PurposeThere is a recent organizational focus on increasing and managing gender diversity with stress on supportive policies for working mothers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of one such supportive policy (i.e. completion of company-initiated internship programs) designed to help women return to the workforce post a career break.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses an experimental design to compare the evaluation of a woman applicant who has a career break with the evaluation of a woman applicant who has completed a support program after a career break. Variance in the evaluation of the applicant on the parameters – educational qualification, professional qualification, fit with job description and invite for an interview is tested. The study also examines the effect of individuals’ neosexist attitude on their evaluation of the applicant. Data were collected from 109 participants having an average age of thirty-two years (SD = 5.97), and average work experience of 9 years (SD = 5.20).FindingsResults show that completion of a support program, as well as neosexism, have a main effect on the evaluation of job fit.Practical implicationsResults have implications for employee-training programs, as well as development programs for women re-entering the workforce post a career break.Originality/valueThis paper is the first to study the efficacy of internship programs for re-entry of women, started by various multi-national companies in India. It extends the application of neosexism to such initiatives, which are not affirmative action, highlighting the changing nature of sexism.
In this study, we surface the problems of representation mainstream organizational theory encounters in documenting and telling accounts of subaltern actors and social transformation. We explore how writing practices that draw on feminist postcolonial literary traditions can transform organizational studies of social change. Drawing on three literary texts-Mahasweta Devi's Draupadi, Urmila Pawar's The Weave of My Life, and Arundhati Roy's Ministry of Utmost Happiness-we reflect on how we may represent the lives of others. Inspired by these three writers, we suggest solidaristic transgression, unsettled habitation, and counter-discursive memory work as three modes of engagement that challenge us as academics writing for change.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.