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Gendered Constructions of Leadership in D anish Job Advertisements
Author(s) -
Askehave Inger,
Zethsen Karen Korning
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
gender, work and organization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.159
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0432
pISSN - 0968-6673
DOI - 10.1111/gwao.12053
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , identity (music) , danish , psychology , field (mathematics) , ideal (ethics) , social psychology , semantic field , advertising , political science , linguistics , computer science , business , mathematics , philosophy , physics , artificial intelligence , acoustics , pure mathematics , law
The purpose of this article is to consider the gender imbalance at top management level from a discourse analytical perspective. More specifically, it investigates the language of 39 D anish top executive job advertisements and considers which leadership identities are projected as desirable or necessary. This is done by carrying out two interlinked studies: a semantic field analysis of the sections in the job advertisements describing the leadership traits of the ideal candidate ( S tudy 1) and a study of MBA students' responses to extracts from the advertisements as far as gender is concerned ( S tudy 2). Semantic field analysis reveals that all the job advertisements are gender‐biased and that most traits described in the advertisements are associated with traditional or stereotypical masculine attributes. Study 2 confirms this finding, as respondents ( MBA students) assign a masculine identity to the vast majority of the extracts from the job advertisements.