Abstract (eng)
Organizations are structuring entities in today's neoliberal economic system (Hofbauer, 2014) and while they operate in a labor market shaped by gender hierarchies, their internal processes are also gendered. Joan Acker theorized this as early as 1990 in her Gendered Organizations framework, whose dimensions of corporate gendering are still relevant. With the increasing conceptualization of gender equality as a business case in recent decades (Mensi-Klarbach, 2012), more and more organizational measures developed to advance gender equality in organizations (Bendl, 2012). While most of these draw on internal resources, gender consulting offers the opportunity to buy gender expertise externally as a consulting service (Petersson McIntyre, 2021a). This thesis is dedicated to expanding the patchy theorization of the gender consulting approach and its potentials and ways of working to intervene in gendered organizational structures and, going a step further, to dissolve these structures, which is conceptualized in this thesis as degendering. A degendered organization is thus understood as the opposite of Acker's Gendered Organization. However, through guided interviews with gender consultants, it was found that a degendered organization is an unrealistic concept that is neither achievable nor worth striving for in a gender-structured society. Rather, gender consulting is about penetrating the structural level of organizations at identified levers and implementing appropriate measures that trigger transformation processes. Accompanied by awareness raising and making gender visible as a diversity dimension, gender consulting can break up gendered organizational structures.