A persisting minority - narratives of women in corporate leadership

In this article I draw from a number of interviews conducted with female executives in the South African oil industry in 2017. Globally, the petroleum industry(1) is one of the most male-dominated organisational structures as well as cultures in the business world. Some of the women, who hold upper-management positions, have not only emerged from the science and finance spheres (equally gendered organisations) but also navigated their way through an aggressive, patriarchal atmosphere of rivalry and competition. I examine various mythologies associated with the industry, such as the cowboy myth and the frontier ideology directed at female executives. One of the themes to emerge from the interviews was the almost unanimous rejection of the 'glass ceiling' metaphor favoured by some feminists. The women of the petroleum industry rather affirmed a picture of their rise to leadership positions through a strategic labyrinth of challenges and obstacles both in terms of gender and race. The article shares the insights of women leaders in a complex industry, framing their reflections within a theoretical feminist lens.