FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 5 Professor Claire Leitch is the Executive Dean, Lancaster University Management School c.leitch@lancaster.ac.uk The bulk of this issue showcases the wide range of work we have taking place across Lancaster University Management School focused around gender. There has been research on gender in business and management for decades – as well as great levels of activism beyond the realms of academia. But we still have discrimination; we still have inequity. It is rife in society. That is whywe continue towork hard in the School under our social justice research banner, andwithin centres such as the Academy forGender,Work andLeadership, to address these inequalities, to highlight issues, and to pursue positive change. You can see from the work taking place across the School – indeed, throughout the whole of our University – the many different areas of society and business where gender inequalities exist, and the ways in which its manifests. For us, as a business and management school, we need to have a theoretical understanding of the issues, and to encourage, inform and introduce positive change. We are a research-intensive School – our world-leading experts produce work that informs and underpins everything we do, from teaching to business engagement and beyond. You know that research being produced in a School like ours has been conducted according to the highest ethical standards; that excellent data has been collected and analysed with rigour and subsequently peer-reviewed before being published in leading international journals. That is important. It is not that activism does not have its place. Of course it does, but what we do complements that work, by providing a strong evidence base. We need to understand how gender plays a role in the actions and behaviours of everyone – here in the School and outside in factories, boardrooms, living rooms – and the complexity of its relationship with what we do, because the ramifications of discrimination are not always clear to see. Our endeavours do not just apply to the outside world. As much as anywhere, we must apply them to our own practice. For instance, the insights and tools produced frome TARGETED-MPI, an international research project involving a consortium of business and management schools, should help inform our approach to overcoming gender inequalities in the UK, Europe and beyond. As institutions, we still tend to be very masculine, very patriarchal, so it is critical that insightful work continues toovercome this. Having research expertswho are passionate and knowledgeable advocates and positive rolemodels is helping to influencewhat is happening in LUMS and thewider University by shaping our policies, procedures, practices and behaviours. You will see many examples of the excellent research conducted around gender at the School in these pages, from the work of the Academy in addressing gender inequality in business through the Gender Matters project, through to the studies of our PhD students on the South African wine industry and the global fashion sector. There ismuchmore beyond the sample of work we are able to feature. We have researchers in Economics looking at the gender imbalance of students studying the subject – with impact both on education and on economic outcomes; theWork Foundation – whomwe include in these pages for their work on the gender gap in insecure work – are highlighting the gender imbalance when it comes to the bonfire of EU regulations the UK is set to face later in the year; in entrepreneurship and leadership, my own field, issues around women’s access to resources if they are starting and growing businesses, the continued existence of the glass ceilings and walls, and the need for more women in the leadership pipeline are all interrogated. We are not just talking about leadership positions, but those all the way from top to bottom on the corporate ladder. You have people outside of what we see as regular business structures as well, people suffering in adverse situations like those refugees featured in Sophie Alkhaled’s work in this edition. I certainly hope our collective work can make a practical difference. To ensure it does, it is important that we communicate our knowledge, to those who need to hear it, and to those who can implement change. Thus, we reach out to external audiences and raise the debate. That is essential. It is about raising awareness, but it has to bemore as well. There have to be concrete actions. This is where the impact of our work and the effect of that impact is important. There is a lot of education to do still within business andmanagement schools, within corporate boardrooms, within government. There has been progress, some enlightenment, but there are areas where wemust improve, gatekeepers in place with outdated – wrong – attitudes whomwe need to influence. I hope that the work we do means that in the weeks, months and years to come the picture will change. We should not need to have a gender pay gap report for any organisation, we should not need quotas to have appropriate numbers of women on boards. So please take the time to delve into an area of research that plays such a key role in our organisation over the following pages. I hope you find inspiration to act, determination to make a change – however big or small – in your own practices, and hope that there are many of us working hard to encourage a positive evolution of behaviours and attitudes. Foreword Welcome to this special edition of Fifty Four Degrees, whose focus is on an area very close tomy researching heart. Subscribe online at lancaster.ac.uk/fiftyfour SUBSCRIBE
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