"We Need More Women in Managerial Jobs": Gender Eqality and Management in the Nordic Context. Deconstruction and Critical Perspectives

Focusing on the Nordic context, this article highlights complexities between genderequality discourse established at the societal level and discursive practice in organizations, particu-larly in relation to management, managing and managers. This research task is carried out bydeconstructing a management text, and grounding the deconstruction in critical feminist literature.This analysis illustrates how managerial discourse is challenged and questioned by pro-egaliterianarguments in the Nordic context. However, it also demonstrates the pervasiveness of the genderedelements in managerial discourse, which relies on specific conceptions of parenthood where mo-therhood is constructed as problematic whereas fatherhood remains absent – and thus unproblema-tic. It is suggested that the ‘Nordic case’ provides a fruitful basis for similar studies in other societalcontexts in Europe.