Gender, Work & Organization: 11th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference

Ort: University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

(urspr. 24.06.20 – 26.06.2020)

Transforming Contexts, Transforming Selves: Gender in New Times

„A central theme for the Gender, Work & Organization2020 conference is Transforming Contexts, Transforming Selves:Gender in New Times –a theme which has particular resonance for our host location, the University of Kent. Kent’s main port Dover, less than 30 miles across the Channel from the French port of Calais, is a key route for the movement of goods and people inand out of Europe, now threatened by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

This route and the rest of Kent’s coastline have also been at the forefront of attempts to prevent the hazardous crossing of refugees seeking sanctuary and a new life in the UK. Our theme goes some way to reflect the high levels of uncertainty, disruption and transition experienced locally and globally as bordering practices, movements and social, political and cultural demarcations undergo radical change. The erosion of consensus, increasing fragmentation and the rise of populist discourses with their antagonistic attitudes based on gender, sexuality and race have led to new forms of discrimination and disadvantage.

The accompanying shifts in gendered power relations, exemplified in re-articulations of entitlement as well as in the #MeToo movement have profound implications for men and women’s experiences in organizations, where organizational transitions, precipitatedby changes in the social, political and economic context, generate different forms of engagement and disengagement, belonging and non-belonging and processes of sense-2making and self-agency. The theme is intended to capture the effects of these and other broader social, cultural, political changes on men and women’s lives at work.“