Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Angela Rayner (Member of Parliament) and the “Basic Instinct Ploy”
T2 - Intersectional misrecognition of women leaders' legitimacy, productive resistance and flexing (patriarchal) discourse
AU - Stead, Valerie
AU - Mavin, Sharon
AU - Elliott, Carole
PY - 2024/1/1
Y1 - 2024/1/1
N2 - AbstractThis paper interrogates a shift in patriarchal media discourse related to women leaders' recognition and legitimation in the UK. We conduct a multimodal discourse analysis of an online newspaper article about the UK politician and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, and analyzed public responses. Understanding the media as a means to distribute power and enable the challenging of norms, we contribute a theory of intersectional misrecognition in media's representation of women political leaders. This reveals an enduring and dynamic subordinate status of women leaders, shown specifically through the intersection of gender and class. We theorize that while women leaders continue to be misrecognized in the media, destabilizing their legitimacy, there is a demonstrable flexing of patriarchal discourse combined with stronger and accelerated resistance to ongoing sexism. We identify this resistance as productive in its call for consequences and a redistribution of cultural values, reflecting a discursive shift toward a productive resistance of resilient gender norms, evident in the intersection of gender with class. Intersectional misrecognition has value in making inequalities explicit for women leaders and where there may be productive tensions with potential to mobilize for change.
AB - AbstractThis paper interrogates a shift in patriarchal media discourse related to women leaders' recognition and legitimation in the UK. We conduct a multimodal discourse analysis of an online newspaper article about the UK politician and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, and analyzed public responses. Understanding the media as a means to distribute power and enable the challenging of norms, we contribute a theory of intersectional misrecognition in media's representation of women political leaders. This reveals an enduring and dynamic subordinate status of women leaders, shown specifically through the intersection of gender and class. We theorize that while women leaders continue to be misrecognized in the media, destabilizing their legitimacy, there is a demonstrable flexing of patriarchal discourse combined with stronger and accelerated resistance to ongoing sexism. We identify this resistance as productive in its call for consequences and a redistribution of cultural values, reflecting a discursive shift toward a productive resistance of resilient gender norms, evident in the intersection of gender with class. Intersectional misrecognition has value in making inequalities explicit for women leaders and where there may be productive tensions with potential to mobilize for change.
KW - intersectional misrecognition
KW - women leaders
KW - media discourse
KW - flexing
KW - class
KW - productive resistance
KW - legitimation
U2 - 10.1111/gwao.13050
DO - 10.1111/gwao.13050
M3 - Journal article
VL - 31
SP - 152
EP - 170
JO - Gender, Work and Organization
JF - Gender, Work and Organization
SN - 0968-6673
IS - 1
ER -