International Women's Day: Voice and protest

Session 1: Academic resistances

Time: 11:00-12:30 UK time

Academic spaces and outlets, as bastions of critical thought, are increasingly becoming coopted into the mainstream, fortifying the neoliberal status quo. In such an environment accounting for and amplifying democratic struggles on the ground becomes almost impossible. The commodification of academic outlets, such as journals, especially those established to enhance equalities, has become a commonplace strategy for taming our resistances and quashing our voices. In this IWD mini conference we will explore these developments from a gendered perspective with a range of wonderful speakers, many of whom have been engaging in activist endeavours, in academia and in broader society, for many years. The conference will open with a panel discussion on the ethical responsibility of nurturing and protecting critical voices in academia. Panellists include: Marianna Fotaki, Jeff Hearn, Emmanouela Mandalaki, Mie Plotnikof, Cinzia Priola, Alison Pullen, Nela Smolović Jones, Melissa Tyler and Alice Wickström.

Session 2: The amplification of a voice of dissent - HoCC in 2019 Hong Kong

Time: 13:30-14:30 UK time

Marilyn Poon will focus on the digital activities of a prominent activist to explore the crucial role of digital materialities for women, and those othered, in claiming their voices in protest. Denise Ho, a.k.a. HoCC, is a prominent artist in Hong Kong and an activist during the 2019 Hong Kong Protest. She has spoken publicly about the movement’s reliance on digital technologies and the important role of art and creativity in protest. Examining the impact of gender on activism, the aim is to understand how being a woman influenced her ability to mobilize crowds, voice demands, and navigate challenges. The focus will extend to the unique ways HoCC navigated such obstacles in entrepreneurial ways. The talk also extends to the digital realm, seeking insights into how marginalized voices, particularly those of women, gain authority through digital platforms. By examining the intersections of materiality and gender, Marilyn aims to illuminate the nuanced dynamics at play in activist movements.

Marilyn Poon is an organization studies scholar whose research focuses on the digital condition and its influence on organizing phenomena, including leadership and entrepreneurship. She applied a communication as constitutive or organizing (CCO) approach in her dissertation, which focused on the 2019 Hong Kong Protests to explore the role of platform technologies. Currently, she is applying practice-based theorizing to unpack the generative dynamics of data-driven and value-based practices.

Session 3: Her Fearless Speech? Gender and Speaking Out

Time: 14:45-15:45 UK time

How can we assess the landscape of gender, protest and voice? Debates about speaking up, including fearless speech, parrhesia and whistleblowing, tend to ignore gender. Yet gender shapes scenes of speech in complex ways that are subtle, multi-faceted and have effects across macro, micro and meso levels. In this talk, I outline a tentative mapping of the landscape of gender and disclosure. Attention to ‘points of condensation’ of power and domination is instructive; these include cultural norms around gender, regulatory aspects that determine the ways in which people disclose, and normative systems shaping standards of behaviour. Bringing these ideas together, I propose a conceptual lens for understanding how power and domination work in and through gender and speech, focusing particularly on workers’ disclosures of wrongdoing and recent research in this area. In many countries and locales, speaking up is becoming more difficult, not least relating to feminist research, practice and activism. It is critical that we examine more closely the affordances and obstacles for those who speak out.

Kate Kenny is full Professor of Business and Society at University of Galway Ireland. She has held research fellowships at Cambridge University's Judge Business School, and the Edmond J. Safra Lab at Harvard University. Her research centres on the contribution of psychosocial and feminist theory to the study of organizations. Books include Whistleblowing: Toward a New Theory (Harvard University Press, 2019), The Whistleblowing Guide (Wiley Business, 2019, with W. Vandekerckhove and M. Fotaki), Understanding Identity and Organizations (Sage 2011, with A. Whittle and H. Willmott), and Affect at Work: The Psychosocial and Organization Studies (Palgrave 2014, with M. Fotaki). Her work has been cited in the UK House of Commons, and in EU policy documents. She has written and contributed to articles in the Financial Times, the Irish Times, the Guardian and contributed to programmes on Ireland’s RTÉ (radio and television) and TG4.

Session 4: Building epistemic voice: reflections on transnational feminist knowledge work

Time: 16:00-17:00 UK time

This IWD lecture explores developments in transnational feminist education at the turn of the century. It will discuss the strategies of African feminist scholars concerned to strengthen the feminist politics in gender studies, despite the neo-coloniality of the neo-liberalised university campuses. I argue that because these took place alongside the ongoing feminist training carried out by women's movement organizations, interventions in gender and women's studies were able to make an epistemic contribution to African feminism. Tracing these connections makes it possible to see how a decade of feminist educational work contributed to the spread of transnational feminist epistemologies and politics in the work of both scholarly and activist organizations.

Amina Mama - Professor in the Dept of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Davis. A transdisciplinary feminist educator, researcher and organizer, Mama’s most influential works include The Hidden Struggle: Statutory and Voluntary Sector Responses to Black Women and Domestic Violence in London (Runnymede Trust 1989); Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender and Subjectivity (Routledge 1995); and Engendering African Social Sciences (co-edited with Fatou Sow and Ayesha Imam, CODESRIA 1997). She has 30 years of teaching experience on university campuses in Africa, Europe and the USA. Key career honours include her appointments to the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity at University of Utrecht (2004), the Angela Davis Guest Professor in Social Justice at the Cornelia Goethe Centre (2016), University of Frankfurt, and the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies (2020-2022). She continues to pursue collaborative action-research, documentation and film projects.