In recent years research on gender and organisations has been a buoyant field, in very close interaction with debates on social theory and feminist theory. This GEXcel research field builds on this rapidly expanding and multidisciplinary body of gender, diversity and organisation research, aiming to contribute to understandings of gender in society, working life and other key social arenas. It explores the gendering of organisational contexts, interactions, policies, change and interventions at micro, meso and macro levels in national, transnational and global settings.  Research on gender and organisations and international and national co-operation around the research field has long roots in all three GEXcel partner universities, as have their international and national co-operations around the research theme. Research activities include both more theoretically-oriented basic research as well as more applied action-oriented approaches on a wide variety of topics.

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Research applying a critical gender lens on organisations can produce valuable knowledge on how gender dynamics and gender relations shape societies as a whole, nationally and transnationally; key social arenas such as working life, media or academia; individual workplaces and organisations, as well as the conditions, careers and subjectivities of organizational members.  Research topics focus on gendering of organisational structures,  cultures and policies; power relations and processes, such as homosociality, heterosociality, constructions of norm and exception, norm breakers and norm-breaking actions;  gatekeeping in organisations;  leadership and management, leaders and managers;  dynamics of gender discrimination; social innovations; organizational change and inertia; conditions and impact of and resistance against gender equality promotion nationally and in individual organisations; sexualities and violations in organisations; ICTs and transnatio­­nail­­sations. 

Research contexts span widely, including private sector, steel and engineering, technology, government, academia and science, production, finance, sales companies, the public sector, care activities, religious organisations, municipalities, and fire and rescue services.  Research on gender and organisations can illuminate practices which maintain or challenge gender orders in organisations. With knowledge of these organisational conditions, there is the potential to transform gender relations. Research on gender and organisations can enrich the practical changes that equality and diversity interventions and promotion aim at, on the one hand, and produce critical insights on the agendas, impacts and limitations of gender equality and diversity policies and practices, on the other hand.

This field includes research strands on: gender and organisational power; changing architecture of gender equality. It also includes several ongoing research projects, of which some are funded by MSB (the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. It builds on the previous GEXcel themes on gender paradoxes in changing academic and scientific organisations.