Comment: Gender Blindness or Gender Suppression? A Comment on Fiona Wilson's Research Note

Abstract

This comment takes one term which Fiona Wilson in her excellent and useful review of the research on gender in organization studies makes central to her thesis. Whilst this term may be meaningfully applied to more recent studies of organizational behaviour with a largely technical emphasis, it cannot be applied accurately to the classical and human relations theorists — Taylor, Weber, Mayo and Maslow. Here they are very much aware of gender, and because of the nature of their particular knowledge projects, they actively suppress it. Contemporary reflexivity has again made blindness no longer an option — organization theory has to either embrace gender or suppress it, and acknowledge the motivations behind and the consequences of that suppression.

Keywords

gender management theory Maslow Mayo suppression

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