Hey there. It’s beginning to feel a lot like it’s common in big organisations for teams to compete for resource and attention to get the job done. 

Why is this? 

The reality of business and big organisations being historically male-dominated is well documented, and it’s only in recent years that many organisations have sought to address gender representation at senior levels and aim to close pay gaps between women and men. 

Out of this male hegemony over business operations and strategy (which IMHO has influenced corporate structures, procedures and culture since the Second World War), we’re experiencing a distinctly male justice perspective on how we work. 

You what, mate? 

You might be surprised to realise you already know what a “male justice perspective” is. You’ve been living through it for most of your career. 

In relation to workplaces, a masculine justice perspective emphasises individuality and independence in human relations. 

This leads to the potential for conflict, which gets moderated by rules and procedures. These rules and procedures create a kind of “ethics” and the difference between “right” and “wrong”. 

The masculine justice perspective means any dilemmas or disagreements must be resolved definitively, with the claims of the person “in the right” being protected by the rules and procedures. 

This is how organisations have traditionally functioned for decades. 

A feminine perspective – another way 

For some time, researchers (according to leadership expert Peter Northouse) have questioned whether women talk about ethics and the needs of a group in a different way. Northouse cites a researcher called Carol Gilligan, who spent a lot of time in the 1990s probing the idea of a feminine ethic of care.

Gilligan (through her book, In A Different Voice) contributed to the idea that women may take a different view on ethics and justice, based on the way children develop. She puts forward the concept of a distinctly female ethical voice, based on the idea that girls follow a different developmental path to boys in relation to friendships and groups. 

You might agree if you’ve seen how some boys and girls behave in the playground at school*. 

The ethic of care in the face of a justice viewpoint 

What does this mean for the traditional justice perspective? 

Whereas the masculine justice perspective emphasises individuality and independence, the feminine ethic of care relies on connection and interdependency between groups. 

This means there’s more likely to be positive interactions, as people view themselves as part of a network of relationships and emphasise the preservation of bonds in the network to resolve any issues so that everyone benefits. 

“Ethics” in this scenario are reinforced when people care about others and encourage each other to engage rather than confront other individuals. 

Of course, it doesn’t really work like this, precisely because of how organisations have functioned for decades. 

Ethical perspectives and hierarchy 

Given that organisations have been male-dominated for a long time, it’s no surprise they operate in a hierarchical way, which encourages and cultivates competition, from a masculine perspective. 

From this perspective, hierarchy is not only desired but essential to the maintenance of a masculine ethical view of the organisation. 

A feminine construct dismantles the hierarchy and views all people in the organisation as part of an inter-connected web, on whom they all depend. 

What this means for a university website 

Historically, as website editors are often based in schools or departments, it means they fall into a hierarchy. And by extension the justice perspective means there is competition for resource, agency and prestige. 

We then enter an arms race, where different factions seek to acquire their own staff, and appoint them to the most senior role they can get away with, in order to go toe-to-toe with others who may seek to undermine their claim to the digital estate. 

But what if we take a feminine perspective? What if we view this group of people not as separate individuals, working to the beat of their own line manager or departmental aims, but a combined group with a shared understanding? A group who naturally rely on each other for the betterment of themselves and the group? 

Perhaps even the betterment of the university? 

Or even, dare I say, for the benefit of users? 

Why this can work at Sussex 

The good news is that Sussex is heading in the right direction in terms of women in more senior positions: women have been taking home 52% of the upper-mid pay quartile over the past three years, compared with men, and increasing their proportion of the take-home of top pay quartile earnings over the same three years, up from 40% in 2022, to 42% in 2023, to 45% in 2024**. 

If quartiles mean nothing to you, in cash terms, the top quartile is something in the region of a £60K salary. 

While it’s hard to be sure, especially as neither perspective is the exclusive preserve of men nor women, it’s conceivable that Sussex is primed to operate from a feminine ethical perspective, which in turn places a greater value on a combined network with shared benefits. 

This can only be a good thing for website governance in the future and, by extension, our website users and their online experience. 

Let’s take that thought home for Christmas. 

• If you enjoyed this post… you might be interested in a companion post about tactical resourcing in response to emergency situations.

*You might not agree with any of this, depending on your views on gender and development, and that’s OK

**data from the following public documents: University of Sussex gender pay gap report 2022 [PDF 526KB]; University of Sussex gender pay gap report 2023 [PDF 229KB]; University of Sussex gender pay gap report 2024 [PDF 184KB].