Introduction to the Special Section on Leveraging Cooperation for Gender Equality in Management

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12380
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Date: 01 September 2020

Introduction to the Special Section on

Leveraging Cooperation for Gender Equality

in Management

BEÁTA NAGY,

1

T. ALEXANDRA BEAUREGARD,

2

HENRIETT PRIMECZ

1

and JANNE TIENARI

3

Introduction

The under-representation of women in senior and

management positions in the workplace, particularly at

board level, has led to an ongoing European-wide debate

about rates of progress toward gender equality in

management (Eurofound, 2017). In 2019, women

accounted for only 28% of board members of the largest

publicly-listed companies registered in EU countries; this

under-representation of women in corporate decision

making incurs a considerable cost to companies and the

economy as a whole (European Commission, 2014,

2019). Women have increasingly entered previously

male-dominated fields such as law and management,

rendering those professions seemingly gender-balanced

on the surface. However, a closer look shows us that

internal segregation functions to cluster women into more

communal versions of these occupations, such as human

resources managers rather than information systems

managersor chief executives (Levanonand Grusky,2016).

Thereare well-knownimpedimentsto genderequality in

organizations and society. This includes ‘hidden’barriers

such as gendered assumptions, norms, and homosocial

reproduction among key decision-makers. While we do

not deny the ongoing significance of these concerns, this

special section shifts the focus to practices of cooperation

among organizational and societal actors that may

contribute to more gender equality in management.

We are happy to highlight examples of recent

opportunities and successes in leveraging cooperation

for equality. These new developments elucidate how

gender equality is no longer viewed as a concern for

women only. Rather, the contributions in this special

section highlight the role and significance of men as well

as women as legislators and as change agents in

organizations. Men are not only holders of privileges,

then, but they can also be protagonists of gender equality

both at work and at home. This special section is inspired

by interdisciplinary approaches to explore antecedents,

forms, and implications of various types of cooperation

that can lead to change in gender relations at the upper

echelons of organizations. As such, we engage with the

ongoing discussion on gender relations and equality in

the field of management and organization studies.

Articles in this special section

This special section includes four articles that in different

ways elaborate on new developments that can impact

upon and challenge established understandings and ways

of doing things in organizations and beyond. Taken

together they offer powerful evidence of the possibilities

of change in gender equality. However, the contributions

also demonstrate that change is precarious and nothing

can be taken for granted. There are strong forces that

impede change in gender equality, sometimes quite

forcefully. We must work for change every day.

In their article, Heike Mensi-Klarbach and Cathrine

Seierstad operate on the level of societal legislative

frameworks and their implications. They offer findings

from an analysis of quota regulations regarding corporate

boards in ten European countries that have introduced

such legislation,exploring the usefulnessof gender quotas

to boost equality on boards. Instead of the simplistic

discussion of the dichotomy of voluntary targets versus

mandatory quotas, Mensi-Klarbach and Seierstad offer a

deeper understanding of corporate quota regulations.

They examine similarities and differences across the ten

countries based on two dimensions: the design of the

regulation in termsof its ‘hardness’and‘progressiveness’,

and the institutional context surrounding the regulation.

Mensi-Klarbach and Seierstad find that the success of

quota regulations largely depends on these contextual

factors. Their conceptual framework offers a basis for

future research by showing that the binary of having or

not having a quota in a country is not enough to explain

the growth or lack of growth of the number of women in

corporate boards.

European Management Review, Vol. 17, 601–602, (2020)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12380

©2019 European Academy of Management