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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Sharon MavinORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This feminist study explores women’s hostilities between women in UK leadership as organizational misogyny. Organizations are mostly silent about misogyny, and gender studies have yet to empirically interrogate organizational misogyny and expose this as a critical method of women’s oppression. Here we explore women’s organizational misogyny (WOM) and its hidden logics. Taking a psychosocial approach and through analysis of 81 women leaders’ accounts, we conceptualize WOM as social-structural-political and affective, operating on patriarchy’s behalf. We theorize UK leadership as fertile ground for women’s internalization of patriarchy and organizational misogyny. WOM is not the fault of individual women. Leadership is unsafe for women leaders provoking unconscious psychoanalytical strategies; collective social defense, splitting and projective identification into women, which surface in misogyny to women. We empirically illustrate and theorize three logics of WOM which exclude and include, control and constrain, and stick and scar. We demonstrate that WOM acts as patriarchy’s “first line of defence”, handcuffing women to its oppression and propose that WOM paves the way for men’s organizational misogyny. We conclude with future research and practical interventions to battle organizational misogyny and commit to its eradication.
Author(s): Mavin S, Grandy G
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Gender Work & Organization
Year: 2026
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 11/07/2026
Acceptance date: 04/06/2026
Date deposited: 16/07/2026
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.70200
DOI: 10.1111/gwao.70200
Data Access Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available upon request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions
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