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Feminist Ethics and Women Leaders: From Difference to Intercorporeality

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Leadership, Gender, and Organization

Part of the book series: Issues in Business Ethics ((IBET,volume 63))

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Abstract

This paper problematises the ways women’s leadership has been understood in relation to male leadership rather than on its own terms. Focussing specifically on ethical leadership, we challenge and politicise the symbolic status of women in leadership by considering the practice of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. In so doing, we demonstrate how leadership ethics based on feminized ideals such as care and empathy are problematic in their typecasting of women as being simply the other to men. We apply different strategies of mimesis for develo** feminist leadership ethics that does not derive from the masculine. This offers a radical vision for leadership that liberates the feminine and women’s subjectivities from the masculine order. It also offers a practical project for changing women’s working lives through relationality, intercorporeality, collective agency, ethical openness with the desire for fundamental political transformation in the ways in which women can lead.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia

    Alison Pullen

  2. Centre for Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations (ARCIO), School of Management, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Sheena Vachhani

Authors
  1. Alison Pullen
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  2. Sheena Vachhani
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Correspondence to Alison Pullen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Mollie Painter

  2. Chicago, IL, USA

    Patricia H. Werhane

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Pullen, A., Vachhani, S. (2023). Feminist Ethics and Women Leaders: From Difference to Intercorporeality. In: Painter, M., Werhane, P.H. (eds) Leadership, Gender, and Organization. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 63. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24445-2_4

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