[WHEN] THE GODDESS PATTINI REACHED T[HE] GLASS CEILING: A REAFFIRMATION OF FEMALE LABOUR ROLE WITHIN AND BEYOND 'HRM'

Abstract

This text recounts our pilgrimage-an attempt of [re]reading ‘the cult of the Goddess Pattini’, mythical symbol of wifely devotion, and motherly fertility and nurture to explore and play the glass ceiling impact on the female labour under the banner of ‘HRM’ in contemporary work organization, Sri Lanka. We argue that the Goddess Pattini, ‘a thing’ that signifies the collective unconscious of women and men of ‘the ideal womanhood’, is still a powerful cue when idealizing ‘female labour role’. The cult therefore, is reread with a view to penetrating the passiveness of the women-the female labour under the banner of ‘HRM’ to the glass ceiling, when reached. Though ‘HRM’, from a modernist’s sense is regarded as a value free-dispassionate symbolic process of managing employment, its real disposition in work organizational milieu discourses is indeed ‘HRMism’. With this sensibility, we locate our [re]reading in a leading manufacturing organization in Sri Lanka, and discern that texts of HRMism not only signify ‘gender prejudices’ but also the manner men-the male labour satisfy their collective unconscious of the ideal womanhood. We therefore, argue that the passiveness to the glass ceiling is per se the manner that women-the female labour are satisfying the collective unconscious of ‘the idealized role of woman’.

Keywords: Collective unconscious, Female labour, Glass ceiling, Goddess Pattini, HRMism, text.

For full Paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk