Being a female pension trustee

Purpose: While there has been much discussion about pension regulation and decision making in relation to pension trusteeship, there appears to be little research on women and men who take up opportunities to become pension trustees. Thus the focus of this research is to explore what it means to be a female or male pension trustee in “a man's world”.

Design/methodology/approach: Acker's influential model for the gendering of organisational processes and its subsequent development to acknowledge the intersection of multiple inequalities such as gender and class is used as a tool to provide a micro‐analysis of men's and women's interpretation of being a pension trustee.

Findings: The persistence of homosocial reproduction around managerial competences in pension board activity helps explain men's and women's differing experiences within male‐dominated pension boardrooms.

Research limitations/implications: The paper focuses on a small but diverse sample of pension trustees and further research is needed to explore further why pension trustees take on this challenging and complex role.

Originality/value: UK legislation about member representation on pension boards has the potential to bring new female candidates to the board. This paper gives an insight into what this means for a diverse group of pension trustees.