Harassment against the LGBTQ is rooted in a heterosexist ideology that establishes heterosexuality as the superior, valid, and natural form of expressing sexuality (see Wright and Wegner, 2012 Rabelo and Cortina, 2014). This requires acknowledging that gender harassment is a technology of sexism, that “perpetuates, enforces, and polices a set of gender roles that seek to feminize women and masculinize men” ( Franke, 1997, p. The roots of GBDH are beyond the forms that discriminatory acts and behaviors take, being rather “about the power relations that are brought into play in the act of harassing” ( Connell, 2006, p. GBDH is the umbrella term we propose to refer to the different manifestations of sexism and heterosexism in the workplace. In this way, it provides a framework for HRM scholars and practitioners working to counteract sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination in organizations. It considers an inclusive definition of gender and integrates the queer-feminist approach to HRM ( Gedro and Mizzi, 2014) with the intersectional perspective ( Crenshaw, 1991 McCall, 2005 Verloo, 2006). A model with the antecedents and consequences of GBDH in the workplace is proposed. The authors believe that GBDH against these groups has its origin in the different manifestations of sexism in organizations. This argument is developed by integrating available evidence on the antecedents and consequences of GBDH against women and people from the LGBTQ community in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to support the claim that gender equality shall be done within a queer, feminist, and intersectional framework. This translates into actions addressing sexism and heterosexism that overlook other forms of discrimination (e.g., racism, ableism), resisting an intersectional approach that would question white, able-bodied, and other forms of privilege (see Crenshaw, 1991 Cho et al., 2013 Liasidou, 2013 van Amsterdam, 2013). These problems seem to originate in the neoliberalization of former radical movements when adopted by the mainstream (see Cho et al., 2013). For example, the gender equality, gender management, and gender mainstreaming approaches overlook most problems faced by people from the LGBTQ community and from women of color, framing their target stakeholders as white, cisgender, and heterosexual (see Tomic, 2011 Hanappi-Egger, 2013 Klein, 2016). Some actions to increase gender inclusion in organizations actually conceal inequality against women, and many problems faced by the LGBTQ originate within frameworks that anti-discrimination policy reinforce (see Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998, 2012 Verloo, 2006). However, there is still a lot to do to improve the situation of women and people from the LGBTQ community ( International Labour Office, 2016 ILGA-Europe, 2017). Also, women-rights movements have impulsed changes for the emancipation and integration of women at every social level, enabling them to achieve things barely imaginable before (see Hooks, 2000). Nowadays, people from the LGBTQ community find safe spaces to express their gender in most developed countries (see ILGA-Europe, 2017). With her work, she challenged the binary conception of gender in the western academia, calling for the disposal of gender as a stable trait consistent of discrete categories ( Mehta and Keener, 2017). More than four decades have passed since Bem (1974) published her groundbreaking article on psychological androgyny. Finally, avenues for future research are identified to explore gendered practices that hinder the career development of women and the LGBTQ in the workplace. The authors underscore the importance of industry-university collaboration and offer a starters' toolkit that includes suggestions for diagnosis, intervention, and applied research on GBDH. Third, it integrates literature findings about women and the LGBTQ at work, making the case for an inclusive HRM. Second, it incorporates the feminist, queer, and intersectional perspectives in the analysis. First, it analyzes relevant antecedents and consequences of gender-based discrimination and harassment (GBDH) in the workplace. This article develops an integrative model of gender equality in the workplace for HRM academics and practitioners. However, human resources management (HRM) initiatives for gender equality in the workplace focus almost exclusively on white, heterosexual, cisgender women, leaving the problems of other gender, and social minorities out of the analysis. Much has been achieved in terms of human rights for women and people of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) community.
Faculty of Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology, Philipps University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
Carolina Pía García Johnson * and Kathleen Otto