“Ready for whatever the day might bring”: Analysis of stories about women leading digital meetings in Iceland

This article examines the performance of femininities and leadership in online work meetings and the discursive knowledge on which they draw. As women's confidence is portrayed as contingent upon their intense labour, we focused on self-body-care and mood work, highlighting their interaction with the construction of professional feminine identity and leadership within a neoliberal framework. Data was collected online using the story completion method. The story stem presented a woman who had just been promoted and was about to conduct her first online meeting with her new team. A total of 83 stories were collected from participants who identified as Icelandic. Through reflective thematic analysis, we constructed the following themes: A) Overwhelmed and anxious, B) Excessive preparation, C) Going off the rails, D) Exposing the rules through dissidence and sarcasm. Overall, these stories draw out the paradoxes within neoliberal ideologies of femininity, how the fantasy of choice is undermined by the notion that women leaders' biggest obstacle is their own mindset. The writers of the stories demonstrate their awareness of the constraints of neoliberal femininity, which allows them to play with the rules and resist the constraints of neoliberal femininity.