Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Deeds, Not Words: How Leaders Combat Genderwashing with Dr. Rita A. Gardiner & Dr. Hayley Baker

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 284

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Dr. Rita A. Gardiner is an Associate Professor, Critical Policy, Equity, and Leadership Studies, Faculty of Education, Western University, Canada. Her publications include articles in Gender, Work and Organization, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Organization Studies. She has published extensively on the topic of authentic leadership including a monograph entitled Gender, Authenticity, and Leadership: Thinking with Arendt. As well, Rita is the lead editor of a new international collection exploring the concept of genderwashing in leadership and diverse organizations. 

Dr. Hayley Baker is an Assistant Professor, School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University, Canada. Her scholarly interests include leadership, gender, and sport. Her research has focused on addressing the underrepresentation of women coaches at Canadian universities by exploring normalized institutional practices and processes. Additionally, she has examined the implementation of gender-based violence policies in universities and Canadian sport organizations. 

A Couple Quotes From This Episode

  • “I think, put simply, genderwashing is really a myth… a myth of gender equality in organizations.
  • “It’s about organizational rhetoric versus lived experience, and we’re looking at the tensions between them.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode 

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

About  Scott J. Allen

My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal v


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Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00 

Okay, everybody, welcome to Practical Wisdom for Leaders. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today, I have two guests. I have Dr. Rita Gardiner, and she is an associate professor of Critical Policy, Equity, and Leadership Studies, Faculty of Education at Western University in Canada. Her publications include articles in Gender, Work and Organization, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Organization Studies. She has published extensively on the topic of authentic leadership, including a monograph entitled Gender, Authenticity and Leadership: Thinking with Arendt. As well, Rita is the lead editor of a new international collection exploring the concept of gender washing in leadership and diverse organizations. I also have Dr. Hayley Baker. She's an assistant professor School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Health Sciences at Western University also in Canada. Her scholarly interests include leadership, gender, and sport. Her research is focused on addressing the under-representation of women coaches at Canadian universities by exploring normalized institutional practices and processes. Additionally, she has examined the implementation of gender-based violence policies in universities and Canadian sport organizations. To the two of you, thank you so much for being with me on this cold winter day, and I look forward to our conversation. You have been involved and engaged in a new publication via the ILA on gender washing, and I'm excited to have this conversation with the two of you. And Rita, maybe I start with you. Would you talk a little bit about gender washing and maybe even the impetus of this publication?

 

Rita Gardiner  1:46 

Sure. And thanks, Scott, for having Hayley and I on your podcast. We love your podcast, listen to it regularly. I especially like the name, Phronesis, because, for me, coming out of a kind of feminist theory philosophy background, having this practical wisdom which we all need, whether we're scholars or practitioners, it's really good. And kudos to you, not only for starting it, but keeping it going. 

 

Scott Allen  2:19 

Thank you. As I said to you before we started recording, it's been awesome and I'm learning so much. But I'm learning in public, like I'm going to be learning today in our conversation. So, thank you for listening, and thank you for acknowledging that you love it.

 

Rita Gardiner  2:35 

And I have to say, I especially love the one that you had with Candace Brunette, who is, or who was, until very recently, one of my colleagues. And is just the most amazing writer. So, not only is she a fabulous speaker, but she's a great writer. 

 

Scott Allen  2:55 

Powerful conversation at a powerful time. Very, very powerful conversation. So, I will put a link to that conversation in the show notes, for sure, for listeners. 

 

Rita Gardiner  3:04 

Fantastic. All right, then. So you asked about the impetus to this book, and perhaps, the notion of gender washing because it is a fairly new term. I certainly didn't know anything about it until Wendy Fox Kirk, who is one of the other editors on the book, introduced me to the term. And it originally came from marketing. And there was a woman called Martha Burke who came up with a term, I think it was in 2010. And then, in around 2019, Wendy, Hayley, myself, as well as a sociologist called Jennifer Chisholm, worked on this article for a piece in human development. Anyway, it was critical human development issues. And Wendy said, “Why don't we write about gender washing?” So, over a course of many months, we worked on thinking about it, but also bringing together all these diverse spheres. As I said, we had a sociologist. We have Wendy, an organizational behavioral person, shows how much I know about that. 

 

(Laughter)

 

Rita Gardiner  4:28 

Hayley, whose background is kinesiology and education, and myself, which is feminist theory and philosophy. So a kind of big mishmash, but it's good for leadership and organizational issues because we look at things from different perspectives. And that was really important to how we thought about gender washing and how we defined it. And I know Hayley wants to talk about the definition. That article came out in 2020, and then we learned about the fact that there was going to be this new series for the ILA. And, at the time, I was the president of the Women's Membership Association. Probably got that acronym wrong. But I felt like it was really important that we took the notion of this gender washing further. It was a great time to develop what we're calling a research primer, and then invite authors from different disciplines, from different countries. We have six different countries present in the book, and to start to think about this concept of gender washing from diverse perspectives.

 

Scott Allen  5:48 

Yeah. Because I think what you've put together, in part, is a little bit of a research agenda as far as, “Hey, this is where we can take this conversation in the future.” Hayley, how are we defining gender washing so listeners include into that?

 

Hayley Baker  6:04  

I think, put simply, gender washing is really a myth. It's a myth of gender equality in organizations. There is this rhetoric that, perhaps, organizations and institutions put out that they're creating gender-equitable spaces through certain initiatives, for example, but when we look at the lived experiences of individuals within those organizations, would they describe it as equitable? And that's something that the book really seeks to explore, like Rita said, from diverse perspectives.

 

Scott Allen  6:41 

So, my sense here is that we have a term like, for instance, greenwashing where you have an organization that is outwardly suggesting that they are very committed to sustainability or initiatives to help the environment in our climate. But when you actually look under the covers a little bit, it's more of a marketing piece. It's more of lip service, it's not really necessarily an authentic true value being held. It's signaling. It's virtue signaling. So, gender washing may be somewhat analogous in the sense that we may talk a big game, but are we truly invested in that? Are we truly living that? Do we truly value that equity? Can you help me? Am I in the ballpark here? 

 

Rita Gardiner  7:25 

Yeah. I think that's a really good analogy. And, as I've been reflecting on the book, and I do want to mention the other editors that were involved in the book, I'll come back to that, but the phrase ‘deeds, not words’ kept popping into my head. And I was thinking to myself, “Okay, where does that come from? Who came up with that?” It was Emmeline Pankhurst originally, and it was the rallying cry for the suffragettes. And I think, wow, it's almost like we're reaching back into history and saying, “Yeah, it still matters.” And it matters for all of us. It doesn't matter who we are. I think most of us, let's say, want to have organizations and societies where we feel that everybody has their best chance, that is able to flourish. When we think about gender washing, we're not just looking at gender, we're very much looking at intersectional approaches. And when we think about intersectional approaches, as Hayley mentioned, we're interested in that effective, embodied piece. What does it mean when I'm told that there's a particular policy in my organization, and how does that affect me? And structural issues, as you brought up with greenwashing. How, sometimes, what an organization says and what they do is very different. So, it's this organizational rhetoric versus lived experience. And we’re kind of looking at the tensions between them. I mentioned I was going to talk about my other editors, and I think it's really important, first, to acknowledge that it was Wendy Fox-Kirk, who's now at the University of Birmingham, but she was in Utah; Carol Elliot, you might have met at conferences, who's at the University of St Andrews; and then Valerie Stead at the University of Lancaster, who were the editors for this book. And then, we have the most amazing people who have written for us. It's so superb. Of course, we've got Hayley, who's brilliant, but there were so many people. Sometimes my students say, “Oh, I don’t understand the word that you've used, Rita.” Then it's like, well, there might be some words that you don't understand, but, for the most part, this is a really engaging, clear book that I think would be great for graduate students. It's really good for practitioners. And, dare I say it's pretty good for leadership, scholars, and people in organizations to think about and reflect on these issues which affect us all. 

 

Scott Allen  10:29 

Okay. So, I'm excited to hear, the two of you, your reflections, potentially. What were some ‘ahas’ for you? You have this really cool team with very, very different perspectives, six different countries around the world. You put the book into motion. As you look back on the finished piece. What were some ‘ahas’ that, “Oh, wow, these were a few dots that were connected for me”? Or, “This is an insight that I really hadn't considered before.” Or, “This is something that's really important that people need to know.” Can you share with listeners just a few of those kind of highlights for you? And, Hayley, maybe we start with you. I'm intrigued to hear what those were for you.

 

Hayley Baker  11:13  

I really appreciate this question. For me, something that really stood out was this notion that policy doesn't do the work, people do. And, in connection to gender washing, it was really eye-opening to kind of explore that, not only within sport. Because it was so eye-opening that even though we were looking at a variety of different settings or even applications of the term ‘gender washing,’ seeing that golden thread throughout the book that connects us all with that understanding was really powerful. And, like Rita had mentioned, I think this book is wonderful for practitioners, scholars, students, because of that connectiveness that each of the chapters have with one another.

 

Scott Allen  12:02 

Awesome. Okay. So, Rita, how about you? A couple of insights, reflections, ‘ahas’ that occurred for you.

 

Rita Gardiner  12:10 

I think one of the things that surprised me a lot was how many of the chapters came out of higher education and some of the frustrations that are being felt, not just in North America, but in Europe, the UK, and also in the Global South, and particularly, Pakistan. Where we start to see, as Hayley just mentioned, some of the same problems occurring within the workplace. The other thing that I'm not sure surprised, but joy, I would say, is the different creative ways in which people used gender washing and then came up with their own term. So, we have gender bleaching, we have gender spinning, we have rainbow washing where two scholars look at problems with LGBT policies in Turkey and the Netherlands. Just fascinating. So, it's all these different theoretical perspectives, methodological perspectives, that make it such a great read. And I would love to have a course. I have to think about this with my departmental head because I think it would be a great book to have on a course as a guiding text. Am I selling this to people? I hope so.

 

(Laughter)

 

Scott Allen  13:41 

Okay. So, a couple of other insights. What were some other reflections that stood out for you as you think about this process and this project?

 

Hayley Baker  13:48  

Thinking back, I think it's really just the importance to continue to be critical and challenge institutions to really uphold what they're promoting and think about how is this actually affecting the lived experiences of those involved. Yes, it's wonderful that we have these policies and programs in place, but how are they impacting individuals within those organizations and institutions? So, for me, big reflection here is continue to challenge, continue to be curious, and continue to talk about and illuminate some of the gaps that we see happening. 

 

Scott Allen  14:30 

One of you had said it earlier; the people, not policy. Are we continuing to explore and examine some of what's happening in the context? Are we in congruence, and are we authentic in that expressed commitment, “This is a priority for us, this is what we want,” or that expressed value that we are living that? And, again, back to this kind of statement of everybody has a chance to flourish. And are we continuing that conversation and elevating when maybe we're not congruent, when we're not in a place of integrity? And thinking about that and examining that and exploring that. And I love another thing that you just said, Hayley, which was, are we asking people about their lived experience, and are we elevating that conversation as well? Because I am still always… I did a networking call on Tuesday of this week, and the individual that I was with, just her experiences in the workplace at a very prominent firm, even in some of the teens and early 2000s, I was flabbergasted at the stories that she shared. Yet, the expressed values of this organization are very different than that. So, I think sometimes people can think, “Oh, we've come so far.” We're probably fairly far from what we're expressing and what the ideal would be. And so, are we continuing that conversation? Does that capture, Hayley?

 

Hayley Baker  16:04  

Beautifully.

 

Rita Gardiner  16:05 

I love that little phrase that you came up with, ‘a place of integrity.’ Because, oftentimes, we think about integrity as something that's inner, inward, whereas, actually, it's about the person in relationship with others in organizations. And that is just such an interesting thing to think about. One of the things I wanted to mention, and this was a puzzle, I like puzzles, and I was very interested in finding out whether this concept of gender washing traveled. And, by that, okay, yet again, we've got a concept that comes up from Global North scholars, does it have any resonance elsewhere? And one of the things that we found in the book is that, yes, it does. And there are some really interesting chapters towards the end of the book on gender washing and militarization, and I think it's a final chapter by Rosie Walters, which is on girl power. And looking at how corporations, to go back to something that you were saying earlier, espouse ideas in their marketing, and then on the ground in places like the Global South, things are very different. And so, we have these massive corporate marketing campaigns about, “We are Malawi,” or things like that. And then we have the reality of how people are experiencing either working with that corporation or being affected by that corporation.

 

Scott Allen  17:51 

Or the vendors of that corporation elsewhere in the world. 

 

Rita Gardiner  17:54 

Absolutely. And so, I think one of the things that sometimes we forget to do, and that's all of us, sadly, we can't be ethical in everything that we do all the time. We could. We don't live in… I’m saying too much about myself, maybe.

 

Scott Allen  18:13 

You're shattering my self-concept right now.

 

Rita Gardiner  18:17 

Well, that's why I find that the whole notion of authenticity such a sticky one. And how someone appears is not necessarily how they are. And there's a brilliant series right now in the US, and I think… UK rather, called ‘Traitors.’ I don't know whether you've seen it. 

 

Scott Allen  18:38 

No.

 

Rita Gardiner  18:38 

Oh, you've got to watch it. I was telling Hayley, because it's all about people not being as they seem. And if there's one thing that we know in the workplace is that, very often, people aren't what they see. But how do we ever get to the point where we all can be authentic? Not in a way that is just true to us, but that respects others, because there's an ethical element to it, isn't there? That we can't just say what we want when we want, without taking into account other people's… Respecting other people.

 

Scott Allen  19:17 

I was in a fun conversation with a guest recently, and she was at the International Study Leadership Conference. And teaches in Germany, and has a background in media and communication, and the arts, and then now has transitioned, over a number of years, into leadership. And we had this fascinating conversation. I said, “Talk a Little bit about using film and media and the benefits of that.” And she said something to the effect of, “We know those very pretty visuals in our textbooks that really make it look very simple and easy, the theory, just add human beings and it's no longer even a square or a circle or a Venn diagram. It's messy.” And so, she was talking about how the media, whatever the media is that we're consuming, in this case, she was talking about Game of Thrones. She said how people behave in the politicking behind the scenes and all of this stuff that the theory is divorced from, it helps people understand the complexities of the theory, and how the theory works, and where it breaks down, and what are the applications of it. So, I don't know, what you just said kind of reminded me of that and that it's a fascinating conversation. It just is. 

 

Rita Gardiner  20:33 

And it's one that we need to have because we were talking just before we came on air about all the different leadership theories there are. And when I teach leadership to scholar-practitioners, well, I remember Joseph Ross saying there were 330 leadership theories. That was probably about 20 years ago now, can you imagine how many there are now?

 

Scott Allen  20:58 

‘Leadership for the 21st Century,’ I think, was the name of that book.

 

(Laughter)

 

Rita Gardiner  21:06 

But the other thing I wanted to mention, just to go back to that policy piece, is that, oftentimes, we have good people with good intentions who develop policies, but one of the problems that we see, and this is brought up in the book in different chapters, is that we're not really talking enough about outcomes. So, we can have the best policies, but, to go back to something I said earlier, deeds not words, we need to be able to track things. And we need to be genuine so that we go, “Okay, we screwed up in this area, but maybe, looking at our mistakes, we can try and do better.” 

 

Scott Allen  21:49 

Yeah. One more before we begin to wind down. Any other observations or thoughts on this process, something to intrigue listeners with? You said you were gonna ask me some questions, do you want to turn the table on me?

 

Rita Gardiner  22:02 

I would really like Hayley to talk a little bit more about gender in sport because I think this is one of the areas where gender washing is so obvious. So many people.

 

Scott Allen  22:14 

Yeah. That's the one story it reminded me of, like a Nike. Where Nike might have this campaign that purports to elevate women and empower women, yet, do they have the wherewithal, even the self-awareness sometimes about, again, some of these places in the world? What are the conditions some of these people are working in? Is there congruence there, or is it actually…? So, if you want to go there, is that cool, Hayley, then you can turn the tables on me, and then we'll begin to wind down. 

 

Hayley Baker  22:48  

Perfect. When it comes to gender washing in sport, my chapter was really focused on gender washing as it relates to addressing gender-based violence within a sport organization. What was really interesting and what kind of came out of our work was that there's a lot of tackling and addressing the, quote-unquote, bad apples. And, as a result of that, there is a lack of looking at the bigger picture and the culture itself. So, when we start to dig into that a little bit deeper, we see that there is maybe a culture of silence that's happening. So, we talked about that through the use of NDAs, for example, when addressing cases of gender-based violence, and how that maintains a particular culture, rather than looking at the issue in different ways, or in new ways. Or, like we've talked about before, prioritizing lived experience, and instead, we end up a lot of times silencing individuals involved in those particular cases. 

 

Scott Allen  23:57 

Rita, do you want to turn the tables now? 

 

Rita Gardiner  23:59 

Yeah. What Hayley has just said about sports organizations is so important, but when we think about sports and society generally, and we just think about it from an economic perspective… I remember, like a few years ago, looking at the top paid 100 athletes, and about two of them were women. It was ridiculous when you think about the amount of play also that you see with different sports organizations. Now, I know things are changing, but still, it's the case that, in a lot of university athletics, which Hayley has told me about, the women's teams get really bad slots so that most audiences never see them because they're on, I don't know, 11 o'clock at night, or something like that. There's just another thing that we need to change just to make it a little bit more equal. Anyway, you asked me if I was going to ask you a question, and I have a question for you, Scott. I have many, but the one I'd like to ask you is so what do you think about this concept of gender washing? Do you think it's got any likes?

 

Scott Allen  25:14 

What I love about this conversation, and this conversation is a little bit similar to some of the DEI conversations that I've had, I try and walk into these conversations with a level of curiosity and humility because my lived experience is very different than others’ lived experiences. Regardless of whether it's where they are in the globe, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, my lived experience is very different. As a father of two daughters who are 14, I think it's an incredibly important conversation. As a husband to a wife who is in the workforce, it's an incredibly important conversation. And I think part of this conversation is just building awareness because, again, my lived reality is not what that woman that I mentioned a few moments ago, what she experienced in the workforce. I’ve never had anything like that happen to me. So, it's different. I'm ignorant to it. I'm blind to it. I was surprised by it. I was like, “How is that even a thing?” Yes, I think it's critical. And back to what Hayley said, are we continuing to build awareness so that people like me with blind spots, and literally, just a lack of knowledge that this is a thing, in some cases, have that awareness? And when they are in positions of authority, have that awareness. And can say we're talking about women and empowerment, yet we're using vendors that are actually creating conditions for women that are horrible. Are we living with a level of integrity in who we say we are as an organization? Because I think you can have integrity as a person, and I think you can have integrity as an organization as well. Yeah, I think it's a very, very important conversation. Honestly, I walk into the conversation just anxious, in the sense that I don't know. It's another one of those conversations where I'm a learner. I'm very much a learner because my lived reality has been different just at being white, cisgender, male, et cetera. 

 

Rita Gardiner  27:18 

Yeah. And I think that we're all learners. This idea that we're certain about anything, I think, is not necessarily a good one. This is just the start of something. This book we had envisaged as a primer, a research primer, and that's what it is. It's for others to take it further, and I really hope that there are people like yourself who go, “Maybe this would be a great thing to talk about in a conference setting or just in the workplace.” Yeah, we're excited to see where it goes.

 

Scott Allen  27:55 

Yeah. And again, whether it's a DEI conversation, or LGBTQ-plus conversation, any kind of difference, cultural conversations that I've been engaged in with a female entrepreneur from Pakistan who's an MD in a tech startup space, I have no clue. And so, Rita, what you said, I really appreciate that we all are learners. Are we entering those conversations with a sense of humility and curiosity and aware that we are blind to the experiences of others? I didn't grow up in the United States, Muslim, so I don't know what that feels like. So, I can enter the conversation with curiosity and humility and try and learn from that individual about their lived experience. Now, I might walk away agreeing with everything, not agreeing with everything, but it's a learning experience. I love it. I absolutely love it. Incredibly valuable. And again, as a father of two young women, I would want them to work in organizations that are more whole, who they say they are, than not. Of course, I want that for them for sure. So, Hayley, to your point, are we keeping our eye on this and are we focused on this? Because, again, my conversation just the other day, I was flabbergasted that was her lived experience in an organization. Very prominent organization. I was like, “Wow, I can't imagine that.” So I appreciate your work. I do. 

 

Rita Gardiner  29:25 

Thank you.

 

Scott Allen  29:26 

So, we always wind down these conversations, and you can name something we've just discussed based on, like, aligned with the topic of gender washing, or it could just be something else that you think listeners might be interested in. But what's a resource, a book? What have you been streaming? What's something that's caught your attention in recent times that you think listeners might be interested in? So, what have you been consuming? What's caught your attention? Hayley, what do you think?

 

Hayley Baker  29:58  

I've been consuming a lot of sport currently. I've been watching a lot of women's college basketball. It's been a very exciting time in that space, with a lot more media attention and focus around women's college sport in particular. So, I've been consuming that a lot, watching a lot of TV. But also, actually, recently went and saw a game in person, which was a really wonderful experience, exciting atmosphere and something I really enjoyed. 

 

Scott Allen  30:29 

What game did you see? 

 

Hayley Baker  

I went and saw the UConn women's basketball team play USC, which was wonderful.

 

Scott Allen  30:37 

Historic team right there. Historic team right there. Oh, that's awesome. Rita, what's on your radar?

 

Rita Gardiner  30:43 

To be honest, Scott, it'll be really boring. This is the first week of class, and I’m really immersed in reading for a class that I haven't taught in six years, which is about leadership ethics, a topic that I really enjoy. And I've been looking, just recently, at the work of Terry Price. And I've just been reading this chapter, which I wonder what my students are going to think because it's fabulous in the sense that he talks about Machiavellianism in the workplace, versus Kantianism and things. But I teach people who are scholar-practitioners, and it's usually, “Read to tell me something that I can put into the workplace.” I'm not sure how I'm going to translate this work into experience, but that's a job that we have as teachers, isn't it?

 

Scott Allen  31:40 

I think all you need to say is, “How does Machiavelli show up in the workplace?” And you will have a great conversation.

 

(Laughter)

 

Rita Gardiner  31:48 

Thank you for that tip. 

 

Scott Allen  31:50 

Just ask them to connect the dots, they will. Terry Price, some incredible ethics scholars came out of Richmond. Joanne Ciulla. Just incredible thought leaders. Well, to the two of you, thank you so much for your work. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with me today, and I look forward to the next conversation.

 

 

[End Of Recording]