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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton November 1, 2013

Negotiating professional and leader identities in interviews with female Indian professionals

  • Prachee Sehgal,

    Prachee Sehgal is a participant of the Fellow Programme in Management at the Indian Institute of Management Indore, India in the Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management area. Her doctoral work is associated with understanding the antecedents of teacher effectiveness. Apart from performance management of teachers, she has a keen interest in analyzing women identity issues and their leadership behavior.

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    , Dorien Van De Mieroop,

    Dorien Van De Mieroop is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Leuven, where she teaches Dutch linguistics. Her research is situated within the field of discourse analysis, with a particular interest in the discursive construction and interactional negotiation of identity, which she analyzes in a variety of settings ranging from business and medical settings to research interviews on a variety of different topics (e.g. World War II, The Belgian Congo, Pre Civil War slavery in the US). She has published extensively, for example in journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Discourse & Society, Discourse Studies, Narrative Inquiry and Pragmatics.

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    and Abha Chatterjee,

    Abha Chatterjee is faculty in the area of Communcation at Indian Institute of Management Indore where she teaches Business Communication. She has over two decades of experience in teaching, in-company training programmes and consultancy. She has international as well as national research publications in refereed journals such as International Journal of Business Ethics, Teaching Business Ethics, Dialogues et Cultures. She has also co-authored the Indian edition of the book titled Perspectives in Business Ethics by Linda Hartmann published by Tata McGraw Hill in 2006 and a book titled Business Communication Today by Bovee and Thill published in 2010 (Pearson). Her research interests are in the domain of cross-cultural studies, ethics and communication.

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From the journal Lodz Papers in Pragmatics

Abstract

Existing research on women’s construction of professional identities and, more specifically, on leader identities in the workplace, has traditionally focused mainly on western contexts. This article aims to extend this focus by investigating the position of women in the workplace in India. We do this by discursively analyzing audio-taped semi-structured interviews with women who are working in the corporate sector in India. The aim of these analyses is to present a number of case studies about the unique challenges that women face at the workplace in the urban Indian context, especially when they take up leadership positions. The issues they grapple with are the collision of the traditional dominant discourses on appropriate female behavior and the new professional identities that these women wish to embrace. The paper discusses how these female professionals mainly construct two quite diverging identities: either as nurturing mentors or as aggressive professionals who are involved in activities traditionally viewed as “a man’s domain”. Conclusions are then drawn regarding how these professional identities acquiesce to, counter, or — as is the case in one interview — carefully mould, hegemonic discourses of femininity in India.

About the authors

Prachee Sehgal,

Prachee Sehgal is a participant of the Fellow Programme in Management at the Indian Institute of Management Indore, India in the Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management area. Her doctoral work is associated with understanding the antecedents of teacher effectiveness. Apart from performance management of teachers, she has a keen interest in analyzing women identity issues and their leadership behavior.

Dorien Van De Mieroop,

Dorien Van De Mieroop is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Leuven, where she teaches Dutch linguistics. Her research is situated within the field of discourse analysis, with a particular interest in the discursive construction and interactional negotiation of identity, which she analyzes in a variety of settings ranging from business and medical settings to research interviews on a variety of different topics (e.g. World War II, The Belgian Congo, Pre Civil War slavery in the US). She has published extensively, for example in journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Discourse & Society, Discourse Studies, Narrative Inquiry and Pragmatics.

Abha Chatterjee,

Abha Chatterjee is faculty in the area of Communcation at Indian Institute of Management Indore where she teaches Business Communication. She has over two decades of experience in teaching, in-company training programmes and consultancy. She has international as well as national research publications in refereed journals such as International Journal of Business Ethics, Teaching Business Ethics, Dialogues et Cultures. She has also co-authored the Indian edition of the book titled Perspectives in Business Ethics by Linda Hartmann published by Tata McGraw Hill in 2006 and a book titled Business Communication Today by Bovee and Thill published in 2010 (Pearson). Her research interests are in the domain of cross-cultural studies, ethics and communication.

Published Online: 2013-11
Published in Print: 2013-11

©[2013] by De Gruyter Mouton Berlin

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