The Handbook of Organizational Gender Consultation and Intervention, published in 2019 by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, is the first guide of its kind. Its aim is to provide a professional toolbox for men and women operating as agents of gender equality in modern organizations, either formally (appointees, consultants, and individuals responsible for equal opportunity and gender equality) or informally (as feminists aiming to promote change in the organization or in their institutional field).
The purpose of this field guide is to present the Gender Equality in Action intervention model, its rationale and assumptions, in order to provide a common language and knowledge base for action. The intervention model is based on experience accumulated over the last years from a number of diverse groups operating as part of the program, and on case studies and research literature.
The Future We Want – the motto chosen by the UN in the run-up to the June 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) – is certainly forward-looking. Expectations are higher than ever: Rio+20 is supposed to be the great historic opportunity to define routes towards a safer, fairer, greener, and cleaner world. The focus of the Rio de Janeiro conference is to be the principle of a “green economy” as a way out of the global crises of climate, food, and poverty.
Over the last three decades, ever since Rosabeth Moss Canter (1977) focused our attention on
the status of women in work organizations, feminist organizational research and theorizing
developed sharp analytical tools for recognizing and deciphering the gendered nature inherent in
work organizations (Acker 2006; Acker 1990; Meyerson and Kolb 2000; Yancey-Martin 2006). Their
gendered structures, practices and internal cultures, as well as their gendering effect on society,
had been studied and understood. This analytical drive was accompanied by much reflection
and development of change ideas and practices: from equal opportunity, affirmative action and
sexual harassment legislation, to training and empowerment plans and, more recently, strategies
of gender mainstreaming.
