Gender plays a critical role in the construction of corporate institutions and the regulatory infrastructure that governs them. The lack of women in executive positions and corporate boardrooms is a direct consequence of a male-dominated history, and so are the laws and norms guiding the institutions that hold immense power in society. This Chapter tackles difficult questions related to business and power through the lens of feminist legal theory, and provide an unapologetic and ambitious call to redesign existing power structures and internal power dynamics that are leading our world into environmental crises. It begins with a short primer on the social construction of gender, and how society continuously reinforces different behaviours from men and women. The Chapter then examines how gendered predispositions are imbued in the entrenched norms that dominate corporate law, and through implicit biases that prevent or slow the rise of women in the corporate world. These invisible power imbalances need to be widely recognized as they subvert the ability of women to attain meaningful positions of power that instigate change. A critical partnership must be forged between feminist legal theory and corporate sustainability to overcome the formidable challenges in attaining a greener future.

This compelling volume considers three significant modern developments: the ever-changing role of women in society; a significant and growing dissatisfaction with current dominant understandings of corporate governance, corporate law and corporate theory; and the increasing concern to establish sustainable business models globally. A range of female scholars from across the globe and from different disciplines interconnect these ideas in this unique collection of new and thought-provoking essays. Readers are led through a carefully planned enquiry focussing initially on female activism and the corporation, secondly on liberal attempts to include women in business leadership and, finally, on critiquing the modern focus on women as a 'fix' for ethical and unsustainable business practises which currently dominates the corporate world. This collection presents a fresh perspective on what changes are needed to create the sustainable corporation and the potential role of women as influencers or as agents for these changes.

This comprehensive and insightful Research Handbook addresses the interpretation of international solidarity within topical legal regimes and regional systems, as well as in relation to decolonization and the concepts of Ummah and Ubuntu. It examines the way in which international solidarity enables the global community to respond to intercontinental challenges, including climate change, forced migration, health emergencies, and inequality.

Corporate law has traditionally assumed that men organize business, men profit from it, and men bring cases in front of male judges when disputes arise. It overlooks or forgets that women are dealmakers, shareholders, stakeholders, and businesspeople too. This lack of inclusivity in corporate law has profound effects on all of society, not only on women's lives and livelihoods. This volume takes up the challenge to imagine how corporate law might look if we valued not only women and other marginalized groups, but also a feminist perspective emphasizing the importance of power dynamics, equity, community, and diversity in corporate law. Prominent lawyers and legal scholars rewrite foundational corporate law cases, and also provide accompanying commentary that situates each opinion in context, explains the feminist theories applied, and explores the impact the rewritten opinion might have had on the development of corporate law, business, and society.

This volume brings together contributions from women business scholars from a range of disciplines and countries. The starting point was a collaborative research meeting organised by Daughters of Themis: International Network of Female Business Scholars in June 2017. The volume highlights the difficulties and the possibilities that lie in working together across disciplines with the aim of achieving corporate sustainability. The volume is written from the perspective of women business scholars, thereby offering outside viewpoints in fields that still are very much dominated by men, and fresh insights and innovate ideas. In three main parts, the authors address the need for interdisciplinarity in research to identify ways to ensure the contribution of business to sustainability, showcasing a number of theoretical and applied approaches for researching sustainable business. The volume ‘s introductory chapter situates the volume in discourses of sustainability and corporate sustainability. It presents the Daughters of Themis Network and provides a short description of the successive eleven chapters. In Part I, Reflections, contributors discuss the significance of interdisciplinary research, how to work across disciplines, as well as the challenges of doing so. In Part II, Theory, contributors discuss theoretical and methodological aspects of interdisciplinary research. Part III presents the Practice of interdisciplinary research. In the introductory chapter, the editors reflect on the insights that can be drawn out of the contributions, and discuss the potential for future developments of interdisciplinary research for sustainability, as well as how interdisciplinary research can be communicated. The book is intended for business scholars, and will particularly appeal to those working in law, accountancy and finance, management, and organization studies.

This book explores the correlations of diversity and power in UK boardrooms and the difficulties inherent in truly merit-based appointments. From a distance, boardroom diversity is seen as a UK success story of recent years. A closer look at boardrooms reveals a more uncomfortable truth: boards can be split into tracks of power and diversity. Where there is a concentration in power, genuine diversity is much less prevalent. Using the FTSE 100, the book examines the appointment and retention of the most powerful positions in some of the world's most powerful corporations. Diversity, merit and power are each defined and measured individually, then considered cumulatively, to provide fresh insights into the meaning of corporate power, who wields it and how it is obtained. This analysis is considered alongside the diversity narratives created by the FTSE 100 to frame their position on diversity. From this, the value of corporate 'diversity speak' is challenged, together with the regulatory requirements that result in its production. Those studying or practising corporate law or management and anyone with an interest in corporate power will find this in-depth assessment thought-provoking and informative. From the book's original vantage point, suggestions are made as to how and why we might seek a more balanced distribution of power in the boardroom.

This collection of essays by feminist scholar-activists addresses the crucial problem of human security in a world of heavily armed, militarized states. It describes the gendered aspects of human security excluded from the realist militarism that dominates current security policy in most nation states. The book deepens and broadens current security discourses, encouraging serious consideration of alternatives to the present global security system that functions to advantage state security over human security, a system the contributors perceive to be rooted in the patriarchal nature of the nation state. This second edition will be of interest to academics and students of gender studies, women’s studies, international studies, development studies, human rights, security studies, peace studies and peace education.

This collection of articles by feminist scholar-activists addresses the crucial problem of human security in a world of heavily armed, militarized states. It describes the gendered aspects of human security, integral to the realist militarism that dominates current security policy in most nation states. The book seeks to deepen and broaden current security discourses, encouraging serious consideration of alternatives to the present global security system that functions to advantage state security over human security, a system the contributors perceive to be rooted in the patriarchal nature of the nation state.

This definitive handbook is the first reference of its kind bringing together knowledge, scholarship, and debates on themes and issues concerning African women everywhere. It unearths, critiques, reviews, analyses, theorizes, synthesizes and evaluates African women’s historical, social, political, economic, local and global lives and experiences with a view to decolonizing the corpus. This Handbook questions the gendered roles and positions of African women and the structures, institutions, and processes of policy, politics, and knowledge production that continually construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct African women and the study of them. Contributors offer a consistent emphasis on debunking erroneous and misleading myths about African women's roles and positions, bringing their previously marginalized stories to relief, and ultimately re-writing their histories. Thus, this Handbook enlarges the scope of the field, challenges its orthodoxies, and engenders new subjects, theories, and approaches. This reference work includes, to the greatest extent possible, the voices of African women themselves as writers of their own stories. The detailed, rigorous and up-to-date analyses in the work represent a variety of theoretical, methodological, and transdisciplinary approaches. This reference work will prove vital in charting new directions for the study of African women, and will reverberate in future studies, generating new debates and engendering further interest.

This book raises awareness about gender perspective in political and legal theories and historical analysis. The impacts of feminist political and legal theories, as well as critical legal studies, have been embedded in all the papers in different ways and degrees. Differences among feminist political and legal ideas are visible in the different approaches. The ongoing issue of defining gender, for example, is a recurring theme in the texts. Some papers question the binary basis of the gender issue and the notion of gender as such, while others start from the binary dichotomy and attempt to expand the consideration towards a multi-dimensional understanding of gender identities. The main focus is on a feminist reconsideration of all relevant fields of legal knowledge. The primary aim is to demystify the seemingly neutral character of legal norms and legal knowledge and highlight the power relations at different layers, beginning with male and female legal subjects of Western heredity (in terms of culture, ethnicity, and race), then moving on to different needs and power relations among female persons of different races and classes, and finally addressing differentiating gender relations and identities beyond the framework of the women-men binary codification, i.e., also taking into consideration the multiple options of intersex, transgender, queering, etc. Taking seriously the issue of the “maleness” of political and legal theories is indeed a challenging and relevant endeavor for legal scholars. The male bias is present not only throughout history but also in the present, given that our “universal” categories of political and legal thought are still overburdened by unequal power relations. It is also important to open our minds and knowledge production for a gender-sensitive and gender-competent intersectional approach, which would also include various queer-, race- and class-based considerations. These tasks should be of interest not only to critical legal scholars but also all those belonging to mainstream legal and political thought.