"Not a Gender Thing." A Qualitative Study of How Gender is (Re)produced and Concealed in a Civil Society Organisation

Sammanfattning

Civil society organisations (CSOs) are widely assumed gender-neutral given their egalitarian missions, female-majority workforces, and participatory structures, yet gendered inequality persists. Gendered-organisations literature targets male-dominated bureaucracies; civil society research has largely declined to treat the sector as gendered. How gender is reproduced in everyday conduct, and how the gap between egalitarian mission and gendered practice is sustained, remains underexplored. This study asks: How is gender (re)produced and concealed in civil society organisations? Through a critical realist, abductive approach, eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted at Save the Children Sweden across three hierarchical levels. The analysis combines Martin's (2003, 2006) practising gender with Lawrence and Suddaby's (2006) institutional work along a reflexivity continuum. The study identifies a feminised institutional template, feminine-coded norms presented as professional value rather than as gendered, whose maintenance is asymmetric: feminine-coded conduct is embedded as routine and masculine-coded deviation is policed, while structural male advantage in accountability, voice, and career pathways remains unpoliced and unrecognised as organisationally produced. Maintenance is also demographically contingent, with the consensus norm collapsing in all-male contexts. Within the template, mission-driven dedication reproduces Acker's disembodied worker in feminised form. The refusal to recognise these patterns as organisationally produced itself constitutes maintaining work, placing the practising of gender beyond the reach of disruption. The study shows (re)production and concealment as co-dependent mechanisms sustaining gender in organisations claiming to have moved beyond it.