Sexing the Corporation

Dr Jo Littler of CCI took part in a public panel debate earlier this week, ‘Sexing the Corporation’, part of the the Critical Corporation ESRC Seminar Series at CASS. The other speakers on the panel were Swethaa Ballakrishnan of Stanford University,  Adrienne Roberts of Manchester University and  Melissa Tyler of Essex Business School; the event was chaired by Grietje Baars. Jo’s paper was called ‘The ‘mumtrepreneur’ and the meritocratic deficit: feminism, meritocracy and corporate rhetoric’.

The panel debated the question of gender and sexuality and the corporation. Questions it considered included: Would corporate capitalism fare better if run by women? (How) does the corporation reproduce, legitimate or subvert traditional (Western) gender patterns and expectations around sexuality? Are “women’s empowerment” in corporations and “gender lens investing” emancipatory or merely rhetorical? What can feminist and queer theory tell us about corporate power and ideology? Can we queer the corporation?