Chapter 3: Early Career Reflections on Discursive Pressures in Business Schools

Lately, when I have had to describe myself, I have done so as a woman primarily and an aspiring academic secondarily. This is because until very recently, my sex was a basic and seemingly innocent assertion, one with little consequence. Lately, it seems to be the cause from which has stemmed many troubling paradoxes. You see I have no children, no husband, and no live-in partner. I started a PhD at the age of 25 and one year later, I found myself teaching my first undergraduate business class. At the age of 29 I finished a PhD focused on developing an alternative critical historiography intended to answer calls for engaging management and organization studies with history. My first tenure track job at what most would consider a mainstream North American business school started one month before my PhD graduation ceremony. My story probably appears as the usual retrospective narrative many academics will share concerning their career path. One’s career trajectory is what most recount when they are asked to describe themselves, that is, to discuss their identity. This chapter offers a reflective narrative on identity construction, career trajectory, and the relationship between the two. Specifically, the story I convey concerns what I fear is an intensifying masculinist entrepreneurial discourse that hegemonically defines what counts as a successful academic career.