Welcome to the Doll’s House Baby: Female Agency in Everyday Organizational Life

I. INTRODUCTION

Linda Hirschman's imperative title 'Get to Work' (2007) expresses one of the most important goals that feminists have worked on achieving. Feminists have introduced the idea of women's emancipation from the home as a sign of gender equality and freedom (Goodman, 2010). They have worked tirelessly to move the role of women from the private sphere to the public sphere and introduce the idea of having a career as a sign of women's ability to accomplish anything, till it becomes a synonym of female power, equality and, agency. Therefore, by the start of the new millennium, post feminists have announced that contemporary women should perceive themselves as the late modernity winner (Harris, 2004; Ghaill& Haywood, 2007), they can venture into any job opportunities, as these opportunities are no longer sexual or gendered oriented. They go further to state that contemporary women are encouraged to forge their identities as "men lose out to women's touch at work" (Ghaill& Haywood, 2007). They combined their claims of female agency and gender equality in the workplace, with many examples of successful women. The women who were able to challenge the system and defy serious sex- base hierarchy, and join the managerial ladder and male-oriented jobs, in response to the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) and its emphasis on equal representation of all gender in the workplace. This optimistic view of full-time career woman's life has encouraged a number of studies to examine the increasing number of female in the workplace or what is generally known as the feminization at the workplace, i.e., Ghaill and Haywood's (2007) work in which they argue that social changes and gender equality can be measured by the number of females who participates in the labor market. And another group of scholars, such as Swim, Aikin, Hall, and Hunter (1995), illustrate the impact of sex differences on individual occupational preferences and argue that sex preferences in occupational presences have diminished. However, little attention has been paid to the idea of female agency and to what extent contemporary women are experiencing their agency in the workplace. Therefore, this This article examines the representation of female agency in the workplace. It demonstrates how being biologically part of a particular group 'female' restrain your agency. The article argues that the workplace has hindered female agency by creating a new domesticity within the public sphere, where female employees have been outsourced or exploited by their male superiors.

The article explains how workplaces have privatized the domain of female employees, creating a new private sphere in the workplace and reinforcing female employees' structure of power that should constitute their agency. The article illustrates that while feminists have been occupied with diversity on the managerial level and female-intensive involvement in a male-dominated career, they have been distracted from the way female agency has been violated in the workplace.

1.1 The systematic sex bias strategy in workplace

According to US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual harassment can be identified as any form of "Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature...conduct explicitly or implicitly...[and affect] individual's work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment" (Quoted in Cortina & Berdahl, 2008, p. 470). Sexual harassment has been identified as any sort of action, gesture, or verbal utterance that expresses sexual desire. However, this identification does not represent the actual social context of the contemporary workplace in which female sexual nature has not only played the leading role in any organization hiring decision but also has been used by organizations as a method of applying cost-saving strategy, i.e., It is much less expensive to hire a female secretary to do her paid work of secretarial tasks, and involuntarily accommodate her boss's emotional and mode swing at the same time. So while her physical nature guarantees her job, her sacrifice of agency maintains her career. Female employee's physical nature might play a role in having and maintaining her career because the moment she fails to provide the emotional part, she loses her job. Such a decision to hire a female secretary explicitly specifies the sex of the job holder. And this decision is usually built on a prototype that being female entitles you to be attentive to other people's feelings, and willingness to sacrifice your agency to fulfill other people needs. So while organizations apply the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) recommendations of equal representation of all gender in the workplace, they preserve the stabilization of the biological sexual hierarchy or what Foucault (1978) calls the system. This sort of what we shall call sex- base harassment expresses the systematic sex bias strategy that exists in the social context of the workplace, in which female agency should be experienced. And while scholars argue that the effect of sex-base harassment on female agency appears to be "a greater problem for women in blue-collar, lower paying occupations than for women in higher paying occupations as well as in situations where women occupy non-traditional jobs" (Barling& Cooper, 2008,p. 664). The article illustrates how female agency on the managerial level and highly skilled women in the male-dominated career has been violated. The article is explaining that when Foucault (1978) argues that agency is achievable through individual resistance, he was developing the concept of agency at a distance from the social hierarchy that bears heavily on female biological nature. He is ignoring that a system which is built on natural sexual scale to preserves its existence, should keep its scale unchanged. In such a system, free agency becomes correspond to this hierarchy. And while a male can experience his agency according to his biological superior position in the scale or the system, a female can experience her agency within the limits of her biological position in this scale, and in a way that preserve the system. Or, as Rousseau (1762) expresses it, if the most important goal of a state is to maintain its existence, it must experience force on its parts and place each one in the way that keeps the shape. Therefore, the female who are challenging male-oriented careers such as managerial positions and non-traditional jobs are more likely to face sex-based harassment because they are trying to change the system or exchange the places of the state's parts. Berdahl (2007) argues that "the primary motive underlying all harassment is a desire to protect one's social status when it seems threatened" (p.641). Indeed, protecting one's social status plays essential role in increasing this sort of harassment in the workplace. However, the way organizations use this sort of harassment to undermine female agency and applying cost- saving strategy ensures us it is more than individual behavior. And it would not be an exaggeration if we say it is a systematic strategy to undermine female employees' agency, keep them apart from male-oriented careers, and protect what Foucault calls a system.

II. VIOLATING FEMALE AGENCY IN THE WORKPLACE

In The Devil Wears Prada(2003), Weisberger offers two examples of female employees: Miranda Priestly an example of woman in the managerial ladder, and Andrea the highly motivated young woman, who wants to join a male-dominated workplace as a journalist at The New Yorker. In the beginning Weisberger introduces Miranda Priestly as an ideal example of these influential women that the society highlights to validate their claims that contemporary women experience their agency. Miranda Priestly is a perfect example of a woman who has it all; she is a wife, a mother, independent, successful, fashionable and powerful woman. She presented an ideal example of a society that believes in gender equality, like our post-feminist society in which equality is sine quenon (Essential and undeniable) (Esping-Andersen, 2009). She is "the most important woman at the most profitable magazine" (Weisberger, 2003, p.81). Therefore, Fest (2008) argues that the way Miranda, ambitious self-made woman presented in the novel as a devil, is an attempt by the author to reinforce feminist achievements, and convey a message that it is not suitable for a woman to have a successful and influential career where she is able to experience her agency. And "perform...[as] a new kind of self-made subjectivity" or as "the winners in...[the] new world" (Harris, 2004, p.6,1). According to Fest, female agency is the sense of I can do it all. What Fest ignores is the way Miranda's agency is trespassed in her workplace, and while Miranda's facade tells us she is in charge of everything in her life, she is unable to dress herself.

I'd walked by the closet just in time to hear Nigel shouting, MIRANDA PRIESTLY! TAKE THAT RAG OFF THIS SECOND. THAT DRESS MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE SLUT! A COMMON WHORE!

I'd stood outside with my ear presses to the door[...] waited for her to upbraid him in that special way of hers, but all I heard was a quiet murmur of agreement and the rustling of the fabric as she removed the dress (Weisberger, 2003, 239).

Miranda has no control over the way her body is dressed and presented Nigel, is the person who is in charge when it comes to her fashion. He is firm, assertive, inconsiderate, and non-emotional. Nigel is a typical male manager in a system that believes that "the mind and reason are coded masculine, whereas the body and emotion are code feminine" ("Feminist Perspectives on The Self, 2015). However, according to Weisberger, Nigel cannot be appointed in Miranda's position because he lacks the female emotional code. He cannot accommodate another male manager. Foucault (1980) argues that power should be exercised rather than possessed. The same idea Weisberger asserts by showing that Nigel's position in the organization is lower than Miranda, but as a male, he is higher than her in the system. Therefore,: he exercises power. On the contrary, Miranda possesses a managerial position, but because she is a female she does not exercise power. And despite the fact that Miranda embraces male attitude in dealing with her female employees, her female nature appears in the way she has to rush to accommodate Mr. Irv Ravitz, her male boss. (Weisberger,2003), fulfill his needs and do whatever makes him satisfied even if she does not like what she is doing the real action began on the third with the dining room, where so far Miranda had refused to eat among the peons unless she was lunching with Irv Ravitz, Elias's CEO, who liked to eat there (Weisberger, 2003, p. 137).

Such a situation might be familiar in the domestic sphere, where the excellent housewife tries to accommodate her full-time career tired husband and sacrifices her needs for the sake of their harmonious relationship and peaceful home. Weisberger (2003) describes the situation in Runway as an example of domesticity "Welcome to the family" (p.115). The relationship between

Miranda and her female employees as an example of the relationship between a mother and her babies, where the children are "tied to Miranda like an umbilical cord" (Weisberger,2003,p. 94), and the mother should watch over them, be sure that they are well behaved and have control over their actions, while the relationship between Miranda and Mr. Ravitz is like the relationship between a good housewife and a husband, where the wife adjust herself to fulfill her husband's needs and wishes. In other words, Weisberger tells us that Miranda's success in her managerial position depends on her ability to endorse male characteristics in controlling her female employees, but maintaining her work depends on her being an excellent female employee able to accommodate her male superior. She follows the undeclared rules that were given to her as she signed the work's contract. And as the marriage contract gives "the woman certain obligations, including unpaid work" (Witting, 1982,p. 77), the new form of implicit work contract assigns female employees to another form of obligations and unpaid emotional work. McRobbi (2009) argues that contemporary women have to be grateful for the managerial positions opportunities and willing to pay for these opportunities of joining the workforce that has been generously given to them by society. Therefore, Miranda shows her gratitude for her managerial position in the form of accommodating her moody male boss, forcing herself to eat where he likes and dress according to another male's taste. And despite Miranda's massive façade as a powerful female employee, she does not experience her agency. Nigle stands behind the way Miranda dresses the way she looks, and tells her about what is suitable and what is not. Mr. Raviyz tells her where she eats, and watches what she eats.

Swim, Aikin, Hall, Hunter (1995) and Powell (2010) state that we should differentiate between old-fashioned and modern sexists in the workplace. It is believed that in the workplaces old-fashioned sexists say a female employee causes problems in the workplace when she does not stick to her proper role, modern sexists in the workplaces say a female employee causes problems when she complains too much.

Therefore, Weisberger asserts that, Miranda cannot complain about her life or the way her agency is violated in the workplace. On the contrary, she should sacrifice. Miranda cannot resist or ask for more, because complaining and asking for more make her look nagging and demanding, as typical female characteristics. Or as McRobbie (2009) puts it "the new female subject is, despite her freedom, called upon to be silent, to withhold critique in order to count as modern sophisticated girl" (p.18). Miranda cannot express her anger towards the way her life and her agency are disregarded in the workplace. Her anger is defined in the way she eats. She eats four slices of greasy, fatty bacon, two sausage links, and a soft cheese Danish every morning, and washed it down with a tall latte from Starbucks (two raw sugars, remember!)[and her favorite] Vanilla ice cream- not yogurt,[...]not ice milk, and nothing sugar-free or low-fat- with chocolate syrup and real whipped cream. Not canned,...genuine whipped cream (Weisberger, 2003,p. 145& 199).

Weisberger argues that Miranda powerlessly suppresses and transfers her feelings into food and indicates that Miranda might have bulimia or any other sort of eating disorder "As far as I could tell, the office was divided on whether she was permanently on the Atkins diet or just lucky enough to have a superhuman metabolism the result of some pretty fantastic genes" (Weisberger, 2003,p.145). Miranda should sacrifice and abide by Nigale's way of dress and tolerates Mr. Ravitz swing of mood for the sake of her fake façade of being the most powerful woman who experiences her agency in the workplace and have control over her life. "Tell me, how many CEOs or managing partners or movie directors... [have] to sacrifice a lot to get there... the same [could] be said of super successful people in every industry" (Weisberger, 2003,p.227).

Foucault (1980) visualizes the way an organization might observe its individual as a 'Panopticon' in which the Eye of the Power or the central of observation at the center of the organization, so it has the ability to observe and monitor the actions of the individual. And argues that technology has developed different forms of optical surveillance that allow the easy and effective exercise of power (p.146-150) However, What Foucault does not explain is the effects of such optical surveillance on the expression of individual agency. And to what extent an individual is allowed to experience their agency in the presence of the gaze of the power? Weisberger (2003) addresses the same idea and describes Runway magazine as a modernish style of 'Panopticon', where the eye of the power is allowed to notice the workers' behaviors through cameras, access card, and the glass cubicles that leads to another a wide- open space of huge windows and streaming bright light (p.21). She argues that female agency in workplace is restrained by the society's new technology of optical surveillance. In Runway, they provide employees with everything. They offer a dining room with different sorts of food, a gym, designer clothes, and even a daycare center. And each employee is equipped with a card to access all these privileges. Organizations can monitor their employee's activities through this card, "[you can use this card] to get food in the dining room... of course, that's how they can tell what you're eating [...] Do they care what you eat? [...] Um, I'm not sure. Maybe? I just know they can tell" (Weisberger, 2003,p. 63). They can also get designer clothes for free or with a considerable discount, but all the clothes in size Zero or maybe larger like size One. They provide employees with the illusion of having power or the sense of I can do it all. Runway provides her female employees with a daycare center, a Gym, and a dining room gives her employees the implications that they can have it all. They can have a great job, a family, friends and even children. Work places are having a daycare centers. Weisberger argues that workplaces i.e., Runway provides female employees with the illusion of agency while they are not only limiting their choices but they also control their female employees' bodies as they monitor their food. They should not exceed 800 calories/day. Powell (2010) argues that the effect on sex differences in the workplace can be traced in way people should be inclined and willing to behave in work setting. Being female entitles you to be attentive to other people's needs, putting your needs in the second position and following the rules. Therefore, Runway uses this card to ensure that her female employees are willing to incline to all the rules and follow the orders. Runway makes female employees paranoid about their weight.

"I was constantly called on to assure various Runway employees that they weren't fat... but I soon come to realize that Hope – along with every other an orexically skinny girl in the office, and most of the guys – was able to accurately evaluate other people's weight. It was just when it came time to look in the mirror that everyone genuinely saw a wildebeest staring back" (Weisberger, 2003, p.188-189).

Runway's new optical surveillance or its formula of power- which presents "between the cameras and the cards, they kind of know what everyone's doing[...] I don't think they actually look at the cameras,...but the cards tell everything"(Weisberger, 2003,p.63)-allow the organization not only to monitor female employees' behaviors and performance at work, but they monitor the most intimate object of their female employees, their bodies. Runway's employees' access card creates a critical gaze of the self. (Gill, 2021 & Roberti, 2022). The card is a method by which the organization incorporates into one's inner life. Runway might look like a family-friendly organization, a working place that offers female employees a daycare center"I'd heard a rumor that there was a daycare center in the basement, but I didn't know anyone who actually had children" (Weisberger, 2003, p.137).They want to convey "the message" (Weisberger, 2003. P.272) that nothing can stop Runway's female employees from having successful careers, financial independence, and social life with family and children. However, these skinny girls would not use the daycare center; female employees would not risk their jobs in order to have babies. Runway forces her female employees to choose between having careers with privileges or the cellar. Put it precisely, female employees have to choose between these privileges that they society offers or the cellar which attaches to their biological nature. Moreover, if Runway does not tolerate their employee's sick leave (Weisberger, 2003,p. 302), it would be a complete fancy to provide them with maternal leave. Runway uses its card as a cost-saving strategy as female employees are not allowed to gain weight, be pregnant, have maternal leave, or any sort of child caregiving responsibility.

In their search for a definition of the ideal worker, who is valued and promoted by employers, Leskinen& Cortina (2013) and Sabra (2016) state that the excellent worker is someone "who works full time and consistently over his or her lifetime and who takes no leaves for pregnancy, child care or other care giving responsibilities" (p.4). Such definition expresses the undeclared conditions and the terms that contemporary female employees accept when they sign their work contracts, in other words, women are considered incompetent workers because of their biological ability to bear children. Grosz (2004) in her exploration of the space between the natural and the cultural, argues that the physical nature of a person does not limit the role that person can play culturally. On the contrary, it offers the person a variety of life. She also affirms that the transformed and the indeterminate nature of biology ensures no boundaries, and limits to social, political and personal life. While the first part of Grosz's argument minimizes the importance of the role that biological nature can play in determined a person's life achievements, her affirmation that nature is transformed and indeterminate provides society with an unclear measure of evaluating women's work. Consequently, "the very terms that confer humanness [and smartness] on some individuals are those that deprive certain other individuals of the possibility of achieving that status" (Butler, 2004,p. 2). Precisely, Grosz (2004) states that she does not focus on the "body but [on] that which [the body] makes it possible and which limits its action" (p.2), by stating that the body has the power to make things possible or impossible we put the ability of female body under a debate, limiting female options and ensuring that the barrier between any female worker and her successful career is the sacrifices that this female worker is willing to do to conceal the vulnerability of her natural nature. In other words, the biological related bias that society uses in evaluating workers forces contemporary female employees who want to move up in their career ladder to sacrifice and put their life on hold for the sake of career development. Weisberger (2003) emphasizes the same idea as Miranda tells Andrea, "you remind me of myself when I was your age" (p.368), in response to Andrea's declaration that she puts her career before her social life and she will not leave her job for emergency. Andrea does not want to be caught with any sort of desire of caregiving or being emotional as she aspires to join the male-dominated career at The New Yorker.She announces that she will trade her social life for a career and equality.

Fest (2008) argues that the way Andrea quit her job "is a cautionary tale that warns young women of the danger of becoming successful, the danger of giving the lure of money and glamour that irrevocably leads to the loss of love [and] happiness" (p.55). Andrea quitted her job, when she came to realize that she will not achieve her dream. She decided to experience her agency through resistance and not let the fake example of having it all presented in Runway to deceive her. She expresses her agency, refuses to follow the norms, and refuses to be acquainted with Christian Collinsworth, the man who offers to help her to achieve her dream in joining a male-dominated workplace as a journalist at The New Yorker while he is telling her "don't worry your pretty little head" (Weisberger, 2003,p. 253). Collinsworth "smelled of masculine...something old-school like Polo Sport" (Weisberger, 2003, p.351). Weisberger draws a concrete picture of the patriarchy and attached this picture with an alarming light, "at that exact moment, an ambulance roared past me with its siren wailing, lights flashing in a fruitless attempt to speed through the hopelessly gridlocked traffic" (Weisberger, 2003,p.159). She urges her female readers to be cautious about what society offers. The successful career in Runway is a part of the society game, or as Weisberger (2003) puts it "It's all a part of that world and that world is no place you want to be. It might look like fun from here[...], but you'd be in way over your head" (p.128). The post-feminist society offers contemporary female employees sweet, wonderful, successful, and prosperous life but according to its sex bias rules.

The Devil Wears Prada is a cautionary tale that warns contemporary female employees against what Foucault (1980) calls 'The social body'. Which is the effect "of the materiality of power operating on the very bodies of individuals" (p.55). Or the way the body is used by the power to restrain individuals' behaviors. And in our case here, the power is represented in the organizational implicitly rules or the social context of the workplace that uses the body to restrain female employees' agency, keeping them apart from managerial positions and male-dominated careers. And while Foucault(1980) states that once the power produces this effect, there is inevitably resistance emerges in response to this phenomenon. (p.56). Female employees' resistance to the social body phenomenon in the workplace cost them their job and careers. Weisberger(2003) emphasizes when Andrea was asked about her job and how it would help her to embrace her future career.

I instantly suppressed the urge to start rattling off the myriad things I'd learned: how to find a single store or restaurant review in whole city[....]how to plead with, scream at, persuade, cry to pressure, cajole or charm anyone, from the immigrant food delivery guy to the editor in chief [...]to get exactly what I needed (p. 354)

Andrea knows that she is wasting her time in this job and she will never learn anything that will help her to have a real career in the future, but she knows that her resistance means losing the position that "a million girls would die for"("Weisberger, 2003,p.17). Andrea, by quitting her jobat Runway, she tries to experience her agency and resist the social body phenomenon or the aces card that allows Runway to mentor her body, her food, and her social life. The Devil Wears Prada is a cautionary tale that warns young women not to let their dreams of having careers even if they have to follow the hardest path as Andrea has to start again "it's not The New Yorker, but it's an OK first step" (Weisberger, 2003, p.385). Therefore it is not strange that Andrea does not only try to achieve her dream, but she aspires to be a CEO and has her magazine, The Plunge. Weisberger asserts that feminism interpretation of women having successful careers was never intended to encourage women to work under subhuman conditions or accept to sacrifice their agency or as Faludi (2006) puts it, "fantasies of fame and world conquest aren't... [feminism] aspirations" (p.xv). Feminism is about liberating women, removing the limits of their dreams, helping them to experience their agency and create their own future and achieve whatever their goals are. Weisberger argues that working at Runway is not the only way for Andrea to have a profound impact or indicate her success. Andrea and contemporary female employees have the power to be whatever they are dream of. Women should not take the safe path. On the contrary, they should stand for themselves.

III. LANGUAGE IN THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE WORKPLACE

Witting (1980) states that in our world, we have diverse of languages, such as the language of the unconscious, the language of fashion, the language of the exchange of women, etc. All these discourses of languages fit into one another, support one another, interoperate one another, engender one another, and produce "a confusing static for the oppressed, which makes them lose sight of the material cause of their oppression" (p.104). Weisberger addresses the discourse of language that is used in the social context of the workplace and demonstrates the relationship between the languages is used in the workplace and female physical nature. Weisberger emphasizes on how the discourse of language in the workplace is created in a way to restrain female employee's agency. Andrea is welcome at Runway by Nigel "WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, BABY!" (Weisberger, 2003, p.59). And when she has been introduced in a party as Miranda's new assistant Marshall, the male color guru, addresses her "I've heard all about you, little one. Welcome to the family" (Weisberger, 203,p.115). And when Andrea talks about her dream of joining the male-dominated workplace The New Yorker, she is told by Christian, "Darling Andy, don't worry your pretty little head about it" (Weisberger, 2003,p. 253). Weisberger demonstrates how the language used in the workplace creates a new domesticity in workplace, where female employees are treated as fragile creatures, unable to use their minds. And even when Andrea refuses to go out with Christian he asks her "Do you really have plans, Andrea, or do you think your boyfriend would disapprove of you going out with another man?"(Weisberger,2003, p. 160). The way the question is constructed expresses how society sees a female employee, and implies that she is unable to make a decision by herself. She should seek the approval of her master 'boyfriend' before she can socialize with her colleagues or the men she works with. Or as Witting (1989) puts it, "the perenniality of the sexes and the perenniality of slaves and master proceed from the same belief. And as there are no slaves without masters, there are no women without men" (p.10). It does not matter if you have a career or are financially independent. As a female you still need to consider your male master before making any decision, even if that decision is related to you job. Weisberger (2003) successfully uses the language to demonstrate the relationship between female agency in the workplace and female biological sexual nature, and affirms that the society creates a new domesticity, in the workplace, where female employees find their agency tied up with umbilical cord, not allowing them to grow up or out or away from the source of their suffocation, or their biological sexual nature.

Foucault (1980) in his explanation of The Order of Things argues that in any regime, it is not important what kind of external power imposes itself on a system, as of what effects of control circulate within this system, and constitute as form of internal power. Put it clearly, it is not important how many female employees have joined the labor market in response to the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs), and it emphasis on equal representation of all gender in the workplace, but what kind of power these female employees have played in the social context of the workplace, and if they constitute any form of internal control that allows them to experience their agency. Weisberger argues that "the new brand of competitive individualism, whereby people are expected to create their chances and make the best of their lives" (Harris,2004, 3). Along with postfeminists' critics and media insisting on the unnecessary female sisterhood have not allowed female employees to constitute any form of power. On the contrary, it restrains their agency and moves female employees' fight with society to a fight with one another, or as Andrea puts it:

"I realized then for the first time what different year it would have been if Emily and I could've be truly been friends, if we could have covered and protected and trusted each other enough...[and be] as a united front" (Weisberger, 2003, p.300)

Foucault (1980) states that in every relationship, power does exist. And this relationship expresses the "concrete soil in which the sovereign's power is grounded, and the conditions which make it possible for it to function" (Foucault, 1989, p.187).

The workplace can be perceived as the soil in which organizations experience their power over female employees and the competitive individualization that post-feminists have fostered considers the conditions that allow organizations to experience their power over female employees, reinforcing their agency and prevent them from challenging male-dominated careers. Post-feminists have left contemporary female employees vulnerable; each one has to fight alone against workplace injustice policies. Weisberger asserts that Andrea and Emily both can achieve their dreams and advance their workplace positions if they both stand together, but they cannot trust one another. They have been told by society that every woman should create her chance by herself and never trust anyone. Postfeminist critics have successfully created a fight between women; making them believe that the barrier between any woman and her advancement in the workplace is not a man but it is another woman.

To conclude, Witting (1984) states that feminists should use text as a literary war machine, this war machine aims at "pulverize the old form and formal conventions", and even though the device might appear strange, nonconforming, and unassimilable, it will eventually work. The Devil Wears Prada might be considered as an example of Witting's literary war machine. It is the new Trojan horse by which Weisberger pulverizes the post-feminist form of female agency and illustrates how female agency in the workplace has been practiced within the limits of physical sexual differences between male and female employees. And emphasizes that the physical differences does not only restrain contemporary female employees' expression of agency but also creates a new domesticity in the workplace where female employees have been assigned to paid and unpaid work.