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Management Communication Quarterly
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Family CEOs

A Feminist Analysis of Corporate Mothering Discourses

Caryn E. Medved

Ohio University, medved{at}ohio.edu

Erika L. Kirby

Creighton University

Women construct their identities amidst contradictory and competing societal expectations about career success and motherhood. Due to the enormous value society places on our organizational lives and to the contradictory rhetoric on women’s roles today, the ability of stay-at-home mothers to construct their identities is argued to be in crisis. The purpose of this feminist critical-interpretive study is to interrogate corporate discourse as a new linguistic frame for defining mothering identity. Through textual analysis of online support Web sites and self-help books or guidebooks, four subject positions of stay-at-home mothers as professionals, managers, productive citizens, and irreplaceable workers are articulated and problematized. Corporate mothering is then further deconstructed in relation to historical ideologies of mothering, contemporary organizational privilege, feminist and postfeminist debates on women’s roles today, and raced and classed ideologies of mothering. Finally, implications for feminist praxis and organizational communication scholarship are addressed.

Key Words: work • mothering • feminism • discourse • corporate • domestic work

Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 4, 435-478 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0893318904273690
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