Women Managers in High Tech: A Discursive Perspective

This paper brings a discourse analytic perspective to an examination of the experiences of women managers working in the high tech sector. A detailed examination of the discursive descriptions of strategies, experiences, and advice reveals a tension between the use of unequivocal language for providing advice for managing everyday gender challenges encountered in the high tech workplace and the use of much more tempered language when trying to articulate an understanding for the basis of the issues and when discussing recommendations for change. The paper highlights the insights into gendered organizational experiences and understandings garnered through a close examination of organizational discourse.