage?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 189(4), pages 699-721, February.
    4. Mengyao Xia & Bangzhu Zhu & Helen Huifen Cai, 2023. "Does duration of team governance decrease corporate carbon emission intensity," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(3), pages 1363-1388, May.
    5. Valerie Stead & Sharon Mavin & Carole Elliott, 2024. "Angela Rayner (Member of Parliament) and the “Basic Instinct Ploy”: Intersectional misrecognition of women leaders' legitimacy, productive resistance and flexing (patriarchal) discourse," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 152-170, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Randall G. Colton, 2020. "Modeling Leadership in Tolkien’s Fiction: Craft and Wisdom, Gift and Task," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 163(3), pages 401-415, May.
    2. Juliette Koning & Jeff Waistell, 2012. "Identity Talk of Aspirational Ethical Leaders," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 107(1), pages 65-77, April.
    3. Christian Garmann Johnsen, 2018. "Authenticating the Leader: Why Bill George Believes that a Moral Compass Would Have Kept Jeffrey Skilling out of Jail," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 53-63, January.
    4. Kishwar Sultana & Muhammad Nadeem Iqbal & Bilal Shabir & Nadia Batool, 2022. "Ethical Leadership and Teachers’ Job Performance at Secondary Level," Journal of Policy Research (JPR), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 8(4), pages 411-415, December.
    5. Alabi-Sessou Omobonike Adeola, 2022. "Exploring the Implication of Gender Balance and the Factors Affecting Women’s Attainment to Top Leadership Positions in Organization," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 6(4), pages 348-358, April.
    6. André, Kévin, 2013. "Why Should Business Education Care About Care? Toward an Educare Perspective," ESSEC Working Papers WP1315, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    7. Ozgur Demirtas & A. Akdogan, 2015. "The Effect of Ethical Leadership Behavior on Ethical Climate, Turnover Intention, and Affective Commitment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 59-67, August.
    8. Charlene Tan, 2024. "Integrating Moral Personhood and Moral Management: A Confucian Approach to Ethical Leadership," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 191(1), pages 167-177, April.
    9. Xianchun Zhang & Zhu Yao, 2019. "Impact of relational leadership on employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior: A survey based on tourism companies in four countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(12), pages 1-19, December.
    10. Ruthanne Huising & Susan S. Silbey, 2011. "Governing the gap: Forging safe science through relational regulation," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(1), pages 14-42, March.
    11. Helena Liu & Christopher Baker, 2016. "Ordinary Aristocrats: The Discursive Construction of Philanthropists as Ethical Leaders," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 133(2), pages 261-277, January.
    12. Cameron Graham & Martin E. Persson & Vaughan S. Radcliffe & Mitchell J. Stein, 2023. "The State of Ohio’s Auditors, the Enumeration of Population, and the Project of Eugenics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(3), pages 565-587, October.
    13. Edita Olaizola & Rafael Morales-Sánchez & Marcos Eguiguren Huerta, 2020. "Biomimetic Organisations: A Management Model that Learns from Nature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-22, March.
    14. Jacqueline C. Wisler, 2018. "U.S. CEOs of SBUs in Luxury Goods Organizations: A Mixed Methods Comparison of Ethical Decision-Making Profiles," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 443-518, May.
    15. Inga Minelgaite Snaebjornsson & Ingi Runar Edvardsson & Vilma Zydziunaite & Vlad Vaiman, 2015. "Cross-Cultural Leadership," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(2), pages 21582440155, May.
    16. Kévin André, 2013. "Why Should Business Education Care About Care? Toward an Educare Perspective," Working Papers hal-00880241, HAL.
    17. Elena Beketova & Irina Leontyeva & Svetlana Zubanova & Aleksandr Gryaznukhin & Vasily Movchun, 2020. "RETRACTED ARTICLE: Creating an optimal environment for distance learning in higher education: discovering leadership issues," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 6(1), pages 1-6, June.
    18. Bernhard Resch & Chris Steyaert, 2020. "Peer Collaboration as a Relational Practice: Theorizing Affective Oscillation in Radical Democratic Organizing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(4), pages 715-730, July.
    19. Allal-Chérif, Oihab & Guijarro-García, María & Ballester-Miquel, José Carlos & Carrilero-Castillo, Agustín, 2021. "Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 354-364.
    20. Grace H. Fan & Zoe A. Cunliffe, 2024. "Transforming Relationships and Empowering Communities: The Role of Care Ethics in Solving Grand Challenges," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 191(2), pages 285-303, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:173:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-020-04526-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.