Doctoral dissertation defended on Jan 20: (Taija Townsend)
13.01.2012
Taija Townsend (MA, University of Helsinki) defended her dissertation Women as Leaders in Public Discourse in the subject area of International Business Communication on Friday, January 20, 2012 at 12.15 pm in the Chydenia Building, Stora Enso Hall (3rd floor), Aalto University School of Economics, Runeberginkatu 22-24.
Associate Professor Geert Jacobs (Ghent University) acted as opponent, and Professor Emerita Mirjaliisa Charles acted as custos.
Further information: Taija Townsend (taija.townsend [at] aalto [dot] fi), tel. +358 (0)40 7275983
Women as Leaders in Public Discourse
Media challenge stereotypical representations of femininity
Gender does not always connote stereotypical meanings in public discourse. In contrast to previous research, the dissertation shows that the media do not only reinforce existing gender stereotypes but that they also challenge stereotypical representations of femininity.
The findings also show that women leaders use gender as a strategy for image management.
As an investigation on communication, gender and leadership, Taija Townsend’s study examines how women leaders operating in the political and business domains are characterized in public discourse.
The main argument of the doctoral dissertation is that the meaning of gender in relation to leadership is currently transforming and there are multiple understandings of gender competing for legitimacy in our global society.
Women exploit gender stereotypes in image management
The thesis focuses on the representation of two high-status women leaders, namely Hillary Clinton (U.S. Secretary of State) and Nicola Horlick (U.K. captain of industry). It looks at the manner in which they are portrayed in news reports as well as the manner in which they present themselves in autobiographies.
In the data, Hillary Clinton and Nicola Horlick are not consistently described in accordance with existing gender stereotypes. Rather, media characterizations of both women leaders depend on the situational context and especially on whether or not gender stereotypes make the overall news story more or less newsworthy.
In their autobiographies, Clinton and Horlick exploit existing gender stereotypes in order to create their own leadership images. This suggests that the meaning of gender can be changed and that new perceptions can be composed through old perceptions of women leaders.
The doctoral dissertation draws attention to linguistic communication processes and the idea that meanings of social phenomena are generated at all levels of language use.