ABSTRACT
Prompted to reflect on one's own career paths, female and male managers alike often suggests that they had no specific aspirations to be promoted into leading positions, but that it somehow happened to them, as though by an external and divine plan. This chapter explores such career narratives among female leaders and asks how the externalization of agency can shed light on gendered aspects of organizations and leadership recruitment. It is based on data drawn from a set of open-ended qualitative interviews with senior female managers in three big multinational companies in the Norwegian petroleum industry. Men and engineers dominate the petroleum industry, and there are in general few female managers in these organizations. The chapter presents approaches to myths and the theology of management, and reviews the main characteristics of Genesis. It considers how myth of Genesis can provide a cultural contextualization and a symbolic structure that can inform the analysis of the women's narratives of becoming leaders themselves.
