Women and Power: Conformity, Resistance, and Disorganized Co-Action

In this paper we explore an additional reason for the exodus and the persistence of gender inequality in organizations. This paper’s focus on high ranking executive women allow us to separate the effects of formal power and gender. These women occupy positions of considerable formal power, yet they are disempowered, in some ways, by their gender. We examine a configuration of micro-processes that undermine the formal power of high ranking women in a male-dominated organization, showing how these women’s capacities to reduce systemic causes of gender inequality are therefore more limited than it might appear.