The Postfeminist Paradox – A qualitative case study critically analysing postfeminism through a female student career network

Sammanfattning: The study analyses postfeminism in an organisational context from a critical feminist perspective by exploring the contemporary perceptions of gender and gender equality in a female student career network. Furthermore, the study aims to investigate how these perceptions are projected and how they relate to organisational values, principles and processes of the organisation. Hence, How does postfeminism play out in a female student career network? was formulated as the study’s general research question. A qualitative case study design with a multi-methodological approach, combining focus group interviews and image and text analysis, allowed for an in-depth critical feminist analysis of postfeminism with an emancipatory ambition. The findings suggested that contradictory notions of gender and gender equality co-existed in the network, disclosed as four paradoxes which together made up the phenomenon postfeminism. The paradoxes further had bearing on some of the organisational values, principles and processes of the network. The feminist insights proved to be overshadowed by the complex postfeminist entanglement, limiting the network from contributing to the advance of women’s career opportunities and improving gender equality. Hence, confirms that what has been proved to characterize postfeminist media phenomena also characterizes contemporary organizational settings, and that inserting postfeminism as a critical concept in organisational studies enables a captivation of contemporary perceptions of gender.