Genderwashing in Leadership

This chapter presents a genderwashing critique of UK historic universities. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it conceptualizes genderwashing and gender-based violence (GBV). Underpinned by feminist subjectivity, raising consciousness to women's situated lived experiences, examples of public declarations of gender equality by UK historic universities are considered alongside women's experiences of GBV. Using Walter's (2022) genderwash varieties, university hypocrisy is illustrated by women academic handmaidens, abuse of women in Professional Services, and women standing up to GBV. This chapter contributes “Eradicating and Silencing Women’”and “Asking the Minority to Fix It” as genderwash processes, theorizing how genderwashing (or genderbleaching) in historic universities not only perpetuates the falsehood of practicing equality but also provides a veil to conceal GBV.

Genderwashing is an organizational phenomenon in which claims to gender equity remain superficial because organizational efforts toward gender equity are unsuccessful at creating substantive change. I introduce the concept of encounter as a useful framework in extending our understandings of the ways that genderwashing might occur within workplaces. Drawing on “encounters” as fundamentally informal, everyday interactions, I explore the ways in which these seemingly trivial social interactions make significant contributions to the quality of workplace relationships. Using the manager–employee relationship and performance review process as a basis, I show how paying attention to “small talk” is not trivial, but rather has a significant impact on the performance review process, and functions as an important site for the reproduction of or challenge to existing gender inequities. I also suggest that the consideration of “encounters” offers practical insights that can help identify additional behaviors that result in significant movement toward gender equity.

In this chapter, we examine the role that business school accreditation agencies play in influencing attitudes to gender, exploring the documentation of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB); Association of MBAs (AMBA) and European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) to develop an understanding of their stake in promoting greater gender equality or inadvertently encouraging gender washing. These agencies are powerful stakeholders who, arguably, set the recognized global standards. We focus on the organizational rhetoric espoused by them and have found that they are using practices we have defined as genderspinning: presenting a favorable impression to stakeholders; and moving in endless circles.

This chapter focuses on the concept of genderwashing in the context of higher education (HE) in the United States. Using intersectionality as a framework, the authors critically examine gender-based affinity groups, which are used in HE as a common strategy to support diversity and equity efforts. The authors discuss how such efforts often fall short in facilitating meaningful organizational or systemic change and provide questions and considerations for addressing genderwashing that are informed by an intersectional lens.

This chapter explores genderwashing in the context of exclusive talent management (ETM) and defensive diversity management (DDM). It makes the counter intuitive argument that ETM is a misnomer in that it privileges maintenance of an organizational hierarchy based on social identity over the development of talent. Further, DDM is a genderwashing tool, enabling organizations to fend off criticism through symbolic diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives while enacting discourses that legitimate structures, practices, and norms that produce a status hierarchy based on social identities. A genderwashing perspective reveals this contradiction and spotlights the uncomfortable reality of workplace inequalities. It also shows that operating within boundaries set by the status quo renders DDM ineffective in removing the real career impediments faced by women and members of minoritized groups (MMG). A transformative diversity management (TDM) approach is needed to confront these realities and enable organizations to support the career aspirations of women and MMG.

Our chapter explores the impacts of genderwashing practices within Hockey Canada (HC), a national organization that governs major and minor hockey leagues in Canada. A 2018 case involving allegations of sexual assault by members of the U20 junior men's hockey team acted as a catalyst to expose HC's organizational practice of silencing victims and covering up bad behavior. Through the application of media content analysis, we argue that HC's responses to the case (financial settlements, Nondisclosure Agreements, and a new educational and training program) reflect genderwashing practices and exemplify a superficial attempt to address sexual violence within the organization. What results is a culture of silence, poor leadership, and the normalization of violence within HC. Our chapter contributes to the genderwashing literature, through the development and application of genderwashing as a conceptual framework that can be applied to responses to allegations of sexual assault.

In this chapter, we critically interrogate Pakistani Higher Education Commission (HEC)'s “Policy Guidelines against Sexual Harassment in Institutions of Higher Learning” (HEC, 2011, 2020) to reveal that the policy represents a form of rhetorical genderwashing, rather than a concerted attempt to effect structural change (Fox-Kirk et al., 2020). Through this critical interrogation, we introduce a new methodological approach to investigate genderwashing, that of collaborative feminist policy analysis. This chapter is based on the theoretical framework of Sara Ahmed's concept of “institutional nonperformativity” (2012). Pakistan recognized workplace harassment as a legal issue for the first time in the 2010 Sexual Harassment Act (Jabbar & Imran, 2013). The Act, and subsequent policies, was an attempt to practice equity and fairness in sexual harassment cases. Our investigation revealed that the policy reinforces gender power inequality, gendered language, and is an example of institutional silence, and genderwashing in the workplace (Fox-Kirk et al., 2020).

We introduce the notion of rainbow burning and develop the concept of rainbow washing, which draws on the concept of genderwashing, to explicate the instrumentalization of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Plus (LGBT+) inclusion. Rainbow burning happens when LGBT+ rights and visibility are targeted through hate to divert attention from economic, social, and political decline. For example, LGBT+ rights are unjustly blamed for the decline of the social and economic fabric. Rainbow washing happens when an organization uses or instrumentalizes LGBT+ concerns for commercial and social ends. We draw on examples from unsupportive and supportive capitalist market systems and explore how rainbow burning and washing manifest in each. This chapter explores the antecedents, correlates and consequences of rainbow burning and washing in unsupportive and supportive contexts. We identify regulatory, cultural and governance measures that can be taken against rainbow burning and rainbow washing to foster LGBT+ inclusion.

“Genderwashing is an organizational tool that presents the myth of gender equality in organizations through discourse and text” (Fox-Kirk et al., 2020, p. 586). Existing literature focuses upon business and economy, e.g., considering how representations of equality are used to enhance profit. The contribution of this chapter is to show how two processes – gender washing and militarization – might function in support of each other. To do this, I firstly argue that the concept of genderwashing should be broadened to consider spaces outside of business and economy. I show how sex, gender and feminism are employed in ways that position martial organizations (such as militaries and arms manufacturers) as socially progressive, “washing” their reputation for militarized violence. Secondly, analyses must consider how the impact of genderwashing goes beyond individual organizations. Martial organizations marginalize their female staff, but I argue that we must look further: in a context in which people can be killed, we must consider what broader harms genderwashing visits upon civilian populations also.

The first two decades of the 21st century saw the rise of girl power discourses in international development, which argue that when girls in the Global South are given an investment to stay in school, they will lift entire communities out of poverty. Transnational Corporations partnered with, or even founded, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) aimed at educating girls. Yet many of these corporations face criticisms that their products, employment practices, or supply chains are harmful to girls and women. In this chapter, I employ a feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist approach, analyzing the transnational politics of corporate–NGO partnerships for girls' education. I argue that Apple Inc.’s sponsorship of the Malala Fund and Caterpillar Inc.’s partnership with Girl Up amount to transnational forms of genderwashing, aimed primarily at alleviating the concerns of publics in the Global North while doing little to address harm experienced by girls and women in the Global South.