‘Female Heroes’: Celebrity Executives as Postfeminist Role Models
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12320 |
| Author | Maria Adamson,Elisabeth K. Kelan |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 30, 981–996 (2019)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12320
‘Female Heroes’: Celebrity Executives
as Postfeminist Role Models
Maria Adamson and Elisabeth K. Kelan 1
Department of Management, Leadership and Organisations,Middlesex University Business School, Middlesex
University London, The Boroughs, London NW4 4BT, UK, and 1Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield
University, Cranfield, Bedford MK43 0AL, UK
Corresponding author email: m.adamson@mdx.ac.uk
This paper explores the significance of contemporary celebrity businesswomen as role
models for women aspiring to leadership in business. We explore the kind of gendered
ideals they model and promote to women through their autobiographicalnarratives, and
analyse how these ideals map against a contemporary postfeminist sensibility to fur-
ther understand the potential of these role models to redress the under-representation of
women in management and leadership. Our findings show that celebrity businesswomen
present a role model that we call the ‘female hero’, a figure characterized by 3Cs: con-
fidence to jump over gendered barriers; control in managing these barriers; and courage
to push through them. We argue that the ‘female hero’ rolemodel is deeply embedded in
the contemporary postfeminist sensibility; it oers exclusivelyindividualized solutions to
inequality by calling on women to change themselves to succeed, and thereforehas limited
capacity to challenge the current gendered status quo in management and leadership.The
paper contributes to current literature on rolemodels by generating a more dierentiated
and socially situated understanding of distant female role models in business and extend-
ing our understanding of their potential to generate sustainable and long-term change in
advancing gendered change in management and leadership.
Introduction
Despite substantial advances in gender equality
in the workplace, research continues to highlight
women’sunder-representation in management and
leadership as an issue of both social and economic
concern (Bendl, 2008; Eagly and Carli, 2007). For
some time now,the popular press and business out-
lets have been rehearsing the argument that one of
the causes for such under-representationis the lack
of female role models in business (Catalyst, 2003;
Frazer, 2014; Pereira, 2012). Academic research
also highlights the particular importance of fema le
Elisabeth Kelanwould like to acknowledge the support of
a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship [MD130085],
which facilitated writing this paper.We also wish to thank
Alison Collins for proofreading and editing the paper.
A free video abstract to accompany this article can
be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
fj2HvTlgjLw&feature=youtu.be
role models for women’s success (e.g. Dasgupta
and Asgari, 2004; Latu et al., 2013; Lockwood,
2006; Sealy and Singh, 2010; Singh, Vinnicombe
and James, 2006). Interestingly, a number of busi-
nesswomen who have made it to the top – for in-
stance, executives like Sheryl Sandberg or Karren
Brady – have recently gained a celebrity-like sta-
tus and widely share their experiences and advice
on how women can become successful (Kapasi,
Sang and Sitko, 2016; Metz and Kumra, 2018).
However, to date little is known about the signif-
icance of such business celebrity role models and
their potential to redress the under-representation
of women in management and leadership.This pa-
per aims to fill this gap by exploring the gendered
ideals modelled and promoted by contemporary
celebrity businesswomen.By ‘ideals’ here we mean
the behaviours, characteristics and values that are
constructed as culturally and socially desirable for
a particular (work) roleand become nor ms against
C2018 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
982 M. Adamson and E.K. Kelan
which to assess performance (Acker, 1990, 1992;
Schein et al., 1996).
The focus on ‘distant’ female role models
(Gibson, 2003) (i.e. those in the public domain)
is important, as research indicates that women
look up to public figures for inspiration (Sealy
and Singh, 2010). Moreover, female celebrity
executives promote not only business ideas, but
also particular ideals of the kind of woman one
needs to be to achieve success (Adamson, 2017).
They disseminate these views through media
appearances and, increasingly, through publishing
their autobiographical accounts. Selling millions
of copies, these books are presented in the business
press as ‘must reads’ for aspiring businesswomen
(Revesencio, 2017) and provide a rich canvas
against which female readers may shape their
behaviour and identities (Metz and Kumra, 2018).
This paper analyses this increasingly popular
outlet to understand the gendered ideals modelled
by these celebrity executives.
To date, research on role models has mainly
focused on exploring individual women’s per-
formance and self-perceptions when exposed to
distant female role models (e.g. Dasgupta and
Asgari, 2004; Hoyt and Simon, 2011; Latu et al.,
2013; Taylor et al., 2011). The analysis of distant
role models themselves, particularly the gendered
ideals they model, has received little attention.
Given that not all distant female role models have
a positive impact on women or the gendered status
quo in organizations (Faniko et al., 2017; Hoyt and
Simon, 2011; Mavin, Grandy and Williams, 2014;
Taylor et al., 2011), such scrutiny is crucial to pro-
vide a better understanding of the characteristics
that mediate female role models’ eect. Further-
more, because women admire female role models
both for their work skills and the kind of gendered
behaviour they exhibit (Kelan and Mah, 2014;
Sealy and Singh, 2010), exploring the gendered
ideals promoted by distant female role models
in business is important to further theorize their
potential to impact on the under-representation
of women in management and leadership.
This inquiry is particularly timely given the
growing popular sentiment in developed Western
societies that gender equality has been achieved;
this contemporary gender regime has been termed
a ‘postfeminist sensibility’ (Gill, 2007, 2016; Gill,
Kelan and Schar, 2017; McRobbie, 2009). One
of its elements includes the emphasis on individ-
ualized solutions for gender advancement, such as
constant self-improvement, and business celebrity
autobiographies may be seen as a source of vari-
ous tips and advice that women mayuse to modify
themselves to be successful. Hence, understanding
whether or how the gendered ideals constructed by
these powerful women map against the postfem-
inist cultural landscape is vital to further under-
stand their impact and emancipatory potential. It
must be noted that we do not use postfeminism as
an identification; following Gill (2007, 2016), we
view it as a dominant set of cultural discourses
around gender.
This paper contributes to the literature on role
models by analysing celebrity businesswomen as
distant role models and the gendered ideals they
promote. Drawing on the analysis of their autobi-
ographies, we argue that they (re)present a specific
gendered role model, which we call ‘female hero’,
characterized by 3Cs: confidence to jump over gen-
dered barriers; control in managing these barriers;
and courage to push throughthem. Understanding
these gendered ideals in the context of a postfem-
inist sensibility leads us to question the extent to
which the celebrity business role models we ana-
lyzed may inspire sustainable change in the gen-
dered status quo in management and leadership.
Through oering a socially and culturally situated
analysis, this papercontributes to a more sociolog-
ical conceptualization of distant female role mod-
els in business, complementing existing literature
grounded in psychological theories that tends to
focus on individual identity dynamics and interac-
tions. In theorizing the emancipatory potential of
distant female role models in business, this paper
also contributes to debates in this journal on un-
derstanding the under-representation of women in
leadership (e.g. Broadbridge and Simpson, 2011;
Main and Gregory-Smith, 2018; Mavin, Grandy
and Williams, 2014; Mulcahy and Linehan, 2014),
and answers a recent call for management studies
to take account of broader questions of poli-
tics, economy and society (Wood and Budhwar,
2014).
The paper proceeds with a review of the current
research on gender and role models, explaining
existing gaps and how our analysis may further
existing theorization. We then outline the method-
ology and present our results. The conclusion
highlights how the analysis of distant role models
against the backdrop of postfeminist sensibility
extends the current research on female role models
in management and leadership.
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