Gendered Enterprises

In global production organizations, the production process is broken down into diverse tasks distributed across the globe depending on the comparative advantages of a particular region. This in turn has generated opportunities for paid work for hundreds of millions of workers in emerging and low-income countries, drawing in a substantial number of women with limited previous labor market access. Those processes of gender division can be seen through a variety of different lenses including liberal, feminist, postfeminist, socialist, or poststructuralist ones. Another strand of gender and organization literature is influenced by observations and critical discussion of management and organization processes within existing companies, primarily in metropolitan regions. This type of research draws attention to the asymmetric representation of genders in the hierarchical organization of companies. A completely different topic of empirical discussion on gendered enterprises is business start-ups, where the number of women as new business founders is increasing. Finally, advertising is not just a medium for selling products but is also a place where gender power relations are mirrored. Through advertisement processes women are increasingly used as objects to sell products or services. Gender stereotypes in advertising translate societal values and use existing values of society to promote their brands.