What is intersectional equality? A definition and goal of equality for organizations
Autor/in:
Woods, Dorian R.; Benschop, Yvonne; van den Brink, Marieke
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), 29 (2022) 1, S 92–109
Inhalt: Organizational research has come a long way in understanding and dealing with inequalities in the workplace. Despite this, there has not been enough progress toward equality. The reason for the stymied progress, we argue, is in large part due to the conceptual gaps in our understanding of equality. This has not been clear enough to prevent previous imbalances in power, interests and domination from re-manifesting themselves in new ways. Because organizations are complex, there needs to be a clear definition and goal of equality that can account for these mechanisms. In this article, we present a conceptual approach we call intersectional equality. To develop this approach, we build on Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectionality and Joan Acker's inequality regimes that are useful for understanding the presence and persistency of inequality in organizations, but these do not define solutions for equality. At this point, we turn to equality and justice theory and examine Amartya Sen's capabilities approach for incorporating organizations and organizational responsibilities to pursue equality. In light of the conceptual gaps in intersectionality, the inequality regimes, and the capabilities approach, we present intersectional equality as a conclusive alternative concept and approach. Intersectional equality sharpens the feminist definition and vision of equality for organizations and provides a practical path forward for building coalitions and capabilities across four dimensions of organizational disparities (procedural, discursive, material, and affective).
Schlagwörter:equality work; feminist approach; intersectionality; Organisation; power
CEWS Kategorie:Diversity, Netzwerke und Organisationen
Equalities in freefall? Ontological insecurity and the long‐term impact of COVID‐19 in the academy
Autor/in:
Wright, Katharine A.M.; Haastrup, Toni; Guerrina, Roberta
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), 28 (2021) S1, S 163–167
Inhalt: This intervention focuses on the impact of the global crisis resulting from the COVID‐19 pandemic on existing racialized and gendered inequalities within the academy and in particular our discipline of Politics and International Relations. We argue that responses to recent crises within the academy have exacerbated ontological insecurity among minoritized groups, including women. When coupled with increased caring responsibilities, the current crises call into question who can be creative and innovative, necessary conditions for knowledge production. While university managers seek to reassure university staff of the temporary nature of COVID‐19 interventions, we argue that the possibilities for progressive leaps at a later state of institutional regeneration is unlikely when efforts to address structural inequalities are sidelined and crisis responses are undertaken which run counter to such work.
Schlagwörter:academia; COVID-19; Gender; gender inequality; Geschlechterungleichheit; Hochschule; race; Universität
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), 28 (2021) S1, S 39–57
Inhalt: In this article, as have many Black women scholars in the past, we again call for collective action against anti‐blackness and White supremacy in the academy. Drawing from black feminist theory, we discuss the long history of Black women academics' activism against anti‐black racism and introduce the current movement: Black Lives Matter (BLM). Although BLM is often construed as resisting anti‐black violence outside the academy, it is also relevant for within the academy wherein anti‐blackness is likely to be manifested as disdain, disregard, and disgust for Black faculty and students. We discuss some of the ways in which anti‐blackness and liberal White supremacy are manifested in the lives of Black faculty and students, and propose that non‐Black allies have key roles to play in resisting them. Like second‐hand cigarette smoke that harms everyone in proximity, anti‐blackness and White supremacy harm us all, and a shared movement is needed to dismantle them.
Schlagwörter:academia; black feminism; black women; Hochschule; racism; Rassismus; Schwarze Frauen; Schwarzer Feminismus; white supremacy
“How did they protect you?” The lived experience of race and gender in the post‐colonial English university
Autor/in:
Salmon, Udeni
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: With this article, I seek to contribute to understandings of how racial and gender hierarchies are reproduced through organizational processes. Using an autoethnographic method, I seek to demonstrate the workings of Mill's Racial Contract Theory and Ahmed's concepts of raced and gendered encounters through the implementation of a university diversity initiative: the Race Equality Charter. My findings demonstrate how the “doing” of diversity work results “undoing” the non-white diversity worker, as their lived experiences catastrophically diverge from the sunny promise of the diversity project. Furthermore, the Race Equality Charter's is revealed that the Charter is a factual, rather than normative type of contract, which enshrines a socio-political reality in which colonialism continues to shape white over non-white domination. Scholars and activists have long been naming the secret weapons of white supremacy in order to expose how anti-racist practice is co-opted by institutions. In this article, I theorize my lived experience to expose how policy and organizational processes fail to protect me, a non-white woman early career academic. I conclude that the Race Equality Charter, far from being a tool of social justice, enforces raced and gendered privileges in academic settings.
Dirty Body Politics: Habitus, Gendered Embodiment, and the Resistance to Women's Agency in Transforming South African Higher Education
Autor/in:
Idahosa, Grace Ese‐osa
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), 27 (2020) 6, S 988–1003
Inhalt: In discussing the difficulty with transformation, research notes that women and Blacks are excluded and marginalised by the cultures and practices within universities in South Africa. While the literature highlights the invisibility of these minorities in universities, with their bodies only becoming visible as tokens, or when representing minority issues, it is silent on how this plays out in interchanges in the transformation process, the embodiment of gender, and the resistance to women's agency within the field of higher education transformation. Adopting a hermeneutic phenomenological lens and Bourdieu's concept of field and habitus, this study examines ten academics' experiences of having agency to effect transformation. In particular, it explores women's narratives of body‐centered attacks in expressions of resistance to their transformation strategies, revealing the normalisation of the White, male body. This normalisation obscures the gendered processes of transformation and the bodily resistance to women's agency, revealed in tugging, pulling, shutting doors and having metaphorical knives pulled from their backs. The study argues that this not only prevents women from exercising their agency, but also ensures the reproduction of oppressive relations within the university and should be directly addressed in the struggle for transformation.
Schlagwörter:body; Bourdieu; Feldtheorie; Gender; Gewalt; Habitus; higher education; Hochschule; Körper; minority; Organisationswandel; people of color; racism; Rassismus; resistance; sexism; Sexismus; South Africa; Südafrika; Transformation; violence; Widerstand
CEWS Kategorie:Diversity, Europa und Internationales, Hochschulen, Geschlechterverhältnis
Everyday sexism and racism in the ivory tower: The experiences of early career researchers on the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the academic workplace
Autor/in:
Bourabain, Dounia
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2020)
Inhalt: The academic workplace is often described as a place of merit and equal opportunities. However, research shows a leaky pipeline where the share of women and people of color decreases in the higher echelons of academia. Explanations are often structural, referring to the access barriers women are confronted with, such as hiring and recruitment. This research investigates what goes wrong in the early phases of a female academic's career. From an intersectional perspective, I study the experiences with everyday sexism and racism of PhD and postdoctoral researchers across disciplines. After conducting 50 in‐depth interviews, four processes are discovered: smokescreen of equality, everyday cloning, patronization, and paternalism.
Moving beyond the gender binary: Examining workplace perceptions of nonbinary and transgender employees
Autor/in:
Dray, Kelly K.; Smith, Vaughn R.E.; et.al.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), 27 (2020) , S 1181–1191
Inhalt: This study is one of the first to experimentally examine the workplace prejudice faced by nonbinary employees, or those who identify outside of the man/woman gender binary. Participants (N = 249) were presented with a vignette which included a description of a fictitious co-worker’s sex and gender identity, and asked to rate the co-worker’s likeability and perceived job performance.
Results revealed that the assigned sex and the gender of hypothetical employees interactively impacted interper1sonal and workplace perceptions. For individuals assigned male at birth, identifying as a man led to the most positive ratings, followed by identifying as a transgender woman, followed by identifying as a nonbinary person. This work expands upon gender schema theory and highlights some of the unexplored challenges faced by nonbinary and trans2gender employees. We end with suggestions for future research, such as incorporating qualitative data to highlight
the unique experiences of these gender minorities in
organizations.