“Nobody Really Wants to be Called Bossy or Domineering”

Abstract

This article examines talks given by 12 female media professionals at a Southern US university’s center on women in communication between 2013 and 2015 to identify the influence of hegemonic masculinity in industry speak about women and professionalism in the fields of journalism, advertising, and public relations. This paper applies a feminist critique of discussions about “work–life balance,” “leaning in,” “emotion,” and language about the role of technology and innovation in women’s careers, to argue that inherent in these discussions about media professionalism are traits that perpetuate binary notions of feminine–masculine traits of the workplace. As a whole, these messages fail to account for notions of intersectionality and perpetuate inequality and masculine power for future professionals.

KEYWORDS:

• feminist analysis
• industry speak
• intersectionality
• professionalism
• women
• workplace rhetoric

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for most helpful comments and suggestions. Moreover, we thank the speakers for sharing their stories and for the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication for its support. While the Center did not fund this particular study, it did fund other work by students involved in this analysis.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication at Florida International University in Miami has a mission to “empower both women professionals and academics in all the fields of communication, in order to develop visionaries and leaders who can make a difference in their communities and their profession.” The aims of its many seminars is to “make top national leaders in the field of communication available throughout the year to optimize the opportunities to hear from those who have achieved success and leadership in the field.” Undergraduates involved in this study were funded by the Center to work on related research. This study emerged later.

2 The 12 speakers constituted the invited number of speakers invited during this timeframe.

3 All speakers approved the use of their comments to be included in research on topics related to women and communication.

4 We do not subscribe for the purposes of this study to these gendered qualities, nor do we suggest that these qualities are or should be assigned to all individuals who identify with a particular group. Gendered terms and descriptions are presented here to reflect hegemonic presentations of identity within the industry.

5 Again, while speakers were asked to discuss professionalization and preferred professional traits, speakers were specifically asked by organizers to focus on discussions targeted to those who identify as women in the field.

6 Throughout this article, we recognize that identity is both subscribed and ascribed.