Over the last several decades, organizational scholars have noted the prevalence of organizational discourses and social practices that characterize the appropriate roles for men and women. Studies indicate that individualistic and competitive masculine qualities as opposed to feminine collective, cooperative, and collegial, are promoted and idealized in academe. Furthermore, women faculty feel pressured into performing these stereotypically feminine roles within the organization that are often devalued in organizational policies and practices. To further an understanding of how dominant discourses define and maintain the formation of gender roles within a higher education context, this study used a performativity framework to focus on how social practices define gendered behaviors. In addition, this study focused on the disciplinary structure that rewards or punishes deviance from maintaining or resisting cultural notions of gendered behavior.

Results from an ethnography at a urban community college indicate that women faculty perform a variety of stereotypical feminine gender roles based on (1) gender socialization both internal and external to the college, (2) the policing of gender norms by an audience, (3) gender identity, and (4) the presence of stigmas. Gender socialization internal and external to the college that influence the construction of gender roles includes: experience in previous work environments, classroom culture, social interactions with colleagues and students, perceptions of gender equity, and the proportion of men to women in the department. The audience, consisting of colleagues and students, promotes adoption of gender roles through workplace bullying, reinforcement, and role conflict. Each of these tactics reveals the organizational social practices and discourses that maintain gender roles.

The main contribution of this study is the recognition of the negotiation between individual identity and gender roles that results in a performance, termed gender performances. Several factors promote or subvert the negotiation of identity and roles, including the complexity of gender identities and the relationship between identity and role expectations. When identity and role expectations are incongruent, negotiation is more likely to occur. When identity and role expectations were congruent, conflict does not exist and negotiation is not likely to occur. The ways in which women faculty are socialized into gender roles, policed by the audience, and the level at which they negotiated identity has implications for their recognition of gender inequity in the college, prevalence of workplace bullying, and identity conflicts.