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This paper aims to consider enforced working from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how it may differ from working from home through choice. In particular, the authors discuss how lockdown may be affecting work-family arrangements.

This is a thought piece.

The paper briefly examines the extant research on remote working. It is argued that as many of the (beneficial) outcomes found for both employees and employers are associated with feelings of greater autonomy and gratitude on the part of employees for being able to exercise choice over their working arrangements, these outcomes may not be found where working from home is required of employees. The authors contend that women, and mothers in particular, have had little choice in relation to when work has taken place, and how much work has been done.

The authors urge employers to consider the positive and negative outcomes of emerging evidence as they review their flexible working policies. They call for a widespread review of childcare provision in supporting women and men in the labour market.

The authors explore this unexpected context of the pandemic and highlight the need for research which examines these different circumstances.

This study aims to deepen our understanding of how inclusionary practices are used within organizations and how they satisfy specific inclusion needs.

We adopt a qualitative research design, reporting on data from semi-structured interviews conducted with 15 diversity and inclusion (D&I) directors/leads and using a thematic approach to analysis.

Our study expands understanding of inclusion practices, showing that they are not uniformly implemented and that practices may satisfy both needs to belong and differences valued, with interviewees prioritizing belonging. Well-being and career development are seen as important inclusion practices demonstrating support and appreciation of difference, thus as inputs, not outputs, of inclusion challenging existing assumptions. Inclusionary practices are malleable, and their impact depends critically on the leaders involved and their commitment to EDI.

Our study shows how practices satisfy inclusion needs and that the implementation of practices varies depending on the leaders involved.

The purpose of this article is to report findings from a major study into flexible working and to examine the link with employee engagement.

The study was conducted within seven case organizations using a mixed method of semi‐structured interviews and an electronic questionnaire.

The findings show that flexible working has an impact on employee engagement through a positive relationship with organizational commitment, job satisfaction and employee discretionary behavior.

Allowing employees a degree of choice over when, where and how much work they do has benefits for the organization. However, for these gains to be realized, support is needed for the implementation of a flexible working policy.

The study included both quantitative and qualitative data and examined the impact of flexible working from the point of view of managers and co‐workers of flexible workers, as well as those who worked flexibly themselves.

This paper is based on the experiences of 31 women who have recently left partner roles within an international management consultancy firm. The purpose of this paper is to explore discursively their perceptions of choice within their decisions to leave.

Data were collected from 31 women using semi‐structured telephone interviews, a 66 per cent response rate. A discursive approach to analysis was adopted.

The decision to leave is the culmination of many interacting factors at a time when a financial incentive for resignation is available. Findings present here focus on discourses of loyalty to and affection for the company and work‐life integration.

Limitations include access only to women who have left the firm, allowing for no comparison with those who were still partners. Additionally, we were unable to speak to any of the male partners who have left the firm in the same timescales, although in smaller proportions.

The findings indicate the need to review the excessive time demands placed on partners and provide further support for policies, which enable greater flexibility.

This paper uses data from a rare sample of women, those who have actually left senior roles within one organization.

This collection seeks to examine the various challenges women face in advancing their careers.

In the mid‐1980s, the phrase “glass ceiling” was coined and has since become an established part of our vocabulary. The glass ceiling refers to an invisible but impermeable barrier that limits the career advancement of women. During the last two decades, women have made progress: there are now more women in senior‐level executive jobs, more women in “clout jobs”, more women CEOs, and more women on corporate boards of directors. But real progress has been slow with only modest increases shown at these levels.

The slow progress made by talented, educated, ambitious women is now having some negative effects on women's views of management and the professions as a career. However, artificially limiting the career possibilities of women is a luxury organizations can no longer afford. Organizations are facing an impending shortage of qualified leaders. The aging of the workforce, a smaller number of new workforce entrants, and the war for talent, makes it imperative that organizations utilize and develop the talents of all their employees.

This collection examines the various challenges women face in their careers. The contributors come from a number of different countries, indicating the widespread interest in this topic in all developed and developing countries.

This editorial aims to introduce the special issue on meritocracy, difference and choice.

The first part is a commentary on key issues in the study of the notions of meritocracy, difference and choice. The second part presents the six papers in the special issue.

Five of the six papers in this special issue explore the work experiences of women managers/directors in senior positions within a variety of organizations. All of these papers demonstrate that despite their economic empowerment, these women are still strongly connected to the domestic realm through their continued entanglement in the traditional roles of mother and homemaker. This has led them to interpret their work situation either through a consideration of what they understand by the notion of merit or a presentation of their situation through the lens of choice. A further paper which explores the experiences of sex workers exposes the gendered nature of agency, highlighting the limitations on “choice” that different types of workers experience.

The authors comment on how contemporary notions of merit and choice individualise women's experience within organisations, ignoring the structural and systemic elements inherent to women's continued disadvantage. This allows “blame” for women's absence in the upper echelons of organisations to lie with women themselves, explaining this in terms of their lack of skills or the traditional “choices” they make. The six papers which make up the special issue explore how women's “choices” are constrained, how the contemporary discourses of merit and choice conceal issues of structure and organizational process and how women struggle to make sense of their own and others' experiences.

The issues discussed in the papers have important implications for understanding women's experience of work and organizations. They highlight the need to introduce a structural and systemic element to the understanding of how women experience work at senior (and other) levels of organizations, why they take the decision to leave a senior position and why women appear to “choose” not to seek senior positions.

Gender and Management: An International Journal invited this special issue on meritocracy, difference and choice to draw attention to the ways in which women draw on these discourses as a means of understanding their organizational situations and how use of these discourses acts to conceal the structural and systemic element connected to their work experiences.