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Articles

Vol. 41 No. 1 (2022): Advancing Women in Leadership Journal

“IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO HOLD THAT POWER”: THE GENDERING OF ADVICE IN CORPORATE DISCOURSE

DOI
https://doi.org/10.21423/awlj-v41.a435
Submitted
May 20, 2022
Published
2022-11-28

Abstract

In this qualitative study, we analyze advice literature written by corporate women for women readers who want to rise in the corporate ranks. Advice is pervasive social practice, and rests on an asymmetry of knowledge between authors and readers. We use discourse analysis to examine how authors of advice books deploy strategies to instruct, encourage, and exhort women to do better. We identify four strategies that expand on the current literature: pronoun choice and alignment, credibility, the assertion of necessity, and the use of metaphors. We find that advice literature re-creates narrow gender categories and dichotomous performances of gender for women to carry out. Rather than offer alternatives, advice to corporate women works toward ratification of gender norms, ratifying a notion of women’s shortcomings.