Gender, Work & Organization

In this paper, we explore gender inequalities by examining how networks specifically shape forms of inclusion and exclusion within the context of the UK energy sector. Traditionally dominated by males, this sector has seen a growing interest from women as a potential career choice, primarily attributed to diversity and inclusion initiatives implemented by energy employers. Drawing upon qualitative data, our research reveals a significant gap between aspirational vision of a diverse and inclusive culture and the lived experiences within workplaces. Although staff diversity networks contribute positively to raising awareness, fostering connections, and advocating for specific groups, their influence on broader systemic issues remains constrained. In contrast, exclusive networks, particularly the old boys' club, function as a form of gendered power, reinforcing male dominance and restricting women's access to jobs and promotion opportunities. These networks also foster resistance to transformative organizational changes in diversity and inclusion. By examining the relatively under‐researched energy sector, this study offers a distinctive perspective on how power dynamics manifest and how networks play a pivotal role in shaping gender in/equalities within organizations.

Research suggests that the concept of a “successful leadership” is deeply entrenched in masculine stereotypes. Female leaders are caught in a dichotomy wrestling with characteristics which are considered “masculine” (e.g., confidence, authority, legitimacy, etc.) while characteristics which are considered more “feminine” are perceived to lack the necessary gravitas expected of senior leaders and thus females who embody these might not be considered as strong or as effective in their leadership. Although much research in this area has focused on female leaders struggling to reconcile this dichotomy, in contrast, this paper describes research showing the powerful, agentic way in which female leaders enact gendered leadership. The findings detail emerge from a study which sought to explore the lived leadership experience of 66 females. Drawing on Butlerian theory, the paper explores the idea of performativity in the context of female leadership. Underpinning Butlerian theory is the idea that certain gendered behaviors are not in fact “natural,” and that the learned performance of gendered behavior (i.e., what is commonly associated with femininity and masculinity) is an act of sorts, a performance. The findings show that many female leaders are considered agentive and strategic in adopting a mask and performing “masculine” traits as required in order to be accepted as effective leaders. The findings presented may be helpful for both established and emerging leaders, organizations keen to retain and progress their female leaders, and, more broadly, researchers, practitioners, and academics exploring the intersectionality of leadership, identity, and gender.

This article proposes the care‐giving worker model as the inversion of the “care‐free” worker model in educational and professional work. The care‐giving worker model offers a sociological understanding of how para‐professional jobs may accommodate care‐giving responsibilities both within and outside of work, typically at the expense of occupational status and reward. Rather than representing an alternative route for occupational upgrading—as promoted by policymakers concerned about teacher recruitment—these positions offer an escape from professional/managerial careers which are seen as antithetical to wellbeing. Based on accounts from 26 women and one man who are graduates working in paraprofessional school support positions in England, we show that most participants positioned themselves as carers first and workers second. Many had actively opted out of “care‐free” roles within education and the private sector which they saw as offering no compromise between home and work. This constrained choice arose from a perceived duty to family responsibilities and/or to a feeling that support posts, such as teaching assistant, were a refuge for meaningful educational work. Such a choice meant accepting lower pay and little opportunity for advancement, usually in favor of a partner's career. Our findings suggest that reforms to address managerialism and performativity in teaching could be effective for improving teacher recruitment and teacher and pupil wellbeing.

The Asia‐Pacific region has emerged as a focal point for reimagining work–life dynamics in an era of change and opportunity. Postpandemic trends such as the rise in remote work and in the adoption of artificial intelligence have redefined workplace practices but also exposed persistent inequalities, including limited access to flexible arrangements for low‐income workers and gender disparities in caregiving and career progression. Work–Life Research in the Asia‐Pacific: Implications for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, edited by Chan, Shang, and Lu, explores these issues and more across three sections: Work–Life Equality and Justice; Technology, Work, and Family; and Work–Life Values and Trends in Asia. The book is broad in scope, examining diverse contexts such as Australia's labor laws and Southeast Asia's gig economies. It offers readers a nuanced understanding of socioeconomic and cultural dynamics in the region with actionable suggestions, such as promoting inclusive technology transitions, addressing caregiving inequities, and tailoring policies to local contexts.

The Icelandic preschool system provides education and childcare services for children, thereby enabling Icelandic women to participate extensively in the labor market. This participation is a key factor in maintaining the country’s longstanding position as the most gender‐equal nation in the world. However, in recent years Iceland’s preschool system has faced significant strain due to a shortage of childcare options for children aged 12 months to 2 years. The strain was worsened by a surge in births during the COVID‐19 pandemic and political promises to guarantee preschool placements after parental leave went unfulfilled. This pressure created an environment conducive to the introduction of cash‐for‐childcare schemes that had not gained traction in Iceland up until now. We explored the portrayal of cash‐for‐childcare benefits in the Icelandic media during a period of 39 months, from January 1, 2020 to March 31, 2023, and analyzed their potential influence on women’s labor market position, childcare policies and family dynamics. By specifically examining the development of cash‐for‐childcare schemes in Iceland, we offer a comprehensive and detailed understanding of how particular childcare policies are promoted and accepted, and how this might affect women’s labor market position, broader parenting norms and gender equality. Our findings suggest that discourses on attachment and bonding merge with postfeminist sensibilities, where conflict and friction are created between the best interests of mothers and children. Furthermore, the findings illuminate challenges stemming from prevalent societal narratives that overlook the gendered nature of childcare responsibilities. These narratives can hinder the progress of women in the labor market, ultimately undermining the effectiveness of state‐sponsored childcare initiatives.

Research on the gendered lived experience of female self‐initiated expatriates (SIEs) in the MENA region is limited and limiting. Although research has informed us that gender and other intersections such as race and nationality play a pivotal role in shaping one's working and private life in the MENA region, it is limiting in illustrating the role of tri‐racial aesthetic labor which encompasses both visible and invisible intersectional characteristics. In this article, we examine the extent to which tri‐racial aesthetic labor manifests itself in the employment experiences of female SIEs employed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) private education sector. Drawing on the accounts of 30 individuals with varying intersectional identities, we demonstrate how individuals can be discriminated against by both visible intersections such as accent, race, and gender, as well as invisible intersections such as nationality. We further discuss how this tri‐racial dynamic of aesthetic labor is embedded in organizations' meso‐level HR practices and influences hiring practices and other outcomes such as pay. We offer a novel perspective on the existing knowledge about aesthetic labor and broaden our understanding of the intersection of nationality, accent, and race in the understudied context of the UAE.

This work explores the dynamic interplay of gender and consumption among middle‐class women in post‐liberalization India. Through thirty‐three semi‐structured interviews, it examines how Indian women reshape gender norms in the context of self, family, and society, revealing the interplay between work and consumption serving as a medium for asserting autonomy while concurrently reinforcing traditional gender roles. Utilizing Judith Butler's gender performativity theory, it argues that middle‐class women engage in a complex performance of gender through their economic agency, which both challenges and perpetuates existing patriarchal structures. Findings highlight a nuanced landscape where the intertwining of employment and consumerism enables women to redefine their gender roles, yet often within the confines of existing societal norms. This study contributes to the broader scholarship on gender work, particularly in non‐Western contexts, by illustrating the intricate ways in which women of color are redefining gender roles amid the pressures of globalization and traditional societal expectations. The paper's insights have significant implications for understanding gender dynamics in urban India and informing policies aimed at promoting gender equality.

This study explores how discourses of gender equality workers in Japan contribute to the construction of gendered subjectivities and how these discourses intersect with the hegemonic neoliberal discourse of gender equality. By employing a thematic and critical discourse analysis, our study revealed the presence of three distinct discursive regimes: a locally adapted neoliberal regime that positions women as resources for development; a critical approach that problematizes a binary view of gender and emphasizes gender equality as a systemic issue; and an essentialist regime that perceives gender equality as incorporating a female perspective and advocates for a more conservative subject position for women in Japan. Expanding on Butler's work, we conclude that discursive displacement can arise within the interaction of various discourse levels, all of which are influenced by the cultural, historical, political, and economic context in which they unfold. We further argue that embracing and recognizing the localized nuances and meanings of gender equality holds the potential to significantly enhance the formulation of both central and local policy decisions. This perspective also opens avenues to effectively counter the effects of neoliberal feminism.

This paper presents how a team of women researchers, with differing intersectional characteristics of race, family support, age, migration background, and career achievement, individually and (subsequently) collaboratively interpreted the career narratives of three white Western women migrant academics. Through auto‐ethnographical accounts, we share how each of the researchers' intersectionalities shaped their respective initial interpretations. Moreover, through joint collaborative questioning and analysis of their individual perspectives, the process of their collaborative “doing” of feminist standpoint research uncovered unconscious privilege and power dynamics among the co‐authors, leading to intense individual and collective reflexivity. A diverse intersectional research team facilitates a dynamic interplay between scholars' social locations and their evolving interpretations, moving beyond static understandings of standpoint. This underscores the bidirectional nature of knowledge production: Although social situatedness informs interpretation, engagement with diverse perspectives also reshapes scholars' own standpoints. Doing collaborative intersectional feminist standpoint research, therefore, leads to more comprehensive richer analysis where the power relations within a research team are also interrogated to spotlight inequality and exclusionary norms in academia. Drawing reflexively on our own diversity and intersectionalities can bring to light gender, motherhood, social class, ethnic, or racial marginalized positions and aid in understanding the othering process in career progression within academia. This reflexive collaborative research process involves intensive identity work, which is both emotionally exhausting and enlightening, prompting a united position on the intersectional inequalities among female academic migrants and the need for systemic change that questions dominant power structures and advocates an intersectional‐focused, inclusive, and broader evidence‐based academy.

In this study, we explore how women who are both mothers and entrepreneurs construct their subject position as mothers in the presence of dominant discourses. Based on multiple interviews with 15 participants, our findings indicate that women engage in doing and undoing motherhood. Although undoing one's motherhood is related to negotiating one's position vis‐à‐vis social norms and expectations, doing motherhood is related to the construction of new discourses. We illustrate how a norm‐breaking motherhood discourse emerges through processes of gender abating and coalescing. In this discourse, child‐rearing is not a woman's primary responsibility but is shared between the parents, and the public and private spheres—work and family—coalesce. A good mother is constructed as an individual who can pursue her passions and realize her dreams and who focuses on her relationship with her child through her work as an entrepreneur while mastering desirable attitudes and values in life. We also find that entrepreneurship can be a vehicle for escaping normative assumptions about motherhood and crafting one's “project of the self.”

Business networks are known to be gendered. However, few studies have delved into precisely how gender relates to networking practices . This study focuses on the gendered symbolic practices used by men when they play golf for the purposes of business networking. The study involved participant observations of five men who worked as wealth managers and who used golf for networking with prospective clients. Analysis reveals how networking and cultural expressions of masculinity intersect. Specifically, we identify the discursive, embodied, and material symbolic practices used by the wealth managers to network with other men. The study shows how performances of “being a good bloke” and “being a good man to do business with” are symbolically related. We contribute to literature on how culturally embedded notions of masculinity are enacted in business contexts, especially business networking interactions.

Are all whistleblowers able to raise disclosures effectively and safely? Or do some workers encounter unfair disadvantage because of who they are? Thus far, the concepts we use in whistleblowing scholarship fail to capture whether and how a whistleblower's gender, race, class, or ethnicity might shape their experience of disclosure. We address this discrepancy by interrogating how a specific social category, gender, intersects with whistleblowing. Our analysis yields a new conceptual framing: disclosure injustice. Disclosure injustice comprises, first, the variability in how different whistleblowers are perceived as credible and thus their testimony is taken into account (whistleblower testimony justice) and second, how structural arrangements support or otherwise people of different social categories coming forward (whistleblower structural justice). Viewing whistleblowing as a scene of potential disclosure injustice challenges extant assumptions that whistleblowing is, more‐or‐less, a universal experience. Contributions for research include, first, disclosure injustice offering a dual approach, testimonial and structural, that shows how whistleblowing is unevenly accessible depending on one's social category. Second, collective shields are shown to provide salience to speakers who are otherwise vulnerable to reprisal. They work precisely because they hedge against the credibility and support deficits that accompany the experience of whistleblowing. At its core, workplace whistleblowing is the act of speaking “truth to power” to challenge an oppressive status quo. Workers of all description must have equal capacity to engage.

In a more diverse global context, companies have more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other (LGBT+) workers in their ranks. However, the factors influencing LGBT+ employees' job satisfaction remain unknown. Furthermore, there is little literature on why and when LGBT+ employees choose to disclose or withhold their sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace (often referred to as “coming out” or “coming into” of the closet, respectively), influenced by the context of the (de)colonization that Chile has experienced in recent years. This study explored the main factors that determine the job satisfaction of LGBT+ employees and the dynamics they adopt to enter or come out of the closet. Data were collected and analyzed using the critical incident technique (CIT). The results showed that Herzberg's factors operate in modern, complex, and heterogeneous contexts. Both motivational and hygienic factors are involved in the job satisfaction of LGBT+ employees, and their influence depends on whether the context is (de)colonized or not. In addition, we identified a new factor for these employees, called contextual openness, which is linked to the decolonization processes that contribute to LGBT+ employees' job satisfaction.

This paper provides perspectives from 11 women advocates with lived experience of various issues across higher education on the ways that the sector currently meets and does not meet the needs of those it employs. We discuss how we hope to disrupt the sector so that it can do better in the future, perhaps leading to a utopia for all rather than the privileged few that neoliberalism tends to cater to. Methodologically, we use a reflexive and recursive multivocal process of reflection, both on and in our own practice, as advocates and experiences of our positionality in higher education in order to present our utopian vision of what postneoliberal higher education could be to meet the needs of all working within the sector.

The discourse on marginalized gendered identities within informal economies, particularly the sex industry, is predominantly Eurocentric, leaving regions such as the Middle East relatively unexplored in this context. This paper aims to address this lacuna by expanding the dialog on sex work in the Middle East and bridging it with the state of Israel, that has witnessed notable shifts in its approach to sex work in recent years in the form of adopting an end‐demand policy. By delving into the socio‐cultural and institutional context that shaped Israeli regulations, mainly through the initiatives of the “Subcommittee on the Fight against Women's Trafficking and Prostitution” (SFWTP), this study argues that the SFWTP has functioned as a local “velvet triangle.” The evolution of this local velvet triangle has significantly influenced rhetoric, discourse, and policy directions, aligning with global feminist rescue industry mechanisms that further stigmatize and marginalize sex workers. Moreover, the criminalization of clients in the sex industry in Israel inadvertently reinforced Global North ideologies while bolstering local conservative nationalist beliefs. This paper critically analyzes the impact of these shifts, shedding light on the complexities surrounding sex work, governance feminism, and the marginalization of sex workers in the Israeli context.

Although platform‐based work is celebrated for its flexibility and autonomy, enabling women to manage their own schedules across the work–life nexus, there is a limited understanding of how women of different life stages navigate work–life balance and their long‐term work prospects. This study investigates how life course shapes women's experiences in platform‐based food delivery. Drawing on qualitative studies with female platform food delivery couriers in Taiwan, this study uncovers that women's lived experiences and strategies for negotiating work–life flexibility in platform food delivery are centered around two mechanisms of time management: (1) life course flexibility and (2) platform‐based flexibility. These two flextime mechanisms create a flexibility paradox that gives women the impression of having greater personal freedom, more control over earnings, and enhanced gender autonomy in platform gig work, thus making some willing to compromise work precarity. It also shows that age and life stages greatly shape how women negotiate work–life balance in platform‐based employment. This study emphasizes the critical need to examine work–life flexibility in connection with life course and gender inequalities in the labor market.

Notorious for its homogeneous hierarchies, the financial services industry needs, yet haemorrhages, talented women. This, in combination with severe underrepresentation of women in senior leadership roles and an unproportionally large gender pay gap, warrants scholarly attention. To summarize existing work and propose future impactful research directions, this paper provides a systematic review of the literature about women's careers in financial services. Our analysis of 150 articles published between 2000 and 2023 demonstrates the presence of persistent gender stereotyping and pervasive career disadvantages for women and mothers. We illustrate this within an input–process–output–solutions framework that can inform future research and policy formation. Governments have an important role in ensuring equal policies for all genders, regardless of parenting status. Firms need to establish fair policies that support the careers of all employees and embed these values throughout their organizations. Consistent attention to these can challenge the systemic gender inequality in the financial services industry and improve business performance.

Travel contributes to the accumulation of academic capital, specifically the social and symbolic capital valued in academic contexts, which in turn supports career success. The expectations of mobility associated with academic travel are experienced differently by academic mothers who also face expectations related to norms for ideal motherhood. The norms of the ideal mobile academic and the ideal mother come into conflict most clearly in terms of expectations for travel. Many academic mothers manage this tension by limiting their travel, even though they recognize its importance to their careers. Limiting travel limits mothers' accumulation of capital, restricting or delaying academic career success and impacting that of their graduate students. Academic mothers’ limited academic travel contributes to the reproduction of inequality in academia and a failure to update the norm of the mobile unencumbered academic. A refined understanding of academic travel and a review of university structures, policies and norms around travel and career supports for women academics are recommended to address these challenges.

The emergence of new and open platforms in new media raises the question of whether digital literacy can empower women to overcome the silencing hegemonic mechanisms prevalent in Israeli society and strengthen their voices in public discourse. This qualitative action research examines the processes of Israeli women's transition to online activism through two rounds of interviews before and after an extended workshop on digital literacy, centered on Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and blogging as venues of voice. Based on the findings, this study suggests a five‐phase model for the formation of a public voice among women in digital environments: Digital Silence, Passive Digital Voice, Personal Digital Voice, Public Digital Voice, and Integrative Digital Voice . The findings indicate that the transition from silence to voice online is not linear as described in previous research, nor binary, but rather circular; having a voice and open online platforms does not guarantee the formulation of an online public voice. In the digital era, unsilencing among women activists is an ongoing endeavor characterizing their lives in a manner that enhances their sense of transitivity.