The Inclusive Leader, the Smart Strategist and the Forced Altruist: Subject Positions for Men as Gender Equality Partners

Abstract

This article explores how men are conceptualised as partners in gender equality processes in organisations against the backdrop of a postfeminist sensibility. Drawing on interviews that formed part of organisational ethnographies, the article highlights three subject positions that men are encouraged to adopt: the inclusive leader, the smart strategist, and the forced altruist. All three subject positions entail the construction of men as disadvantaged through a focus on women. While theorists of postfeminism have shown how women are made responsible for their own success and failure with structural gender inequalities being disavowed, the opposite logic seems to operate for men; if men do not succeed, it is due to unequal gender structures that favour women. Alternative subject positions could focus on making men's privilege visible or on that men who support gender equality might accelerate their careers. The article also shows that gender equality is still seen as a women's issue rather than an issue that concerns both women and men.