Organizational Elites Recreating Themselves: The Gender Structure of National Sport Organizations

Abstract

This paper, and the study upon which it is based, focuses on the processes and dynamics that structure gender in organizations. More specifically, our purpose has been to understand and explain how organizational elites (males) work to recreate themselves in order to retain their power, and how women collude in this process. Our empirical data were drawn from in-depth interviews with over 70 women and men who hold professional and key volunteer positions in one of five Canadian national sport organizations. Our specific focus here, however, is a critical assessment of the plausible explanations for these observations. We draw upon the theoretical and empirical literature in four areas: voluntary participation and associations, organizational culture, critical organization theory, and most important, feminist perspectives on organization theory. This is an exploratory paper that attempts to explain the relations between women and men in a specific organizational context and how these relations can be changed so as to bring about a more equitable gender balance.