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Despite the well-documented importance of empathy and mentoring in entrepreneurship, there is a need for a deeper understanding of how empathy influences individuals’ “willingness to be mentored”.

This paper investigates gender differences in “Willingness to be mentored” based on the mentor’s types of empathy (cognitive vs affective) and entrepreneurship (social vs for-profit). Drawing on the personal identification and the entrepreneurship literature, we measured the respondents’ “Willingness to be mentored” by manipulating the type of empathy and entrepreneurship and comparing its effect between male and female respondents. Primary survey data were collected from master’s degree students in entrepreneurship from diverse business schools. An explanatory qualitative study on female start-uppers complemented the findings.

The results from the quantitative study show that female respondents prefer to be mentored by an entrepreneur who exhibits some affective empathy rather than only cognitive empathy, with a preference for a social entrepreneur. The qualitative study confirms the evidence. This research contributes to the discussion on developing social capabilities to succeed in new ventures. It extends our understanding of the importance of empathic entrepreneurs as mentors to foster entrepreneurship among women.

Theoretically, we demonstrate the existence of a gender difference in “Willingness to be mentored” based on the type of empathy displayed by the entrepreneur. Additionally, we introduce a new construct in the entrepreneurship literature, “Willingness to be mentored”, and differentiate it from “Attitude toward entrepreneurship”.

This chapter focuses on the concept of genderwashing in the context of higher education (HE) in the United States. Using intersectionality as a framework, the authors critically examine gender-based affinity groups, which are used in HE as a common strategy to support diversity and equity efforts. The authors discuss how such efforts often fall short in facilitating meaningful organizational or systemic change and provide questions and considerations for addressing genderwashing that are informed by an intersectional lens.

Several African American educators served as an inspiration in the development and scholarship of an African American female who teaches at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) of higher learning. This chapter shares the author's foundational beginnings and persistence in academe while teaching and leading in a race-conscious society. She shares some of her upbringing, education, and early teaching experiences. She also shares her motivation to learn and serve (Bethune, 1950, 1963), while walking in circles. Sizemore (1973, 2008) to provide a roadmap of her journey to support new and developing African American female professors. She uses poetry and the dimensions of African American culture (Boykin, 1983) to guide her sharing. The author uses her exploration of identity development as an African American womanist who advocates as an African American first, to share how she has developed as a scholar whose renewal of purpose targets becoming a full professor.

Our chapter explores the impacts of genderwashing practices within Hockey Canada (HC), a national organization that governs major and minor hockey leagues in Canada. A 2018 case involving allegations of sexual assault by members of the U20 junior men's hockey team acted as a catalyst to expose HC's organizational practice of silencing victims and covering up bad behavior. Through the application of media content analysis, we argue that HC's responses to the case (financial settlements, Nondisclosure Agreements, and a new educational and training program) reflect genderwashing practices and exemplify a superficial attempt to address sexual violence within the organization. What results is a culture of silence, poor leadership, and the normalization of violence within HC. Our chapter contributes to the genderwashing literature, through the development and application of genderwashing as a conceptual framework that can be applied to responses to allegations of sexual assault.

The first two decades of the 21st century saw the rise of girl power discourses in international development, which argue that when girls in the Global South are given an investment to stay in school, they will lift entire communities out of poverty. Transnational Corporations partnered with, or even founded, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) aimed at educating girls. Yet many of these corporations face criticisms that their products, employment practices, or supply chains are harmful to girls and women. In this chapter, I employ a feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist approach, analyzing the transnational politics of corporate–NGO partnerships for girls' education. I argue that Apple Inc.’s sponsorship of the Malala Fund and Caterpillar Inc.’s partnership with Girl Up amount to transnational forms of genderwashing, aimed primarily at alleviating the concerns of publics in the Global North while doing little to address harm experienced by girls and women in the Global South.

This chapter explores genderwashing in the context of exclusive talent management (ETM) and defensive diversity management (DDM). It makes the counter intuitive argument that ETM is a misnomer in that it privileges maintenance of an organizational hierarchy based on social identity over the development of talent. Further, DDM is a genderwashing tool, enabling organizations to fend off criticism through symbolic diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives while enacting discourses that legitimate structures, practices, and norms that produce a status hierarchy based on social identities. A genderwashing perspective reveals this contradiction and spotlights the uncomfortable reality of workplace inequalities. It also shows that operating within boundaries set by the status quo renders DDM ineffective in removing the real career impediments faced by women and members of minoritized groups (MMG). A transformative diversity management (TDM) approach is needed to confront these realities and enable organizations to support the career aspirations of women and MMG.

“Genderwashing is an organizational tool that presents the myth of gender equality in organizations through discourse and text” (Fox-Kirk et al., 2020, p. 586). Existing literature focuses upon business and economy, e.g., considering how representations of equality are used to enhance profit. The contribution of this chapter is to show how two processes – gender washing and militarization – might function in support of each other. To do this, I firstly argue that the concept of genderwashing should be broadened to consider spaces outside of business and economy. I show how sex, gender and feminism are employed in ways that position martial organizations (such as militaries and arms manufacturers) as socially progressive, “washing” their reputation for militarized violence. Secondly, analyses must consider how the impact of genderwashing goes beyond individual organizations. Martial organizations marginalize their female staff, but I argue that we must look further: in a context in which people can be killed, we must consider what broader harms genderwashing visits upon civilian populations also.

In this chapter, we critically interrogate Pakistani Higher Education Commission (HEC)'s “Policy Guidelines against Sexual Harassment in Institutions of Higher Learning” (HEC, 2011, 2020) to reveal that the policy represents a form of rhetorical genderwashing, rather than a concerted attempt to effect structural change (Fox-Kirk et al., 2020). Through this critical interrogation, we introduce a new methodological approach to investigate genderwashing, that of collaborative feminist policy analysis. This chapter is based on the theoretical framework of Sara Ahmed's concept of “institutional nonperformativity” (2012). Pakistan recognized workplace harassment as a legal issue for the first time in the 2010 Sexual Harassment Act (Jabbar & Imran, 2013). The Act, and subsequent policies, was an attempt to practice equity and fairness in sexual harassment cases. Our investigation revealed that the policy reinforces gender power inequality, gendered language, and is an example of institutional silence, and genderwashing in the workplace (Fox-Kirk et al., 2020).