Sexuality and women in care organisations: negotiating boundaries within a gendered cultural script

Mainstream research, education and practice in management and organizations in social work have not been strong on gender and sexuality and any specific analysis is far from being explicit and well established. This chapter therefore takes a closer look at the contradictory and paradoxical nature of gendered selves and sexual identities in those public sector organizations delivering care services. This chapter will argue that whilst a number of gains have been achieved, if left critically unexamined, sexism, heterosexism and gender biases will continue as more subtle practices embedded within social work’s core processes and activities. This requires increased reflexivity in order to negotiate boundaries within such an institutionalized cultural script (Martin 2003). By reviewing some of the literature and research on gender and sexuality within organizations in social work and social care, this chapter elaborates on the range of ways that gender and sexuality are enacted, sustained and generated across the structures and practices of organizational life. It reviews some of the broader key discourses when thinking about the relationships bgender, sexuality and organizations within social care. Some tentative recommendations will be made about what women themselves can do, what care organizations can do and how current discursive practice in relation to gender and sexuality within the organization might be deconstructed and challenged