Editorial: Outline of a Theory of Gender Practices

The article introduces a special issue on gender as social practice. Analysing practice requires a shift in focus to the way in which activities are performed in organizations. uncovering the ‘structuring structure’ (Bourdieu, 1980) and identifying the organized nexus of activity (Schatzki, 2001) rooted in the doing and saying of organizational actors. In this article I will try to argument how this approach is particularly fruitful when applied to studying gender in organizations. It makes possible the idea of gender as something that is to be superseded and upholds a view more closely centred on the dimensions of social and relational construction — that is, the view of gender as situated social practice, or, in other words, something actualized through social interaction. But it also leads to a rethinking of research methods and processes, in the awareness that every research practice is at the same time a gender practice.