Search results

This commentary aims to review the contributing papers in this special issue.

Papers are reviewed by Joan Acker in relation to her original work “Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organizations”.

It is found that the articles make important contributions to the question of equality in organizations.

This commentary serves as a reminder that academic work can contribute to a dialogue between academic generations, as is demonstrated throughout this special issue.

The purpose of this editorial is to present a series of articles in this special invited issue that celebrate Joan Acker's theories of gendered organisations.

This editorial presents articles that utilise Joan Acker's notions of gendered organisations, the gender subtext in organisations, the ideal worker, and inequality regimes to help explain gender discrimination in organisation. It is a celebration of Joan's theorising in relation to this topic and also includes Joan's own thinking about the development of her ideas as theorised by the authors in different organisational and empirical contexts.

The paper reveals that the articles illustrate the value of Acker's original thinking, how the original concepts have evolved to theorise and explain the intersectionality of current discriminatory practices.

This paper presents a celebration of Joan Acker's work and an introduction to the special issue.

While there has been much discussion about pension regulation and decision making in relation to pension trusteeship, there appears to be little research on women and men who take up opportunities to become pension trustees. Thus the focus of this research is to explore what it means to be a female or male pension trustee in “a man's world”.

Acker's influential model for the gendering of organisational processes and its subsequent development to acknowledge the intersection of multiple inequalities such as gender and class is used as a tool to provide a micro‐analysis of men's and women's interpretation of being a pension trustee.

The persistence of homosocial reproduction around managerial competences in pension board activity helps explain men's and women's differing experiences within male‐dominated pension boardrooms.

The paper focuses on a small but diverse sample of pension trustees and further research is needed to explore further why pension trustees take on this challenging and complex role.

UK legislation about member representation on pension boards has the potential to bring new female candidates to the board. This paper gives an insight into what this means for a diverse group of pension trustees.

The purpose of this paper is to seek greater academic discussion of gender and gender change within industrial relations. It attempts to move the theoretical discussion of gender away from universal systems theories of analysis to a more micro multi‐layered approach that can accommodate what is a complex and subtle situation, gendered industrial relations. It commences to theorise why women in certain institutional frameworks progress whilst women in others do not.

A qualitative empirical case study approach has been taken to uncover the nuances of women's daily experiences of work relationships including industrial relations in Keylockco, a lock manufacturer.

The findings indicate that Bourdieu's theory can be successfully used to analysis gender change within industrial relation and to explore how women's differing access to capital can facilitate their positional progress within hierarchical gender‐stratified industrial relations. While the paper does not offer solutions for improving the position of women within industrial relations it does seek to stimulate discussion around the positional requirements of industrial relations actors where greater social, economic, cultural and symbolic capital has accrued to men.

The analysis of empirical data with Bourdieu's theory of habitus and capital has the potential to be extended to other sites of industrial relations than the Keylockco case study. It offers us the possibility to evaluate empirically the progression of women, for example, in female‐friendly unions such as Unison. It is also possible to apply the theory to both national and international experiences of gendered industrial relations.

Joan Acker proposed her gendered theory of organization as a framework to analyze organizations and to understand how gender underlies organizational structure in such a way as to subordinate women. Much of the previous work that has utilized this framework has examined highly (male‐) gendered organizations. This archival case study aims to use Acker's framework to examine a purportedly female‐gendered organization – the 1970s feminist organization, Stewardesses for Women's Rights (SFWR).

Using these archived materials, this paper uses a critical hermeneutic approach across Acker's framework of gendered organization to make sense of the rise and fall of SFWR. The paper discusses lessons learned from this short‐lived organization.

The paper finds that societal pressure and organizing women's understanding of what is “real” and valued in an organization pushed them to create an organization that was as highly (male) gendered as the organizations from which they were escaping. Many in the organization never saw SFWR as a “real” organization because of the underlying organizational logic that was directing what the organization should be. Even if the organization did, on the surface, look different than other explicitly male‐gendered organizations, the same underlying organizational logic manifested itself in similar organizational structure.

This archival case study uses Acker's framework to examine a purportedly female‐gendered organization – the 1970s feminist organization SFWR and reveals lessons learned.

The purpose of this paper is to explore potential benefits and possible pitfalls of the removal of the default retirement age.

A human capital and labour market perspective provide theoretical lenses for exploring the potential implications for individuals, organizations and societies. The paper employs financial costing analysis to demonstrate.

The paper uses the UK case to illustrate anticipated managerial and societal outcomes. The main finding from the discussion and the financial analysis is that indeed the current system is unsustainable.

The paper offers areas where lessons about age management can be learnt from other experiences of flexible retirement strategies such as enhancing older workers ' human capital. The idea is of global nature and relevance and forms a “wake-up call” for decision makers at national level.

This paper aims to be a critical reflection on the author's position as a Black female academic in the academy, and comes from a motivation to raise Black consciousness about the importance of Black feminist scholarship.

The author identifies the unique position of Black feminism, which has had to define itself apart from second‐wave feminism of the 1970s, which marginalised non‐White women and the Civil Rights movement, which marginalised women. The oppression faced by Black feminists is apparent in the shifting platforms of identity that Black feminists occupy in the academy. Another obstacle is the restricted and incomplete picture of feminism in the academy, which sidelines Black feminist writing. One of the ways to raise awareness is to focus on the corpus of Black writing and to re‐position it within academic core curricula, rather than relegating it to specialised courses.

It is found that Black feminism is marginalised in the academy in scholarship and representation. It is also found that students are more receptive to ideas about feminism when approaching the subject indirectly.

One limitation of the study is an absence of theoretical literature from a UK context.

The paper highlights the marginalisation of Black feminism in the academy.

The subjects of “feminism in academia” and the representation of “Black and minority ethnics in the Academy” have been explored in scholarship. However the combination of these terms, namely the role of the Black feminist in the academy, is a comparatively unexplored subject. Hence, the originality of this paper.

The purpose of this article is to highlight inequalities created and sustained through gendered, raced, and classed organizational processes and practices using Joan Acker's work as a lens for perceiving the mechanisms that support such practices. It aims to use home health aide work as an example of how US labor laws and court decisions create and support disadvantages for workers who are largely economically‐disadvantaged and often women of color.

The article considers processes of inequality based on demographic characteristics and the resulting stereotyping, discrimination, and gender, race, and class inequalities.

The article finds that multiple intersecting processes of inequality exist in organizations, manifested in practices of stereotyping and discrimination for some job applicants and workers and advantageous positioning for certain others.

Future research should more specifically consider the effects of multiple processes of inequality on individuals' organizational experiences and the intersections of gender, race, and class (as well as other markers such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability) in organizational practices.

Managers and human resources practitioners should be aware of the effects of processes related to the intersectionality of gender, race, and class and work to eliminate resulting stereotyping and other discriminatory organizational practices linked to these processes in their organizations.

Identification of processes of inequality resulting in stereotyping and discrimination may help reduce them, thus increasing opportunities for work, wages, and benefits, and reducing poverty for members of the most devalued groups.

This research contributes to the literature on the intersecting nature of gender, race, and class‐based inequalities and on human resources decision making in organizations.

The pursuit of equality and valuing of diversity are central tenets of much organisational thinking and public policy development. However, in this current age of austerity we are witnessing a number of existing and proposed “fairness initiatives” feeling the sharp blade of a cost‐cutting axe. This paper is a reflexive response that aims to examine a piece of action research in the field of industrial relations. It aims to take the professional UK association, the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA), as a case study and consider how issues of equality and diversity have been viewed by the organisation both in theory and practice. Using a framework which acknowledges the need for multiple levels of analysis (macro, meso and micro) and which argues for an intersectional approach, the paper seeks to detail the measures adopted by BUIRA so as to augment its organisational responsiveness to various equality and diversity concerns. It also provides an insight into how the authors, as equality and diversity academics, reflected on the process of creating policy through their own research activities. A further aim of the paper is to highlight the scope and character of equality and diversity initiatives undertaken by BUIRA, and to discuss some of their implications for its membership – both now and in the future.

What began as a simple policy piece of research developed into a multi‐method, quantitative and qualitative, action‐based project. It also became a reflexive study of how and by what methods research is conducted. A quantitative and qualitative survey of BUIRA members was followed with interviews with past‐presidents of the organisation. Historical data in the form of a comprehensive 2010 retrospective on BUIRA were also consulted.

The authors' empirical material was analysed with reference to a theoretical framework that acknowledges the importance of intersectionality at all levels of analysis. The study's findings are discussed in relation to macro, meso and micro influences and reference is made to how these three levels intersect in examining views and perceptions in relation to equality and diversity within BUIRA. The main findings are that while BUIRA as an association has acted to combat perceptions that it is dominated by older White men who prioritise traditional elements of industrial relations (IR), this view still persists for some of the membership. The membership survey indicated that it was female, younger or less established academics in particular who held this view, suggesting that in challenging inequalities within the IR academic community BUIRA may still have a way to go.

A key implication is that representative organisations such as professional associations need to consider equality and diversity aspects that reflect the membership they serve. This has been acknowledged as fundamental in both workplaces and trade unions and now requires similar commitment from professional associations. Of course, the scope and character of initiatives are also context‐sensitive, as reflected by non‐linear progress in equality initiatives undertaken by these and other organisations.

The research offers an analysis of equality and diversity within a professional association which is an under researched area.