Soft Skills and Hard Numbers: Gender Discourse in Human Resources

• In Event: Gender Discourses in Professional Practices

Abstract

In the recent years, the phenomenon of big data has taken popularized usage, promising to be a profitable apparatus for corporations. While much has been said about the exploitative potentials of big data, less has been written about the ways professions are demanded to change in accordance to the regime of calculation and prediction. My essay examines the gendered undertones of big data focusing on the human resource (HR) occupation. It asks the question of whether a big data epistemology produces unequal gender relevance in the corporate structure. Using both a historical study and a textual analysis, I tie the current challenge of ‘hard numbers’ in an occupation characterized by ‘soft skills’ to a broader struggle of femininity and patriarchal capitalism. The occupation’s historical challenge with its gendered assumption illuminates on the current big data struggle, and show how patriarchy continues to produce inequality in workplaces.

Author

• Renyi Hong, U of Southern California - Annenberg School for Communication