"Women Home and Away": Transnational Managerial Work and Gender Relations

This article addresses the intersections, even blurrings, of two "homes" and two "aways" - the personal, 'private' home and the corporate 'public' 'away', and the national home country and corporate base and the transnational work away. Drawing on 40 semi-structured interviews with women and men top and middle managers in seven multinational corporations located in Finland, we examine the complex relations among transnational managerial work, corporate careers and personal, marriage and family-type relations, and their differences for women and men managers. This shows the very different personal and social worlds inhabited by senior women and men managers, and how transnational processes can make those differences even greater.