Recent modes of management contribute to shaping the ways of working and living (Grisci, 2008) of professionals, who need to adapt creatively and respond in a profitable way to the pressures of the world (Gaulejac, 2007). To achieve organizational success and social recognition, executives are subject to the impositions of management that, manipulating their subjectivity, shape and control the way they work and live. Management appropriates the executives, using, through seduction, justification, sophistication and subtlety, strategies and practices that control the ways of working (Gaulejac, 2007; Siqueira & Mendes, 2009), a fim de obter a adesão voluntária (Grisci, 2008).

Control takes place through dispositives, the essence of which is the restructuring of production and the capture of subjectivity (Alves, 2011). This is because the dispositives have the ability to shape and direct both the actions and thoughts of individuals (Alves, 2011; Mansano, 2009), because they are “anything that in any way has the capacity to capture, guide, determine, intercept, model, control and ensure the gestures, behaviors, opinions and speeches of living beings” (Agamben, 2009, p. 12).

In order to meet the demands of management, the subjectivity of the subject is manipulated so that he self-compares, controls himself and covers himself for results, living as his own boss (Gaulejac, 2007; Alves, 2011). Consequently, the subject leaves his personal life aside, regardless of the losses he may have, to meet, with availability, through self-discipline, the work and expectations of society. Therefore, rhizomatic control changes the ways of life of individuals and the community (Grisci, 2008). In this context, we question: how does the subjectivity of executive women in their career rise?

Although studies relate the career growth of women and their behavioral behaviors (Abele, 2003), they do not delve into why such behavior. The manipulation of subjectivity by means of control dispositives, especially in women in high hierarchical positions, has been a theme rarely addressed in the literature. A survey carried out in journals, on the Sucupira platform of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education (CAPES, 2020), covering 1,250 journals, from 2008 to 2018, demonstrated that the combination of the terms ‘executive’ and ‘dispositive’, ‘executives’ and ‘dispositives’ does not present any study carried out, which suggests that the literature does not have the terms executive and dispositive (Olbermann, 2017). When they were researched separately, it was found that 21 articles were related to the proposed themes, which dealt with career, gender, employability and prejudice.

A survey in the international database Scopus, from 2008 to 2018, resulted in 195 articles. The search using the junction of the terms did not detect any study, which suggests that the international literature has also not linked the terms executive and dispositive, corroborating the Brazilian panorama, as evidenced by Olbermann (2017). Therefore, studies on dispositives related to the manipulation of the subjectivity of the executives were not found in the Brazilian and international literature.

In appreciating the Brazilian context, the labor market has been marked by several changes. However, the Brazilian labor market still shows structural inequality between men and women, since they reach yields 29.7% higher than those obtained by them (IBGE, 2018), even when there are equal performances (Joshi, Son, & Roh, 2015). In occupying higher positions, there is a lower proportion of women (Tanure, Carvalho Neto, & Andrade, 2007): only 11% of the administrative advisor positions of the 500 largest companies in Brazil are filled by women and, in executive positions, they occupy 13.6% of the positions (Instituto Ethos, 2018). Therefore, it is opportune to add new approaches to the discussion on women to advance the discussions on gender.

Therefore, the study aims to contribute to the literature by showing different ways in which management appropriates individuals, to make companies more profitable. Regarding gender studies, the reproduction of a behavior that favors masculinities in executive positions is shown, to justify the organizational rise. It is necessary, therefore, to review the policies and practices of People Management and the way they privilege and reproduce these masculinities organizationally, both in the recruitment and selection stages as well as in the ascension, remuneration and performance evaluation.

Some companies have taken initiatives to increase the number of women executives, but most have not been successful in the results (Dawson, Ho, & Kauffman, 2015; Dewally, Flaherty, & Singer, 2014; Shortland & Perkins, 2020). This may be related to the fact that the executives are also responsible for household chores, which is not always the case with executives. For them to be able to dedicate themselves to the challenges of their professional careers, the wife takes care of the welfare of her husband and family (Tanure et al., 2007; Brett & Stroh, 2003). Executive women who have children and work long hours, however, need to pay for outside help to care for their children (Brett & Stroh, 2003).

Although social discourse preaches that the couple invest in their careers and share the responsibilities of the home, studies show that women are still the most responsible for household activities (Rocha-Coutinho, 2005), for example, Brazilian women, in general, dedicate 18.1 hours per week to domestic care (IBGE, 2018). Among women, there is a predominance of professional activity in just one shift and, compared to men, they take more days off due to household chores, implying fewer hours worked and less years of experience in the labor market (Eagly & Carli, 2007).

In this context, many female executives who choose to associate their professional life with motherhood feel guilty and some prefer to slow down their investment in their careers to ensure family rebalancing (Tanure et al., 2007). Others postpone motherhood (Tanure, Carvalho Neto, & Andrade, 2006) or give up having children and family (Fidelis & Mosmann, 2013; Schlickmann & Pizarro, 2013), because “for women to match at least in some points the married man with children, many times she needs not to get married and decide not to have children” (Hryniewicz & Vianna, 2018, p. 340).

In this context, many times not even the executives recognize the existing difficulties and the prejudice expressed in relation to gender (Carvalho Neto, Tanure, & Andrade, 2010; Hryniewicz & Vianna, 2018; Mota-Santos, Tanure, & Carvalho Neto, 2014). These circumstances are part of the queen bee phenomenon, in which “women who ascend in their careers exhibit behaviors that, more than help, other women to develop professionally” (Gomes Neto, Grangeiro, & Esnard, 2020, p. 2). Many women, when promoted, tend to credit their success to random factors such as luck or being in the right place at the right time (Hryniewicz & Vianna, 2018).

One study found that male leaders are rated as most successful, even when they demonstrate an equivalent level of competence to that of female leaders (Hopkins & Bilimoria, 2008). Thus, women need to work harder than men to be promoted (Grisci, Deus, Rech, Rodrigues, & Gois, 2015) and follow well institutionalized paths of career progression (Bowles, 2012). They also need to articulate a strongly strategic vision to attract supporters for their ideas and leadership (Bowles, 2012).

Such evidence exposes the phenomenon called ‘glass ceiling’, which shows the difficulties of women ascending to leadership positions in companies due to disputes and prejudices (Mota-Santos et al., 2014). Eagly and Carli (2007) differently understand the rise of women in management positions, as they consider that the ‘glass ceiling’ metaphor does not problematize all the difficulties they face. These authors consider that the labyrinth metaphor is the most appropriate to explain women’s difficulties: “prejudices and discriminations that eventually block the paths of women have not disappeared but are presented as labyrinths” (Fraga & Rocha-de-Oliveira, 2020, p. 5).

Seemingly neutral organizational practices end up shaping work structure, defining and evaluating performance and awarding rewards, reinforcing gender inequality (Joshi et al., 2015). This is because organizations are male contexts, having been “created mostly by men and for men” (Oliveira, Gaio, & Bonacim, 2009, p. 92), reflecting organizational structures based on male experiences (Oliveira et al., 2009).

Organizational structures, by privileging masculinities, tend to devalue everything that is different, disqualifying the dissimilar (Eccel & Grisci, 2011). As a result, the expected and ‘normal’ behaviors favor masculinities (Eccel & Grisci, 2011; Oliveira et al., 2009; Fraga, Antunes, & Rocha-de-Oliveira, 2020), which induces women to reproduce this type of behavior in order to ascend organizationally (Eccel & Grisci, 2011). By masculinities we mean the ideals of hegemonic masculinities, accessible to a few men, but imitated by all genders in order to enjoy the privileges (Eccel & Grisci, 2011).

Masculinities are perceived as a social construct and are not associated with the biological characteristics of male and female. This conceptualization of masculinities is in line with studies by Eagly and Carli (2007) and Eagly and Karau (2002) who understand genders to be consensual beliefs about the characteristics of women and men. Masculinities concern the way of dressing, behaving at work and in the family and sexuality (Eccel & Grisci, 2011). The subjects must speak up calmly and firmly and their considerations must be based on facts and probabilities, without exposure of feelings or subjective perceptions, as emotionality is associated with femininity, and is even undesirable for managers (Eccel & Grisci, 2011). These characteristics are socially correlated to masculinities, however that does not mean that all male people - or no female person - possess them, since they are not connected to biological characteristics.

The present research has a descriptive and qualitative approach, in order to unveil the meaning that the participants attribute to the situation or phenomenon under analysis (Merrian, 2002). In this study, executive women are those who assume the role of president, vice-president or director of the company and those positioned in the third level, that is, occupants of positions below those of vice-president and director, but who have decision-making power (Lima, Carvalho Neto, & Tanure, 2012).

As the literature considers both women who work in their own company (businesswomen) and those who work in a third-party company to be executive (the employees), here we analyze only the employees. Although both categories share meanings related to executive life, they are different, because women entrepreneurs are not subjected to the manipulations of organizational management, but as employers, exercise control over their employees. As a result, power relations and tensions are not the same for the two categories. The concern of the female entrepreneur is to position her business in the market, that of the female executive is to occupy, as an employee of a company, a prestigious and status position, experiencing disputes to remain in the achieved position (Andrade, 2014).

For data collection, we contacted several executives through social networks and personal referrals. To find different perspectives, time in the company, time in the labor market, age, marital status, education, area of training, characteristics of the operating company (type, size and sector) were not taken into account). Through the snowball technique - whoever participates indicates other people for the interviews -, we reached 14 interviewees, when the field was saturated.

We consider it important to adopt this technique, because, when indicating other executives, the interviewees already show dispositives that manipulate the subjectivity of the executives, such as lifestyle, clothing, business and social events, importance of the role exercised. When asked to nominate other executives, the interviewees asked for time to think and then made the nomination by making the contact available. We believe that this strategy also represents the dispositives acting on the executives. While they do not want to be upset because of the indication and ask for prior authorization to forward the contact, they also look for women who are part of their nucleus and legitimize their speeches. Therefore, the contacts were sent after the request and only after the prior authorization of the appointed executive.

The interviewees are identified as follows: E1 to E7 - executives who are at the top of their careers; E8 to E14 - executives on the rise in their careers (Table 1). Executives at the top of their career were those who are in a management position and who did not have great professional ambitions during the interviews. Some of them stated that they would like to assume the presidential position, but they already feel very well in the leadership position. We emphasize that, in general, the position of president is held by one of the partners of the company. As rising executives, women were considered employed, in management positions, who have not yet reached the level of management in the executive career. They explained that there is still a long way to go to be recognized and to reach the top of the executive career.

Table 1.

Executive	Age (years)	Current Position	Company Type	State	Income	Children	Marital status
E1	51	South America Country Manager	Multinational 1	SP	BRL 46 thousand	1	Married
E2	49	IT Director	Multinational 2	SP	BRL 45 thousand	1	Divorced
E3	44	Director	National 3	RS	-	1	Married
E4	51	Commercial director	Multinational 4	SP	BRL 43 thousand	2	Married
E5	55	Finance and Marketing Director	National 5	PR	BRL 30 thousand	1	Married
E6	55	HR Director	Multinational 6	SP	BRL 45 thousand	0	Single
E7	49	Fleet and Operations Director	National 7	SP	BRL 26 thousand	1	Married
E8	33	HR Manager	Multinational 8	RS	BRL 18 thousand	0	Married
E9	45	HR Executive Manager	Multinational 9	SP	BRL 20 thousand	2	Separated
E10	31	Social Media Manager	Multinational 10	SP	BRL 11 thousand	0	Single
E11	37	Libero Manager	National 11	RJ	BRL 9.5 thousand	1	Married
E12	-	HR Manager	National 12	SP	BRL 25 thousand	2	Married
E13	39	Accounts executive	National 13	RS	-	1	Married
E14	43	Commercial / Operations Manager	Multinational 14	SP	BRL 21 thousand	1	Separated

Source: Authors’ own elaboration (2020).

We used the semi-structured interview as data collection instrument, with a script based on the theoretical framework, which underwent a pre-test with three women executive. The collection of information took place between the months of July and October 2019. All interviews were conducted online, due to the geographical distance between the participants and the researchers. In the interviews, initially, it was communicated that the meeting would be recorded, guaranteeing anonymity and a commitment to the scientific use of information. The total duration of the interviews was 19 hours and 4 minutes, resulting in a transcript of 403 pages.

After the transcripts of the interviews, they were organized into preliminary categories in the Max-Qda software that helped in ordering the categories. For the analysis of the interviews, we used the content analysis technique, which consists of discovering the essence of meaning that comprises a communication, through three stages: pre-analysis; exploration of the material; treatment, inference and interpretation of results (Bardin, 2016). After the organization by categories, they were reorganized, configuring the categorization process and resulting in eleven analyses categories (Table 2).

Table 2.

Analysis Category	Examples of dialogues
Organizational Benefits - imposition and glamor	“I will be much more uncomfortable, I will have a lot more responsibility, I will have to deal with a president who is very complicated, a guy who doesn’t share my values, a super centralizing guy. Then I said ‘oh, I don’t want to get beaten for that money” (E9).
	“I participate in events with the directors and owners of the construction companies. Anyway, the status is very good” (E5).
Control - competitiveness and standard behavior	“It’s a very aggressive, competitive area, but it’s not a healthy one, it’s a destructive one” (E12).
	“It is based on stereotypes, on what you’re wearing, the way you put on makeup, how you do your hair, the way you talk, gesture. I think it really matters, at least here I know it has” (E2).
Loneliness - competitiveness and not showing weaknesses	“The happier you are, the more pressure you have to put on” (E14).
	“Loneliness is not physical, I feel that loneliness is having a position that does not allow you to talk about everything with everyone” (E1).
Defense strategy (disposable, irreplaceable)	“I have a full schedule in shared outlook” (E1).
Reproduction of behavior that favors masculinity in organizations	“People think I am angry that I am very demanding and I must be, I must be” (E6). “If we are almost all more like tommy boy than pretty, like this, we tend more to this side because everyone came from working in the the store floor” (E3).
Affirm themselves as unique	“When they promoted me, he called me and told me that I was the only woman in the entire company as CEO” (E3). “I was the only woman on the team” (E6).
Reconciling work and leisure	“Last year I had to, I won’t say to cancel, but give up on a trip, having to divert my script to solve a problem, but I think everything within what I think is acceptable for my position” (E2).
Support team	“Reconciling is easy, I have no problem, I have no difficulty in reconciling, no. (...)I have a maid, of course, you can’t do everything” (E1).
Denial of trajectory difficulties	“I think that in my career, it is obvious that there is a lot of my effort to know how to take advantage of opportunities, to be in the right place, at the right time” (E6).
Discrimination and harassment	“I didn’t have any discrimination because I see myself as a woman with a very high testosterone load. I don’t see myself as a weak woman. Perhaps this is one of the differentials. Even if you look at the management level there in the company itself - because we are all strong women - you will not find any Barbie like women, in the sense of dress sense, that person who has the beauty that maybe I could have some kind of discrimination, the cute little dummy, things in that sense” (E3).

Source: Authors’ own elaboration (2020).

The analyzes show that the control dispositives normalize the executives, causing them to fit a pattern due to the pressure of the position. The executive’s visibility, therefore, refers to a perfect life, but the journey is long, gradual and full of mishaps. The analysis of the executive’s subjectivity manipulation has been exposed in a gradual way, since the initial rise (E8-E14) in career until one reaches the top (E1-E7).

The first part of the analysis portrays the comparison of the two groups on how they perceive the pressures of the position differently and on how the manipulation of subjectivity changes according to the status of the position. The second part of the analysis shows that the executives who reached the top justify the naturalization of their behaviors according to the demands of the position, to show that they are unique and exalt behaviors that privilege masculinities, denying the difficulties of the trajectory and the solidarity with other women. This does not mean that rising executives have not reported similar perceptions, but as they still have a way to go and have not acquired the status of the position, the manipulation of subjectivity was more explicit in the other group. Therefore, we sought to emphasize the subtleties and justifications for behavior, which were more evident in top executives.

The more the executives justify and naturalize their behavior according to the demands of the position, more control dispositives act on them, because the reproduction of the management discourse is a mere manifestation of the performance of these dispositives in subjecting the executives to the imposed determinations (Agamben, 2009). The more they deny it, the more dispositives are acting on them. It is noteworthy that, at times, they are aware of the rules of the game and are willing to give up their personal life in favor of the benefits of the position. This study emphasizes, however, how top executives ‘sell’ the idea that ‘bonuses and liens’ are desired and that they are in control of management and not the other way around.

Executive life in modern times can be perceived through different lenses. One of them shows a life of glamor, power, status and money; another shows suffering, barriers, responsibilities, impositions. To reach and maintain high positions, women submit to dispositives that manipulate their subjectivity.

The present investigation, with the objective of analyzing the manipulation of the subjectivity of executive women, showed the pressures and challenges they face daily to stay in the positions that they occupy. As they move up the ranks, executives become more and more isolated and lonely, because the co-workers’ complicity no longer exists and because they cannot demonstrate fragility. Their position does not allow them to be sensitive, much less that they cannot solve their problems. Asking for help may show weakness, which does not match the position assumed.

Women who ascended in the executive career show signs of manipulation of subjectivity by control dispositives, which are responsible for their subjection, showing their importance in handling and controlling the way they live. The executives overvalue themselves and perceive themselves as differentiated women among the others, denying the difficulties to reach that position, that is, denying the maze of the woman’s career (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Fraga & Rocha-de-Oliveira, 2020) and evidencing the occurrence of the queen bee phenomenon (Gomes Neto et al., 2020). Some statements are perceived as defense strategies (Dejours, 1999) necessary to minimize the difficulties inherent to the career.

The results demonstrate that behaviors that deviate from the ideals of masculinity are repressed and rarely emerge in the organizational environment (Eccel & Grisci, 2011; Fraga et al., 2020). This leads many women to exalt their masculinities and sometimes reproduce gender discrimination without realizing it (Carvalho Neto et al., 2010; Mota-Santos et al., 2014). Many of the behaviors described and statements exposed by women could very well be attributed to men, for reflecting masculinity valued socially and organizationally. However, it is emphasized that “positioning side by side with men, legitimizing their domination, as if it were no different to be a woman, does not have the effect of improving the conditions of equality at work, but rather of fostering the logic that men are the ideal workers, especially in managerial positions” (Eccel & Grisci, 2011, pp. 73-74).

The analysis of the results highlights the greatest evidence of subjectivity manipulation in the executives when justifying their behaviors. This does not mean that they are being completely manipulated by management or that they are unaware of their actions. The purpose of the investigation was not to analyze the masculinities of the executives, rather how they extol these masculinities, to justify its place in the organization, thus revealing the manipulation of subjectivity.

We believe that studying executive women and the dispositives that manipulate their subjectivity contributes to individuals understanding that the denial of difficulties increases pressures and stress, as well as the reproduction of the organizational discourse implies the well-known barriers and difficulties in the organizational ascension of women. Motivated by this study, the executives can seek to have a better knowledge of their needs and desires; promote a less sexist organizational environment; help to have more women in management positions, mainly in the new social and organizational arrangements resulting from the pandemic caused by Covid-19.

For future studies, we suggest analyzing the dispositives for manipulating workers in lower operating positions, in order to verify which dispositives act in the manipulation of their subjectivity; analyzing how the homogenization of executive behavior, subtly imposed, benefits or harms the management of companies; investigating retired executives, aiming to rescue their trajectory and identify their perception about work after they have retired; investigating the career trajectory of women from different social conditions, bringing social differences to the discussion.

One of the limitations of the present study is the length of the interviews. We chose to interview only executives in high positions, whose time for dialogue proved to be scarce due to their routine. Although the schedules were previously established and the executives were available, there was a concern that they would not take too much time. We emphasize that the subjectivations and manipulations shown here are not subject to generalization, being applicable only to these interviewees. We observed that all the interviewees were white women, heterosexual and who had family support. Even those who reported that they came from the lower class are currently in a different position from the reality of most Brazilian women.