Improving Lives? Responsible Business and Gender Equality: ‘Doing No Harm’ or ‘Doing Good’?

Abstract

This panel symposium explores the role of business in relation to gender equality through a focus on improving lives (this year’s CMS theme). It begins by critiquing the ‘improving lives’ approach generally adopted by organizations in their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and other similar efforts by discussing critically how research and practice on gender equality and business addresses business contributions to gender inequality in the workplace and society. Then, by focusing explicitly on whether such efforts change gender and power dynamics towards equity, whether they simply replicate the status-quo but aim to do no further damage, or whether they might in fact exacerbate gender inequality in new ways even while they aim to facilitate, or improve, women’s lives, the symposium outlines new directions for scholars and scholarship in this area. By distinguishing and clarifying these different approaches to gender equality and business, which have often previously been bundled together,...