“Bossyboots”: Postfeminism and the construction of Australia's “Corporate Woman”

Abstract

Improving the representation of women in corporate leadership is a key postfeminist project. Postfeminism—or the integration of women's empowerment and neoliberalism in the decades following the Women's Movement—has shaped the experience of Australian women in corporate leadership roles since the 1990s. As such, while efforts to improve the number of women in leadership have yielded admirable progress, achieving sustainable improvements in corporate diversity requires attending to collective postfeminist scripts. In order to better understand the global and local features of Australian postfeminism, this article analyses “Corporate Woman,” a mainstream newspaper column published regularly by the Australian Financial Review between 1988 and 1998. It finds that similar political and economic systems, and feminist histories, encouraged Australian postfeminism to adopt many core transnational tenets. At the same time, aspects of Australia's national history and identity, including egalitarianism, emphasis on nuclear families, and context of major economic change, contributed to localism in postfeminism's expression. This expands our understanding of postfeminism, and can help empower corporate women by uncovering the collective cognitive maps that have guided policy interventions, and women's lived experiences in corporate leadership roles.