Navigating Gendered Interactions Online: Tactics and Strategies in the Digital Meeting

In the post-COVID era, digital communication has become central to workplace culture, yet how gender norms manifest in digital environments remains underexplored. By analyzing recordings of digital meetings from a medium-sized Icelandic company, this research examines how gender dynamics and power relations operate in online meetings and how participants employ tactics and strategies to challenge them. Our analysis identified three distinct governing strategies, distinguished by the extent to which the chairs themselves engaged in gendered interaction, each eliciting a different repertoire of tactics from participants. Digital tools served as instruments of power, facilitating collaboration or enabling control, while humor could reinforce status hierarchies. These findings demonstrate that digital workspaces do not automatically consolidate or rewrite traditional gender norms; they create a new arena where power relations can be reinforced or restructured. This highlights the need for organizations to develop structured, inclusive approaches to digital meetings and to promote gender equity.