Manuscript Central now live - see below for more information

Gender, Work & Organization

Edited by:
David Knights and Deborah Kerfoot

ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2007: 5/28 (Women Studies), 36/81 (Management)
Impact Factor: 1.185

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Awareness of gender as a central feature of all aspects of everyday life and society has become more and more widespread. Appropriately social sciences research is reflecting this increasing concern with gender, especially in the field of work and organization where this journal is focused. Gender, Work & Organization is the first journal to bring together a wide range of interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research in this field into a new international forum for debate and analysis. Contributions are invited from all disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, history, labour economics, law, philosophy, politics, psychology, and sociology.

TopNews and Announcements

Call for papers
Special issue Of Gender, Work & Organizationon: Gendering Change: The Next Step

Guest editors:
Yvonne Benschop (Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)
Albert Mills (St Mary's University, Halifax, Canada)
Jean Helms Mills (St Mary's University, Halifax, Canada)
Janne Tienari (Helsinki School of Economics, Finland)

Under pressures from intensifying competition, decision-makers today turn organizations around, merge them or acquire new ones, often across national boundaries. Nonetheless , changing established ways of organization and interaction is always painful in contexts where gender is rarely considered. Established gender relations in different national and local contexts are subject to processes of globalization and transnationalism (Acker, 2006; Calás and Smircich, 2006). The gendered forms and outcomes of these processes need to be mapped out and challenged. At the same time, however, analyses of global processes must be nuanced with attention to local specificities as globalized capitalism takes various forms in different nation-states and local settings. Thus, while numerous occupations are open to women, and some women have risen to the top echelons, the overrepresentation of women among the lowest paid, lowest grade workers continues at all times and in all places. Overall, established gendered power relations in societies and organizations have been maintained, and there is evidence that in the era of globalization and transnationalism the position of women has deteriorated rather than improved (Mohanty, 2004). This calls for reflection on the dynamics of gender inequality in constantly changing organizational worlds.
This special issue invites work from multiple disciplinary backgrounds and different parts of the world concerning a range of timely topics, including, but not restricted to, the following:

• Gendered discourses of change
• Gender, change and resistance
• Gender, change and identity
• Questioning 'change' from feminist perspectives
• Feminist interventions
• Gender, race, class and change
• Intersectionalities and change
• Transnational feminism and change
• Transnational organizations, gender and change
• Gender, mergers and acquisitions

Full papers (not under review elsewhere) using Gender, Work and Organization guidelines for authors, should be sent by 31 May 2009 via Manuscript Central (http://mc.manucsrciptcentral.com/gwo) or to the special issue editors: Yvonne Benschop (Y.Benschop@fm.ru.nl), Albert Mills (a.mills@smu.ca), Jean Helms Mills (jean.mills@smu.ca) and Janne Tienari (Janne.Tienari@hse.fi).

Work-life balance: a matter of choice?
Editors: Abigail Gregory (University of Salford) & Susan Milner (University of Bath)
Volume 16, Issue 1 (2009)

Work-life balance has come to the forefront of policy discourse in developing countries in the context of major socio-economic change and in particular government support for increased female labour market participation and a more egalitarian division of labour in the home. In this discourse it is often taken for granted that work-life balance should be formulated in terms of a "win-win" situation where employees' preferences coincide with employers' desire for greater flexibility of working practices, particularly working time. This special issue contributes to debates around the motivation behind workplace work-life balance measures (choice/constraint), the content, take-up and impact on employees' non-work life.

Its present (largely qualitative) empirical data from France, Ireland, Norway and the UK, showing that the work-life balance agenda needs to tackle wider organizational and sector-specific cultures if it is to have a positive impact on employees' lived and the working environment. Individual choice is circumscribed both by organization arrangements and practice and by prevailing national gender cultures, expectations and labour market opportunities. A key theme is the way in which organizational change (e.g. in high-pressure knowledge and project work) is redrawing the balance between work and non-work lives and generating "boundaryless" work. Another is the continued gendering of organizational cultures and their national embeddedness.

These constraints lead the editors to question the usefulness of adaptive strategies for achieving work-life balance and to highlight the need for collective rights to back up individual choice. They conclude that framing rights, for example to parental leave and working-time reduction, in a gender-neutral way can represent a way forward for men and for women and help to rebalance the gender division of labour.

Special Issue: Thin Edge of the Wedge
Partly to celebrate the journal's 15th year of existence, this issue is devoted to the opening plenary speech from the 2005 GWO International Conference at Keele University. Please click here to read the editorial from the issue.

Call for Papers
Special Issue: Gender Equality and the Modernization of Public Sector Employment.
Following a popular and successful conference stream at Gender, Work and Organization 2007 we call for papers that continue and develop the influential debates on equality in the public sector in this special issue. For further information on this special issue, please click here. Manuscripts should be submitted by 30th November 2008.

Gender, Work and Organization Annual Membership
Gender, Work and Organization is delighted to announce the launch of our first annual membership package! For details click here.

GWO Newsletter
Call for items for inclusion - click here

Online Content Now Available Back to Volume 1
All back issues of this journal are available online.  Click here to browse contents and abstracts.  For further information on how to access these articles please visit our Librarian Site.

Endorsements
Rated as an "A" class journal in the Australian Business Dean Council ABDC Journal List. The Council seeks to list journals relevant to Australian business academics and group them into four categories (A*, A, B & C).

Gender, Work & Organization article selected from 15,000 as one of the fifty best articles published in 2006 in management!
We are delighted to annouce that the article Sexual harrassment in small-town New Zealand: a qualitative study of three contrasting organizations by Jocelyn Handy (published in Volume 13, Issue 1) has received a Citation of Excellence by Emerald Management Reviews.

Click on the link in the article title to access the award-winning article for free

Does your library subscribe to Gender, Work & Organization? Click here for a recommendation form.

TopHighlights

Latest Special Issue of Gender, Work & Organization: Conference Plenary Issue - The Thin End of the Wedge
Click here to be linked to an online table of contents.
Papers include:

The Thin End of the Wedge: Foreign Women Professors as Double Strangers in Academia
Barbara Czarniawska and Guje Sevón

Helpful Men and Feminist Support: More than Double Strangeness
Joan Acker

Hierarchy of Strangeness: Negating Womanhood
Lotte Bailyn

The Wedge or the Doorstop?
Marta B. Calás

Previous Special Issues:
Gender and Emotion
Guest Editors: David Knights and Emma Surman
**FREE TO ACCESS**

Undoing Gender: Organizing and Disorganizing Performance
Guest Editors: Alison Pullen and David Knights

Gender and New Technologies
Guest Editor: Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist

Gender as Social Practice
Guest Editor: Barbara Poggio

Gender and Service Work 
Guest Edtiors: Deborah Kerfoot and Marek Korczynski

Beyond Boundaries: Towards Fluidity in Theorizing and Practice 
Guest Editors: Alison Linstead and Joanna Brewis