‘Woman as a Project’: Key Issues for Women Who Want to Get On

The following chapter explores senior women’s key issues for women who want to get on as managers and leaders. We present analysis drawn from a wider qualitative study of 81 senior women who hold UK FTSE 100/250 Executive/Non-Executive Director and/or influential leader positions , set against a background assumption that “male-defined constructions of work and career success continue to dominate organizational research and practice” (O’Neill et al, 2008: 727). The senior women participants have achieved a traditionally “masculine strategic situation” (Tyler, 2005: 569) in breaking through the gendered glass ceiling (Morrison et al., 1992) and in doing so may be viewed as no longer “the organizational second sex” or “Others of management” (Tyler, 2005: 572). The study, following Ellemers et al. (2012) and Chesterman et al. (2005), therefore explores experiences of women in high places who have overcome gendered barriers to achieve senior leader positions, and advances Terjesen et al.’s (2009: 332) call for “truly innovative research into the female directors’ experiences” currently lacking in the literature.