Grand Challenges, Feminist Answers

Feminist organization theories develop knowledge about how organizations and processes of organizing shape and are shaped by gender, in intersection with race, class and other forms of social inequality. The politics of knowledge within management and organization studies tend to marginalize and silence feminist theorizing on organizations, and so the field misses out on the interdisciplinary, sophisticated conceptualizations and reflexive modes of situated knowledge production provided by feminist work. To highlight the contributions of feminist organization theories, I discuss the feminist answers to three of the grand challenges that contemporary organizations face: inequality, technology and climate change. These answers entail a systematic critique of dominant capitalist and patriarchal forms of organizing that perpetuate complex intersectional inequalities. Importantly, feminist theorizing goes beyond mere critique, offering alternative value systems and unorthodox approaches to organizational change, and providing the radically different ways of knowing that are necessary to tackle the grand challenges. The paper develops an aspirational ideal by sketching the contours of how we can organize for intersectional equality, develop emancipatory technologies and enact a feminist ethics of care for the human and the natural world.

Heart, Mind and Body: #NoMorePage3 and the Replenishment of Emotional Energy

Emotional energy is key to disruptive institutional work, but we still know little about what it is, and importantly, how it is refuelled. This empirical paper presents an in-depth case study of ‘No More Page 3’ (#NMP3), an Internet-based feminist organization which fought for the removal of sexualized images of women from a UK newspaper. Facing online misogyny, actors engage in ‘emotional energy replenishment’ to sustain this disruptive institutional work amid emotional highs and lows. We introduce ‘affective embodiment’ – the corporeal and emotional experiences of the institution – as providing emotional energy in relation to disruptive institutional work. Affective embodiment is surfaced through alignment or misalignment with others’ embodied experiences, and this mediates how actors replenish emotional energy. Alignment with others’ embodied experiences, often connected to online abuse, means emotional energy is replenished through ‘affective solidarity’ (movement towards the collective). Misalignment, surfaced through tensions within the movement, means actors seek replenishment through ‘sensory retreat’ (movement away from the collective). This study contributes to theorization on institutional work and emotional energy by recentring the importance of the body alongside emotions, as well as offering important lessons for online organizing.

The Vagina Monologues in a Chinese Context: Discussing the Value of the Localized Adaptations

The silence around female genitalia and sexuality is a prevalent phenomenon with grave implications. Eve Ensler, an American playwright, wrote the famous Vagina Monologues to combat such issues and aim to end violence against women. While Ensler’s play is popular on a global scale, the localized versions inspired by Ensler are also emerging in various regions. A Chinese feminist organization, The Vagina Project, has created their own script and organized several localized performances in the past few years. A close analysis of one of the scripts written by the Vagina Project demonstrates that the localized versions of The Vagina Monologues, though less paid attention to, are effective in creating connections with the audience. Being attuned to the regional feminist differences allows the play to be more powerful and thoughtful when presented to the audience.

Gendering Sustainability in Management Education: Research and Pedagogy as Space for Critical Engagement

Gender issues have been well conceptualized in feminist organization studies. However, gender research has had limited practical effects, in part because it has not been well conceptualized in the sustainability in management education (SiME) scholarship; nor has it been adequately prioritized in management and business curricula. I argue that given the persistence of discrimination, segregation, sexual oppression, inequality, and lack of empowerment of women (to name a few . . . ), mandatory gender education is needed to equip management students as they enter diverse and equal opportunity working environments. Integrating SiME and Feminist Organization literatures, I develop a multidimensional framework for conceptualizing gender studies in the classroom. This theoretical framework offers faculty and students an evolving pathway to analyze gender and SiME with perspectives in feminist organization studies. I conclude by reflecting on integration strategies for creating space in research and pedagogy for the critical engagement of gender debates in our programs.

Secular Rule and Islamic Ethics: Engaging with Muslim-Only Marriages in the Netherlands

From the mid-2000s, Dutch policy makers, the media, and others have started to define Muslim-only marriages as a problem. This contribution unpacks a recent hype, when a Dutch TV station broadcasted the conclusion of a polygamous marriage at a mosque, while simultaneously the largest right-wing political party presented an initiative to further criminalize Muslim-only marriages. In both the TV program and the policy initiative, the same feminist organization, Femmes for Freedom, was involved. Using liberal arguments such as freedom of partner choice to limit the freedom of a religious minority, interestingly, the dividing lines were neither between Muslims and non-Muslims, nor between more ‘mainstream’ and more ‘Salafi-oriented’ mosques. Arguing for the need to protect women, many supported the current Dutch law demanding that couples conclude a civil marriage prior to a religious marriage, as the former would protect women better, while others called for better educating Muslims about women’s rights in Islam. Whereas the voices of women in Muslim-only marriages were not heard, our research with converts entering into polygamous marriages indicates that they may opt for these marriages themselves with their main concerns centering on the equal treatment of wives and men’s openness about polygamy.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of single-sex protective laws. The longevity of protective laws rests in part on reformers' bifocal defense. The goal of such laws, their proponents claimed, was to compensate for women's disadvantages in the labor market and to serve as the linchpin of a larger plan to achieve wage-and-hour standards for all employees. This double-planked rationale—though contradictory—proved versatile and enduring; it suited constituents with varied priorities. Protective laws' longevity also rested on effective social feminist organization and, after 1920, on the federal Women's Bureau. In retrospect, single-sex protective laws were an unwieldy means to achieve egalitarian ends—or what women reformers of the 1920s called “industrial equality.” However, critics charged that the laws failed to redress disadvantage and even compounded it. Protection's supporters also confronted developments they could not anticipate and shifts in attitude they could not foresee.

Women against Government

This chapter examines the functioning of the feminist NGO Associated Women of Zimbabwe (AWZ) to highlight varieties of feminism and the influence of a political and economic crisis on a feminist organization in Zimbabwe at the turn of the twenty-first century. After providing a brief history of AWZ, the chapter considers its experiences to demonstrate how women consciously organize to fight sexism in Zimbabwean society. It then explores AWZ's role in the political process as it advocated for women and promoted women's civil rights in the context of increasing political competition, electoral violence, and a declining economy. It also discusses cosmopolitan feminism in Zimbabwe and the relationship between AWZ and the state—especially in relation to the politics of inclusion, state-sponsored violence, and economic decline; explains how an organization that once stood against government lost its edge, even as government became more oppressive; and analyzes the fiction of Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga. The chapter concludes by showing what happens to an NGO dependent on international donors when the money stream begins to dry up.

Deportations and Reverse Migration, 1902–1910

This chapter focuses on the anarchist movement in Argentina to 1910, as its ties to Spain were reinforced through deportations from Argentina as well as continued immigration from Spain. The Argentine government passed the Residency Law after strikes and labor unrest in 1902, which allowed the deportation of unruly immigrants. Deportations of anarchists then occurred sporadically until the 1930s. Many deported writers, editors, and activists remained active after returning to Spain. Juana Rouco Buela, deported in 1907 for her role in an anarchist feminist organization, took part in the movement in Spain before returning surreptitiously to Argentina. Antonio Loredo had been a member of the editorial board of the anarchist daily La Protesta prior to his 1909 deportation and later surfaced as an editor of Barcelona's influential anarchist newspaper, Tierra y Libertad. These deportations of Spanish anarchists show not only that population movements can be involuntary as well as voluntary, but also that these returnees brought experiences and ideas from Argentina.