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The purpose of this study is to generate an empirically informed theoretical framework which can be used to analyze the relationship between gender and innovation in the context of a municipality. The authors present and analyze three illustrative tales from a feminist perspective. The authors thus offer a more balanced approach to the conceptualization of gendered ascriptions with respect to the possible outcomes of innovation work in a public context.

An ethnographic account which employed “shadowing” as a method of observation.

The article presents a debate on how the social construction of gender and innovation can be placed in the context of a municipal reality. Our analysis reveals how the complexities of a gendered work life within a municipality can create paradoxes. A constructionism approach was used in the identification of hidden and unspoken paradoxes that exist in public spheres.

The authors used empirical tales from a very specific context, namely a Swedish municipality. The central implication of this study is the recognition of innovation as being masculine-gendered within the feminine context. This implication thereby deepens our understanding of gender paradoxes in the public sector.

This study provides insights to practitioners who intend to work with innovation in a public organization.

The social implications of this study is that when a male-gendered concept like innovation is implemented in a female-gendered context, like a municipality, it is of importance to contextualize the concept.

The empirical value of examples of a gendered work landscape at a Swedish municipality.

Even more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination toward a number of groups in employment settings in the United States, workplace discrimination remains a persistent problem in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive review and analysis of contemporary theory and evidence on the nature, causes, and consequences of discrimination before synthesizing potential methods for its reduction. We note the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship and highlight meaningful future directions. In so doing, we hope to both inform and inspire organizational and scholarly efforts to understand and eliminate workplace discrimination.

The article begins by pointing out how Canada has undergone a huge demographic change in the last 30 years, forcing companies to rethink their training strategies. This means diversity training will assume an ever larger role. Different clichés about diversity training are discussed and demystified. The goal of all diversity training is to make participants aware of their perceptions and assumptions, so as to ensure correct understanding of different values. The characteristics of an effective diversity program are: it must be linked to a business objective, it cannot result in preferential treatment for some groups and it must have the 100 percent support from top management. The benefits will yield better communication with outsides as well as insiders, enlarge the customer base and will transpose one's mindset so that a person can engage successfully in any interracial or intercultural relationship.

Hospitality firms adopted diverse hiring policies and public declarations of support for LGBTQ+ causes through brand activism. The impact of activism on LGBTQ+ employees’ workplace experiences has been ambiguous. This study aims to examine the hospitality and tourism employees’ perceptions of gay and lesbian leaders as token-hires among hospitality employees and the spillover effect on company’s motives for hiring the leaders. This study further explores LGBTQ+ employees’ reactions to token-hiring as a form of activism, and how workplace interactions as passing/revealing LGBTQ+ individuals shaped their career development.

This research adopted a sequential mixed-methods design. An experiment examines how employees judge gay vs lesbian hospitality leaders as token hires, contingent on their own gender identity. It further tests the conditional mediation of tokenism on company’s egoistic motives for activism. A qualitative study explores the reactions to token-hiring as activism from the perspective of LGBTQ+ leaders who reflect on their own careers and workplace experiences.

Tokenism in the hospitality workplace is recognized as the phenomenon attributed to groups at the intersection of identities (e.g. gay men). Findings demonstrate the spillover effect of tokenism perceptions of gay male leaders by other men on company’s egoistic motives for activism. This effect is not observed for a lesbian female leader. Results from interviews suggest that hospitality and tourism LGBTQ+ employees predominantly take the post-gay vs political approach when managing their sexual identities at work and feel ambivalent toward token-hiring as LGBTQ+ brand activism.

This research contributes to understanding workplace challenges of LGBTQ+ employees and how they are perceived by others contingent on gender identity. It also explores the role of tokenism in their experiences.

Burnout has been linked to a myriad of negative organizational and individual health outcomes which threaten employee and organizational well-being. This study examines how unique features of diversity and inclusion (D&I) work are related to burnout.

Participants were recruited using network and convenience sampling strategies. A total of 64 full-time employees whose primary responsibility is to implement the D&I strategy for their organization provided useable data for analysis. Participants completed measures of burnout, role ambiguity, role conflict, subjective experiences of tokenism, and top management support. Measures were administered online via Qualtrics.

Results suggest lack of clear job duties, conflicting job demands, lack of top management support, and experiences of tokenism are associated with D&I professionals' experiences of burnout. The current study, however, indicates that while D&I professional experience higher levels of exhaustion than other professionals, they also experience greater professional efficacy, which suggests D&I roles are both challenging and rewarding.

Results suggest organizational leaders may mitigate employee burnout by providing clear support to and role definitions for D&I professionals.

This study is the first to explore burnout experiences among D&I professionals. Additionally, this study examines how burnout experiences are associated with role dysfunctions, top management support, and subjective experiences of tokenism.

Presents the results of a study of 84 first year undergraduates in Hong Kong which looked at discrimination due to gender. Considers the female students’ experience in relation to home, school and work showing that the study suggests they face blatant and subtle sexist attitudes in all areas. Looks at the male perception of discrimination against women which implies that some recognize and sympathise with the issue, whilst others hint that there is a backlash against the feminist movement. Discusses the implication of the findings.

Critical mass theory suggests that attaining a certain proportion of a minority group triggers transformation that improves conditions for minority group members. Using faculty gender composition as a continuous rather than categorical predictor, the present research discerns whether the proportion of women influences perceptions among STEM faculty.

STEM faculty completed a survey examining perceptions of department climate for women (i.e., advancement and discrimination) and division of work time. The proportion of women in each department was calculated.

Using multilevel modeling, we found that women (vs. men) faculty perceive less departmental advancement of women, but that a greater proportion of women in a department is related to increased perceptions that the department advances women. We did not find differences in time male or female faculty reported spending on research, teaching, or service; however, as the proportion of women in a department increases, there is a decrease in the amount of time individual male and female faculty spent on research and an increase in time spent on service. Contrary to critical mass theory, we found a linear rather than quadratic effect of proportion of women on perceptions of department climate and division of work time.

These effects may not be attributable to gender proportion alone.

Given our finding of incremental effects of proportion of women, a critical mass is not necessary or sufficient for change. Underlying problems of discrimination and stereotyping need to be addressed while recognizing that each woman hired has a positive impact.

The paper investigates how the interplay of women-specific human and social capital factors with ownership structure impacts her chances to get director level appointment in the light of recent amendments to the Indian statute.

The strength of the study lies in fitting a logistic regression model to the unique hand collected data on women director characteristics from 100 large listed Indian firms.

Counter intuitive findings reveal negative effects of social capital on appointment of independent women directors. This relationship gets reversed when social capital is moderated by ownership structure.

Companies may be influenced to take into cognizance the underlying gender biases prevailing in the highest echelons of management and employ un-gendered fair selection practices for board level appointments in order to progress towards gender balanced corporate boards.

The paper is a first of its kind that combines aspects of human capital and ownership structure using Indian data. By developing several new proxy variables to enrich the construct of social capital it contributes to the corporate governance literature and lastly, through main and interaction effects, the paper offers a deeper understanding about the impact of endogenous factors of corporate boards on women's representation at leadership levels in India.

The purpose of this paper is to analyzes how board’s gender diversity, and more specifically a gender-balanced configuration – i.e. a proportion of women in the boardroom ranging between 40 and 60 percent – affects economic and risk-oriented performance in financial firms.

The empirical application uses a rich data set that includes detailed accounting and organizational information for all financial firms in the Costa Rican industry during the period 2000–2012. The proposed hypotheses are tested using panel data (fixed-effects) regression models that emphasize that bank performance is affected by various dimensions of the banks’ gender diversity.

The longitudinal analysis of the Costa Rican banking industry reveals that, unlike a proportion indicating a particular critical mass of women on the board, a balanced gender configuration yields superior economic performance (ROA and net intermediation margin). Additionally, the findings show that the performance benefits of gender diversity only exists in the presence of a gender-balanced board configuration, and that this positive effect is not conditioned by the presence of women leadership in the corporate hierarchy (Chair or CEO).

The paper further explores the influence of board gender diversity on organizational performance by adopting an approach to the gender diversity–performance relationship that goes beyond the mere representation of women within the corporate hierarchy.

Do female police recruits drop out of police education and/or leave the profession more often than men, and has this changed over time? Can gender differences be explained by the background characteristics and family obligations of the recruits?

This paper employs administrative registry data covering all individuals admitted to the police academy (1995–2010, N = 6570) and all academy recruits employed in the Norwegian police (1992–2014, N = 7301). The paper analyses the data using discrete-time logistic regression and coarsened exact matching.

The levels of dropout and attrition are generally low. However, female recruits have a somewhat greater tendency both to drop out of education and to leave the force. The gender differences are quite stable, although the percentage of female recruits has risen sharply. Family obligations do not seem to explain female attrition from the police force.

Because women tend to leave the police more often than men, further research is suggested in investigating female police recruits’ experiences. However, the relatively low level of dropout and limited gender differences also provide a reason to question whether stories of the police as a male-dominated profession not adapted to women are valid across time and in different settings.

This study provides exhaustive and detailed longitudinal data not previously available in studies of police careers. This study also tracks attrition in a period that has involved both increased numerical representation of women and changes in police culture, while accounting for other observable differences between male and female police officers. Contrary to common explanations, there is limited importance of family obligations and altered gender composition.