ABSTRACT
This book is called Gender and the Organization but throughout it our analysis has been almost exclusively on feminist theory. We conclude the book with this brief postscript that aims to bring the gender of the title back in, that is, by emphasizing that the ideas in this book are aimed at management and organization studies more generally, not solely at feminist audiences or women only. In other words everyone is gendered, and therefore this book’s arguments apply to everyone regardless of their sex, and/or their views about feminist theory. Yet, we argued that not only have feminists helped us to rethink gender, they have indeed introduced the term itself and positioned it as an important topic in policy debates. This mainstreaming of gender and more recently of feminism itself, while far from being complete, would be a genuine cause for celebration if these were not equated and appropriated by neoliberal discourses of consumerism, and choice as an end in itself and a proxy for liberation, rather than as a means of emancipation of all, not just those who have an ability to buy things and experiences. To put it bluntly, if feminism and gender were not as Andi Zeisler aptly puts it, ‘ “translated neatly” … “in a time of tacit postfeminism” … into what could be called “empowertizing” – an advertizing tactic of lightly invoking feminism in acts of independent consuming’ (Zeisler, 2016:19), we would have cheered for its success in popular culture. We would have also cheered if feminism was not made synonymous with liberation that is ‘swelled with the self-obsession of the privileged but insecure’ (ibid.) women who must remain so to act as docile consumers in late capitalism.
