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The purpose of this paper is to explore the fieldwork dilemmas a young, female, heterosexual, indigenous South African researching everyday negotiations around heterosexuality within township families encountered in negotiating her own heteroerotic subjectivity within the field.

A heterosexuality studies approach is here combined with a critical feminist research methodological perspective.

The paper argues that researchers are often unprepared for having to negotiate their erotic subjectivity within the field and that such negotiations can be compromising to the researcher in a variety of ways.

The paper suggests that more might be done to prepare researchers for negotiating identity aspects such as sexuality in the field since that negotiation impacts on one’s research and the researcher’s sense of self in the field.

The paper critically interrogates what negotiating one’s erotic subjectivity in the field might mean.

Little is published on female researchers negotiating their heteroerotic subjectivity in the field. The paper contributes original insights on this from fieldwork carried out by an indigenous heterosexual female researcher in South African townships. It raises important issues about the conduct of fieldwork in (non-)compromising and agentic ways.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which butch lesbians manage and negotiate their sexual identity in the workplace.

A qualitative study using online ethnographical enquiry to explore lesbians' experiences of performing butch identity in the workplace. Ethical and other issues relating to online ethnographic research are also explored and discussed.

Identity negotiation is a key issue and lesbians face the constant pressure of identity management. This is not simply a personal perspective but a defence mechanism to counter the heteronormative culture within organisations. Strategies for dealing with these tensions evident in the literature and reflected in this study range from “passing” (passing as a heterosexual) to defying expectations of heteronormativity and remaining constant to individual butch identity.

The paper can assist HRD professionals and leaders in developing organisation cultures which embrace and include difference and help obviate oppression. It may also be of interest to researchers and policy makers in the fields of diversity and equality and LGB issues.

The findings here will be of interest to social audiences including LGBT individuals, activist groups and support groups. Wider understanding of female masculinity and butch identity may help leverage greater tolerance and acceptance.

This study responds to calls for more LGBT research in the workplace and organisational context. The findings develop the understanding of identity negotiation in conditions of heteronormativity. It is also argued that this study of the experiences of lesbians in the workplace is positioned as an alternative site of understanding organisations, with learning to offer gendered leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to interrogate ways in which sex and sexual orientation are excluded from the agenda of work relationships in one probation service.

The research was conducted through conversational interviews with members of a team responsible both for supervision of colleagues and for development of supervisory practice. Straight and lesbian officers responded to a perceived lack of skills to effectively “work with” sexuality issues.

Responses lead to discussion of the discursive “silence” of sex, and to the specific positioning of lesbian identity. Specifically, it critiques approaches to supervision that do not explicitly value lesbian experience

This small study does not include the voices of black or gay male officers. It also does not explore the experience of bisexuality.

The finding of this research can be used to support development of good supervisory practice.

The paper sheds light on day to day interactions that “silence” experience of sexual orientation.

The paper draws on original research interrogating both lesbian and straight experience. In so doing it sheds light on both discursive practices of a sexual agenda and practice issues in supervision.

The purpose of this paper is to look beyond the issue of disclosure/non‐disclosure in the workplace, to explore the ways gay men challenge, negotiate and conform in the two‐way process of managing their identities in what Jenkins terms the interaction order. In the validation of their external identities, the author aims to identify critical incidents and experiences in gay men's working lives in which they have resisted or challenged identities, labels and stereotypes ascribed by others.

Data were gathered through ten semi‐structured interviews with self‐identified gay men in a wide range of occupations and age ranges working in Bournemouth, UK.

The data focus on the fluidity of identity and the impact of organisational context. In their self‐presentations a number of strategies were deployed. The respondents experienced exclusion, stereotyping, being viewed as a piece of curiosity, silence, discomfort and a marked identity in the eyes of others. In response to these reactions, themes of compliance, conformity and adopting an educator role were uncovered.

Although the findings presented are not necessarily generalizable, themes of exclusion, silence and marked identities were uncovered that echo many previous studies of gay men's experiences in the workplace.

Little research has been done on identity management in the workplace beyond the issue of disclosure of sexual identity. In particular, there has been limited focus on how gay men challenge, negotiate and modify the labels and social identities ascribed by others in what Jenkins terms the interaction order. Nor does there seem to be any research on whether gay men have modified the management of their social identities throughout their working lives.

This paper aims to explore how gay men and lesbians draw upon workplace friendship for developing and sustaining managerial careers and identities.

The study adopts a qualitative design, using data collected from semi‐structured interviews with four lesbians and eight gay men, all employed in managerial roles in the UK.

Data reveal the importance of workplace friendship as a resource for mentoring, climbing managerial career ladders, fitting into existing work cultures and developing gay and lesbian managerial identities. A significant finding is that participants preferred to befriend heterosexual colleagues, to that end complicating previous research that suggests gay and lesbian friendship preferences tend to be marked by similarity in regard to sexual identity. Work friends enable and constrain the development and visibility of gay and lesbian managerial identities and careers.

Although the data are not generalisable, it is of concern that gay men and lesbians continue to be disadvantaged by heteronormative constructions of gender and sexuality. While gender and sexual norms can limit the visibility and embodiment of gay and lesbian managers in the workplace, the study reveals also how gay sexualities can be utilised as a resource for developing influential friendships.

This article provides insights into issues not previously covered or understudied in the organisation studies literature such as the agency of gay men and lesbians in constructing different types of workplace friendships as a resource for developing managerial identities and careers.

This paper seeks to identify, examine, and discuss the unique challenges for lesbians who serve in leadership positions in corporate America.

Drawing upon a multi‐disciplinary framework of management, diversity, feminist, and leadership literature, the paper critically examines the myriad of pressures exerted upon all women in leadership positions, and then identifies the pressures that are specific and unique for lesbians.

There are pressures that are unique for lesbian leaders. These pressures include negotiating the heterosexism of the organization; invisibility versus visibility, and gender expression and gender role expectations.

The paper provides implications for human resource development to assume a stronger and more active role in uncovering tacit issues embedded in leadership so that organizational workplaces become locations of greater equity, access, and fairness for all who aspire to leadership positions.

Suggests that research specifically at the homeless lesbian, gay or bisexual person is sparse. Presents some of the stories found from interviewing 19 cases within their category. Shows that whilst the samples share characteristics with other homeless groups that can also be characterised in four distinct ways based on their sexuality. Looks at each group in turn. Highlights that whilst sexuality is often portrayed as one more disadvantage to deal with, it can become a way to inclusion. Cites some examples.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of gender, sexuality and occupation and to analyse how male cabin crew utilize space in managing gender identity.

The paper draws on a project where interviews were conducted with 17 male cabin crew, all aged < 35 years, from 5 different airlines in airports in the South East of England. The crew worked in a mixture of short-haul, low-cost and long-haul global carriers.

The paper shows how men in a feminized service role negotiate masculine subjectivities within and through space and how gendered meanings attached to space can impress on and both challenge and be challenged by the performances and subjectivities of individuals within them.

The findings on which the paper is based surface the diverse challenges facing men in non-traditional roles – an area that would profit from further research in different contexts. Further, the findings have implications for work-based practices and employee relations within a paraprofessional service role.

The paper adds to the understanding of how gender and identity intersect as well as to how space, seen as both gendered and gendering, is implicated in the processes involved.

The paper's aim is to examine how diversity management discourse reproduces heteronormative essentialist notions of identity in organisations.

This is a critical analysis of diversity management discourse that draws upon concepts, frames and the language of queer theory and insights from social identity construction to offer an alternative approach to reconceptualising diversity management. The key question of the paper is: what are the conceptions of identity underpinning the diversity management discourse and how do they reproduce heteronormativity?

The paper unveils the reproduction of binaries in diversity management discourse. Possible counter strategies from queer theory are proposed to alter the diversity management discourse.

This paper offers a first reading of diversity management discourse against the grain from a queer perspective and offers possible points of departure for altering diversity management discourse.

This article’s principle aim is the investigation into the underdeveloped field of lesbian audience research. It theorises the relationship between the text of Xena Warrior Princess a television programme and a fanclub called Xenasubtexttalk that evolved on the Internet. The researcher has drawn on evidence from a case study and participant observation over a twelve month period, the gathering of postings from bulletin boards and continuing interviews lasting between one and two hours conducted over the Internet. This has revealed some of the practices and rituals of two self‐identified lesbians who participated in this fanclub. Informed by a postmodernist feminist framework several issues of methodology are discussed. The main theme in this study’s findings is that these fans have produced through the appropriation of this particular text, biographies that represent a “coming out narrative”.