Julia Nentwich

Unconscious bias training has become a popular intervention for eliminating discrimination in the workplace. Particularly recruitment processes are said to become fairer and more objective if gen-der biases are eliminated through training of personnel. However, the concept of gender bias, and particularly the idea that it can be trained away, has also been critiqued as too limited in its focus on individual mental processes, thereby neglecting effects of context, interaction and power. Taking this critique as our starting point, we argue that gender bias needs to be theorised in relation to a specifi c interaction and normative context. Building on cognitive social psychology, critical social psychology and on gender as a social practice we show that gender bias is not only an individual, but a funda-mentally social activity that is embedded within organisational norms and power relations and repro-duced in interaction. By theorising gender bias as a social practice, we expand the concept of gender bias beyond individual cognition. This perspective not only opens up the scope of explanation but is also a vital concept for exploring and combatting bias in recruiting.

Our article aims at refocusing the debate in privilege studies from tackling the invisibility to challenging justifications of gender privilege. Focusing on instances in which men acknowledge that they receive preferential treatment, this study sheds light on how privilege is perceived and talked about in interviews with men in female-dominated occupations. In contrast to existing literature on the invisibility of privilege to the privileged, our analysis shows that the privileging of men is indeed known to them. However, our interviewees then employ specific discursive strategies to actively reframe and thereby silence privilege. They either justify privilege as an individual achievement or as a natural advantage of male bodies. In our discussion, we show how these discursive reframings build on existing discourses on gendered bodies and neoliberal subjectivity. Based on our key argument that gendered privilege is not invisible, but it is acknowledged and then actively reframed and thereby silenced, we argue for expanding the focus of privilege studies: Instead of primarily investing in making privilege visible to those who have it, we need to challenge the discourses that allow for reframing and silencing it.

In this article we analyze how privilege is dynamically constructed as well as contested.A positioning analysis of interviews with employees of a multinational organization reveals the construction of a hierarchy of privilege. As this hierarchy is based on English proficiency along with other diversity dimensions, privilege is multifaceted. Furthermore, privilege is also contested. Contesting English-proficiency–related Privilege is connected to the speaker's position in the hierarchy of privilege. The Analysis shows that both category membership and specific competences and skills cumulate to produce privileging effects, but also the possibilities for contesting privilege. At the same time, although the privilege gained by English proficiency is not invisible and is regularly contested, it is nevertheless silenced by those in advantage.

In this paper we explore the dual role of human agency in maintaining the status quo and generating change. Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu offer differing conceptions of change agency in relation to organisation and transformation of gender relations. Focusing on how those approaches would work, we analyse an empirical case study on a particular change process: getting women the right to vote in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell. We contribute to the current use of Butler's and Bourdieu's theories in organisation studies in three main ways. First, we explore stability and change from the lenses of these two scholars. Second, we illustrate how change agency looks from these two distinct perspectives. Finally, we offer an empirical analysis that identifies the main elements of change agency in the two frameworks and discuss the possibilities and limitations of bringing these two approaches together to better understand change agency.

Men in early childhood education (ECE) are subjected to different discourses: while they are facing serious mistrust on the one hand, their otherness to the field is also interpreted as new and potentially innovative on the other hand. This article explores how male childcare workers create and take up different subject positions by drawing on these competing discourses in order to acquire a legitimate position as men in the female-dominated context of Swiss day-care centers. In constructing themselves as professionals they create a subject position that seems to move beyond the gender binary. Analysing the position of the professional in depth, the article first shows how this position is accomplished and then explores how gender unfolds between the lines by infusing professionalism with masculinity.

‘Doing gender' is a much used term in research on gender, work and organizations. However, translating theoretical insight into empirical research is often a challenging endeavour. A lack of clarity with regard to the conceptualization and operationalization of key terms in turn often limits the theoretical and empirical purchase of a concept. The aim of this article is therefore to provide a systematization of empirical approaches to ‘doing gender'. This systematization leads to a topology of five themes that is derived from empirical research in the field. The five themes identified are structures, hierarchies, identity, flexibility and context specificity, and gradual relevance/subversion. Each theme explores a different facet of ‘doing gender'. This topology helps empirical researchers to be more specific about which aspects of ‘doing gender' they are referring to. This in turn can help to unfold the theoretical potential of the concept of ‘doing gender'.