British Journal of , 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, and

The articles selected for this special issue fall into three main areas. First, there is a clear focus on 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 (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 , 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 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, 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 in multiple 'Otherness'. Following on from the work of Calás and Smircich (2006), they rely on trans-national , 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 . 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 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 (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 (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 sexism, self-objectification and intra-gender . While the article does not address postfeminism directly, the intra- gender violence that those elite women perform resonates strongly with postfeminism in that it entails such as a repudiation of sexism and a focus on individual agency. The article concludes the traditional axis of analysis of looking at women vis-à-vis men often means that intra-gender relations among women have been neglected.

Directions for Future Research

It is notable that the emerging themes mirror in many ways the increased sophistication of approaches that can be seen in gender studies. Earlier approaches have followed biologically deterministic approaches where sex is largely equated with gender and a central concern is to explore differences between men and women. For example, Carli and Eagly (2001: 633) note that a plethora of such research has been conducted on the basis that has been constructed as masculine ven though much evidence suggests that there are many more similarities than differences between women and men in management (Billing & Alvesson, 2000). A field more engaged with gender theory produces research that explores, not just if gender makes a difference, but how the difference manifests itself, including through for example seeing gender as socially constructed and highlighting how this social construction is achieved and context dependent (Bennett, Daly, House, & Square, 2014; Bradley, 2007; Holmes, 2007). More recently, gender studies has started to include a focus on the intersectionality of gender with other dimensions of difference (for example Healy, Bradley, & Forson, 2011) as well as exploring a postfeminist sensibility and the denial of gender discrimination in the work context (Kelan, 2009; Scharff, 2012). Research in the British Journal of Management clearly shows that researchers in this field follow the impulses set in gender studies and translate them to show their relevance to management.

It is clear that leading research published in the British Journal of Management has embedded these perspectives in three distinct ways. First, there is a clear turn towards work that aims at questioning and transforming our own gender practices institutionally (in our workplaces and our journals); second, research on gender and management clearly seeks to expand our lenses and repertoires, when it comes to our research practices; third, these articles serve to challenge the view in practice that gender equality is no longer relevant and inconsequential.

British Journal of Management, Virtual Issue: Gender in Management Research (2016) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12163

However, it also appears that engagement with gender theories remains partial and often implicit. This raises the question of whether gender theories are fully employed. For instance, gender theories often question existing frameworks to develop transformative research agendas but such research often does not enter management journals. There is also a time lag issue. For instance research on postfeminism has flourished for a number of years on the intersection between gender and cultural studies but has only recently been brought to bear on research in business and management.

It is also important to note that data and methods remain constrained. For example, the work of Metz et al. (2015) relies on demographic data as proxies for attitudinal data despite relying on highly sophisticated statistical analysis. This is one in many instances where it is clear that the field of gender and management needs to draw on – and potentially develop – better data sources at the organizational level for example through large scale dedicated surveys combined with in-depth qualitative work. Methodological innovations, such as interventions or other participatory techniques could be used to generate new insights. An example might be audience studies which have started to engage with how audiences receive and construct media messages around gender (Coleman, 2008) but again these studies are often not published within management journals.

Further reflexivity around methods or how research on gender in management is conducted would also be beneficial. It would be worth to examine how the relevance of gender shifts between different settings and contexts. This means that how gender matters might find different expressions in different contexts (Nentwich & Kelan, 2014). It would also be useful to question in how far gender research in management reifies or challenges gender since gender, as an analytical space, is shaped by the political intellectual context in which it resides (Bradley, 2007). Unveiling its gender-biasedness can be done through deconstruction methods informed by critical management perspectives (Billing & Alvesson, 2000; Calás & Smircich, 2006; Fondas, 1997). This is particularly pertinent because gender is not only an object of study, but also a lived personal and professional reality or in other words “the focus is not only on how gender is something that we study, but also how our own gendered practice and subjectivity infuse our very own research and writing” (Pullen & Rhodes, 2015: 88).

The articles on gender and management included in this virtual special issue demonstrate that greater engagement with diverse aspects of gender theories have led to some important new insights. Management, as a discipline, has traditionally sought much inspiration from other disciplines to enrich its own subject matters. Drawing more from current gender theories would enable management research to explore new and promising avenues of research.

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