Gender in Management Research (2016) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12163
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British Journal of Management, Virtual Issue: Gender in Management Research (2016) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12163 Editorial: Gender in Management Research Guest Editors: Elisabeth K. Kelan & Anne Laure Humbert Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL, UK Corresponding author email: [email protected] Introduction The British Journal of Management has published many leading articles on gender in management, exploring topics such as the glass cliff (Ryan & Haslam, 2005), the process of promotion to partner (Kumra & Vinnicombe, 2008) or the gender subtext in organisations (Bendl, 2008). With this virtual special issue we do not wish to rehash those debates – an excellent review of current scholarship in the field can be found elsewhere (Broadbridge & Simpson, 2011). Instead we wish to focus on the more recent trends in the British Journal of Management. We have looked at articles published since 2013 to explore the themes and approaches that have emerged in the study of gender in management. This review is necessarily partial and incomplete because rather than presenting an exhaustive overview, we wanted to focus on specific examples that illustrate the themes that we have identified in the most recent publications. Gender in Academia, Intersectionality and Postfeminism The articles selected for this special issue fall into three main areas. First, there is a clear focus on gender equality in academia and academic publishing. Second, intersectional approaches have gained prominence. Third, new topic areas are emerging such as postfeminism and intra-gender relations. In the following we outline the three main areas in turn and then offer a conclusion to explore further directions the field can take. The first two articles explore gender in academia. Bendl, Danowitz and Schmidt (2014) map the different stages of change in higher education institutions, drawing on their own experience in an Austrian institution. Their research draws on a social movement approach, which recognises the role of the external environment in shaping and legitimising the concerns of organisational activists, notably in relation to the potential effects of new managerialism on gender equality in the organisation. In total, four phases were identified: Phase 1 – Democratic patriarchal university structures and the emergence of feminist collective activism (1990–1993); Phase 2 – Early organizational structural and process shifts and the formalization of feminist collective activism (1994–1997); Phase 3 – Ongoing structural and processual shifts towards managerialism and the introduction of gender mainstreaming (1998–2001); Phase 4 – Institutionalization of new managerialism and equal opportunity measures and the morphing of feminist activism (2002 ongoing). Bendl and her colleagues (2014) illustrate the move from collective to individual feminist activism within academia, as gender equality becomes further institutionalised and structures become more feminised. This is shown to take place within a context where universities are increasingly moving from bureaucracies to new managerialist organisations, and where national/EU policy imposes a top down approach to gender equality. A lesson drawn is the need to rely on both cognitive and political strategies to achieve greater gender equality in academia. British Journal of Management, Virtual Issue: Gender in Management Research (2016) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12163 The theme of gender equality in academia is also developed by Metz, Harzing and Zyphur (2015), this time in the broader remit of publishing rather than within institutions themselves. They examine why, despite the so- called feminisation of business schools, progress on women’s representation on the editorial boards of management journals has been slow. Drawing on theories of social identity and homosociality, they assess the association between the composition of editorial boards and the characteristics of the editorial leader (journal editor or editor-in-chief). This mirrors recent studies conducted in the context of corporate boards that have drawn on upper echelons theory or a cognisant approach (for a brief review see Bao, Fainshmidt, Nair, & Vracheva, 2014). The results of their analysis, based on Bayesian multi-level modelling, suggests that women’s representation on editorial boards is higher where the editor is a woman, with a lower number of years of professional experience and/or with higher performance levels in terms of publications. Furthermore, the data suggest that a small improvement has been made in the last 20 years with around one woman for every four men on editorial boards in 2009. Overall, Metz et al.’s (2015) article argues that the characteristics considered act as proxies of actual life experiences, values and attitudes towards gender diversity, theorizing that these influence behaviours and in effect create not only more gender balanced editorial boards but also more inclusive scholarship. One of the key contributions of gender studies to research has been the concept of intersectionality (Davis, 2008) and publications in the British Journal of Management reflect that by embracing an intersectional lens. Two articles stand out by the contrast that they bring to intersectionality, both when it comes to approaches and methods. Woodhams and Lupton (2015), using a large UK company sample, demonstrate the multiplicative effects on the pay gap associated with multiple layers of identity - focusing on gender, ethnicity, disability and age. Given the sensitivity of these data to small sample sizes, there has been little empirical evidence for this and so the article represents an important contribution to gender in management. Although considering multiple categories of disadvantage is not new in itself, the ability to estimate its true scale proves invaluable in terms of stressing more than ever the need to take remedial action at the level of organisations and policy. Since this work relies on a large scale quantitative data analysis, it requires the adoption of an inter-categorical approach to the analysis of intersectionality (McCall, 2005). This contrasts well with the work of Pio and Essers (2014), who use a qualitative methodology based on an understanding of intersectionality as identities. This approach by its very conceptualisation rejects the possibility that categorisation is feasible or indeed desirable. Pio and Essers (2014) describe the complexities of multiple binary systems and challenge the logic of oppression in multiple 'Otherness'. Following on from the work of Calás and Smircich (2006), they rely on trans-national feminism, which they frame as closely aligned with a post-colonial perspective to create an alternative to hegemonic western theorisations of gender relations and outline various layers of oppression and discrimination. Three analytical themes emerge from their analysis of ethnic migrant businesswomen in Australia, which show the subtleties in how they opt in and out of their Otherness as active agents. Otherness is sometimes imposed, but also often in turn fractured, strengthened or displaced as required by individual circumstances. Regardless of how Otherness is lived or embodied, a constant feature is how their participants engage in continuous and systematic efforts to negotiate, source and acquire power around it. Following the theme of intersectionality, one of us, Elisabeth Kelan has also explored how young professionals make sense of gender and age (Kelan, 2014). One of the key contributions of this article was to discuss postfeminism in the context of the intersection of gender and age. Postfeminism is widely discussed in sociology as well as media and cultural studies, but remains a relatively unexplored concept for scholars in the area of gender and organisations with some exceptions (Kelan, 2009; Lewis, 2014). Postfeminism is not an British Journal of Management, Virtual Issue: Gender in Management Research (2016) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12163 identification but can be best understood as a ‘sensibility’. The postfeminist sensibility includes an emphasis on individualism, discourses of choice and agency but also the denial of structural gender inequalities and the repudiation of sexism (Gill, 2014; McRobbie, 2008; Scharff, 2015). I show how young professionals use individual agency instead of structural inequalities to explain the different experiences of women and men in the workplace. If experiences are perceived as individualised, this makes it difficult to see and articulate how existing gender inequalities continue to exist and shape experiences. In other words gender inequalities have become unspeakable in the work context (Gill, 2014). Mavin, Grandy and Williams (2014) follow what they identify as a politically high risk strategy: documenting and analysing intra-gender micro-violence between elite women leaders in a climate where the aim is to increase the number of women leaders. Drawing on interviews with 81 elite women leaders, the authors uncover how intra-gender competition manifests in relationships between women. Following from other work that appeared in the British Journal of Management on female misogyny (Mavin, 2008) and women’s identifications with other women (Kelan & Mah, 2014), the article shows the negative relations women often have with one another. The research shows how women have embodied a patriarchal norm that expresses itself among other things in the denial of the reality of sexism, denial of individual