Metamorphosis: From ‘Nice Girls’ to ‘Nice Bitches’:Resisting Patriarchal Articulations of Professional Identity

This article explores the random strategies women adopt in resistingpatriarchal articulations of their professional identity and the kind oforganizational discourses women's resistance brings about. The focus ison describing the context, dynamics of contradictory tensions and ambivalenceinherent in situations of resisting. The article draws upon theauthors' own experiences in academia. In addition to participatory observation,the authors are using themselves as research instruments thatenable them to highlight the emotions and ambivalent dynamics in theconstruction of gendered identities and power relations in organizations.The study indicates that there are several sets of rules in motion in oneand the same social situation, such as the rules of organizationalbehaviour, rules of friendship and the rules of gender relations in publicplaces. By describing two overtly sexualized discourses that women'sresistance brought about, the article highlights that organizationalsexuality does not necessarily differ in kind or in degree from `streetsexuality' or sexuality in semi-public places. The study's findings arguethat it is important to extend research to both informal and semi-formalorganizational gatherings. These liminal spaces are important sites ofcommunicative struggles over organizational meanings and identities.