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The paper seeks to evaluate the views of manager‐academics on gender equity and research in one UK institution.

The paper draws on semi‐structured interviews with 22 manager‐academics in one UK institution, against a context of national data.

It was found that manager‐academics had little knowledge of the conceptual issues surrounding gender equity and used a discourse of choice and agency to explain continuing inequalities in the research careers of women academics.

While the case study was carried out in one institution, it replicates many of the issues raised by national studies and data.

Good practice in encouraging gender equity for women academics engaged in research includes role models, confidence and support networks, gender awareness training for managers, mentoring and building networks.

The paper provides new empirical data on gender equity and research in one UK university and critically analyses the gap between theory on gender equity and practice of manager‐academics. It provides a link between a micro‐agentic viewpoint and a meso‐institutional viewpoint and suggests that both these as well as a macro national and supranational view will give a fuller analysis of the issue of gender equity and research careers for women academics.

A comparison of state‐regulated provision of continuing vocational training in France with the voluntarist British model highlights Britain′s poor record in the 1980s and 1990s. The widespread well‐financed training culture in France contrasts with piecemeal provision in Britain where TECs have little room for manoeuvre. The FORCE programme encourages innovation and good practice in ongoing training in the workplace throughout the European Union but there is no move towards legislating for compulsory training rights, which would benefit British workers as levelling up would take place. Europe needs a coordinated training policy, to maintain competitiveness as its industrial base becomes increasingly service‐dominated.

This paper seeks to use two empirical episodes to investigate gendered critiques of leadership.

The paper uses an action inquiry approach by reflecting on two pieces of work, one collaborative and one individual, to reflect on ideas about women's ways of leading, and women's leadership of groups. The work includes the making of artefacts which it uses as a stimulus for reflection and as a reflective practice in itself. The artefacts which it uses are quilts, and the feminised nature of quiltmaking is also considered.

The paper begins by reflecting on the ability of a leaderless group of women to achieve a task in a highly successful and timely manner. It uses this experience to explore theories of distributed leadership in work groups, and suggests an alternative proxy for leadership. It then uses the creation of a piece of art about Elvis Presley and the Madonna to consider gendered constructions of leadership, including heroic and post‐heroic leadership. Drawing on the work of Fletcher, it considers why feminised post‐heroic leadership is so often vaunted and so seldom seen. It posits the tension between self‐abnegation and self‐promotion and service and individual achievement as an explanation of the slow adoption of this more feminised form of leadership. The paper traces the emergent process of the work itself, and hints at the difficulty of getting the “right answers” from research participants, and reflects on the role of nostalgia as a limiting factor in organisational research.

The collaborative method of the piece synchronises with the ideas under investigation, and builds on the critique of post‐heroic leadership as an observable phenomenon in organisations.

This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.