Men/Managers and the Shifting Discourses of Post‐Compulsory Education

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Abstract
This article discusses and critically examines some inter‐relationships between the terms ‘men’, ‘managers’ and masculinities in the contextual setting of further education. Drawing on Foucauldian and feminist post‐structuralist notions of the socially constructed discursive subject (see, for example, McNay, 1992; Weedon, 1991; Sawicki, 1991), the article considers the possibilities and problematics of men, masculinities and management practices within what is argued, is a new, emergent Further Education (FE) work culture. Recognising that education is but one of a multiplicity of social arenas (Foucault, 1971), within which discourses flourish, emerge and compete, the author argues that central to this social and discursive dynamic, are the gendered assumptions, actions and stereotypes of men as managers, managers as men (Collinson & Hearn, 1994; Roper, 1994). Furthermore, that as dominant discourses of gender, the practices of men in management are both constitutive and constituting of the new work culture that now predominates in FE and other sites. As hegemonic masculinities, these practices of self are, for men managers, especially potent and powerful, for in their constitution of self‐identity, they purport to confirm for many men their ‘sense of being masculine’; their gendered relationship to self and other. The empirical basis is taken from qualitative research recently completed in the FE sector and FE managements. Within this, 20 middle and senior men managers were interviewed for a larger project, during 1994–95. Drawing on some of these interviews, the aryicle highlights the gendered constitution of contemporary FE managements and the relationship to men's identity, while raising questions for the future direction of post‐compulsory education more generally.

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