From the FLP mailbox:
Call for Papers: Psychology of Women and Equalities Review Special Issue – Feminisms and Leadership
‘Leadership’ is a highly regulative practice, and is pervasive in our personal and political realms. Under late capitalism, academic and popular discourse continues to represent leadership in gender essentialist terms, through the figure of the ‘great man’. Notions of the ‘great leader’ are rarely tied to colonial domination, which consolidated leadership as the natural and legitimate enterprise of white, ‘civilizing’ masculinity (Mohanty, 2004). This is reflected in the ongoing proliferation of leadership as a marker of individual stature, and the reproduction of white patriarchal power in global corporate and political spaces.
Feminist attention has been dedicated to understanding differential leadership experiences within this highly gendered terrain. However, a wealth of feminist literature continues to promote women’s leadership in these spaces without dismantling the spaces themselves. Moreover, unchecked histories of racism, sexism, classism, and ableism function to keep notions of ‘successful’ leadership firmly within the confines of dominant globalizing forces.
The call: “Do not become the master’s tool!” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 160), inspires the commitment that we will never use the master’s tools (Lorde, 1984) to resist these forces. Following this commitment, current feminist work in psychology calls for collective feminist leadership and resistance through ‘feminist counter-publics’ (Rúdólfsdóttir & Jóhannsdóttir, 2018). More broadly, Lewis and Pullen (2018) call for the strengthening of feminist work in organizational studies, arguing: “…we have never needed it more than we do now” (p. 108).
In the spirit of these calls to action, this special issue invites feminist work that rewrites notions of ‘successful’ leadership in psychology and related academic and non-academic disciplines. Contributions may include, but are not limited to work that considers:
* Intersections of race and class, gender, sexuality, and/or disability, with leadership.
* Leadership in contexts of feminist activism, movements, and political resistance.
* Reimagining leadership in/outside of elite or corporate contexts.
* Bad or ‘toxic’ leadership.
Contributions may include original articles (up to 3000-7000 words), observations and commentaries (up to 2500 words) or creative pieces (up to 2000 words). Submissions will be subject to the usual peer review process. The deadline for submissions is January 7th 2019. Queries can be sent to editor.powsr@gmail.com Lucy Thompson (aymorluc@msu.edu<mailto:aymorluc@msu.edu>).
