Ruth Simpson

• Brunel University London

This article explores the experiences of white, male manual workers in Hastings, East Sussex – a mid-sized UK seaside town that has undergone long-term decline in employment opportunities. Informed by the theoretical insights from Bourdieu, it focuses on the role of place in shaping the employment paths of a group that has arguably been ‘left behin...

Mobilising postfeminism as an analytical device, this article re-examines how women business owners discursively engage with the identity of the mumpreneur. Drawing on interviews with women business owners, this article reconceptualises the compatibility between motherhood and entrepreneurship associated with the mumpreneur, in terms of a hybrid id...

Based on an ethnographic study of male manual workers in Blackpool, a large seaside town in the United Kingdom, and drawing on Bourdieu as a theoretical frame, this article explores the role of place in understanding conditions and experiences of precarity. With higher than average levels of deprivation, seaside towns have experienced particular em...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the “gendering” of contamination in the context of COVID-19 where “gendering” is taken to include other, cross-cutting areas of disadvantage. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on secondary sources to explore gender and COVID-19. Findings The authors show that contamination is rooted in st...

Drawing largely on a high profile case of unequal pay at the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) as an illustrative example, this conceptual paper considers differences and interrelationships between merit and deservingness, where the latter captures how, through appropriate performances, merit is given recognition and value. We propose a perfor...

Drawing on two studies of those involved in physically tainted jobs, this chapter seeks to explore what constraints might compel or hinder the application of particular discursive ideologies and strategies in battling stigma attached to these jobs. The findings demonstrate how workers count on labour market participation as a way of preserving thei...

Despite growing interest in video-based methods in organizational research, the use of collaborative ethnographic documentaries is rare. Organizational research could benefit from the inclusion of collaborative ethnographic documentaries to (a) enable the participation of “difficult to research” groups, (b) better access the material, embodied, or...

This article analyses the meanings tattooists as ‘body workers’ construct around their work. Based on an ethnographic study, the research finds that tattooists adhere to notions of non-conformity, unconventional artistry and professionalism. We locate these meanings within the cultural values and aesthetics of ‘cool’ as an admired set of attributes...

This article reviews the growing literature on dirty work, i.e., work that is seen as disgusting or degrading and argues for a more “embodied” understanding of such work. It points to a tendency in the literature to focus on the nature of the task or role and on social and moral dimensions of the work at the expense of its material and embodied asp...

Purpose This paper aims to draw on Ashcraft’s (2013) metaphor of the “glass slipper” (which highlights the need for alignment between occupational identity and embodied social identities of workers) to show how merit may not adhere to individuals when social identity in the form of gender, race or class fails to fit the definition and perceived cha...

Drawing on a relational approach and based on an ethnographic study of street cleaners and refuse collectors, we redress a tendency towards an overemphasis on the discursive by exploring the co-constitution of the material and symbolic dynamics of dirt. We show how esteem-enhancing strategies that draw on the symbolic can be both supported and unde...

Jump to sectionABSTRACTIntroductionUnderstanding work ethic and moral energy through LebensführungWork ethic literature within a Turkish contextMethodologyFindingsMoral energy: a rational and secular conceptMoral energy: a shared/communicated conceptMoral energy: an action-oriented conceptDiscussionConclusion This paper explores the hitherto neglec...

Through an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ (refuse collection and street cleaning), this article explores how masculinity and class intersect — how, in a mutually constitutive sense, they produce attitudes and practices, strengths and vulnerabilities, which are shaped by shifting relations of privilege and power. We find resistance to class subo...

This chapter explores potential methodological tools and procedures which could be applied to the study of dirty work. In particular, it looks at how to offer voice to multiple subjects, especially to subjects that might lack ‘status-generated’ access to discursive resources. The quality of the data often depends upon the participants’ ability to e...

This chapter explores the emotional dimensions of dirty work. In particular, looking at the meat trade, it investigates how butchers draw on and activate emotions in managing the ‘dirtiness’ of the job. Thus, we address the question: what emotions do butchers convey as they discuss key aspects of work practices and their work role? While a body of...

The meanings that workers assign to their work are predicated to a large extent on notions and experiences of recognition—as a potential source of self-realisation and positive feelings of self-worth. Drawing on Alex Honneth and his conceptualisation of the struggle for recognition and Bourdieu’s understanding of habitus, this chapter sets out to d...

Drawing centrally on the work of Bourdieu, this book has explored experiences and understandings of dirty work through a focus on men working in physically tainted occupations—specifically, butchers, street cleaners, refuse collectors, and graffiti removers. Overcoming a relative neglect of the area in organisation studies, the book set out to deve...

In the previous chapter we have seen how social position and associated moral injury—the withdrawal of recognition at the interface of economic and moral principles where dirty workers fail to match the expectations of the neo-liberal market—may potentially lead to forms of resistance. Picking up this theme, this chapter explores resistance in dirt...

As further background to our empirical chapters, this chapter looks at masculinity, whiteness, class, and dirt. In sympathy with Bourdieu, we position understandings of masculinity as relational, as embodied, and as configured in practice—given meaning in specific institutional contexts. The chapter considers some of the broader pressures on employ...

As the social psychologist Marie Jahoda (1982), one of the first to consider work-based meanings in any explicit sense, argued, work offers meanings that are less readily available from any other activity or institution: work gives time structures to the day; prompts contact with others, giving the opportunity to participate in a collective activit...

As we discussed in Chap. 4, in highlighting the interdependencies between discourse and materiality, Hardy and Thomas (2014) point to the significance of bodies and space as well as objects and practices in understanding relations of power. The body is the site of ‘local, intimate and intricate power relations’, enacted and contested through the in...

Thus far in this book we have employed the terms ‘dirt’ and ‘dirtiness’ without a detailed account of what we mean by them. The concept of dirty work itself has arisen from an enduring set of underpinning debates surrounding the material and symbolic facets of ‘dirt’ and how the nexus of taint, morality, social ranking, and social division extends...

This chapter seeks to bring bodies and embodiment into understandings of dirty work. Drawing on Bourdieu, it highlights the significance of the body and of embodied dispositions and practices; the interrelations between gender, class, and race; and the simultaneity of the material and the symbolic in understandings and experiences of such work. We...

This book is about dirty work, that is, work that is seen as distasteful and/or undesirable. More specifically, it explores the experiences of men undertaking ‘physically tainted’ occupations (Ashforth and Kreiner 1999), namely, jobs that primarily involve direct contact with physical dirt. Through an ethnographic study of white working class men e...

This chapter builds directly from our discussion in Chap. 3, Dirt in Material Worlds. At the conclusion of the previous chapter, we argued that since the early paradigmatic literature on dirty work, there has been something of a ‘return to the material’: a direct consideration of how ‘matter matters’ in the context of dirty work. We observed, nonet...

This insightful new study explores an emerging and growing interest in Sociology and Organization Studies which concerns the meanings and experiences of ‘dirty’ work. Based on a unique study of male street cleaners, refuse collectors, graffiti removers and butchers, and drawing on Bourdieu as a theoretical frame, it presents an ‘embodied’ understan...

We revisit Hakim's influential preference theory to demonstrate how it is both reflective of postfeminism and generative of its values and practices. We differentiate between two interpretations of postfeminism - first a surface-level 'successful but obsolete' version articulated by Hakim and second a multilayered account of postfeminism as a discu...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how QROM has become an outlet that gives voice to de-valued and marginalised work/research and those who undertake it. The authors present an overview of the research published in the journal over the past ten years that has provided rich accounts of hidden and marginalised groups and experiences...

Through a study of the butcher trade, this article explores the meanings that men give to 'dirty work', that is jobs or roles that are seen as distasteful or 'undesirable'. Based on qualitative data, we identify three themes from butchers' accounts that relate to work-based meanings: sacrifice through physicality of work; loss and nostalgia in the...

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to detail how the ethnographic approach can be usefully adopted in the context of researching dirty or undesirable work. Drawing on a study of refuse collectors, it shows how ethnography can enable a fuller social articulation of the experiences and meanings of a social group where conventional narrative discl...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of gender, sexuality and occupation and to analyse how male cabin crew utilize space in managing gender identity. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on a project where interviews were conducted with 17 male cabin crew, all aged < 35 years, from 5 different airlines in ai...

Through a study of small scale independent theatre companies, generally known as fringe', this article explores how passion is drawn on and activated as company founders seek an outlet for their work. Drawing on a social constructionist approach to emotions, we highlight the multiplicity of passion through its positive and negative dimensions as we...

Neo-liberalist agendas have restructured the sites of production, consumption and migration, in late modernity with gender playing a pivotal role in the reshaping of these sites. However, narratives around neo-liberalism and migration have largely ignored an analysis of emotions. Ahmed (2000, p. 90) shows that ‘the journeys of migration involve a s...

Southeast Asia has become a nucleus for the feminization of migration, with countries in the region becoming increasingly absorbed into the global economy (Huguet, 2003; Piper, 2003; Piper and Roces, 2003). The opening up of national borders as a result of free trade agreements across countries has resulted in the free flow of goods and services. T...

In the last chapter, it was shown how recent migrants often end up in ‘3D’ work that is dirty, dangerous and dull. In this respect, migrants often fill up jobs that the indigenous workers reject — so that they are likely to be in lower paid, monotonous work that is poorly unionized and that does not match their qualification levels (Holgate, 2005;...

This chapter considers the emotional dimensions of migration in a European context. Specifically the chapter explores how female Polish migrants1 working in ‘low-level’ service jobs draw on emotions as they manage their identities. The interface between emotions, identity and migratory transitions has been an under-researched area of concern within...

The experiences and transformative nature of transmigration on individuals involved in the process are often ignored in analyses of citizenship rights and human rights of individuals. Coll (2010, p. 96) notes that: Much of the contemporary academic literature on citizenship focuses on macro processes of legal and state-generated definitions of who...

As has been shown in the chapters of this book, transmigration is not restricted to economic migration and there are of course different forms of transmigration, including transmigrant marriages, transmigrant entertainment workers and sex-work, transmigrant domestic workers and asylum seekers and refugees who are fleeing persecution, among others....

Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the history of migration into California and in particular the San Francisco Bay Area and consider how migration into California has defined the cultural, social and economic profile of the people and state of California. The first part of the chapter looks at the demographic profile of migration into California, focusing...

The ‘emotionalization’ of the social sciences, particularly within contemporary social theorizing, can be seen as part of a broader shift towards reconceptualizing ‘the social’ within an understanding of social scientific analysis and more broadly in terms of individual and organizational contexts. Greco and Stenner (2008, p. 5) conceptualize ‘the...

Emotions in Transmigration: Transformation, Movement and Identity has investigated the intersection of migration narratives, emotion and identity. In doing so it has shown the gendered nature of migration, whatever form it takes, and has also shown that the experiences of migration cannot be understood completely without an analysis of gender. The...

Based on data from a recently completed project in Australia, this chapter explores the gendered nature of 'dirty work' and how male nurses perceive and manage the 'taint' associated with nursing care. From Hughes (1951) dirty work includes tasks, occupations and roles that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading, while the management...

This edited book sets out a research agenda for the study of dirty work - generally defined as tasks, occupations and roles that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999). Through the different occupational settings presented, it explores the identities, meanings, relations and spaces of dirty work and how t...

This paper revisits Kanter's (1977) seminal work Men and Women of the Corporation, rereading her account of numerical advantage and disadvantage through a poststructuralist lens which exposes hidden dimensions of gendered power. This lens is captured in the ‘(In)visibility Vortex’ (Lewis and Simpson, 2010) which highlights struggles and tensions ar...

This paper sets out to explore the emotional dimensions of dirty work. In particular, through a study of the meat trade, it investigates how butchers draw on and activate emotions in managing the 'dirtiness' of the job. It demonstrates the significance of often conflicting emotions of disgust, shame, pleasure and pride. Further, in the context of r...

Using an exploratory qualitative approach based on in-depth interviews with 38 junior and middle managers, and informed by institutional theory, this article explores how Nigerian managers conceptualise career success. Results indicate that in contrast to some Western-based research, managers prioritise ‘objective’ (e.g. achieving financial stabili...

Purpose – The paper aims to draw on rational choice theory (RCT) to explore factors underpinning the decision by female entrepreneurs in Nigeria to enter self-employment. Design/methodology/approach – A survey research design involving the use of questionnaire and structured interviews to obtain primary data was adopted. Primary data pertain to 300...

This paper celebrates the progress that has been made in gender and management research over the last 25 years and outlines some current challenges faced. The British Journal of Management has disseminated many of the key debates, from empirical and theoretical work, that have helped to both frame and reflect developments in the field – and this pa...

The paper examines the validity of stereotypical image of challenges female entrepreneurs (FE) encounter in the development of their business. The study which is conducted in the context of Nigeria, a large transition economy, throws light on a number of general and culture-dominated issues specific to traditional societies. FE, particularly those...

Purpose – This editorial aims to introduce the special issue on meritocracy, difference and choice. Design/methodology/approach – The first part is a commentary on key issues in the study of the notions of meritocracy, difference and choice. The second part presents the six papers in the special issue. Findings – Five of the six papers in this spec...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how women in senior management draw on discourses of merit and special contribution in making sense of the contradictions and tensions they experience in their working lives. It has a particular focus on how women explain possible experiences of disadvantage and the extent to which they see such exper...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges female entrepreneurs face in the development of their business in the context of Nigeria. In so doing, it addresses a gap in the literature on the experiences of female entrepreneurs in a non‐Western context and acknowledges the contribution that women make in this area of work. Desi...

This article explores the experiences of liminality through the accounts of Chinese students on a UK-based MBA programme. The transient nature of the MBA experience, as well as the international status of the Chinese student, is resonant with conceptualizations of liminality as ‘in between’ space. Based on semi-structured interviews with 20 MBA gra...

Issues of visibility and invisibility are becoming increasingly apparent in gender research in organizations. Such work is based on a recognition of the significance of (in)visibility in understanding experiences of advantage and disadvantage in work contexts — and how these experiences can impact on identity, attitudes, culture and careers. From a...

This chapter explores how men experience visibility. In particular, it considers the challenges men face in the ‘eye of the gaze’ (Townley, 1992). The gaze captures some of the power dynamics of visibility and the disciplinary and controlling effects of surveillance as individuals are subject to normalizing scrutiny and judgements. Power is implica...

Drawing from institutional theory, this article explores `boundaryless' careers and the nature of career boundaries in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in Nigeria. The specific objectives are to explore: 1) whether career mobility in Nigeria reproduces or challenges contemporary projections of the `boundaryless' career (i...

Purpose – This paper sets out to explore the gendered nature of the MBA and the benefits men and women gain from the course. In so doing it aims to highlight a relationship between the masculinity of the MBA and the “un‐development” of men. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on secondary data and critiques the masculinity of the MBA ped...

The paper presents a qualitative study of men who do traditionally female dominated and feminized work (specifically nursing and primary school teaching). Men are often seen as not only a minority to women in these contexts, but also their Other. The paper explores the processes of doing gender as a social and discursive practice, highlighting the...

Exploring how men in service and caring occupations (cabin crew, primary school teachers, nurses and librarians) both 'do' and 'undo' gender as they manage the potential mismatch between gender and occupational identity, this book engages with the key theoretical concepts of identity, visibility and emotions to examine men's experiences.

This article explores gender reflexivity through the accounts of men discussing women and of women discussing men as professional nurses. Drawing on data from an Australian-based study, and with an orientation to gender as practice, it investigates the skills and aptitudes that each is seen to bring to the job, how men and women view the other's pe...

This paper explores how Arlie Hochschild's concept of emotional labour put the service sector and gender at the heart of our understanding of work in contemporary organisations. In The Managed Heart, Hochschild provides us with the means to understand the nature and commercial value of the social interactions involved in the delivery of a service....

This chapter considers issues of gender, service and emotions. While there have been several studies on the gendered nature of services (discussed below), there has long been a ‘gender gap’ in studies of emotion (Knights and Surman, 2008) — a gap that reflects the implicit assumption that emotions are the domain of women. This implicit assumption h...

In the last chapter, I positioned the theoretical orientation of the book as one of ‘doing’ gender. In other words, rather than seeing gender as a stable attribute or category that ‘attaches’ to the individual, gender is performed in action and interaction. Thus, gender can be seen to be a dynamic: an accomplishment (West and Zimmerman, 2002) or ac...

This book has focused on the experiences of men in four gender-atypical occupations involving levels of service and care, namely cabin crew, nursing, primary school teaching and librarianship. It has explored career issues and career dynamics, the implications of men’s ‘token’ status for experiences in the organization, perceptions of gender differ...

This chapter sets out to explore how men who occupy ‘para-professional’ service roles, specifically cabin crew, mobilize and utilize the spaces of their working lives as they manage their identity in a non-traditional role. Authors from social geography (e.g. Gregson and Rose, 2000; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1994, 2005) as well as from organization s...

This chapter seeks to uncover the significance of bodies within the profession of nursing. Bodies have long been a neglected area of research in organization studies — often invisible despite their centrality in any work context. In this respect, we are our bodies and they are therefore deployed to greater and lesser extents in the work we do. It i...

In this chapter we explore how male primary school teachers negotiate discourses of professionalism and care. This is set in the context of recent changes in the meanings and practices of professionalism which, in teaching as in some other occupations, has led to tensions in terms of the norms and values underpinning day-to-day activities and proce...

This paper sets out the results of a research project which compares benefits from the MBA in China and the UK. Drawing on and modifying Bourdieu’s forms of capital theory, it highlights areas of commonality and difference. In particular it demonstrates that some forms of capital (e.g. institutional, social) transcend national boundaries and are eq...

Purpose – Drawing on institutional theory, this study sets out to explore the career anchors that exist among information technology (IT) workers in Nigeria and also to establish the strongest anchors in this context. Design/methodology/approach – This research adopted a two-pronged methodological approach, which involved the use of 30 semi-structu...

Drawing on recent work on critical management education (CME), I explore the masculinity of the MBA and call for a "feminization" of course content and design. The masculinity of the MBA is considered through the emphasis on "hard" skills (culturally associated with masculinity) and through its influence on three key areas: the values of management...

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore claims about the changing nature of careers by focusing on how information technology (IT) workers enact careers in the context of Nigeria. The theoretical framework guiding this research is that societal context (social structure and institutions) has an influence on the career patterns exhibited by individual...

Men and the Language of Emotions, by Dariusz Galasinski. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 0333995740.

This paper presents a review of the literature on gender and organizations through the twin concepts of ‘voice’ and ‘visibility’. In gender studies, as in other areas, the concepts have been used at different levels of abstraction to analyse inequality and exclusion. However, we argue that their potential richness has not been fully exploited and w...

This article explores the experiences of men in non-traditional occupations. In particular it focuses on the dynamics of career entry, career orientation (namely, a preference for intrinsic or extrinsic rewards) and the possible existence, nature and consequences of role strain. Four occupational groups are examined: nurses, cabin crew, librarians...

Against the background of an earlier study, this article presents the findings of a Canadian-based survey of career benefits from the MBA. Results indicate first that gender and age interact to influence perceptions of career outcomes and second that both men and women gain intrinsic benefits from the MBA. However, intrinsic benefits vary by gender...

Against the background of an earlier UK study, this paper presents the findings of a Canadian based survey of career benefits from the MBA. Results indicate firstly that gender and age interact to influence perceptions of career outcomes (young men gain most in terms of extrinsic benefits of career change and pay), and secondly that both men and wo...

This article explores the career progress of female MBA graduates in Canada and the UK and the nature of career barriers experienced in each context. Results suggest that while Canadian women have similar career profiles to men, women in the UK lag behind their male counterparts after graduation from the course. At the same time, UK women encounter...

This paper presents the findings of a research project on the implications of men's non-traditional career choices for their experiences within the organization and for gender identity. The research is based on 40 in-depth interviews with male workers from four occupational groups: librarian-ship, cabin crew, nurses and primary school teachers. Res...

This article discusses results from a research project which set out to investigate gender differences in the nature and experience of bullying within the higher education sector. Gender differences emerged in the form and perception of bullying as well as in target responses. Results also indicate that, irrespective of gender, bullies can capture...

This paper examines the impact of restructuring within the transport and logistics sector on women managers working at senior and less senior (middle/junior management) levels of the organization. The majority of women experienced increased performance pressures and heavier workloads as well as an increase in working hours. At the same time, there...

This paper explores the relevance of Kanter's early work on the numerical distribution of women in organizations for an understanding of the position of highly qualified women managers today. Despite the progress that women managers have made over the last twenty years, various consistencies stubbornly remain, particularly concerning the impact of...

This article reports the findings of a study of Canadian MBA graduates that explores the skills, knowledge and capabilities which they gained from the programme within the context of a career-competency framework. It concludes that the development of knowing-why career competencies (relating to career values, meanings and motivations) were the most...

Examines the impact of restructuring on the career progression of women transport and logistics managers. Research to date has indicated that restructuring can have detrimental effects on women managers, as middle management levels are reduced through delayering and as the organisation takes on a more competitive and “masculine” culture. Results fr...

This paper presents and discusses results of a research project on the personal and career benefits of the MBA. These results suggest women value the experience of doing the course and that this gives them greater >intrinsic= benefits of enhanced confidence and self worth. Men gain greater >extrinsic= benefits of enhanced pay and status and place a...

This article sets out to consider the benefits of the MBA and the extent to which these benefits vary by gender and by organizational sector. To explain the differential career progress of men and women MBAs, it uses as analytical frameworks the sex difference approach, which emphasizes differences in individual attributes, and the organizational s...

This article presents evidence on the career success of young women managers and suggests an interaction between age and seniority as young women managers outpace their male counterparts in career progression. Hence the glass ceiling may be seen as “time bounded”. Three alternative explanations are presented: a sea change in women’s careers; that y...

This paper explores the impact of the numerical distribution of women at different levels of the organisation on the experiences of women managers. It aims to build on work in this area which argues that gender imbalance creates an organisational culture that is hostile or resistant to women. Findings of a research project on women managers, on the...

This paper discusses the results from a survey on the gendered impact of organizational change and the implications for workloads and working hours. These results suggest that restructuring leads to increased workloads and that the pressure of long working hours is associated with male-dominated organizations. Restructuring is also associated with...

The MBA as the top management qualification has enjoyed a considerable increase in popularity. However, doubts exist about the accessibility and success of the course for women managers. Describes a research project which aimed to make a comparison of the potential returns of an MBA for men and women. Also aims to explore the barriers which exist f...