Academy for Gender Equality and Social Justice Research in Organisations

A dynamic research area of expertise focused on exploring and tackling gender inequalities in work and organisational contexts.

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Research
Collaborations
Individual member projects
Resources and outputs
News and events
People

Our research

Our research has a social justice agenda motivated by the persistent global challenge of gender inequality.

The Academy aims to connect scholars concerned with tackling gender inequalities in work-based contexts at Lancaster and beyond, develop networks at national and international levels, showcase and stimulate ground-breaking and impactful research, and promote knowledge-sharing among scholars and practitioners through events, seminars and workshops.

With a range of projects across multiple areas, exploring themes including gender dynamics in family business, and gender equality in business and management Schools, our academics are identifying solutions to key issues across the world.

Transcript for The Academy for Gender Equality and Social Justice Research in Organisations

Women make up 50% of the population, and yet they remain underrepresented and underpaid. This is an issue that needs a multi-pronged approach to be able to tackle it through social, economic, and political avenues. We need to get women more economically engaged and politically engaged, and I believe that universities are at the forefront of being able to tackle this issue. The Global Gender Gap report has shown us some troubling figures, that we're not going to be able to achieve gender equality for over a hundred years. The Academy is a research group based at Lancaster University Management School, and the group focuses on research issues around tackling gender inequality in work, in organisations. We are an interdisciplinary group of scholars based at the management school, and Lancaster University, and internationally as well. Universities have a key role in us tackling gender inequality in all aspects of society, particularly business and management schools, where we have students coming in to learn how to engage with different organisations and with society, and hopefully take important political roles in the future. The impact of the Academy can be seen across various projects that it's engaged in, for example, the European Commission funded Horizon 2020 project, targeted MPI, which is a project that's focusing on developing gender equality plans to tackle gender inequality in business and management schools in the UK, Europe, and the Mediterranean. We also have other projects, such as the Gender Matter projects, which focuses on understanding the issues that women face in organisations in the UK specifically, and we have other projects, such as the Entrepreneurship of Survival project, which focuses on refugee women and how they engage in entrepreneurship as a means of survival during enforceable displacement. The gender equality plans developed by the business and management schools have been implemented and monitored over the last three and a half years, and whilst the project will come to an end at the end of 2024, the legacy of the project will continue in its gender equality observatories, which will maintain the work that we've been doing over the last four years. Targeted NPI has worked very closely with Lancaster University's EDI initiatives, so it's been developing guides to incorporate gender awareness and inclusivity in teaching and research and innovation, and this way we're able to provide support for our academic staff members to incorporate issues around gender, race, sexuality, disability, and other marginalised groups as well in all aspects of their teaching and research. At the moment, the way that we do research is gender neutral, some even call it gender blind, and this is detrimental to at least half the population, and other minority groups also go unnoticed, so when we are looking to create solutions, we want to create them for everybody, and one way to do that is to cast a gender lens over all the research that we do at varying stages of the research as well, and we also need to be able to engage with these groups in a more inclusive way so that we can develop policies to support their progression in the future.

Academy collaborations

Gender equality in business and management Schools

Despite years of progressive policy efforts to promote gender equality in Higher Education, women remain under-represented in all disciplines and at all levels of academia, especially at the professorial level, in senior leadership roles, including deans, university vice-chancellors and presidents and in gate-keeping positions, such as editorial boards and research funding bodies. The TARGETED-MPI project - Transparent And Resilient Gender Equality Through Integrated Monitoring Planning and Implementation - aims to address this problem by understanding and addressing gender inequality in Business and Management Schools through the implementation and monitoring of Gender Equality Plans. TARGETED-MPI is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and includes five project partners: Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece (PI); Lancaster University, United Kingdom; Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden; Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium; and, American University of Beirut, Lebanon.

This project is interested in understanding how gender inequality is culturally constructed. Through innovative and unique diagnostic tools the project will illuminate the taken-for-granted and underlying attitudes, values, and assumptions that prevent gender equality efforts within Business and Management Schools. Collaborative conversations with project partners and iterative analysis of gender equality theory and organisational practice will facilitate the creation and implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) specific to each partner university. The GEPs include specific tasks and practices that address issues of discrimination such as slowed career progression, gender pay gap, and lack of women in leadership positions. The GEPs move beyond generalized discussions on gender discrimination to focus on the needs and constraints of the specific partner School. With this knowledge, the GEPs can then create tasks to address the named barriers. The partnering of structurally and geographically diverse B&M Schools adds depth and richness to our understanding of gender equality within Business and Management Schools and requires the TARGETED-MPI team to think beyond one-size-fits-all responses and solutions to the generic outcomes of gender inequality.

The GEPs will set key benchmarks for improvement and rely on outside monitoring to make sure the partner Schools meet their expected deadlines. While acknowledging and preserving the need for context and organisation specific gender equality plans, the project hopes to conclude with ‘best practices’ that can inspire other B&M Schools in their own gender equality efforts.

A group of people sitting on some wooden steps smiling
The TARGETEDMPI team.

Gender Matters

Businesses put gender equality and inclusivity high on their agenda. Media coverage of gender issues at work has never been greater, and we are seeing increased legislation to recognise the importance of gender equality including pay gap reporting and shared parental leave policy. Yet despite this attention, women continue to be under-represented in positions of power in organisations.

The Gender Matters project created in 2018 aims to shed light on this resilient problem by drawing on a range of international and national sources to identify the scope and range of gender challenges facing UK organisations.

Visit Gender Matters
Gender icons

Gender dynamics in family business

Researchers at the Centre for Family Business, are working in collaboration with members of the Academy for Gender, Work, and Leadership, to delve into the complexity of gender dynamics in families in business. This undertaking is important due to the increasing interest in understanding how gender influences roles and practices in family business, and to address the critique that women’s contribution in family business has been under investigated.

Family businesses represent the dominant form of business across the globe, and the importance of women in their emergence and continuity cannot be underestimated. Current work is revealing the diverse pathways that women engage into to start, develop and ensure the continuity of family businesses in diverse cultural contexts, discussing the role of gendered norms in a business family and challenging prior misconceptions about men’s and women’s role and participation.

In a unique collaboration, The Academy for Gender, Work and Leadership joined with three other LUMS areas of research expertise (Pentland Centre for Responsibility in Business; The Centre for Family Business; The Work Foundation) to bring leading academics, policy-makers and family business representatives and associations together for a two-day workshop at Lancaster Castle; Resilience and Family Business.

Participants explored resilience through the lenses of planet, place and people with keynote contributions, expert panels and group discussions.

More information and resources from the event are here: Resilience and Family Business 2022

Family business

Researching gender in management

Gender and management research is complex and challenging requiring methods that can interrogate and make explicit deeply embedded social issues and structural inequalities. A key focus of our researchers is the development of critical methodologies and methods that can uncover and understand gendered systems, processes, practices and behaviours in multiple organisational and socio-cultural contexts in order to seek opportunities for change.

The Academy for Gender, Work and Leadership hosted a series of six online seminars focused on research methods in gender and management between January and June 2023. Convened by Professor Valerie Stead and Dr Sophie Alkhaled, each seminar introduced a particular method and featured expert scholars on gender and management. Speakers presented a method, with an illustration of it in use, providing key guidelines for use and ethical considerations. The series was supported by The Northern Advanced Research Training Initiative (NARTI) and drew on the recently published Edward Elgar Handbook of Research Methods on Gender and Management.

View recordings and presentations from these and other seminars in the Academy events archive.

Book cover

Individual member projects

Entrepreneuring as survival: The case of Syrian women refugees

The project explores contexts of forcible displacement, focusing on Syrian women refugees’ entrepreneurial practices in setting up and running ‘survivalist’ home-based micro enterprises. Specifically, the project illustrates how Syrian women refugees engage in identity work through cultural heritage entrepreneurship as a means of economic survival and cultural revival in the contexts of Jordan, the Zaatari Refugee Camp and the United Kingdom. It also highlights methodological challenges conducting such research with vulnerable communities. The project is funded by Lancaster University’s Global Challenges Kick-Starter Fund and LUMS Pump-Priming Award.

Publications from the project

Reuber, B., Alkhaled, S., Barnards, H., Coupper, C., & Sasaki, I. (Forthcoming) Something Borrowed Something New: Challenges in Using Qualitative Methods to Study Under-Researched International Business phenomena. Journal of International Business Studies

Alkhaled, S. and Sasaki, I. (2021) Syrian women refugees: coping with indeterminate liminality during forcible displacement. Organization Studies, pp.1-23 DOI: 10.1177/01708406211040214

Alkhaled, Sophie (2019). The resilience of a Syrian woman and her family through refugee entrepreneurship in Jordan. In Sibylle Heilbrunn, Jörg Freiling, & Aki Harima (Eds.), Refugee entrepreneurship: A case- based topography (pp. 241–254). London: Palgrave.

Refugee

LUMS Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Seminar series 2023/2024

Resources and project outputs

LUMS Gender Equality Report 2023

The TARGETED-MPI project has produced LUMS' first Gender Equality Report. The report focuses on academic staff and draws on data in key priority areas to align with the university’s goal of addressing the gender pay gap.

Download the Gender Equality Report 2023 (PDF 630 KB)

LUMS' Guide to Developing a Gender-Aware and Inclusive Curriculum

The TARGETED-MPI project has produced a guide which provides a comprehensive approach to developing a gender-aware and inclusive curriculum for programmes and modules taught in business and management schools.

Download the guide to a gender-aware curriculum (PDF 706 KB)

LUMS’ Guide to Integrating Gender-Awareness and Inclusivity in Research and Innovation

The TARGETED-MPI project has produced a guide which provides a comprehensive approach to integrating gender-awareness and inclusivity in research projects within the business and management discipline.

Download the guide to inclusivity in research (PDF 810 KB)

Current activities

Dr Sophie Alkhaled presents to an audience while standing behind a lectern.

Research highlights women refugees’ experiences

Dr Sophie Alkhaled presented her work on the experiences of female refugees turning to business to help their families survive at the Research in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Conference 2024.
Delegates at the TARGETED-MPI event stand together for a group photo

Researchers celebrate end of project tackling business school gender inequality

Representatives from Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) marked the end of TARGETED-MPI project.
Male and female wooden figures stand on either side if a balanced seesaw, with a person holding hands to either side to keep them balanced

Advancing Gender Equality in Business and Management Schools

Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) hosted an online roundtable for global business schools focusing on advancing gender equality.
A photograph of Professor Val Stead smiling and looking into the camera

Lancaster expert presents evidence to MPs on equality at work ahead of International Women’s Day

A LUMS expert presented evidence to Members of Parliament in Westminster last week, focusing on modernising employment practises in the UK.
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Tinker, tailor, soldier, spoof… Forensic linguistics webinar series

In January we wrote a little bit about what it takes to become a forensic linguist or a forensic speech scientist – the qualities, skills, and qualifications. But if you did our MSc in Forensic Linguistics and Speech Science, what might you actually learn about in class? Our upcoming free webinar mini-series will give you the chance to join four live taster lectures by the academics teaching the programme.
This image shows a computer monitor with a spectrogram on it. In the background there are newspaper cuttings pinned to the walls. On the desk in front there is a keyboard and a mouse. The whole aesthetic is dark, like a criminal investigative lab, and a single lamp casts a moody, subdued light over the scene.

Signal in the noise: forensic linguistics and forensic speech science

Can linguistics help us to solve crimes? From trolling to disinformation to artificial intelligence, we take a look at two fields - forensic linguistics and forensic speech science - and the remarkable ways in which they can assist investigations and intelligence operations. Interested in working in this area? Read on to find out more.

More News

Events

View previous events from the Academy in the events archive

Videos

Discover more of the work of the Academy through our research videos

Organisation Gender Challenges

Professor Valerie Stead, Professor Claire Leitch and Dr Sophie Alkhaled discuss the importance of their work on gender equality issues in the workplace.

Targeted MPI

Discover how working with institutions across Europe is helping to shape practice and policies on national and international levels.

Gender, Diversity and Innovation

How can increased diversity lead to more and better innovation in business? Dr Lara Pecis explains the benefits.

Women's entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia

Dr Sophie Alkhaled outlines how entrepreneurship provides women with a legitimate space to engage in sustainable social and political change in Saudi Arabia. 

Our people

Academy Director
Sophie Alkhaled

Dr Sophie Alkhaled

Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship

Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education, Pentland Centre

Academy members
Patricia Boyallian

Dr Patricia Boyallian

Lecturer in Corporate Finance

Corporate Finance and Banking

Lola Dada

Professor Lola Dada

Head of Department, Professor of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

WP C065, C - Floor, Management School
Allan Discua Cruz

Dr Allan Discua Cruz

Senior Lecturer

Centre for Family Business, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Latin America Research Cluster, Pentland Centre

C048, C - Floor, Management School
Cynthia Forson

Dr Cynthia Forson

Deputy Provost Lancaster University Ghana and Director - External Engagement West Africa

Bingbing Ge

Dr Bingbing Ge

Lecturer

Centre for Family Business

Ellie Hamilton

Professor Ellie Hamilton

Emerita Professor

Centre for Family Business, Entrepreneurship and Innovation

C112, C - Floor, Management School
Sarah Jack

Professor Sarah Jack

Distinguished Professor

Centre for Family Business, Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Pentland Centre

Claire Leitch

Professor Claire Leitch

Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership, Executive Dean

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

D10, D - Floor, Management School
Mandy Lim

Mandy Lim

Doctoral Research Associate, PhD student

Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education

Robyn Remke

Dr Robyn Remke

Associate Lecturer

Institute for Social Futures Fellow

+44 (0)1524 522087 C085a, C - Floor, Management School
Valerie Stead

Professor Valerie Stead

Professor Emerita

Pentland Centre, People, Work and Organisation

C091b, C - Floor, Management School
Emma Watton

Emma Watton

Senior Teaching Fellow, PhD student

Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education

+44 (0)1524 593038 C052, C - Floor, Management School