Achievement Femininity: Media Representation of the Professional Careers of Women Top Managers and Entrepreneurs

Abstract

The article focuses on the phenomenon of achievement femininity as career success and leadership of women entrepreneurs and top management, studied in the media representation. Media discourse as a platform of representation is to a certain extent responsible for the production in society of meanings associated with entrepreneurial labor and managerial and business careers. Аt the conceptual level, a shift is made towards a gendered understanding of entrepreneurship and leadership in management as work and career, with its gender regimes and the necessary balance of life and work. Understanding and eliminating gender inequality in these areas is associated with the re-conceptualization of entrepreneurial activity and top management as work performed by women who are aware of their differences, possess corporeality, reflective over the costs of traditional culture in a business context. In addition, the conceptual framework of the article links gender and power leadership position. In this sense, the analyzed professional women’s careers (N = 20), reflected in the media format Mediametrix, give an idea of the components of the public discourse about achievement femininity. Analytical work on meaningful coding and generalization identifies 10 final components: education and continuous self-education as accumulated social and professional capital; introspection and rationalization of the career path as a way of building female subjectivity; breaking stereotypes in the family circle and compromises with stereotypes in a professional career; role models with a shift towards female role models; an ambivalent women’s leadership and supportive environment of women’s communities; discursively flexible female leadership style; self-limitation, low self-esteem and low competitiveness as career barriers; male colleagues as competing associates; rationalization of the balance of life and work in the business logic of the project; distrust of quotas as an institutional mechanism and the search for solidarity women’s eco-systems.