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Doing Gender in Academic Education: The Paradox of Visibility
Author(s) -
Van Den Brink Marieke,
Stobbe Lineke
Publication year - 2009
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/j.1468-0432.2008.00428.x
Subject(s) - ambiguity , visibility , agency (philosophy) , sociology , field (mathematics) , epistemology , order (exchange) , doing gender , gender studies , social psychology , psychology , social science , philosophy , linguistics , physics , mathematics , pure mathematics , optics , economics , finance
Recent contributions in the field of gender and organization point to the notion of paradox to unveil the persistence of gender inequality in organizations. This article seeks to contribute to this growing body of knowledge. We used the notion of paradox to reveal the processes of doing gender at an earth science department of a Dutch university in order to find out whether gender segregation in academic and professional careers has already started during academic education. We focused on the study choices of female students in earth sciences and discovered the paradox of visibility, which enabled us to show the contradictory and ambiguous nature of how gender is done at this department. In this article we discuss the relationship between doing gender and paradox on a theoretical as well as an empirical level. We argue that paradoxes could be very useful when analysing doing gender in organizations, because paradoxes focus on the social process in which individual agency and social structures come together. We even suggest that paradoxes might help us to disrupt the hierarchical nature of the gender binary, because they allow for a constant reflection on ambiguity and contradictions in theorizing as well as in practice.