We invite you to register for the


EGOS Feminist Network Meeting 2024

Avoiding Polarization, Strengthening Collaborations, Finding Hope


The EGOS Feminist Network Meeting 2024 will take place onsite at the University of Milan-Bicocca on Wednesday, July 3, 2024, 14:00–16:00 CEST, prior to the main 40th EGOS Colloquium in Milan (July 4–6, 2024). – The detailed “Call for Registrations” can be found below.


Registration:

  • To register for the EGOS Feminist Network Meeting 2024, please send an email to the EGOS Executive Secretariat executive-secretariat@egos.org, noting “EGOS Feminist Network Meeting 2024: Registration” in the email’s heading. Please only state your full name and affiliation in this email (a submission/file is not required).

  • Deadline for registrations: Friday, June 14, 2024 (23:59 CEST)



Please note:

In order to participate in the EGOS Feminist Network Meeting 2024, you have (1) to pay the EGOS membership fee and (2) to register for the main 40th EGOS Colloquium (July 4–6, 2024), i.e. you must pay the Colloquium fee.

 

Call for Registrations

EGOS Feminist Network Meeting 2024

Avoiding Polarization, Strengthening Collaborations, Finding Hope

Wednesday, July 3, 2024, 14:00–16:00 CEST

University of Milan-Bicocca 
[Building U6 | Room U6-P0-09 | Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo, 1 | 20126 Milano]

Moderators:

Janet Johansson, Linköping University, Sweden
Sara Louise Muhr, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Mie Plotnikof, Aarhus University, Denmark
Sheena Vachhani, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

Despite rising awareness of diversity issues in organization studies and beyond, mainstream concerns persist to primarily focus on diversity as a business case with easy fixes such as headcounts, mentor systems, and symbolic diversity tokens for show – also in the EGOS context. This means that more radical changes and a profound appreciation of difference and not least feminist scholarship in organization studies remain largely absent, reproducing everyday exclusionary practices and sexist structures at best, while also enabling more extreme formally and informally organized backlashes at worst.
 
So although we see more feminist scholarship being included in organization studies events and outlets, we also experience both obvious and more subtle forms of resistances and backlashes, for example, in terms of diversity tokenism, symbolic allyship, instrumentalist use of diversity discourses when convenient, etc.; all of which claim the fame of taking seriously the EDI agenda, all while undermining and devaluing the very fabric and nerve of feminism and related scholarships in organization studies and beyond.
 

At this year’s EGOS Feminist Network Meeting, we will discuss the issue of not just hostile and obvious resistances and backlashes, but indeed also the more subtle versions – those wrapped in neoliberal discourses, benevolent appreciative, yet symbolic gestures, that may look like respectfully working FOR diversity and inclusion on the surface, but actually only does so in as far as it's serving own interests and not in any way challenge own identities and privileges, as well as the inequalities which uphold them.
 
At the 2024 EGOS Feminist Network Meeting, we will invite a number of different voices to the stage to give their take on how we move forward beyond polarization by resisting backlashes and strengthening solidarity in organization studies. This will be followed by a facilitated discussion, and we hope to be able to end up with a visualization of how collaboration can be brought forward into the Colloquium with the hope of a more inclusive future in organization studies.

Coffee/tea, soft drinks and pastries will be available from 13:30 onwards.

The moderators

Janet Johansson is a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at the Department of Management and Engineering at Linköping University in Sweden. Her research specializes in ethics, business ethics, and the intersections of gender, equity, diversity, and inclusion within organizations. Currently, Janet’s work centers on feminist care ethics and their impact on socially sustainable organizational processes, including practices in human resource management, leadership, employee well-being, and equity strategies and practices. Her work has been published in outlets such as Gender, Work & Organization, Journal of Business Ethics, Human Relations, and others.
 
Sara Louise Muhr is a Professor of Diversity & Leadership at Copenhagen Business School. Her research focuses on critical perspectives on managerial identity, leadership and HRM, especially in relation to issues around coping with diversity and expectations to employees and leaders in modern, flexible ways of working. Following this broader aim, she has worked with various empirical settings such as management consultancy, the military and police force, pharmaceuticals, municipalities and executive networks where she has engaged with issues such as power, culture, emotional labor, gender, ethnicity, migration, and work-life balance. Sara Louise’s work has materialized in more than 80 published books, journal articles and book chapters. Her most recent book is “Leading through bBas”, co-authored with Poornima Luthra and published by Pelgrave Executive Essentials.
 
Mie Plotnikof is an Associate Professor at Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. She studies organizational norms, politics, power and resistance by questioning performative relations of, e.g., meaning/matter, diversity/difference, time/temporality, and governmentality/subjectivity, often in contexts of education and care work. Her studies are published in outlets such as Organization, Gender, Work & Organization, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, and Organization Studies, amongst others. Mie is a regular participant at EGOS Colloquia as convenor and presenter at various SWGs, PDWs, and the past three years also as co-organizer of the EGOS Feminist Network.
 
Sheena J. Vachhani is Professor of Work and Organisation Studies and co-director of the Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations (ARCIO) research group at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research explores ethics, politics, and difference in work and organization with a view to understanding social transformation and social justice. She has a particular interest in craft work, materiality, corporeality and embodiment. More recently, her work has focused on elemental ethics using feminist theory and plant politics to understand new ways of organising (with Alison Pullen). Sheena’s work has been published in outlets such as Organization Studies, Gender, Work & Organization, British Journal of Management, Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics and others.