Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • 2018
  • Working Paper
  • HBS Working Paper Series

Class Matters: The Role of Social Class and Organizational Sector in High-Achieving Women's Legitimacy Narratives

By: Judith A. Clair, Kathleen L. McGinn, Beth K. Humberd, Rachel D. Arnett and Katherine Chen
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:77
ShareBar

Abstract

While prior research recognizes that women struggle to maintain legitimacy for their successes and that self-narratives play a key role in building such legitimacy, theory provides limited insight into how women build legitimacy through their self-narratives. Our findings from an inductive, qualitative study of 40 women who rose to elite levels in corporations or entrepreneurial ventures during the latter half of the 20th century, despite considerable underrepresentation by women in similar roles, shed new light on how women narrate their own legitimacy. We build a theoretical framework showing how women legitimate their successes in the face of gender-based challenges, identifying six discursive legitimation strategies women use to explain and justify success against the odds. We also explore why women differ in the constellations of strategies they present in their self-narratives. While women universally pull upon multiple discursive legitimation strategies to explain their successes, we find that women’s social class origins and the organizational sector in which women ascended, either corporate or entrepreneurial, relate to the discursive strategies women employ in their legitimacy narratives.

Keywords

Personal Development and Career; Gender; Success; Diversity; Perception; Situation or Environment

Citation

Clair, Judith A., Kathleen L. McGinn, Beth K. Humberd, Rachel D. Arnett, and Katherine Chen. "Class Matters: The Role of Social Class and Organizational Sector in High-Achieving Women's Legitimacy Narratives." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 18-014, August 2018. (Revised August 2018 for requested resubmission.)
  • Read Now

About The Author

Kathleen L. McGinn

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • January 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Traversing a Career Path: Pat Fili-Krushel

    By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Deborah Kolb and Katherine Chen
    • November 2021
    • Faculty Research

    Francoise Brougher

    By: Edward H. Chang, Nour Kteily and Kathleen McGinn
    • September 2021 (Revised October 2021)
    • Faculty Research

    Francoise Brougher (B)

    By: Edward H. Chang, Nour Kteily and Kathleen McGinn
More from the Authors
  • Traversing a Career Path: Pat Fili-Krushel By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Deborah Kolb and Katherine Chen
  • Francoise Brougher By: Edward H. Chang, Nour Kteily and Kathleen McGinn
  • Francoise Brougher (B) By: Edward H. Chang, Nour Kteily and Kathleen McGinn
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College