Dear All (sorry for cross posting)
Please see below the 2nd call call for abstracts in this stream. Closing date 1st November.
Thanks,
Debbie
9th Biennial International Interdisciplinary conference, 29th June-1st July, 2016
Keele University, UK
GWO2016 Call for Abstracts
Gender and Disability in Work and Organisation
Stream Convenors:
Deborah Foster, Cardiff University, WALES
Nancy Hansen, University of Manitoba, CANADA
Stefan Hardonk, University of Iceland, ICELAND
Alan Roulstone, Leeds University, ENGLAND
Jannine Williams, Bradford University, ENGLAND
This stream seeks to create a supportive inter-disciplinary forum for researchers in disability, gender and employment. Research in the field of gender and disability has identified important gaps in our understanding of the effects of austerity measures in relation to gender and disability, including the impact on pay, job security, the organization and quality of work, workplace accommodations, and the practices and the motivations of diversity managers. Similarly, in relation to both ‘access’ and ‘treatment’ discrimination (Duff and Ferguson, 2010), the experiences of disabled employees working in the public and private sectors, across different occupational groups and in different countries, continues to be under-reported.
Building on these observations, we welcome papers that advance our understanding of these issues through theoretically informed empirical studies and theoretically and conceptually driven papers which ‘give space’ to the intersecting concerns of disability and gender in work. We particularly welcome papers that highlight themes in different, or across, cultural contexts. The stream will examine the under-explored synergies between gender, disability, ableism and impairment in work and organizational contexts. We are interested in papers that contribute to our understanding of how disability is constructed within a category of social relations - in relation to and with non-disability - and how these relations are shaped through and interact with gender and the gendering of organization. Our understanding of how gender inequalities contribute to studies of work and organization is now relatively developed, but how the patterning of organizing along the `divide’ between disability and non-disability, and the differences this makes for women and men, remains poorly under-researched and under-theorised.
Feminist academics in disability studies have argued that disability studies has neglected gender, and gender studies has neglected disability (Thomas, 2006). Debates on disability, work and organization have been marginalized and often take place in silos – in the disability studies, sociology, organization studies and, to an extent, in business and management literatures. Important conceptual distinctions in disability studies literature between impairment (bodily variations designated impairments) (Thomas, 2007) and disability (the contextual factors that mediate the experience of impairment, marginalizing experiences of impairment and the social spaces available to disabled people (Williams and Mavin, 2012) continue to be poorly understood in mainstream work and employment debates. Recent research on ableism, that is, the privileging and maintenance of non-disability as an organizing normative principle (Hughes, 2007; Campbell, 2009), has provided a critical lens, questioning the absence of impairment experiences in accounts of work and organizations (Meekosha and Shuttleworth, 2009). Understanding how ableism contributes to gendered experiences of organizing has the potential to bring disability research into line with epistemological critiques in organization studies, which have highlighted the importance of asking for whom knowledge is (re)produced and associated power relationships (Calás and Smircich, 1999; Ferguson, 1994). We welcome substantive contributions that develop these debates further.
In the sociology of work and industrial relations literature, increasingly debates are emerging on disability that address labour market disadvantage, the negotiation of workplace adjustments, the need to improve union workplace representation for disabled workers and which challenge taken for granted concepts of what constitutes an ‘ideal worker’ (Foster and Wass, 2013; Jones and Wass, 2012; Foster, 2007; Foster and Fosh 2010; Bacon and Hoque 2010; Foster, 2015). Disability, nonetheless, remains under-represented in the mainstream business and management literature (often subsumed in `health and well-being’) and the intersections between labour market disadvantages stemming from disability and gender, have been particularly neglected. The stream welcomes contributions that develop these debates further, particularly where they demonstrate the relevance of both feminist and disability theory and explore new ways of challenging embedded views of work. In this regard, we are particularly interested in debates that focus on job design/re-design, flexible working practices, improving workplace representation and challenging existing HR/management ideologies.
Finally, we welcome papers that focus on impairment and impairment effects (Thomas 2007; Williams and Mavin, 2012) and the gendered / embodied employment related experiences of persons with disabilities, including the organisation of labour and production of impaired bodies. The body is understood not as a 'normal, finished and fixed entity' (Williams and Mavin, 2013:7), but as socially and materially produced, yet its construction is masked by the everydayness of the production of social relations (Dale, 2001). For example Burrell and Hearn (1989) have argued that sexuality is an ordinary public process, intimately tied up with gender power imbalances, and as Hearn and Parkin (1987) argue, is subsumed under and a part of a gender identity. Disability research has highlighted the extent to which disabled bodies are desexualized, or hypersexual/deviant or objects of fetishism (Liddiard, 2011; Shakespeare et al., 1996). We therefore welcome paper that include, but are not limited to:
• Conceptual and theoretical papers examining the hitherto under-developed synergies and possible tensions between gender, disability, ableism and impairment in work and organizational contexts.
• Interdisciplinary papers that aim to bridge existing gaps in our knowledge and understanding of gender, disability, work and organizations by, for example, engaging with and fusing diverse literatures and methodological debates.
• The relationships between gender, disability, impairment type, and role/sector, country context and how these shape work experiences.
• How impairment effects feature in disabled organizational members' experiences of work and interrelationships with debates around ‘ideal’ worker norms.
• Embodied experiences of disabled organizational members, the organization and production of impaired bodies and the intersection of gender and disability.
• Gender, disability and the political-legal/ social policy employment context.
• The role of different organizational actors (e.g. HR professionals, managers, trade unions) in perpetuating or challenging established gendered and ableist norms.
Abstracts of approximately 500 words (ONE page, Word document NOT PDF, single spaced, excluding references, no header, footers or track changes) are invited by 1st November 2015 with decisions on acceptance to be made by stream leaders within one month. All abstracts will be peer reviewed. New and young scholars with 'work in progress' papers are welcomed. Papers can be theoretical or theoretically informed empirical work. In the case of co-authored papers, ONE person should be identified as the corresponding author. Note that due to restrictions of space, multiple submissions by the same author will not be timetabled. Abstracts should be emailed to:
[log in to unmask] Abstracts should include FULL contact details, including your name, department, institutional affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address. State the title of the stream to which you are submitting your abstract. *Note that no funding, fee waiver, travel or other bursaries are offered for attendance at GWO2016*.
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