Women on Work, Women at Work: Visual Artists on Labour Exploitation

The aim of this paper is to explore an organizational issue of gender inequality in labour, represented in visual arts, and illustrated by critical artistic practice of Lucy McKenzie, Julita Wójcik and Mary Kelly. The paper seeks alternatives to patriarchal constructions of the gendered identity at work and the associated notions of the idealized managerial masculinities. I attend to working strategies and art making processes that reflect managerial otherness. The artists discussed engage in relational activities that have replaced dominant masculine values of managing and producing by a focus on collectivism, play and relational transmission. Work here is envisaged as a political and cultural category that alters a meaning of value and is considered crucial in formation of identity and a lifestyle choice. The paper reflects on invisibility of alternative ways of working, contributing to on-going multidisciplinary debate, challenging disadvantage and discrimination at work context and a disproportionate participation and representation of women in arts, management and in society as a whole.In a dim corner of my room for longer than my fancy thinks A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me through the shifting gloom.Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she does not stir For silver moons are naught to her and naught to her the suns that reel(From The Sphinx by Oscar Wilde)