Stream proposal for the 10th International Critical Studies (CMS) Conference, 3-5 July 2017, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Liverpool, UK

Stream Title:

The Quality of Equality: Critically Debating Inclusion in Organisations

Stream Convenors: Dr Maria Adamson (Middlesex University) [email protected] Prof. Elisabeth Kelan (Cranfield University) [email protected] Dr Patricia Lewis (University of Kent) [email protected] Prof. Nick Rumens (University of Portsmouth) [email protected] Prof. Martyna Śliwa () [email protected] (lead convenor for administrative purposes)

The reason there are five convenors of this stream is because all five of us are the co- organisers of the ESRC Seminar Series on Gendered Inclusion. We consider this CMS stream as an important outlet for continuing and further deepening the discussion on gendered inclusion in organisations that has been developing throughout the seminar series. The aim of this stream is to critically explore the concept of inclusion, in particular how inclusion manifests itself in organisation and how it continues to be implicated with the logic of exclusion. Recent decades have seen a dramatic growth in the proportion of women in the workplace and a greater emphasis on and mainstreaming of equality and inclusion policies. Contemporary organisations promote themselves as inclusive employers; for example, they organise annual inclusion and diversity celebration ceremonies, contributing to the frequently articulated postfeminist assertions that gender equality has been achieved. In this context, inclusion and equality agendas are seen as ultimately good and progressive phenomena. However, research demonstrates that women continue to face various structural barriers, including pay gap, vertical and horizontal segregation, and discrimination. Elsewhere, studies show how, for example, LGBT employees continue to experience exclusion even within work organisation self-styled or formally recognised as ‘gay-friendly’. To unpick this paradox, this stream aims to critically explore the concept of inclusion in order to generate a more complex understanding of what it means and how it manifests itself. We would like to invite submissions that address – but are not necessarily limited by – the following questions: ● What is inclusion? ● What are the conditions and bases of inclusion in contemporary organisations? ● Who has the power to include? ● How does inclusion happen? ● On which terms, where and how are women included in the workplace? ● How is the experience of workplace inclusivity mediated by intersections of class, age, sexuality, ethnicity, race and able-bodiness? ● How is inclusivity understood and experienced in workplaces that are culturally framed as ‘postfeminist’, ‘gay-friendly’, ‘pro-older workers’ and so on? ● What are the possibilities for reformulating hetero-masculinities and femininities within inclusive work organisations? ● How can we re-theorise the relationship between the logics of inclusivity and exclusion? ● How is inclusivity implicated in organisational processes that normalise identities, selves and subjectivities? ● What are the lived experiences of those seeking inclusion in organisations? ● What compromises does one have to make to be included? ● What are the effects of inclusion-related initiatives in organisations? In posing these questions, this stream seeks to move away from the simplistic and binary view of exclusion as ‘bad’ and inclusion as ‘good’. Rather, it aims to generate a complex theorisation of inclusion and explore how contemporary inclusion agenda may give rise to new hierarchies and inequalities in organisations. SUBMISSIONS: We are anticipating at least between 30-40 submissions. We have been running an ESRC funded seminar series on Gendered Inclusion in Contemporary Organisations for a year and so far all seminars have been oversubscribed. This demonstrates that the topic is very popular, and we have a good network for advertising the stream. PREVIOUS CMS EXPERIENCE: all convenors have previous experience of participating and presenting at CMS conferences. Prof. Martyna Śliwa has been organising and running VIDA stream at CMS for a number of years.

CONVENORS’ PROFILES: Dr Maria Adamson is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies and HRM at Middlesex University Business School, UK. Her research interests centre on understanding gender inequality in professional work, gendered workplace identities and the application of feminist theories within the field of organisation studies. She is a principal investigator on the ESRC funded research seminar series ‘Gendered Inclusion in Contemporary Organisations’. Her research has been published in journals such as ; Human Relations; Gender Work and ; and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. She has organised numerous special streams at various conferences such as Gender, Work, and and British Sociological Association. She is currently convenor of the Work, Employment and Economy group in the British Sociological Association. Elisabeth Kelan is of at Cranfield School of Management and the Director of the Global Centre for Gender and Leadership. Her research focuses on the facets of inequality in changing organisations and focuses specifically on gender and generations. For the academic year 2014/2015 she held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (MD130085) to research how men can practise inclusive leadership. She is author of two research monographs as well as various peer-reviewed journal articles. She is the series editor for the Routledge Studies in Gender and Organizations book series and an Associate Editor of Gender, Work and Organization. She also sits on the editorial board of the British Journal of Management and Management Learning. Patricia Lewis is Reader in Management at the University of Kent. Her research is located in the field of Gender and Organisation Studies and she mainly draws on a poststructuralist feminist perspective manifest in her research on female entrepreneurial identity which has explored issues including the masculine norm published in Gender, Work and Organization, authenticity and identity also published in Gender, Work and Organization and development of the notion of entrepreneurial femininity published in Organization Studies. In addition she enjoys re-reading influential texts through the lens of poststructuralist feminism including Kanter’s Men and Women of the Corporation published in the International Journal of Management Reviews (with Ruth Simpson) and Hakim’s much criticised text Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory published in Gender, Work and Organization (with Ruth Simpson). She is currently editing (with Ruth Simpson and Yvonne Benschop) a special issue of Gender, Work and Organization on Postfeminism, Gender and Organization and an edited book with Routledge entitled Postfeminism and Organization, both of which will be published in 2017. She is currently an Associate Editor of Gender, Work and Organization. Nick Rumens is Professor of Human Resource Management at University of Portsmouth, UK. His research is situated in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) sexualities and genders in the workplace, and addresses issues of inequality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace. He has published six books and articles on these topics in journals including Human Relations, Organization Studies, Human Relations, British Journal of Management, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Human Resource Management Journal, Management Learning, Organization and The Sociological Review. Nick is also an Associate Editor for Gender, Work and Organization, the leading international journal on gender and workplace issues. Martyna Śliwa is Professor of Management and Organisation Studies at the University of Essex. Her research interests focus on a range of topics relevant to the employees, managers and other stakeholders of contemporary organisations, especially those operating in the international business environment. Examples of Martyna’s recent research projects include: language(s) and power in multinational corporations, transnational professional mobility, and the effects of the intersections of nationality and gender on organisational hierarchies and individual careers of highly skilled professionals. Martyna is currently an Associate Editor of Management Learning. She has published in a variety of journals, for example: the British Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies, Management Learning and Organization.