Gender, family and organisation: an investigation of gendering processes in a large organisation in Thailand

Drawing on Joan Acker's theory of gendered organisation and the emphasis she places on the embeddedness of cultural assumptions related to gender difference in organisational structures and practices, this chapter explores how men and women experience work within a large organisation in Thailand. Adopting a gender-as-process approach to reveal how gender functions across multiple levels of social life with gender inequality arising out of a diverse range of factors, we draw on interviews with 72 men and women managers, to investigate the way in which our study organisation is gendered. Specifically, we argue that an organisational logic of family permeates the work context our interviewees are subjected to. While both men and women benefit from family-of-origin support provided by fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts, men can more easily build an organisational family by broadening their network connections to support their careers within the context of a Thai organisation.