Exploring the Career Management Experiences of Female Middle Managers in the HR Profession through a Feminist Poststructuralist and Intersectional Lens

This thesis explores the career management experiences of twenty-five female, middle managers in the HR profession working in a range of UK private, public and non-for-profit organisations. A feminist poststructuralist and intercategorical intersectional (McCall, 2005) lens of gender, ethnicity and class was applied to explore how gendered dominant discourses competed and were negotiated in the context of the career management experiences and outcomes of the women. The findings of this research contribute to what can be considered the relatively small body of academic literature that has examined the careers of HR managers and women in the HR profession. Arguably, surprisingly small due to the focus for continuing professional development and career management within the profession. The feminist poststructuralism and the intersectional lens applied here allowed for new insights into the career management experiences of the women from shifting and complex subject positions to be identified. In doing so, marginalised voices were foregrounded in the context of how gendered dominant professional discourses impacted their career management experiences in competing and affiliated ways, providing the opportunity for new reflections on the impact of discourses in profession. The key findings of the research revealed the gendered nature of mainstream HRM and diversity management discourses impacted the career management experiences of the women through the restricted opportunities for training, complex positioning of female role models within the profession, and restricted opportunities for career planning due to the pressures of managing in the middle and the HR generalist role. The intersectional lens of the research also allowed for counterintuitive localities of career management privilege to be identified from what initially could be considered marginalised positions.