The Ethics of Gender Paradoxes in Organizations

Éditeurs invités

• Pauline Reinecke, Leuphana University Lüneburg
• Ignas Bruder, Technische Universität Dresden
• Tobias Hahn, Esade Business School
• Olga Kokshagina, University of Sydney
• Stephanie Schrage, Kiel University
• Janina Sundermeier, Freie Universität Berlin

Synthèse

Gender paradoxes emerge from tensions embedded in organizations, where competing expectations generate not only managerial challenges but also fundamental ethical questions about inclusion, equality, and responsibility. While prior research has examined barriers such as the glass ceiling and pay inequality, less attention has been paid to how gender paradoxes subtly yet systematically shape organizational experiences and allocate moral responsibilities among actors.

Gender is approached as an institutionalized system of social practices for constituting people as two significantly different categories, men and women, and organizing social relations of inequality on the basis of that difference. At the same time, the special issue recognizes the lived realities of intersex, non-binary, genderfluid, and other gender-diverse individuals who navigate structures grounded in binary norms.

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Thèmes proposés

• Systemic constraints: How ethical commitments to inclusion and equality clash with organizational systems optimized for efficiency – such as standardized evaluations, established management practices, or masculinized leadership norms
• Competing values and moral ambiguity: How ideals such as fairness, meritocracy, and equity create ethical tensions and "tragic choices", where no option is without compromise
• Limits of both/and thinking: How both/and strategies for navigating gender paradoxes can foster more inclusive responses, but may also obscure structural inequalities and shift responsibility to individuals
• Symbolic inclusion and tokenism: How efforts such as diversity targets or flexible work arrangements may produce ethically problematic outcomes, including constrained agency, limited advancement, and superficial change
• Stigma, visibility, and marginalization: How gender-diverse professionals experience and resist stigmatization within organizations, raising ethical questions about who bears the burden of representation