Unmasking the Politics of Policy-Driven Change (or not) for Gender Diversity
Date
Authors
Rosser, Heidi
Ryan, Irene
Myers, Barbara
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley
Abstract
This article places a critical lens over one part of an empirical study to explore the political reasons for why (or why not) women on boards policies are effective (or not) in Aotearoa New Zealand. Political intersectionality is used as a heuristic tool to link the political agendas of macro level public policies to meso‐level organizational processes and how these (re)shape the micro‐level everyday politics of structural privilege and disadvantage. Interview data from 10 influential male directors show how the political agendas of powerful interest groups can shape the dialog and further embed the status quo by promoting a business case for gender diversity based on the inherent assumption that it incentivizes businesses to function as meritocracies. We argue that power and conflicting political interests must be addressed if diversity‐related interventions are to achieve the desired gender equity and social justice outcomes in a board membership.Description
Keywords
4408 Political Science, 44 Human Society, Generic health relevance, 1503 Business and Management, 1608 Sociology, 1699 Other Studies in Human Society, Gender Studies, 3505 Human resources and industrial relations, 4405 Gender studies, 4410 Sociology
Source
Gender, Work and Organization, ISSN: 0968-6673 (Print); 0968-6673 (Online), Wiley. doi: 10.1111/gwao.13060
Publisher's version
Rights statement
© 2023 The Authors. Gender, Work & Organization published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.