Special Issue: Postfeminism, Gender and Organization

This special issue seeks to insert postfeminism as a critical concept into understandings of gender, work and organization. It is motivated by a desire to highlight the wider applicability of postfeminism and its associated themes and archetypes beyond its original disciplinary position of cultural and media studies, demonstrating its importance to the field of gender and organization studies (Lewis, 2014a; Tasker & Negra, 2005). In doing this, the special issue will reveal how notions of choice, individualism, opt-out, opt-in, merit, make-over - frequently used in relation to contemporary gender issues in organisations and presented as reasons for the persistent inequalities that women experience in the world of work – share common (unacknowledged) postfeminist roots. A key aim is to move beyond superficial understandings of women’s contemporary agency to investigate how the reconfiguration of femininities, the disavowal of structure, the promotion of choice and the valorisation of a moderate feminism associated with postfeminism, impact on organizations and the women and men who work within them.