Gender Work and Organization最新文献

In this paper, we propose that the reproduction of labor-power, achieved through the expropriation of women's work at home and in the community, is acutely relevant to the analysis of the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. Capitalist structures of exploitation rely heavily on undervaluing women's and other marginalized peoples' work, specifically tasks related to social reproduction and care. In this paper, we assess the effects of COVID-19 remedial state policies on the re-organization of care and working lives during the pandemic within the UK, an example of a neoliberal regime with an individualist approach to responsibility for care. Drawing on data from the European H2020 project RESISTIRÉ (RESpondIng to outbreakS through co-creaTIve inclusive equality stRatEgies), we first assess the policies brought in by the UK government in response to the pandemic from a gender perspective, with a particular focus on the extent to which the work–care nexus has been considered. We then draw on the personal narratives of women in the UK, who were differentially affected by the pandemic, to analyze the lived experiences of this policy context and the challenges faced in “reconciling” paid work and care. These experiences demonstrate that any attempt to effectively respond to and reverse structural inequalities needs to address the dynamic interrelationship of paid and unpaid work, and particularly unpaid care work that women undertake at home and beyond. This is crucial in our attempt to challenge neoliberal capitalist organizing, transform societies and build a fairer, more inclusive post-pandemic future.

Economic abuse (EA)—intimate partners' efforts to control women's economic resources—still suffers from ambiguous legal recognition. Even in countries with legal recognition, state allocation of resources for support remains meager. We suggest that Israeli state welfare organizations (SWOs) employees have developed their professional response to EA along two distinct value sets—a dominant institutional logic in their respective organizations and a more covert feminist institutional logic encountered in collaborations with feminist Non Governmental Organizations. Using a framework of multiple institutional logics, in interviews with 48 SWO employees, we map the multiple institutional logics that cultivate responses to EA survivors and show that elements of feminist understanding and practices on EA permeate SWOs' practices. The existence of a feminist institutional logic creates a path for exploring whether the feminist impact is significant in enabling committed responses to EA even while no institutional change is achieved.

While in the last decade gender research has shown great interest in problems around work–life balance for women and the implications for their career mobility, the links between these and women's health and wellbeing have not been fully examined. This article reviews international research undertaken between 1980 and 2020 on the early career period of female doctorate holders. The focus is on the early career mobility (career progression as well as international, disciplinary, and sectorial mobility) of women with doctorates and the connections between their mobility and their physical and mental health and wellbeing. Guided by feminist theories on recurrent institutionalized and legitimized gender inequalities, our review identifies the establishment of inequity during the early career period for female doctoral graduates inside and outside academia and associates this with imbalances in mobility patterns, which are directly connected with their personal lives. The evidence found also suggests that women's health and wellbeing is mostly negatively impacted by these circumstances which may be contributing to women leaving academia or employment. Some improvements at institutional level are recommended as well as the need to continue challenging perceptions of gender roles and responsibilities.

This article argues that a perpetrator-based definition of sexual harassment that highlights corrupt aspects of sexual harassment may contribute to a shift in focus from the experience of the harassed, to the actions of the harasser. This argument is based on an analysis of testimonies of sexual harassment from the #metoo call by the Swedish police in 2017, which reference abuse of power and quid pro quo elements. By introducing the recently developed analytical framework of ‘sexual corruption’, we show how a perpetrator-based definition of sexual harassment may contribute to attributing responsibility to harassers. Identifying sexual harassment that includes the abuse of power and quid pro quo elements as corruption centers on the role of the abuse of power and, thus, the responsibility of the person abusing their position of power. Moreover, this shift bypasses discussions of whether or not the situation was experienced as ‘unwelcome’ by the harassed, the severity of the act, and questions of coercion and consent. Identifying instances of sexual harassment that include the abuse of power and quid pro quo elements as corruption also closes off attempts to portray it in terms of ‘jokes’ or banter, which is common in the police context. The article contributes with analytical tools that enable a shift from tracing the experience of the harassed to centering on the actions and responsibility of the harasser.

This special issue (SI) contributes to a growing body of work in management and organization studies focusing on the complex relationship between social reproduction and inequalities in paid work and organizations. In this introduction to the SI, we first identify three key areas of inquiry relevant to the study of social reproduction: challenging the boundaries of productive and reproductive labor; inequalities and exploitation; and alternative organizing. We then present the seven papers of the SI that draw on research from Australia, South America, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the US to contribute to the aforementioned areas, foregrounding distinctive social reproduction dynamics manifesting in the household and alternative organizations (cooperatives), and facilitated by state policies. Based on these contributions, we propose an agenda for future research on social reproduction that aims to address the persistence and potential transformation of the existing gender, class, and race orders. We call for future studies exploring changing parenthood roles and how these affect the organization of re/production tasks; for research revealing and investigating underlying inequalities (re)produced by public policy; for analyses of existing and potential forms of feminist alternative organizing, and how these are sometimes hindered by heteropatriarchal structures; and for the study of social reproduction dynamics across cultural, socioeconomic, and political contexts.

Our qualitative study delves into the life history of a mother-worker caring for two neurodiverse children, surfacing how the intensive mental load of balancing domestic and professional responsibilities permeates and shapes her identity. Employing narrative analysis and photovoice methods, we investigate how she navigates the logistical and emotional complexities in both roles across three distinct storytelling events: storying (mis)diagnoses, storying care needs and work negotiations, and storying coping. Our primary contribution lies in introducing the concept of the surrendered self, signaling the amplified and prolonged embodiment of one's provisional identity (mother) based on socio-cultural expectations of who she thinks she ought to be, leading to the eclipse of other possible identities (woman, wife, worker).

This study examines the subjectification of working mothers through the lens of intersectionality by listening to the under-represented voices of those whose lives are shaped at the intersections of gender, poverty, Islam, and Javanese ethnicity. Drawing on poststructuralist feminist discourse analysis, the subtle subjectification process is observed through conversational interactions in which working mothers construct the ‘ideal woman’. The findings challenge the predominant postfeminist framing in the extant literature by illustrating how here working mothers draw on a specifically local discourse (i.e., moderate-Islam and Javanese cultural discourses) to construct the ideal woman as embodying the dual wife-mother identities. Based on these locally dependent discourses, working mothers accentuate their identity as wives while subduing identities as mothers and workers. The emphasis on the underexplored wife identity imbues work with a distinct significance for mothers within this context.

This article investigates how the complexity of life domains of menopause-aged women creates a paradox of simultaneously challenging the ideal worker stereotype while being caught within it. The empirical setting of menopause at work acts to highlight how work, life, and health pressures are entangled in how women present themselves at work, through varying organizational and societal expectations of being ‘fit for work’. We draw on 80 semi-structured, life-course interviews of women over 50 working in four occupational settings: social care, manufacturing, finance, and self-employed. Findings are presented through three empirical vignettes, providing unique insight into how ideal worker expectations perpetuate or challenge the persistent silencing of ‘being’ menopausal at work, reinforced by life domain experiences relevant to mid-life. We present a theoretical contribution to ideal worker theory by highlighting that women who redefine the ideal worker stereotype might be less vulnerable to gendered ageist workplace cultures. We provide a practical contribution for how organizations can better support this generation and future generations of mid-life women at work.