Date/Time
Date(s) - 17/05/2023 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Audience:
RESEARCH METHODS ON GENDER AND MANAGEMENT SEMINARS – ONLINE SERIES HOSTED BY LANCASTER UNIVERSITY MANAGEMENT SCHOOL
The fifth seminar of the series will focus on Interviews with speaker Professor Patricia Lewis
Hosts: Professor Valerie Stead & Dr Sophie Alkhaled (Lancaster University)
Click here to book your space at the event
Abstract
Gendered encounters in a postfeminist context: researcher identity work in interviews with men and women leaders in the City of London
This seminar explores researcher identity work as one aspect of the research relationship when interviewing men and women elite respondents. Scholarly considerations of relationships in interviews tend to focus on the vulnerability of the interview subject, arguing that irrespective of interview topic or interviewee, the power dynamic tends to act in favour of the researcher. Elite interviews are often treated as the exception to this claim as it is argued that they have a different power dynamic, with the interviewer in a weaker position compared to their more powerful respondents. Similarly, considerations of cross-gender interviewing where women interview men are also understood as sites where a reversal in the power dynamic between researcher and researched occurs. In general, there is a tendency to view power relations within interview settings as a zero-sum game – one party controls the interaction at the expense of the other. However, despite this claim, there is increasing recognition that interview situations are not characterised by static power lines. Starting from this latter position, the seminar will argue that it is more fruitful to interpret the power embedded in interview interactions as fluid, dynamic and contested with the power dynamic continually moving between the interviewer and interviewee. A key aim of the seminar will be to explore how to manage a constantly moving power dynamic within an interview context.