This Call for Paper is for a special issue of the Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business titled "Women in the Economy Since the 1950s: Change and Transformation in Expected and Contested Roles".
For inspiration to the research, you can visit our special collections (TOPICS) on Women, Economics, and Industry
The guest editors are Beatriz Rodriguez-Satizabal (lecturer, Universidad del Pacífico), Laura M. Milanés-Reyes (cultural sociologist, University of Albany), and Paula de la Cruz-Fernández (Independent Scholar).
This Special Issue seeks studies that explore the roles (leaders, workers, consumers, shareholders or investors, amongst others) that women have actively assumed while participating in the economy since the 1950s. The editors of this SI are particularly interested in research articles that identify change and transformation over time of these roles, in either an economic sector or an industry or within a particular organization, whether this refers to sectors or sizes -micro, small and medium-sized companies and large national and transnational companies. They welcome theoretical and empirical pieces that question culturally informed assumptions that women in Global North have more power and access to greater roles in the economy.
The time period is limited to the second half of the twentieth century with the aim of understanding how historical processes and changes in the workplace and education, such as the 1970s shift in women’s labour to work outside the home and the greater number of women in higher education, or the 1960s US and European protests and social unrest, affected the ways in which women became business actors during the time.
Women around the world are not exclusively defined by gender, instead they need to be conceptualized in all their complexity as economic and social subjects (Hills Collins, 2015). The editors consider that the perspective of intersectionality is a valuable resource to understand women’s identities and societal inequalities through the multiple interlocking social categories such as race/ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation or ability/disability, amongst others (see the reviews of Hills Collins, 2015 and Viveros Vigoya, 2021). The editors also reckon that the contributions of management and business history studies (see the reviews of Barbero and Lluch, 2014; Cárdenas de Sanz de Santamaría, Franco and Sandoval, 2014; and Ripoll, 2014) are useful for understanding that the context in which women constitute economic actors is heterogeneous and shape women’s participation and access to business and opportunities over time.
This SI seeks to broaden the understanding of the role that women have played as leaders, different from high-level corporate positions (see for example, De la Cruz-Fernandez, 2021; Ginalski, 2022; Lluch and Salvaj, 2022; Tumbe, 2022; Wright, 2021). For this, the editors encourage studies that focus on the construction of meaning about women and the expected or contested roles they play in the economy and other interrelated domains (see for example, Fernández and Hamilton, 2007, Berkers, Verboord, and Weij, 2016; Milanes-Reyes, 2011; Richards, 2007; Rodriguez-Martinez, 2022; Skalli, 2011, and Tribín-Uribe, Pirela-Ríos and Gómez-Barrera, 2022), incorporating novel sources and methods.
This SI aims to include papers that examine the following issues:
- The diversity of paths that women have undertaken to be part of industry and business, as leaders, workers, consumers, shareholders or investors and the ways in which their cultural, social, and economic background has helped or has been an obstacle to their pursues.
- Female entrepreneurship in different geographical regions and the diverse outcomes of their endeavors to understand the variety of contexts and organizations that women work and manage.
- The impact that the press and the new digital media have had in the construction of women as economic actors and how they have reflected upon it.
The Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business is an open access publication with two issues per year, with an external and international academic peer review process of evaluation, with the sponsorship of RCUB (Revistes Científiques de la Universitat de Barcelona) gratefully acknowledged.
All submissions will undergo a peer review process to select up to 8 accepted papers. Please follow these submission guidelines:
Deadline for extended abstract submission (1.200 words) is 21 November 2022, more information here