Gendering teamwork: Re-writing the feminine

Recognizing the neglect of gender in the prescriptive and critical fields of teamwork, this article explores the gendered processes of teams. The argument presented in this article challenges masculinist discourse inherent in team theorizing and empirical research. This masculinism, we argue, stems from the so-called gender-neutral performance criteria and practices of team organization and management. Analysing The Wisdom of Teams (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) highlights the implicit gendering processes of the team rhetoric. To illuminate the latent gendered practices a case study, Nylons, is discussed. Both methods of analysis unveil the dominance of masculinist discourses that subjugates and suppresses femaleness and femininity. The article concludes by highlighting areas for furthering critical debates in the teamwork arena that centre on analysing the complex and ambiguous power relations that influence, and are influenced by, the construction and re-construction of gendered identities in teamwork and the gendered relations of power in teamwork practice.