Feminist Theories and Activist Practices in Organization Studies

This piece reflects on the untapped potential of feminist theories and activist practices to address vital organizational issues and societal challenges such as inequality, sustainability and care for the environment. While we recognize and briefly review the progress on gender issues in organization studies achieved over the last decades, our focus is on identifying the critical and underutilized strands of feminist thinking offering fresh responses to these problems, including decolonial feminism, feminist ethics of care, posthuman feminism and ecofeminism. By way of illustrating our theoretical arguments, we discuss how five different papers recently published in Organization Studies address some of these issues, including the uncovering of hidden entanglements of power and performativity in a global bank and in the beauty industry by paying attention to body and affect, the underrepresented struggles of women in the Global South as they disrupt gendered practices through consciousness raising, contesting gender regimes at organizational social events and, finally, how the social media operate at the intersection of gender and occupation. We conclude by outlining future directions for research as we discuss the contributions of anti-racist feminist theory and decolonial feminist practice to completing the unfinished project of social change while making our scholarship more reflexive and inclusive.

Automated summary

This article reflects on the untapped potential of feminist theories and activist practices in addressing organizational issues and societal challenges. By reviewing the progress made in gender studies over the past decades, the authors identify critical and underutilized strands of feminist thinking that offer fresh responses to these problems. Using five papers recently published in Organization Studies as examples, the authors discuss how these strands of feminism contribute to uncovering and addressing gender inequality and social issues within organizations.