Dear Colleagues
We have extended our submission date to September 2, 2019 for the following special issue. We will be at the 4th Women and Leadership Conference later this month, if you are attending, we welcome discussions with those interested in submitting. Please email me at: wendyfoxkirk@weber.edu to arrange a meeting.
Leadership in an age of #MeToo: Global Conversations
Guest Editors
Leigh Fine, University of Connecticut
Wendy Fox-Kirk, Weber University, Ogden, Utah
Rita A. Gardiner, Western University, Canada
Faith Ngunjiri, Concordia College, Minnesota
Initial inquiries should be made to the lead editor of this special issue, Rita A. Gardiner at rgardin2@uwo.ca.
About the special issue
The #MeToo movement has proven to be a major catalyst for raising public awareness about sexual violence. As such, it is a catalyst to effect major societal change if leaders are willing to confront organizational structures and individual behaviour that lead to violence. Yet because #MeToo is a recent phenomenon, there is a lacuna of research that takes up the challenges leaders face in addressing the issues raised by the movement. #MeToo and other offshoots (Time's Up, Times Up UK, #SilenceIsNotSpiritual, #MeToo academe to name a few) are challenging organizations not only to address gender and violence issues, but also to come to terms with the negative effects of hypermasculinity on workplace cultures.
Around the world, the #MeToo movement has prompted responses from government and industry to address the insidious and pervasive problem of sexual harassment and workplace violence and the concomitant abuses of power. This has been prompted by the courage of many victims/survivors who are speaking out about long-term and persistent abuse (Gerchiek, 2018a). Recently, Statistics Canada released a report stating there had been a 65% increase in business-related assaults reported to the police from October 2016-October 2017 (Rotenberg & Cotter, 2018). The report suggests that this increased reporting was related to the effects of the #Me Too movement.
The effects of #MeToo are also being felt in large corporations, such as the global collective workforce action demanding an improvement in Google's management of sexual predators. At other corporations, such as Uber, we also see that whistleblowers are demanding organizational action to address institutional violence.
Much of the initial media attention regarding #MeToo concerned women who spoke out against violence in the entertainment industry. However, women are not the only targets of predatory action; young men, trans, and those who identify as genderqueer are vulnerable, too. Yet there is a lack of robust research on who commits sexual violence against LGBTQ victims, leaving readers to assume perpetrators are also LGBTQ but this may not be so (Bedera & Nordmeye 2018). Furthermore, as governments and organizations look at how they can create changes in organizational culture and practices to make workplaces safe and respectful places for all, there is a tendency to focus on a simplistic model of sexual harassment and violence as a mainly heterosexual phenomenon. We seek to develop a space for new scholarship that is not only cognizant of violence against heterosexual women, but highlights how diverse others experience violence in the workplace.
In the US, early responses to the #MeToo movement include new federal laws to restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual harassment and violence (Gurchiek, 2018b). The Society for Human Resource Management (2018) highlights that current federal legislation has failed to stop the tide of abuses across industries. In a recent SHRM study which examined changes in organizations a year after the #MeToo revelations, CEOs and HRM directors maintain there is an urgent need to create self-policing cultures. This requires a shift in cultural norms that sanctioned violence in the workplace, and a different approach by HR toward victims/survivors.
Across diverse countries and cultures, the effects of #MeToo and similar movements are being felt (Briggs, 2017; Collins, & Grossman-Boder 2018; Norholm, Just, & Muhr, 2018; Burt, 2018). In keeping with this journal's international focus, we encourage submissions that examine the global effects of these movements, and their impact on the affective aspects of organizational life and leadership experience/s (Fox-Kirk, 2017; Ngunjiri & Gardiner, 2017; Ngunjiri, et al., 2017; Ngunjiri, Chang, & Hernandez, 2018).
This special issue seeks to consider how leadership and #MeToo movement challenges organizational practices and policies in diverse cultural arenas (Fine, 2018; Finn, Gardiner, & Bruijns, 2018; Gardiner, Almquist, Shockness, & Finn, under review; Iverson & Issadore, 2017; Quinlan, Quinlan, Fogel, & Taylor, 2018). The aims of this special issue are:
1) To provide new lenses with which to view the impact of #MeToo on organizations
2) To expand discourses beyond a narrow heteronormative focus
3) To highlight the global impact of #MeToo.
4) To set an agenda for future organizational and leadership research that examines how organizations are responding to #MeToo.
We welcome papers that seek to explore the global effects and after-effects of the #MeToo movement in diverse workplaces and cultures from different conceptual and methodological perspectives. We also welcome papers that seek to integrate critical, feminist and/or queer theory so as to enhance women's leadership theory, organization, and managerial practices. The intent is to provide a fora for new knowledge to emerge, enabling scholars and practitioners to more effectively address sexual violence issues in their workplace and beyond.
Submission
1st submission of papers to Gender in Management: An International Journal BY MONDAY SEPTEMBER 2, 2019. Publication is likely to be late 2020 or early 2021. Please follow the submission instructions on the journal website. Or use the link below to Manuscript Central where you should be able to identify the special issue.
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gm (NOTE: This link is not active for us yet, working out how to get our SI in the system and us as editors)
Please follow the Author Guidelines and include the Structured Abstract and Author Copyright declaration in your submission. Detailed instructions can be found at
http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=gm
References
Bedera, N. and Nordmeye, K., (2018). An Inherently Masculine Practice: Understanding the Sexual Victimization of Queer Women in College in the United States. In: International Symposium on Gender Studies "(De) constructing Femininity and Masculinity". London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research. London, UK.
Briggs, M. (2017). #MeToo – Sexual harassment in the workplace. [Online] Lexology. Available at: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=36f98e36-78d1-429b-926e-1f3e336f5873&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email+-+body+-+general+section&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2017-11-03&utm_term= [Accessed 20 Nov. 2018].
Burt, E. (2018). After #MeToo, #WhatNext? [Online] People Management Available at: https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/long-reads/articles/after-me-too-what-next [Accessed 20 Feb. 2019].
Collins, C. E. and Grossman-Boder, Y. (2018). China Has a #MeToo Moment, But Still Lacks Anti-Harassment Enforcement. [Online] Lexology. Available at: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0f5138dc-053e-4ee5-af05-1d5d987137ad&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email+-+body+-+general+section&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2018-02-09&utm_term= [Accessed 20 Nov. 2018].
Fine, L.E. (2017), "What's in a word? Troubling and reconstructing the discourse of inclusion", In: A. Boitano de Moras, R.L. Dutra, & H.E. Schockman (Eds.) Breaking the Zero-Sum Game: Transforming Societies through Inclusive Leadership (pp. 29-42). Emerald.
Finn, H., Gardiner, R. & Bruijns, L. (2018). Winning at all cost: Gender, sport and violence. Gender Forum, 70, pp.26-39.
Fox-Kirk, W. (2017). Viewing Authentic Leadership through a Bourdieusian Lens: How structural power constrains agentic expression. In Gardiner, R. & Stornberg-Walker, J. (Eds.), Authentic Leadership in HRD: Context and Identity Matter! Critical Explorations on Leading Authentically, Advances in Developing Human Resources: 19(4) pp.439-453.
Gardiner, R., Almquist, J., Shockness, M., & Finn, H. (Under review). Politics versus policies: Fourth wave feminist critiques of higher education's response to sexual violence.
Gerchiek, K. (2018a). One Year After #MeToo and 'Weinstein Effect': What's Changed? [Online] SHRM. Available at: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/sexual-harassment-workplace-weinstein-effect.aspx?utm_campaign=E%26C%20Pulse%20Newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8bBrEhQuW65pnX-_sxJlLnXczL2bQNX9AsSn9uGko5VA2ow1geEXfY5Hf4TbmrG5P8FVY5 [Accessed 20 Nov. 2018].
Gerchiek, K. (2018b). #MeToo Movement Sparks Bill to 'Stop Culture of Silence' in Workplaces. [Online] SHRM. Available at: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/behavioral-competencies/global-and-cultural-effectiveness/pages/metoo-sparks-bill-to-stop-culture-of-silence-in-workplaces.aspx [Accessed 20 Nov. 2018].
Iverson, S.V., & Issadore, M. (2018). Going upstream: Policy as sexual violence prevention and response. In K. Edwards & J. Jessup-Anger (Eds.), Addressing sexual violence in higher education and student affairs (pp. 59-60). New Directions for Student Services. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
Maas, M.K., McCauley, H.L., Bonomi, A.E., & Leija, S. G. (2018). "I was grabbed by my pussy and its #notokay." A twitter backlash against Donald Trump's degrading commentary. Violence against Women, 24(14) pp.1739-1750.
Ngunjiri, F. W. & Gardiner, R. (2017). Future Strategies for Developing Women as Leaders. In Madsen, S. (Ed.), Handbook of Women and Leadership, (pp. 423-438). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Ngunjiri, F.W., Chang, H. & Hernandez, K.C. (2017) Multivocal Meaning Making: Using Collaborative Autoethnography to Advance Theory on Women and Leadership. In J. Storberg-Walker & P. Haber-Curran (Eds.), Theorizing Women and Leadership: New Insights & Contributions from Multiple Perspective, (pp. 103-119). IAP.
Ngunjiri, F.W., J. Almquist, M. Beebe, C. Elbert, R. Gardiner & M. Shockness (2017). Intersectional Leadership Praxis: Unpacking the Experiences of Women Leaders at the Nexus of Roles and Identities. In J. Storberg-Walker and P. Haber Curran (Eds) Theorizing Women and Leadership: new Insights & Contributions from Multiple Perspective (pp. 249-263). IAP.
Norholm Just, S. & Muhr, S. L. (2018). "Together we rise": Collaboration and contestation as narrative drivers of the Women's March," Leadership, online first.
Quinlan, E., Quinlan, A., Fogel, C., & Taylor, G., Eds. (2018). Sexual violence at Canadian universities. Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press.
SHRM (2018). #MeToo One Year Later: One-Third of Executives Have Changed Their Behaviors. [Online] SHRM. Available at: https://www.shrm.org/about-shrm/press-room/press-releases/pages/metoo-one-year-later-one-third-of-executives-have-changed-their-behaviors.aspx [Accessed 20 Nov. 2018].
Rotenberg, C. & Cotter, A. (Nov 8, 2018) Police-reported sexual assaults in Canada before and after #MeToo, 2016 and 2017, Statistics Canada. Available at: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2018001/article/54979-eng.htm
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Wendy Fox Kirk
Weber State University
Ogden UT
(801) 626-6030
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