Navigating Women’s Empowerment in the Global Era: Intra-gender Competition among Pakistani Working Women through Internalized Patriarchal Masculinity and Fractured Sisterhood

Abstract

This paper investigates female-to-female power dynamics in male-dominated workplace environments of Pakistan. Thus, challenging the global rhetoric that surrounds female empowerment as defined by global feminism and neoliberal development. By employing ethnographic methodology, I collected the data through in-depth interviews of interlocutors conducted during my PhD research and field notes of participant observation from three gender-sensitivity training workshops I conducted with government employees in various sectors. I have explored with this data how women working within the male-dominating government workplace navigate authority and legitimacy. The study finds that women use the internalization of patriarchal masculinity to gain access to authority, legitimacy, and social capital within the hierarchy of bureaucracy. Through this analysis, the study identifies new emergent femininities resulting from the dual forces of internalized masculinity and selective adoption of feminine care ethics. These emergent femininities are characterized by women adopting masculine behaviour as a means to create opportunities for themselves within the institutional hierarchy. At the same time, by perpetuating Patriarchy through their own choices, women create additional forms of inequality between female workers. As a result, two groups of women emerge, the first are empowered women with internalized masculinity who often view themselves as self-made women or saviours of other female workers However, the other group of working women has care-oriented responsibilities at home are often excluded from access to power. The theoretical framework of this paper is built on Kandiyoti's concept of "patriarchal bargains" and Bourdieu's theory of social capital. The paper demonstrates that toxic masculinity permeates women's everyday behaviour through their own practices within male-dominated organizations. This paper further demonstrates the ways women have internalized patriarchal masculine notions of empowerment at workplace undermine feminine perspectives of empowerment built on ethics of care. It explores practices through the lens of three themes a) women bargaining patriarchy to gain power position at workplace as a social capital; b) different needs of women with care-giving roles and their ways of becoming empowered and accumulating social capital vary from the women who either do not have these obligations or do not choose to have these responsibilities; c) Lastly, the priorities of women who prioritize or have only office-based duties to perform conflict with the ideals of some women with feminine responsibilities related to domesticated duties.