Study of Gender as Social Practice and Tokenism in an Indian IT Company

This systematic study is focused on examining the women’s gendered identity work in an Indian IT company. The research builds a body of work that explores female tokenism at senior positions and highlights tension in practicing gender. Research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with twenty two women employees utilizing the case study approach. A patriarchal Indian society and social construction of IT as feminine and rewarding for women is responsible for an increase of women participation in it. However, there is evidence of exclusion at all levels of hierarchy in the firm on accounts of gendering and social practices. There is prevalence of gender based discrimination in the nature of work allocated and the compensation received especially at the middle level. Gender stereotyping is related with such workplace discrimination. Women tokens at the higher level have been unable to influence policy directions in favor of women employees. Frustrated women employees chose passive coping mechanism such as acceptance as part of work culture and social expectations. Clearly there are tensions between gender and social practice in the chosen firm. Company has a significant role to play in nurturing and supporting women employees through a strong support system. Strategies include avoidance of negative connotations, mentoring, provision of work-life balance support initiatives, tough action against harassment, concerns of discrimination and tokenism. Most important issue is awareness in the society which is effective in changing socially constructed beliefs and attitudes related to gender which would go a long way in improving women experience in workplace. Studies critically analyzing IT’s implications on India’s overall social and economic development is scarce. Further, there have been few sociological studies of work focusing on this industry or on its workforce. This study addresses this gap existing in the literature. The study to the best of my knowledge would be the first of its kind in the Indian context as few studies previously conducted on women IT workforce ignored the theoretical perspectives

A critical moment: 25 years of Gender, Work and Organization

Anniversary editoria

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 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

Feeling clumsy and curious. A collective reflection on experimenting with poetry as an unconventional method

In this paper, we offer a collective, multi-vocal reflection on using poetry for research purposes. These were reflections on an online sub-plenary session organized as a workshop, which was held at the European Group for Organization Studies conference in 2021. During this workshop, the first three authors presented a step-by-step method for doing poetic inquiry and invited participants to apply it to their own empirical data or research praxis. The method was created in response to the marginalization of affect and embodiment in mainstream research in organization studies. Poetic inquiry aims to formulate specific practices of “writing differently” that assist researchers in their attempts to analyze and articulate their findings in embodied and affec-tive ways. In this paper, we describe the method and bring together multi-vocal reflections from the participants and organizers of the workshop on the affects of poetic inquiry and the (ethical) questions that it poses.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Catching a glimpse: Corona‐life and its micro‐politics in academia

The spread of COVID-19 acutely challenges and affects not just economic markets, demographic statistics and healthcare systems, but indeed also the politics of organizing and becoming in a new everyday life of academia emerging in our homes. Through a collage of stories, snapshots, vignettes, photos and other reflections of everyday life, this collective contribution is catching a glimpse of corona-life and its micro-politics of multiple, often contradicting claims on practices as many of us live, work and care at home. It embodies concerns, dreams, anger, hope, numbness, passion and much more emerging amongst academics from across the world in response to the crisis. As such, this piece manifests a shared need to — together, apart — enact and explore constitutive relations of resistance, care and solidarity in these dis/organizing times of contested spaces, identities and agencies as we are living–working–caring at home during lockdowns

Increasing frailty is associated with higher prevalence and reduced recognition of delirium in older hospitalised inpatients: results of a multi-centre study

Purpose: Delirium is a neuropsychiatric disorder delineated by an acute change in cognition, attention, and consciousness. It is common, particularly in older adults, but poorly recognised. Frailty is the accumulation of deficits conferring an increased risk of adverse outcomes. We set out to determine how severity of frailty, as measured using the CFS, affected delirium rates, and recognition in hospitalised older people in the United Kingdom. Methods: Adults over 65 years were included in an observational multi-centre audit across UK hospitals, two prospective rounds, and one retrospective note review. Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), delirium status, and 30-day outcomes were recorded. Results: The overall prevalence of delirium was 16.3% (483). Patients with delirium were more frail than patients without delirium (median CFS 6 vs 4). The risk of delirium was greater with increasing frailty [OR 2.9 (1.8–4.6) in CFS 4 vs 1–3; OR 12.4 (6.2–24.5) in CFS 8 vs 1–3]. Higher CFS was associated with reduced recognition of delirium (OR of 0.7 (0.3–1.9) in CFS 4 compared to 0.2 (0.1–0.7) in CFS 8). These risks were both independent of age and dementia. Conclusion: We have demonstrated an incremental increase in risk of delirium with increasing frailty. This has important clinical implications, suggesting that frailty may provide a more nuanced measure of vulnerability to delirium and poor outcomes. However, the most frail patients are least likely to have their delirium diagnosed and there is a significant lack of research into the underlying pathophysiology of both of these common geriatric syndromes