Stay in Place – a Gender Perspective on Silencing Managers in Social Service

This article examines how silencing practices shape the everyday leadership conditions of women managers in Swedish municipal social services. Drawing on feminist organizational theory, the study analyzes focus group discussions with thirteen female managers across different hierarchical levels. The findings show how gendered organizational logics, austerity, and New Public Management reforms produce structural ostracism and explicit silence strategies when managers raise concerns about resources, ethics, legal responsibility, or work environment risks. Women managers’ professional judgments are frequently reframed as personal shortcomings, emotionality, or disloyalty, triggering social sanctions, exclusion, or exit. Using concepts such as inequality regimes and glass cliff, the article demonstrates that silencing is not an individual failure but a systemic response to responsible leadership in a feminized welfare domain. The study concludes that enforced silence undermines both managerial agency and the capacity of social services to fulfil their democratic and legal mandate.