The first chapter provided an overview of the neoliberal academy as a framing context for our argument highlighting the need to engage in researching and writing differently. I explored contemporary academic discourse, which is deeply rooted in neoliberal approaches and masculine ways of approaching academic work as a locus of inequality. This second chapter focuses on researching and writing differently as a political and feminist project and as a key to unlock positive change. In order to do so, I provide a brief overview of Feminism, which will be then linked specifically to management and organization studies, and articulated via examples of different currents of feminist thought and literature.

Feminism today

Feminism is beautifully complex in its various nuanced, interdisciplinary and intersectional interpretations and strands that have developed across different sociocultural contexts over the last century (see Tong and Fernandes Botts, 2017). Although Feminism per se is a movement that found its initial impetus in the 1960s, its (often hidden) roots stem from earlier initiatives around equality expressed via political rights, literary work and other fields. It is generally recognized that up to this point Feminism has witnessed three ‘waves’ of engagement, although some suggest a fourth one. Starting in the 1860s with a first wave focused on women’s rights, with a particular focus on suffrage, Feminism became progressively more visible in the 1950s; the second wave (1960s–1980s) was characterized by investigations around gender equity and equal opportunities for women; while the current third wave focuses on egalitarian concerns and intersectionality (see Crenshaw, 2017). Other labels are often attached to the broader term Feminism – for instance Liberal Feminism, Radical Feminism, Marxist and Social Feminism, Black Feminism, Queer Feminism, Postcolonial and Transnational Feminism, to name but a few. It has been defined and described in many ways.

Building on bell hooks (2000), Harquail (2020, 15, emphasis in original) defines Feminism as ‘a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and all oppression; establish a political, social, and economic equality; and create a world where all people flourish’. These aims, with which I concur, are predicated on a foundational layer of assumptions.