ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the interesting ways in which women in New Zealand workplaces use humor to 'do femininity' in the workplace, without undermining their professional identity, and explores ways in which some women use humor to further a feminist rather than a feminine agenda in the workplace. It analyzes how women use humor to parody stereotypical feminine behavior at work, indicating their awareness of the constraining effects of such stereotypes and subtly contesting the validity of restrictively gendered expectations. The chapter explores the proposition that femininity is an issue for women at work and that humor provides a flexible and dynamic socio-pragmatic strategy for managing the issue. The social constructionist approaches that have dominated language and gender research since the late 1990's focus on ways in which people make use of linguistic resources to construct their social identity, including their gender identity.
