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This summary discusses the influential work of Judith Butler, particularly their book Gender Trouble, which has had a significant impact on feminist thinking. Butler's writings challenge traditional male-dominated theories in the field of work and organization studies, offering valuable insights into how organizations shape and exploit our desire for recognition. The article explores the opportunities and challenges of applying Butler's ideas to understand and transform organizational life, with a focus on vulnerability, resistance, and non-violence. It also highlights Butler's recent work on ethics, interdependence, and the need to sustain our social and natural environment. The article includes five substantive papers and an "In Conversation" event with Judith Butler, providing further insights and discussions on their upcoming book Who's Afraid of Gender. This text is a summary of a special issue of the journal Gender, Work and Organization that explores the impact of Judith Butler's ideas on the analysis of gender, work, and organization. The contributions in the issue evaluate the avenues that Butler's work has opened up and consider the unexplored questions and challenges it raises. The papers in the issue discuss topics such as the individualization of vulnerabilities in organizational contexts, the ethical potential of art in contesting unequal valuation of working bodies, the experiences of loss in times of planetary crisis, and the survival and overcoming of normative organizational violence. The summary concludes by expressing gratitude to the contributors and hopes that the papers will provide reference points for future work in the field. [Extracted from the article]

This Special Issue brings together analyses of the lived experiences of women who work in male-dominated areas of work, occupations, and industries across a number of countries. For example, in the construction trades and vehicle repair, recruitment practices typified by homophily can be addressed through antidiscrimination training, while gender stereotypes across professions can be overcome through reflection and conscious effort, by remaining alert to and challenging public images of occupations. Occupational gender segregation is an enduring and endemic problem, which is damaging to careers, organizations, and economies. [Extracted from the article]

The aim of this article is to explore the rhizomatic nature of the professional development strategies used by the female workforce of public cultural organizations. The research problem of this study are (1) the challenges of women who work in public cultural organizations and (2) ways of dealing with them by women. The empirical material was collected between January 2021 and January 2022 through 20 in‐depth interviews with female managers of public cultural organizations in Poland. The findings are presented in three sections: (1) specificity of work in culture, (2) twists and configurations on the way to grow, and (3) communities. In this way, it was possible to capture the specific strategies used by the female workforce for the development of their professional paths. To illustrate the complexity of these strategies, the concept of Rhizome—a root structure that grows in unpredictable and manifold directions—developed by Deleuze and Guattari was used. It also highlighted the fact that the professional development strategies used by women develop in a strong relationship with their environment and constantly evolve according to the needs of the women who decide to undertake them. The results of the research illustrate the impact of the far‐reaching gendered nature of work in cultural organizations on the professional development of women in this sector. Moreover, this reveals that to achieve their professional ambitions, women in cultural organizations co‐create complex informal organizational constructs, rhizome‐like in structure, which help women cope with the challenges that arise along their professional paths. These findings contribute to the theory of gendered organizations and the knowledge of gender inequality in cultural organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I demonstrate the methodological value of working abductively with Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations, as an approach for feminist empirical research. Although the value of Acker's theory is acknowledged, I note it is most frequently used to legitimize the idea that organizations are gendered, not to test whether they are. Few use her theory fully or as it was originally intended. Fewer still have questioned it. This, I argue, contributes to the stagnation of her ideas and results in blindness toward, or disregard for, data that does not support her theory. To realize the analytical potential of Acker's theory, I call for future studies to work abductively with data unaccounted for in the expectations and predictions set by Acker, while operationalizing her five‐dimensional framework in its entirety. Abduction is about discovering new concepts, ideas, and explanations by working with surprising phenomena or data that cannot be explained by pre‐existing knowledge. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, I draw upon a qualitative case study of one atypical Australian trade union. I outline the creative process of drawing inferences to best explain anomalous observations using other theoretical resources in the gender studies field, which together with Acker, constitute a plausible explanation for questions that arose during analysis. This analysis not only surfaces how masculine power is maintained by having women in leadership positions, who serve as "role models" while quieting "others," but that women and men cooperated as a "team" to support a feminine public impression of the union that was knowingly contradicted in private, indicating a more "truthful" performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]