I’ve got a Gal in Kalamazoo: Rotary International, change and the outsourcing of gender

Summary Over approximately the past four decades, women have entered organizations that traditionally were male bastions. Usually, the appearance of women is gradual over a period of time. This paper presents the case of an almost instantaneous change in organizational gender composition and explores the gendered nature of the organization twenty years after the “disruption.” We examine the effects of the admittance of women on the gendered nature of Rotary International's North American organization. The iterative effects on and of the organizational culture are explored through textual analysis of The Rotarian , the North American RI magazine. We argue that, although the gender order is disrupted on the surface, the gendering is ultimately maintained in the organization through an outsourcing of gender.