Hung out to dry: gender washing in organizations

This paper advances feminist organizational theory by critically examining the phenomenon of gender washing, a strategic practice whereby organizations superficially promote gender equity while perpetuating discriminatory structures. Drawing on 12 in-depth interviews with women across diverse UK industries and professional backgrounds, this study reveals how gender washing manifests through gendered HR texts and organizational discourse, particularly in response to women challenging pay inequity. It theorizes gender washing not merely as rhetorical posturing but also as a systemic mechanism that gaslights, silences, and isolates women through institutionalized grievance procedures and legal intimidation. This paper contributes to feminist scholarship in three key ways: (i) it conceptualizes gender washing as an analytical construct that captures the dissonance between organizational rhetoric and lived experience; (ii) it exposes how gas lighting and personal attacks function as collective organizational practices that shape women's encounters with HR and legal processes, and (iii) it theorizes the coercive use of legal threats through the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) (UK Government) and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), which are used as weapons to scare or silence women, stripping them of agency and voice. By foregrounding the psychological and emotional toll of gender washing practices, this paper deepens our understanding of its harmful affects on women and exposes how it is weaponized under the guise of progressive human resource (HR) policies, marketing, and social media. We provide new ways of understanding how gender washing can serve as a useful analytical tool in feminist critique, one that helps uncover and challenge organizational claims of gender equity and, in doing so, broadens our understanding of the gendered organization.