Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Emily YarrowORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
The legitimacy of business schools is based on rankings, revenues, branding, and opportunities to support staff and students ‘to make a difference in the world’. Yet sexism in business schools is endemic. Drawing on Acker’s inequality regimes framework and a thematic analysis of reports in Poets&Quants, EFMD’s Global Focus and AACSB International’s BizEd/AACSB Insights over a decade, this study explores how business schools are dealing (or not) with sexism. We propose a typology of four categories of sexism in business schools: belligerent, benevolent, ambivalent, and oblivious sexism. Our findings contribute to understandings of institutional theory and the institutional development of business schools as important sites of (sexist and gendered) knowledge production and dissemination and entrenched inequalities. We posit that media constructions of sexism may better inform individual decisions, organizational development, and governance about the imperative to eliminate sexist behaviours and discrimination. We argue that business schools need to gain substantive legitimacy as effective role models by reforming themselves. They must actively tackle institutional and cultural sexism from within. Implications for practice include effective inclusion of mandatory sexism reporting in international business school accreditation standards and rankings criteria as well as requirements for research funding.
Author(s): Yarrow E, Davies J
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Gender, Work and Organization
Year: 2024
Volume: 31
Issue: 5
Pages: 2019-2039
Print publication date: 01/09/2024
Online publication date: 01/11/2022
Acceptance date: 18/09/2022
Date deposited: 05/11/2022
ISSN (print): 0968-6673
ISSN (electronic): 1468-0432
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12914
DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12914
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
