The Performativity of Organizational Gender Norms in Saudi Arabia

The performativity of norms

Performativity is about doing norms, in the sense that norms are not viewed as static or pre-existing but as something constantly being (un)done (Butler, 2004). The norm becomes re-produced and stable over time through repetition, which can be formal, for example, through organizational policies or handbooks, or informal, through norm-conforming behaviour. However, the norm does not exist before being performed, although it is constituted as something that existed before every time it is performed. Performativity emerges as the habitual enactment of subjectivities in and through a dynamic set of interconnected reiterative norms (Butler, 2006; Hollis, Wright, Smolović Jones & Smolović Jones, 2021).

Performativity functions both through repetition and the expectations surrounding the norm – reifying its object – where ‘the anticipation of a gendered essence produces that which it posits as outside itself’ (Butler, 2006, p. xv). Butler’s emphasis on the outer or external aspects of articulation, which could be bodily, material or linguistic articulations, posits that what is usually believed to be something inner or ‘essential’ is also constituted by way of the outer or external expression. It is not the inner beliefs that come first and are then articulated. The articulation is ontologically prior to the inner sphere, which is then constituted. This is exemplified in Mahmood’s (2011) analysis of the Islamic virtue of piety (taqwa) among women in Egyptian mosques, where women’s external expressions, including their prayer and modesty, reflect their inner spiritual experience.

Performative accomplishments align with the socio-cultural, religious and legal frameworks that circumscribe social and organizational life, where the subject results from a process of recognition rather than being its foundation (Butler, 2006). Recognition has a constitutive effect (Tyler, 2020). However, norms are differently distributed (Butler & Athanasiou, 2013), and how subjects need to conform to be recognized and have a livable life differs and implies a different sense of entitlement to respect (Eger, 2023). ‘Hence, the differential distribution of norms of recognition directly implies the differential allocation of precarity’ (Butler & Athanasiou, 2013, p. 89). Butler (2016) describes this as the exclusionary norms upon which the field of recognizability is founded. Recognition forms the subject (Butler, 2011) and has material consequences.

The inaugural submission of the subject (to be) to the norms of recognition is described as a form of dispossession by Butler and Athanasiou (2013, p. 1), which ‘in its paradoxical simultaneity with mastery, constitutes the ambivalent and tenuous processes of subjection’. In rural parts of Morocco, for example, gender relations are enacted through conceptions of honour and shame, posing restraints in relationality as individuals abide by an ‘implicit code of conduct’ (Eger, 2021). Interpretations thereof are often mobilized to limit women’s access to employment and public life. Different studies highlight that norm conformance usually rests on a woman’s behaviour in Islam (Eger et al., 2018; Karam & Jamali, 2013; Sian et al., 2020; Syed & Van Buren, 2014), which is intended to safeguard patriarchal family honour (Stowasser, 1994) and can also induce precarity. The knowledge of authoritative sources can allow women to engage in different forms of resistance and boundary work, where ‘Islam is used as a basis for distinction, stratification and demarcation’ (Essers & Benschop, 2009, p. 419). This raises the importance of understanding how regimes of recognition become anchored in the law.

The performative power of the law

The institutionalization of norms can strengthen or disrupt sex role traditionalism, driving employee preferences to abide by organizational expectations (Ely & Padavic, 2007) and socializing employees into how to think and act (Amis, Munir, Lawrence, Hirsch & McGahan, 2018). Butler (2011, p. 69) describes the law as representing the ‘demand and threat issued by and through the symbolic’. However, the law in a juridical sense refers to performative acts backed or guaranteed by the state or legal system. Saudi labour law, for example, stipulates that organizations must provide access to childcare if they employ fifty women or more (Miller et al., 2019), depending on whether they have children or not. Whereas enforcing such requirements has been lax (Syed, 2008), it makes childcare responsibilities primarily a woman’s task, reflecting patriarchal gender norms (Koburtay, Syed & Haloub, 2020). The effects thereof on the formation of gender identities within the organization are rarely acknowledged.

The law, however, also provides the discursive opportunity for potential resistance to and resignification of the law (Foucault, 1976). The judge who cites the law does not ‘originate the law or its authority’. Still, through consultation and reinvocation, the judge’s ‘discourse becomes a site for the reconstitution and resignification of the law’ (Butler, 2011, p. 70). This becomes apparent in Islamic law, which is based on the human interpretation of the Sharia, i.e. God’s revealed law. The Sharia is derived from the Qur’an and the hadith (the collected sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad) and represents the divine (immutable) order in which God is the sole lawmaker (Abdulla & Keshavjee, 2018). It covers a broader sense of ‘law’ compared to a Western understanding, constituting a legal system that defines customary practice and ethical imperatives in society and business (Badran, 2009). Its principles guide the design of policies and procedures (Abdulla & Keshavjee, 2018) based on the practice of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), which forms part of religious science to interpret and extract Sharia rulings (Wadud, 2006).

Islamic law represents the broader heterogeneous discursive tradition through which religious rulings are deduced as well as the body of knowledge of Islamic juristic scholarship that does not adhere to an individual or collective frame of overseers (Ahmed, 2016). It draws its structure of possibility from the interconnection between the past and present based on a set of religious principles that establish the boundaries and potential of what can be done, recognized and expressed through religious interpretation (Mahmood, 2011). This creates an interpretive space connecting divine order with human juridical effort, which can be interpreted as a norm system whose exact nature of norms and expectations is never wholly known to humans. Mahmood (2011) describes this as the space of nonresolution that emerges from the religious texts. There can be no debate about God’s absolute commands, but ‘the Qur’an has left many issues unresolved’ and it is ‘within this space of nonresolution that [. . .] emphasis on choice unfolds’ (Mahmood, 2011, p. 90).

Islam has provided the subtext for much of the feminist discourse generated in the last and present centuries in the Middle East (Badran, 2009), emphasizing the need for an emic understanding of gender equality and how to advance the human first and foremost. Islamic feminists critique the prevalent male ‘voice’ in Islamic theology, which has supported gender-unequal interpretations of religious texts (Mernissi, 1985, 1991). Given the dominance of men in the judicial system and the legal profession, masculinist interpretations continue to prevail (Syed & Ali, 2019). Islamic feminists aim to advance the egalitarian interpretation of Islamic doctrine by critically engaging with the exegetical tradition and its lived experience (Badran, 2009). Mir-Hosseini (1996) was among the first women to undertake a critical gender-sensitive reading of the Sharia, introducing women’s exegetical practices to a traditionally male-dominated domain. Al-Rasheed (2013) further observes that it has been through writing that women have transcended the constraints of politics, society and religion in Saudi Arabia in the past decades rather than through their physical presence in the public sphere.

Essers and Benschop (2009) show how these interpretive practices can also apply to the quotidian work experiences of Muslim women entrepreneurs, who use religious principles to establish boundaries between gender, Islam and ethnicity. Mahmood (2011) relates this to the citational practice of a norm, which is circumscribed by using authoritative sources and doctrinal reasoning in Islam while ‘constantly [being] lived, reworked, and transformed in the context of daily interaction’ (Mahmood, 2011, p. 98). The practice of citation, for example a hadith citation, performatively constitutes the authority of a norm. Butler (1997, p. 155) adds to this bodily habitus as a ‘citational chain lived and believed at the level of the body’, such as those observed in the women mosque participants in Mahmood’s analysis. This can be described as both an authoritative and internally persuasive discourse, as shown in the research by Eger (2021), who illustrates the complex ways in which the discursive traditions of Islam come to bear on a woman’s embodied experience of honour and shame.

This study adopts a performativity lens to elucidate the complex processes through which norms and laws are enacted, interpreted and negotiated by managers in Saudi Arabia. A norm only exists when it is enacted. Still, the diverse set of normative sources, including religious texts, Islamic law and statutory laws, shapes the expectations that award and implement its authority, thereby shaping ideal local gendered arrangements. Studying the performativity of norms hence requires a deep and rich contextual analysis of how norms intertwine and enact themselves and how this activity bears on women in a particular setting in Saudi Arabia, with the next section presenting the methods guiding this approach.

Data collection

Data collected include 33 semi-structured interviews. The interviewees were selected based on purposive sampling and snowballing technique (King & Horrocks, 2010) to identify employees with managerial responsibility and relevant representatives from chambers of commerce and policymakers. However, the purposeful sampling of women employees and managers does not reflect nor account for the large share of ‘missing women’ in the labour force (Miller et al., 2019). The 33 interviews lasted an average of 75 minutes. Some interviews included more than one participant, allowing the opportunity to reveal and observe shared norms and common practices during group interactions. The total sample of 54 interviewees consisted of 30 men and 24 women working across different managerial levels and sectors. An additional group of participants included representatives from government and local chambers of commerce to gain insight into the behind-the-scenes work and political processes underpinning changes toward increasing women’s labour market participation.

The interviews were semi-structured, focusing on participants’ perceptions of the barriers to integrating women into the workforce, organizational strategies for navigating an integrated workplace, their impressions of men and women employees, issues in recruitment, and the suitability of various workplace tasks for women. When visiting firms, the author organized visits to the women’s sections. The research assistant played an important role in the observations conducted in the women’s sections, helping build rapport with employees and facilitating informal conversations. This provided a more profound perspective on space management, supporting ‘alternative ways of thinking about (and thus acting upon) gender without either simply reversing the old hierarchies or confirming them’ (Scott, 1994, p. 358).

Qualitative data analysis

All interviews were conducted in English, recorded (apart from one), transcribed verbatim and analysed using a three-staged thematic approach (King & Horrocks, 2010). The coding process relied first on descriptive coding and second on thematic coding, differentiating between sub-themes, which were then grouped into overarching themes in the third step. Throughout the three iterative stages of coding, the analysis focused on: (i) how different normative sources, including the religious texts, Islamic law and statutory laws, came to bear on a subject and made possible different subject positions; (ii) how this in turn, governed recognition and had material consequences in the workplace; and (iii) how the complex set of religious, gender and legal norms intersected and were constantly being (un)done through stylized and deviant acts of repetition. This provided a nuanced perspective into the boundary work managers engaged in when (re)producing a norm and the troubling moments of slightly altered performances, leading to a fracture in the normative scripts (Morison & Macleod, 2013).

The analysis process supported the identification of three overarching themes: regimes of recognition, gendered space and four different forms of performativity and related sub-themes. The author identified quotations illustrative of the themes, presented in the coding structure as part of the descriptive coding stage shown in Figure 1 and as evidence in the findings section. Moreover, the article relies on a specific selection of quotes that reflected similar discussions, experiences and points made by participants during the interviews to illustrate the different themes. There are also some instances in which these enactments were not ‘representative’ in the traditional sense, with some quotes (e.g. the quote of the warrior) being unique. Riach et al. (2016) highlight that deviations from the norm might also require an openness to listen to those instances that do not appear across all interviews and diverge from chronological narratives. NVivo was used to organize the large amount of data and to engage in the iterative coding processes, accounting for the recursive nature of qualitative research (Braun & Clarke, 2006). In the analysis, acronyms were employed to specify the interview number (Int1), the respondent if more than one person participated in the interview (Int3_R3) and whether the respondent was a man or a woman (Int1_M). Table 1 in the appendix provides information on participants’ demographics, firm details and acronyms used (see Appendix A).

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Figure 1.

Thematic coding structure.

Male ideals

The societal familial framework is highly valued and protected in Saudi Arabia, and the recognition of difference between men and women is central to religious and legal provisions (Syed & Ali, 2019). This is expressed in the local regimes of recognition through which certain performative acts become recognized as viable subject positions through adherence to prevalent norms, while others are disavowed (Butler, 2006). The ‘equal but different’ philosophy (Metcalfe, 2007) underpinning societal perceptions of gender has ascribed a certain stability to a woman’s personal status dimensions related to the constellation of gender relations within the family. However, this contrasts with the uncertainty that remains when discussing a woman’s job-related status characteristics.

It’s not about the education and the behaviour of the woman herself; no, it’s about how they deal with the culture of the work because in Saudi, the upper hand is usually from the man, and this comes from the religion. You can see it everywhere; it is okay. (Int14_R1_M)

A male CEO argues that status differences (re)produce an inherent difficulty for women negotiating the work culture. The prevalent norms are built on male ideals assigning the role of provider – upper hand – to the man. By Islamic law, the money that a woman owns or earns is hers (Elamin & Omair, 2010), and a woman’s income was often perceived to be supplementary, while a man’s status as breadwinner was encapsulated in the male-as-norm underpinning the gender division of labour. A female lawyer explained the assumptions driving this religious norm, showing how its interpretation results in the preferential treatment of men in the workplace.

[I]f you have one job and there is a male and female who are equal, who would you hire? Of course, the male because the female won’t spend her money on her family. [. . .] It’s a very complicated situation built to direct you into choosing a male. They’re thinking they’re hiring males because males are supporting their families. (Int4_W)

Whereas this might be a stereotypical hyperbolic depiction of gender norms, it pinpoints the importance of understanding how gender relations are constructed in situ. The expectation of the religious norm structures how differences are repeated and put in relation to each other through implicit or explicit contrast. Women’s increasing uptake of employment carries the potential to undermine how relations of difference are currently structured in the ‘breadwinner model’, contributing to the erosion of men’s role as providers. Paid employment was seen as central to a man’s ability to contract marriage, as men need to pay the maher (a religiously mandated monetary gift to the future wife) and provide for their family (Syed, 2008), while it was not seen as central to a woman’s ability to marry. Instead, a male CEO argued that he is not able to hire women, i.e. take this risk because his daughter would never get married if she worked in a mixed environment. Sian et al. (2020, p. 12) describe this as the broader social pressure to ‘protect’ women employees, which can also function as a form of guardianship ‘in loco parentis’. This alludes to the transference of a symbolic guardianship role to men in the company, i.e. qiwamah in the family is transferred to qiwamah in the organization. This illustrates the difficulty of negotiating progressive and traditional values of social status and family honour when perceived respectability and professional role expectations are not aligned.

Organizational (in)visibility

Historically, firms in the Middle East and North Africa have accommodated female employees by using gender segregation ‘as an ideal model of space management’ (Syed, 2008, p. 143, emphasis added). Alselaimi (2014, cited in Jamjoom & Mills, 2023) uses the term brick wall instead of glass ceiling to describe the visible practice of gender segregation restricting vertical and horizontal integration. Segregation was legally required when this research was conducted, though it has since been removed.

The Ministry of Labour issued labour laws for women. [. . .] It is a clear segregation in the labour force used by many to deter them from hiring women because how do you hire women and not work with them? (Int21_W)

Managers argued that they were not able to effectively work or communicate with women due to the segregation rules. This made it difficult to effectively integrate women into the workforce, requiring significant workplace adjustments and generating a certain resistance to hiring women (Alodayni, Eger, Fetzer & Peck, 2018). At the same time, female respondents emphasized that women’s sections were often built in the poorest sections of the building without access to natural light. In contrast, some organizations built separate buildings for women, which, according to a government representative, was not required by law. This negatively impacted women’s career opportunities and status as workers by making them invisible.

There are no females in the succession plans. They just forgot to include them. (Int26_W)

I am a little away from where my senior is working. That is why sometimes, when they go to meetings, they forget to tell me, or just having this separate wall is a barrier. (Int6_R1_W)

Some managers argued that segregation laws were not clearly stipulated in codified law, and they were uncertain about the exact rules and how segregation should be practised. While there were specific requirements regarding workplace accommodations for female employees (for an overview, see Eger et al., 2022), some of the underlying religious principles were deemed less clear. A male lawyer emphasized that gender segregation is primarily a Sharia principle that is not codified in any statute or ministerial decree.

The separation of men and women is a Sharia principle, and you won’t find any statute or any ministerial decree that orders that. That’s the courts’ and the agencies’ [. . .] interpretation of what Sharia law requires. I don’t think that there are any written rules that will confirm that, but it’s a practice. It’s a policy based on a consensus view of what the Sharia requires. (Int2_M)

Orthodox readings of Islamic scriptures prohibit women from mixing with unrelated men unless accompanied by a mahram (a woman’s husband and men within the forbidden degrees of marriage, e.g. a brother). A female managing director argued that ‘families fear the lack of control and don’t trust the relationship [with unrelated men]’ (Int21_W). This includes the prohibition of seclusion (khulwah) between men and women and the mixing (lkhtilat) of genders, particularly when a woman is not modestly covered (Al-Dehailan, 2007).

Bodily control

Modesty can be interpreted as one of the modalities through which women have increasingly entered male-dominated spheres as one of the necessary conditions to engage with a discourse that has traditionally subordinated them to male authority (Mahmood, 2011). The Qur’anic principle of modesty was meant to enable women to attend to their daily business without being sexually harassed or molested (Syed & Ali, 2019). When this research was conducted, Saudi Arabia did not yet have a policy against sexual harassment. The government started to draft a policy in late 2017/2018, and this was seen as an important precursor to removing the segregation law, as highlighted in the quote below.

The whole point of the sexual harassment law is to remove segregation, and that is why the Shura Council, for three years or four years they were rejecting this law. (Int1_M)

The respondent interprets the Shura Council’s hesitance towards this policy as a form of resistance to the broader social change that could ensue from it. There was an implicit assumption that the religious principles did not allow for sexual harassment to happen, with the latter representing a form of deviation from the norm, as it would undermine the conception of respectability described as central to gender norms in Islam (cf. Eger, 2021). ‘When we teach someone about sexual harassment, they will say we are conservative. We don’t do such a thing’ (Int8_R2_M), with conservativeness being associated with religiosity by the respondent in this context. Respectability was firmly based on the powerful theme of invisibility in respondents’ accounts, which alluded to an implicit and/or explicit form of bodily control. There was a strong focus on a woman’s body and the need to regulate her appearance in and out of space to prohibit norm transgression, as illustrated through the suggestion of a dress code for women in the quote below.

MLSD [Ministry of Labour and Social Development] says that the company should announce the proper code for women’s dress; well why don’t you have it for men also? Not just women: why are we the ones who have to hide? (Int26_W)

The idea of a woman’s dress code is put into sharp relief by the woman manager, whose resistance ensues from reclaiming the norm and the sense of division that prefigures it, which mirrored the ‘denial of the body [. . .] [which] reveals itself as nothing other than the embodiment of denial’ (Butler, 1986, p. 44). In the interview, the woman manager highlights that the Qur’an commends modesty for both men and women, questioning why women are the ones who have to hide, alluding to both the dress code and physical separation through women’s sections. The reproductive power of the norm relied strongly on a woman’s body to symbolize the norm. This discursive framework itself becomes constitutive of the materialities it refers to, circumscribing individual agency (Butler, 2011), as illustrated by a manager referring to his company’s tight dress code stipulating a black abaya.

We have very tight rules regarding dress code: Abaya, and if we’re in doubt, we’re conservative. The coloured abaya is very common now, but we don’t allow it in here. Black abaya. (Int15_R1_M)

The interpellative hail for a black abaya constitutes both a discursive and a material practice at the level of the body through which boundaries become differently lived. Harding et al. (2022) refer to the interpellative hail as an alternative boundary-making apparatus alluding to the normative implications of being seen, of being called into existence. Who was allowed in and who was seen versus unseen had a symbolic effect on women’s recognition as a subject, with the administrator in the quote below questioning how a woman could have an image at all.

When we have to get our ID pass for the company, the admin guy just decided to make me without a face for the card. I said, do you know what the purpose of the card is? It is for security and identification, so how would you do it without a face? He said, but you are a woman how can I put your face on it? (Int26_W)

This treatment of women as symbols of honour reflects a paradoxical conception of respect, in which the respectful treatment of a woman requires her to be invisible – a hidden image – which is a performative contradiction. Gender hence is doubly affected, as an object of respect and as a subject of norm conformance, showing how regimes of recognition become materialized through gendered space and reiterated through the citation of religious and cultural norms. Not seeing a woman, not recognizing her, became the way in which a woman could be respected as a person, showing how the gendered body image becomes intimately tied to making a woman both invisible and hyper-visible.

Precarious performativity

The notion of implicit control builds on a specific interpretation of relationality that was central to the performative effect which the enactment of norms produces. This can have an empowering effect (see e.g. Essers & Benschop, 2009; Mahmood, 2011) but can also induce precarity. A male CEO implicitly associated a woman’s presence in the workplace with having a party, premised on the perceived transgression of rules that supposedly prevailed in gender-mixed firms. The allusion to a party refers to a woman’s organizational Otherness – essentializing competence and controlling the body-subject – to reconstitute the gender order by naming it: ‘You are a man, and she is a woman at the end’ (Int14_R1_M). Normative beliefs can influence the job tasks that are seen as suitable for women, translating into who is considered to be ‘better qualified’ or ‘established’ in work situations (irrespective of actual qualifications). This stands in direct contrast to a female manager who argued, ‘we are here to work, and we are not playing’ (Int21_W).

The uncertainty around a woman’s status as worker was further influenced by guardianship practices. The Qur’an makes men the guardians of women, stipulating that a woman must have a male guardian who is entitled to make certain decisions on her behalf (Mahmood, 2011). This practice is referred to as qiwamah, which in some references means maintainers and caretakers or protectors of women, further stipulating that this does not allude to any man but her wali (guardian, protector). This notion of qiwamah is many times transcended to the organizational context, but according to labour law, it is no longer legally required for a woman to receive her guardian’s approval to work. However, the quotes below illustrate that guardianship practices are deeply engrained in the local culture. This can favour an assessment of women’s qualifications and suitability for a job that includes the expectations from her family, emphasizing the higher ‘employment risk’ associated with female employees in Saudi Arabia (see also Eger et al., 2022; Sian et al., 2020). This creates a grey zone in which guardianship remains a religiously endorsed practice, though, by statutory law, it is not binding anymore.

[W]hen they announced it [guardian approval being removed from labour law], they wanted to show the world that women in Saudi are given more freedom. It doesn’t relate to what a company does. That permission was not a big issue before. [. . .] Because if you sign it or not and he [guardian] snaps, you just can’t do anything about it. (Int12_M)

The company does not want to risk the lady employee if they make her travel a lot that might cause issues with the family, so if her job nature requires a lot of travelling, they will not feel comfortable about it. (Int13_W)

In these examples, statutory law does not seem to be the main normative source of power. Rather, forms of religious authority and cultural habits weigh stronger. Codified law or the guardian’s permission seem to be irrelevant because ultimately the guardian has the power to take back his permission, reflecting the ways in which a perceived norm can (re)produce male ideals. This elevates the role of the patrilineal kinship system in circumscribing women’s agentival capacity. At the same time, women managers actively negotiated perceived norms of respectability and professional image by continuously adjusting and engaging in forms of behavioural control in which ‘desire for recognition and inclusion constitutes an affective driver for conformist body work’ (Pouthier & Sondak, 2021, p. 388).

I don’t know how to act sometimes. I have to look very conservative for some men, and I will look very open-minded for others, so I don’t make them uncomfortable. So, I am trying to act in a certain way. (Int13_W)

The woman manager’s quote shows the boundary work involved in interpreting and reproducing the ideal while also being sensitive to male fragility (Jamjoom & Mills, 2023). The interpretation of a norm as lived and inhabited by male colleagues points to the possibility of her becoming even while repeating normatively prescribed embodiments. However, it also highlights that the body-subject cannot be grasped without reference to the (in)visibility that constitutes her. Precarious performativity has this sense of ambiguity and insecurity embedded in the repetition of a norm whose grounds of legitimacy are uncertain or multiple, providing an interpretative space in which the repressed and negated can be glimpsed through the contrast with its ‘Other’.

Sovereign performativity

Sovereign performativity illustrates the (re)productive power of the law. There are different legal prescriptions in Saudi Arabia, with sometimes limited integration between principles stemming from Islamic law and statutory law, which accentuates the perceived grey zones that respondents alluded to. How to organize according to the principles of Islam was a key concern among managers enacting religious norms. ‘We need to develop an operating model to employ women that is sustainable [. . .] Anything that does not align with our religion is not sustainable’ (Int14_R1_M). Sovereign performativity was characterized by a strong belief in the righteousness of religious principles and the consensus they produce, but also the ‘societal control’ that ensues through their enactment. ‘Everything is compliant with the Sharia 100%’ (Int32_R1_M), a male CEO emphasized. The religious principles became embodied and reproduced through managers’ beliefs characterized by their sense of accountability towards God, others and themselves. A male CEO expressed the difficulty of reconciling his beliefs and sense of responsibility when considering hiring female employees, as some gender mixing would likely occur.

When I create the female approach, I will be responsible for all the consequences of that in front of Allah, the owners, and myself. When I start this, who is going to control it? (Int14_R1_M)

The CEO did not contest the underlying religious principle but questioned how it should be lived in practice. The religious law functioned from the inside out (cf. Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian & Samuel, 1998) through the manager’s embodied feeling of accountability, which was central to the enactment of a religious norm reflecting a sense of moral responsibility. For the manager, the ‘right’ approach was not merely a social imposition but core to his belief in the proper realization of a norm and the possibilities of developing a religious-conforming operating model to employ women. This illustrates how compliance and striving to emulate religious principles represent a form of agency in this context. This was also expressed through a male CEO’s perceived inability to develop a model that he perceived to be in line with religious norms, which led him to refrain from hiring women.

We don’t try [to hire women] [. . .] I forbade it. I am not in this game until the storm is finished. We want to have it normal [. . .] Not the policy, but the principle [has to change]. We can design any policy and any procedures based on the constitution of the country, which is behind everything, and the Sharia has the upper hand for any laws in the kingdom. [. . .] These AlSharia principles, we need to make them clear and adjusted for the policymakers. (Int32_R1_M)

In the quote, the male CEO constitutes an identity of both a rebel and a conformist, i.e. by conforming with Islamic law while asking for a religious-conforming change in the interpretation of the underlying principles. Mir-Hosseini (2003, p. 11) explains that religious rulings provide ‘principles and guidelines so as to ensure propriety and fair play’ in the realm of muamalat (social/private contracts). The latter remains open to interpretation and provides room for rationalization and explanation also in light of new issues arising (Abdulla & Keshavjee, 2018). The CEO enacts this form of openness, which can be described as radical when considering his engagement with religious principles as the basis for change within an Islamic tradition. However, this approach simultaneously validated the organization’s renunciation of the responsibility for achieving greater gender equality, expecting the underlying interpretation of the religious principle to change first.

Managers’ experiences indicate that the complex set of norms around women’s employment has generated tensions and uncertainty in interpreting what might be considered right and wrong behaviours and actions. This became evident in managers’ struggle to engage with statutory laws that contradicted their ‘fundamental’ beliefs, which were shaped by socially authorized forms of practice – the constitutive outside of the subject (Butler, 2011). This also posed identity conflicts that did not prescribe clear resolutions for both male and female managers and employees alike, making a distinction between individual feelings and socially prescribed performance impossible.

Hyperbolic performativity

Hyperbolic performativity was based on the dynamic relationship between a performatively instituted mode of behaviour based on the anticipation of norm transgression. Taqwa, in the Qur’an, is translated both as piety and fear of God – a form of virtuous fear (Mahmood, 2011). The enactment of the norm was driven by an over-identification with the norm rooted in a fear of the law and managers’ desire to stay ‘away from where we make mistakes’ (Int15_R1_M). At issue here is the supposition of a norm. Pre-empting a possible norm transgression became embedded in the duality between an inner token inclusion of women in the workforce and an outer proper ‘demeanour’ through the conception of exclusion. The norm was symbolically overlaid with a (cultural) distance that had to be maintained to respect the other, to approximate an ideal (pious) model of the self. Distance – as an allusion to the ideal – became crafted into social relations through space by constituting a ‘safe’ alignment between employees and securing shared meanings, as emphasized by two male HR managers.

I can’t get very comfortable around my female colleagues, I can discuss with a limit. I can’t be very personal. I need to keep distance. (Int15_R1_M)

We are not doing best practice; we minimize the risk as much as possible, and we hire female employees where they have minimal contact with male employees [. . .], so we’re playing it safe. (Int12_M)

Distance became embodied in everyday work relationships, materially manifesting the religious discourse. For example, the norm of khulwah implies that a man and a woman alone in a closed room is ‘considered wrong’ (Int18_W) and should be prevented. Moreover, the Sadd AI-Dharaie principle refers to the ‘closing of doors, which could lead to corruption or sinful actions’ (Al-Dehailan, 2007, p. 348), as illustrated by the inspector’s fear in the quote below.

We have an open floor [. . .]. Every time the labour office visits me, they give a penalty for this [. . .] 10,000 SAR. I asked them, what does our religion – the essence of the written policy – say? They replied: ‘We don’t want any issues. We don’t want a male and female together in a closed room. Something wrong happens. This is our biggest fear.’ (Int15_R1_M)

The male HR manager went on to explain how the inspections from the labour office and religious police in the past led them to restructure their workforce and implement almost-complete gender segregation by excluding women from space.

We had open floors, then the labour office and the religious police came, and there was a very strong message [. . .], so management freaked out. We suddenly started to move all the working females into a closed place [. . .] In a few months’ time, the female ratio rate dropped from 20% to 13%. (Int15_R1_M)

The elision of norm transgression becomes signified through gendered space and, in the process of its repetition, gives the missing subject her meaning, exposing the normativity of the claim. A woman becomes neither the one who is not present nor the Other, but signifies the possibility of norm transgression, which introduces an ambivalence to the structure of iteration – a definition of identity by exclusion – as illustrated below by the firm owner saying, ‘I will come after two’.

I met one of the owners, and I invited him to come for [. . .] a tour of the [female] factory. He said he would come after two. This saying is very famous in the company, ‘I will come after two’. But after two, we’re done with the working hours [. . .] All of the [women] workers would be home. He said then how can I come in? (Int28_W)

Distancing has been described as a key mechanism in managing institutional contradictions (Giorgi & Palmisano, 2017). The male HR manager tries to inhabit the ideal by maintaining a distance, in which the ideal is approached through over-identification with a norm that may never be reached. This sense of over-identification can be expressed through a strong desire for conformity driven by the missing clarity on the structure of social norms individuals and firms were subjected to and their evolution, as there was no dissensus possible. This led to a form of hyperbolic performativity by wanting to perform the norm too well.

Paradoxical performativity

Paradoxical performativity was characterized by managers’ ability to enact and hold in creative tension seemingly opposing interpretations (enactments) of the same norm (to be). This created an important space of in-betweenness that made it possible to live, resist and expand the norm in its creative enactment. Managers did not necessarily challenge the religious principles nor statutory law, but they resisted the disciplinary power of the norm by repeating the prevailing discourse with a slightly different meaning (Foucault, 1976), providing room also for its inherent ambiguities. Especially in industry segments where regulations had not yet been developed, such as tourism and construction, managers tried to experiment with new approaches to integrate women, as exemplified below by a construction manager.

Everyone said, oh, females can’t go to the [construction] site. I said why? I have an English version of the labour law, and I couldn’t find anything there. We did a little research, and they said no, they can if it is in the job description. (Int5_R1_M)

A managing director reported that he started experimenting with implementing an all-woman kitchen. While existing regulations prescribed that the cooking area had to be visible to customers, this did not comply with segregation laws and would have impeded women from taking off their abayas and niqabs or hijabs. Despite the difficulties the director faced from both internal management and the municipality, he expressed an identity as a warrior, taking inspiration from a Muslim war leader.

This is in our history, like Tariq Bin Zyad, a famous war leader. When Muslims crossed from Africa to Spain, [. . .] he gave no choice for his army and burnt all the ships, and he said the sea is from behind and the enemy is in front of you. [. . .] Sometimes you have to burn the ships to close that part. Now, we have the female kitchen. The municipality and our team were not very keen, but I told them we would do it even [. . .] if they [women] can’t work the night shift, we close the restaurant, let them know they are part of this. This is not a show. (Int20_M)

The statement ‘This is not a show’ explicates a strong commitment to women’s employment as not merely a display – a show – but as a core part of the organization and subject’s enacted values. This differs from the identity of the rebel alluded to previously, as the manager uses the symbolic category of the warrior to elucidate a change in the existing practice rather than the underlying principle, and he was willing to hazard the consequences, i.e. ‘to burn the ships so there is no escape’. However, the identity of the warrior is an identity only available to men. This gendered imaginary connotes the implicit undertones of agentive capacity in which the interpretation of norms remains dominated by men and male ideals.

A female manager recounted how she negotiated her identity described as normal, to showcase the firm’s ambivalent guardianship practices. The organization privileged the identity of the normal/ideal worker – whose body is productive (and male) – diffusing the traditional grounds of gender identity as tied to guardianship practices. The female manager, by invoking the legitimacy of the supposed norm of guardianship, reinscribed her ‘rights’ that ensued from this norm.

When I got my first business trip to Damman [. . .], they gave me the ticket and told me it was in economy. I was fine with it. Now, where is my guardian’s ticket? They are like, no, you don’t need a guardian, you are normal. I don’t need it [. . .], but you do care about the guardian because you made my guardian sign the consent, and I played that card with them. I said it is either my guardian who has to come or upgrade my ticket because you want to make sure I arrive safely, and they did it because I spoke. (Int26_W)

This puts into relief the liminal problem of identification by questioning the discursive positioning, which remains to be primarily that of men, from which questions of identity in the organization were posed. ‘Making space’ for and by women represented both a material and a discursive engagement with the gendered division of labour, in which the boundary-making apparatus of the interpellative hail turned against itself to question the supposed ideal that kept this division alive. Change, hence, became possible within the realm of perceived norm conformance through a form of reversal of the norm rather than a transgression. Norms were enacted through the negotiation of what is possible that did not (directly) challenge statutory law nor Islamic law but provided room for in-betweenness. The (re)interpretation of norms (to be) hence had a transformative element rooted in their performative destabilization. Resistance ensued from the discursive enactment of religious norms and statutory laws by actively engaging with the paradox, by either deploying a supposed ideal to justify subtle changes in practice or the absence of regulations as a source to legitimize the need to experiment with new approaches.

Understanding local regimes of recognition

Recognition tends towards that which is assumed, which is why the ideal remains so powerful in shaping the public imaginary. Butler and Athanasiou (2013) emphasize that recognition does not suffice as a goal of politics if recognition is taken as a static acknowledgement of status. Rather, recognition must become a transformative category and requires an understanding of the materiality of (mis)recognition (cf. Tyler, 2020), capturing the powerful experience of being-seen-by-another. The societal regulation of a woman’s body had a profound effect on gendered space in which a woman’s body was brought to matter through a form of organizational invisibility or hypervisibility in this study. The former referred to a woman in a reified form who, under the guise of protection, was obliterated. The latter referred to an over-intelligibility of a woman’s body and her conditional inclusion based on her token status (see also Aldossari et al., 2023; Tyler, 2020).

In these processes, gender became an expression of the norm as performative, requiring the iterative performance of the supposed male ideal ‘to be allowed in’, showing that to be called normal, i.e. different from those that are already different, re-constitutes that same difference. Women managers and employees were asserting their presence in male workspaces and enacting subtle forms of subversion by ‘re-authoring’ their bodies and questioning the correct interpretation of religious texts. However, to understand the materiality of (mis)recognition requires an engagement with how masculinities and femininities are co-constructed through a sense of complementarity in Islam. This also calls for a better understanding of men’s work experiences, as shifts in the dominant normative framework and women’s empowerment are altering men’s roles in their families and in society. Hence, understanding the co-constitution of self and other through relationality is crucial to exploring different forms and modalities of agency that are deemed valuable in the local regimes of recognition.

The Saudi Vision 2030 has put women’s integration into the labour force firmly on the political agenda, but priorities manifest differently across the vast regions of Saudi Arabia. Future studies could explore how gender and religious norms are performed across the rural–urban nexus, the class system and ethnic groups. Internal migration has meant that regional identities have become part and parcel of the urban centres (Thompson & Quilliam, 2024), with positions of wealth or class strongly circumscribing women’s work experiences (Sian et al., 2020; Syed et al., 2018). Moreover, ethnic hierarchies have had a longstanding influence on shaping different forms of discrimination in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East more widely (Harry, 2007; Lauring, 2013). Examining these variations through a more nuanced focus on the discursive conditions for the recognition of a politicized subject could yield valuable insights into how inclusive forms of organizing can be developed in specific Islamic discursive communities.

This research is an invitation for future studies to investigate the understanding of how transformative agency and resistance could advance such politics. Future research could focus on the engagement with alternative forms of Saudi feminisms (Al-Fassi, 2016) or extend the focus of this study to examine the role of ethnicity or rural–urban divides, for example, through a more in-depth engagement with local interpretive practices, women’s poetry and oral history across regions. This would allow going beyond traditional approaches of studying gender at work to gain a more profound understanding of how women can play a political role in (re)interpreting discourse, especially in the complex interplay between religious norms and laws capturing their intersectional sensibilities and contextual realities.

Capturing the texture of norms

This article conceptualizes four forms of performativity – precarious, sovereign, hyperbolic and paradoxical performativity – focusing primarily on their application and texture in the Islamic discursive communities of Saudi Arabia. These performativities can be understood as practices, which can arguably be transposed to other contexts and concerns because they denote different forms of normative enactments carrying a wider relevance to and reflection of Butler’s work. Moreover, this study adds an important distinction between a norm and a law, which tend to be used interchangeably in Butler’s work. Thereby, this study builds on and contributes to the rich empirical studies that have elucidated different forms of performativity, such as Ortlieb and Sieben (2019), who examined gender performativity in organizational events as performatively constituted through gender images, status differences, the body and sexuality. However, empirical explorations of performativity in an Islamic context are scarce. The four forms of performativity identified in this study provide an original perspective on how the repetition of a complex set of norms is guided by the intersection and interaction of different normative sources and how this, in turn, governs recognition in the context of Saudi Arabia.

Precarious performativity is rooted in the expectation of the dialectics of recognition that differently distribute a sense of entitlement to respect among men and women, showcasing how the Islamic discursive tradition comes to bear on specific interpretations of relationality in organizations. This supports findings from a previous study on women’s access to employment in Morocco, where Eger (2021) proposes that respect can function as an alternative lens through which gender (in)equality in Islam can be understood. Building on this prior work, this article shows how the norm of respect becomes materialized through gendered space and enacted through forms of bodily control and (in)visibility in the organizations studied. This practice highlights the repetition of a norm that builds on the conception of ‘mutual recognition’ that a subject (to be) constantly strives toward but may never reach, in which the dialectics of recognition are shaped by induced forms of precarity.

Induced forms of precarity circumscribe a woman’s subject position as a viable worker in and of the organization, relating to Riach, Rumens and Tyler’s (2014) conception of negating experiences which require a certain form of vigilance to be accorded recognition. This is illustrated in this study through women’s conformist body work, in which they negotiated perceived norms of respectability and professional image while struggling with exclusionary norms that implied that not seeing a woman, not recognizing her, became the way in which a woman could be respected. A woman’s body became associated with the figural enactment of the possibility of norm transgression, with Thompson (2015, p. 22) describing this as a ‘culture of female dehumanization’ that (re)produces induced forms of precarity around a woman’s status as worker and leader. This alludes to the power of interpellation to produce a subject of fear and shame by signalling a trespass, which connects to the prevalent terms of recognition. Such a threat is always present and circumscribes a form of silenced deviance set up as the continuous striving for an ideal that negates the wrong and the wronged.

Studying performativity in a religious context further shows that sovereign performativity acquires an interpretive force that goes beyond the traditional realm of legal sovereign power and becomes intimately tied to disciplinary power, opposite to Foucault’s (1994) argument specifying these as the two limits of power. Sovereign performativity is enacted in an interpretive space, with this study illustrating the fluidity of the political and religious realm in Saudi Arabia, which ensues from religious nationalism that has also penetrated the workplace (Al-Rasheed, 2013; Sian et al., 2020). Sovereignty, in this practice, assumes the power to do what is said, i.e. by producing and not only describing social reality. Regulation, in turn, becomes one form of constitutionalization where managers mediate sovereignty by referring to a source of legitimization such as religious law rather than being sovereign themselves. This opens to interpretations of sovereign law and contests the indifference of the law, disclosing the ways in which the call becomes a political act constituting the juridical and social formation of the subject. This has material consequences ‘for those who are intensely interpellated as for those who are partially interpellated or not interpellated at all’ (Butler & Athanasiou, 2013, p. 89).

The new Saudi nationalism has embraced a more ‘moderate’ interpretation of Islam, which turns the matter of normalization of Saudi law central to discussions of women’s integration into the labour force (Viden, 2024). Thompson (2015) emphasizes the importance of Saudi women’s knowledge of their legal rights in Islam to advance their integration and representation in the labour force. Women’s rights are influenced by the Sharia-backed personal status laws or family laws enacted as part of state law (Badran, 2009), which can also come to bear on a woman’s daily work experiences, not least through the institution of the family, which ‘permeates society upward and outward, personalizing societal institutions in a way not found in the west’ (Omair, 2008, p. 117). The regulatory framework around women’s employment has significantly changed in Saudi Arabia in recent years. This raises an interesting field for further studies, especially considering the recent codification of the personal status code in Saudi Arabia – to understand how the increasing forms of codification of religious norms can influence their performativity and assimilation into the workplace.

Hyperbolic performativity portrays a sense of over-identification with a norm, for example, as bodies that ‘conform too well’ (Butler, 2015, p. 32). When repeating a norm hyperbolically, managers over-identify with a supposed norm. This becomes the dominant way managers (re)produce a norm that remains uncertain or not wholly known to humans but seems to be constituted through its prohibition. Managers were afraid of transgressing a supposed uncertain norm. For example, the norm of gender segregation led some firms to establish separate buildings for women. This was described as an over-interpretation of the law, which did not stipulate such a requirement. Such strategies risk confirming a supposed norm by idealizing or even naturalizing the latter by ‘overdoing’ the supposed norm’s expectation. This practice surfaces how norms resist when challenged. They over-proliferate and over-assert themselves, further entrenching their authority but also seemingly transforming their authority through this exaggeration while norms are being instituted.

An exaggerated performance of a norm can only exist in relation to a normative source that simultaneously becomes conceived with regard to the exaggerated performance. The analysis of this study showcases how hyperbolic normative enactments over time can institute an accepted way of doing gender that relies on an over-interpretation of the law. Thereby, this practice causes a fracture that tends to reinforce the normative scripts by restraining the possibility of other ways of conceiving and performing a norm (to be), as recognition tends to confirm the existence of a shared knowledge of those norms. Asymmetries of recognition can also be reversely distributed if the over-performance of a norm functions as a subversive strategy, in the sense that it makes visible both the constructed nature of norms and what was otherwise a taboo (Butler, 2011). However, this might lead to shame (cf. Eger, 2021) or other forms of exclusion or backlash, as illustrated in this study.

The repetition of a norm can also be paradoxical. Paradoxical performativity rested in the subversion of a given norm by making use of that very norm that it was subverting, i.e. the norm was ‘turned against itself to spawn re-articulations that call into question [its] hegemonic force’ (Butler, 2011, p. xi). By reclaiming the norm and the sense of division that prefigured it, resistance became effective because it reproduced the same norm by temporarily inhabiting the space and the practices of its re-interpretation, and this openness enabled tactical ways of addressing the underlying paradox. This highlights the intimate entanglement between statutory laws and cultural as well as religious norms, whose pursuit and enactment were often subject to a contradictory set of demands, which called into being different forms of boundary work. At times, this also required courage on the part of managers not to know due to the perceived uncertainty and ambiguity underpinning different legal and normative prescriptions.

Practical implications

The social interpretation of normative sources was mainly performed by men, also at the organizational level. Religious principles and managers’ interpretations were seen as authoritative in shaping women’s integration into the workforce. This implied an often limited exposure and understanding of a woman’s experience and interpretation of a supposed norm. This led to situations in which organizational responses to and implementation of governmental regulations and laws were deemed disrespectful towards women and/or added to induced forms of precarity undermining a woman’s status as a worker. The introduction of anti-sexual harassment and discrimination policies represented a significant step for normalizing gender-mixed workspaces by thematizing sexual harassment as something that is not primarily a ‘woman’s fault’ (Eger et al., 2018) or reduced to norms around women’s modesty and segregation (Ali & Syed, 2017). However, when this study was conducted, most organizations had not yet developed an advanced understanding of how to meaningfully integrate women into their workforce beyond the letter of the law.

Organizations could become more explicit in codifying extant laws and norms, which often remain ambiguous in their understanding and treatment of gender difference (Syed & Ali, 2019). Only a few organizations in this study had developed codes of best practice or ethics that could guide employees on acceptable forms of conduct and relating to each other. This would, however, also require specifying the potential deviations from the norm and associated penalties, which symbolically often hinge on norm transgression being perceived as that which cannot be named. Different scholars have emphasized that even progressive actors in Saudi society, including judges, lawyers and business leaders, often fear the societal backlash that could ensue from supporting women’s empowerment (Eger et al., 2022; Sian et al., 2020; Thompson, 2015). Therefore, the political backing and the King and Crown Prince’s endorsement of women’s participation and representation in the labour force has been and continues to be central to ensuring that progress endures.

Moreover, previous research has shown that managers are often uncertain about how to interpret and adhere to religious norms and regulations concerning women’s integration in the workplace (Eger et al., 2022). This study confirms these findings but further extends these by showing that women in management positions were knowledgeable and confident in interpreting and applying extant norms (much more often than their male counterparts). This extends Islamic feminists’ concern to the business realm, showing how religious-conforming change becomes possible through women’s active interpretation of religious and societal norms as part of their everyday work life. The enactment of a norm through reliance on the Qur’anic verses can resist local (primarily) male interpretations of a norm (Thompson, 2015), for example, by highlighting how modesty in the Qur’anic verses can be interpreted differently. This can provide a realm for religious-conforming, paradoxical performativity that does not counter a religious norm (to be) but questions its enactment.