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GUEST EDITORIAL

Spirals of silence?
Fiona Colgan and Aidan McKearney

624

Business School, London Metropolitan University, London, UK

Abstract
Purpose This editorial introduces the papers within the special issue and outlines their
contribution to the emerging and evolving study of sexuality and sexual orientation in organisation
and management studies.
Design/methodology/approach A review of some key themes within the literature on sexuality
and sexual orientation is provided prior to drawing out key points within the submitted papers and
considering how they contribute to this literature.
Findings These six papers make an important contribution to the fast-changing and evolving
study of sexuality and sexual orientation in organisations and the development and implementation of
equality and diversity policy and practice.
Originality/value The editorial refers to papers presented at the Equality Diversity and Inclusion
Conference held in Istanbul, July 2009, which included a stream entitled: Spirals of silence? Tackling
the invisibility of the sexual orientation strand and sexuality in academic research and in
organisation equality and diversity policy and practice which can lead to reflections on the processes
of voice and silence as these pertain to the discussion of sexuality and sexual orientation issues in
academic organisations and at academic and practitioner conferences.
Keywords Equality, Diversity, Inclusion, Business policy, Sexual orientation
Paper type General review

Equality Diversity and Inclusion: An

International Journal
Vol. 30 No. 8, 2011
pp. 624-632
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
2040-7149
DOI 10.1108/02610151111194412

This special issue of Equality Diversity and Inclusion An International Journal

includes papers presented at the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Conference held in
Istanbul, July 2009. That year we organised and co-chaired the stream entitled: Spirals
of silence? Tackling the invisibility of the sexual orientation strand and sexuality in
academic research and in organisation equality and diversity policy and practice. As
the title suggests, the stream was prompted in part by a reading of Bowen and
Blackmons (2003) paper Spirals of silence: the dynamic effects of diversity on
organizational voice, which led us as academics, to reflect on the processes of voice
and silence as these pertain to the discussion of sexuality and sexual orientation issues
in academic organisations and at academic and practitioner conferences.
As Bowen and Blackmon (2003) argued of all the strands covered by
equality/diversity policy, sexual orientation has been one of the most sensitive,
taboo and until recently invisible areas of diversity in organisation and management
studies. It is not true to say that research has been silent on sexuality generally.
A number of early works explored sexuality, work and organisation, including for
example, Hearn and Parkins (1987) Sex at Work, followed by Hearn et al. (1989)The
Sexuality of Organization and Brewis and Linsteads (2000) Sex, Work and Sex Work
There is now a growing body of work which seeks to make sexuality visible within
organisations (Cockburn, 1991; Franzway, 2001; Acker, 2006; Simpson, 2009), and in
some cases examine the implications of heteronormativity at work (Dunne, 2000;
Pringle, 2008; Rumens, 2008; Ward, 2008: Bendl et al., 2009). Research on sexual

orientation has been described as coming in two waves (Ozturk, 2011; Colgan and
Rumens, 2011). The first wave of research in the area of sexual orientation at work has
focused primarily on organisations as difficult places for lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgendered (LGBT) people to be. It has identified homophobia, discrimination and
workplace inequities (Hall, 1989; Trau and Hartel, 2004; Hofmann and Cserer, 2010;
Ozturk, 2011). A second wave sexual orientation research agenda has developed where
LGBT people have increasingly gained rights and recognition in the public sphere,
alongside heterosexuals. This focuses on sexuality as a key dynamic within
organisations and tries to identify effective strategies to ensure the full equality of
sexual minorities at work (Guiffre et al., 2008; Colgan et al., 2009; Bell et al., 2011).
However, we would argue that research on sexuality and sexual orientation still remains
thin on the ground at conferences and in academic and practitioner journals. Our 2009
conference stream and subsequent call for papers for this special edition of Equality,
Diversity and Inclusion was thus prompted by our desire to provide a platform for those
engaging in research in this fast changing and evolving field.
The papers in this special edition focus primarily on sexual orientation and LGBT
issues. The majority of papers we received were submitted on this topic. This is not
surprising given the recent significant advances in a number of countries advances
which have reshaped the legislative landscape in terms of LGBT rights. Wider social
changes have helped engender more progressive attitudes towards LGBT people and
helped promote greater tolerance and acceptance of sexual minorities. Sexual
orientation is thus an issue of growing importance for organisations (Colgan et al.,
2007; Colgan and McKearney, 2011; Bell et al., 2011). It has become an important source
of employee and customer diversity, as people increasingly feel able to self-identify as
lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered in organisations and society. The legislative
and policy framework concerning equality and discrimination on grounds of sexual
orientation has been undergoing a transformation in many parts of the world including
the European Union, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and in parts of
the USA and South America (Elliot and Bonauto, 2005; Waaldijk and Bonini-Baraldi,
2006; Hunt and Eaton, 2007). Where strong legislation protecting the rights of LGBT
people has been introduced, including the right for a legal partnership, attitudes
towards LGBT people have been found to be more positive and inclusive (European
Union Fundamental Rights Agency, 2009).
However, we must not forget that these significant, important and welcome
developments have, thus far, been limited to a relatively small section of the population
in quite specific corners of the globe (Bruce Jones and Paoli Itaborahy, 2011; Kulpa and
Mizielinska, 2011; Ozturk, 2011). For sure, the all-pervasive silence that has surrounded
sexual orientation is slowly ebbing away but as Weeks (1998) reminds us the idea of
sexual citizenship is about enfranchisement, inclusion and belonging. It also:
[. . .] brings to the fore issues and struggles that were silenced in earlier notions of citizenship
[. . .] but are now much debated concerns because of the very powerful cultural and social
changes we see (1998, p. 5).

To coin a political phrase, much has been done but much is yet to do. As Ozturk
(2011) suggests in addition to developing the research agenda on LGBT rights in the
advanced, industrial economies, there is a need to expand the research agenda for
example, to include countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East where scant

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conceptual or empirical research on sexual orientation discrimination has been done.

Pringle and Giddings (2011) have recently called for research making
heteronormativity more visible in organisational processes and everyday workplace
interactions as a crucial step in learning how to transform organisations to be more
inclusive. Furthermore, it cannot be assumed that the reality for LGBT people living
and working in legislatively progressive jurisdictions has been suddenly uniformly
transformed for the better problems still exist. All of the papers in this special edition
identify the still problematic progress towards LGBT equality but they also provide
examples of progress and stress the importance of developing good policy and practice
in equality and diversity within organisations.
In the first paper, How judges decide: lesbian/gay identity and social cognition,
Todd Brower explores American same-sex sexual harassment cases and the sex
discrimination prohibitions within US legislation and illustrates how cognitive schema
models and social cognition theories may be used to explore what informs judges
decisions. The paper explains the term schema, which can be conceptualised as a set
of beliefs about people or situations that guide our interactions with these things.
It argues citing Taylor (1995) and Bem (1993) that one major characteristic of the popular
schema about lesbian and gay people is that they exhibit cross gender or gender
atypical behaviour and so may be considered gender subversive. Brower argues that
this popular lesbian and gay schema and the consequent conflation of sex, gender and
sexual orientation can colour perceptions and behaviour and this has led to confusion in
discrimination law.
This article bridges two different fields of study: judicial decision making and
gender/sexual orientation theory. While much of the literature has traditionally
focused on judicial decision-making, the paper aims to change the focus by providing
an analysis of judicial decision making with a view to establishing how cognitive
schema mechanisms affect legal decisions. It provides an engaging and detailed review
of legal cases in US courts a review which illustrates the influence that schemas exert
on judicial decision-making. This is particularly the case within the American context
as US discrimination law distinguishes between gender and sexuality, the former being
legally prohibited while the latter is not proscribed at national level.
Browers analysis provides an invaluable insight into judicial decision making in
the area of sexuality and gender concluding that the popular lesbian and gay schema
has prevented some judges from interpreting legal doctrine and precedent within its
stated jurisprudential limitations and within consistent doctrinal expectations.
Further it shows that LGB people may as a consequence be denied agency and legal
redress while also effectively illustrating how the law is shaped by and reflects societal
and political biases and controls.
The second paper also takes an American perspective, this time within a corporate
setting. In The faggot clause: the embodiment of homophobia in the corporate locker
room, Michelle Gregory considers the role of sports culture (especially locker room
sports culture) in supporting and feeding hegemonic masculinities and constructing
homophobia in the non-sport work environment. The locker room referred to in
the article is described as a formal or informal male preserve where men socialise
and discuss their professional and personal issues and the research illustrates the
connections between a competitive sports ethos and the construction of a
heteronormative, homophobic and misogynist workplace culture.

Based on the authors experience of working for three of the largest multinational
corporations in the USA from the early 1990s to the early 2000s the paper offers unique
empirical observations of the existence of homophobia and sexism. Her reflective
analysis illustrates that, just as hegemonic male sports locker rooms exclude and
marginalise gay men and women, so too does the locker room culture evident in
many workplaces devalue and demean those perceived as gay men and women. Here,
Gregory makes specific reference to what she calls the fag clause which describes
situations and environments where there is a tacit understanding that allows
employees to feel entitled to state publicly and derogatively that a man is a fag. The
paper considers the use of the term fag within workplace interactions so spotlighting
homophobic attitudes and behaviours particularly in the two work contexts where men
dominated senior organisation positions.
Although the paper acknowledges the steps taken at policy level by US corporate
employers to tackle homophobia in recent years, importantly, it also reflects on the
presence of a hierarchy of equality at work whereby sexual orientation issues may in
practice be dealt with differently from other diversity issues. It asks whether a two-tier
system of diversity management may be endorsed in some organisations and raises
questions about the implications this may have for LGBT equality in the US legal,
political and social context.
The agency of gay men within a heteronormative workplace is the focus of the third
paper written by Simon Roberts Exploring how gay men manage their social identities
in the workplace. The internal/external dimensions of identity. This paper focuses on
how gay men challenge, negotiate and modify the social identities and labels ascribed by
others using what Jenkins (2008) terms the interaction order. The paper begins by
explaining how identity is continually constructed and reconstructed on an ongoing
basis. This identity construction forms the basis of Jenkins; (2008) interaction order
whereby the internal aspect of identity (as presented by the individual) meets with the
external aspect of identity (response of others to that presentation).
The paper also draws upon the concept of marked identities which are identities
that tend to be undervalued by society and could include for example, black,
woman, immigrant or gay (Brekhus, 2003). Thus, within the Interaction order,
Roberts explores the degree to which gay men feel their sexuality is a marked
identity either of their own choosing (internal) or one that has been imposed (external).
His empirical findings are drawn from in-depth interviews with ten gay men working
in a variety of occupations in Bournemouth, England. The paper shows the degree to
which the gay male respondents perceived their (gay) sexuality as a marked identity
and details the various strategies deployed by them in an attempt to downplay or
counteract this marked identity ascribed by others.
Roberts paper provides a unique insight into how gay men modify the management
of their social identities throughout their working lives and the impact this has for them
and for others. It shows that common experiences still included exclusion, stereotyping,
marginalisation or being treated as a piece of curiosity or even something exotic.
Despite more liberal social attitudes and the introduction of anti-discrimination in the
UK (Colgan et al., 2006; Stonewall, 2007), Roberts suggests that much self-management
by his male respondents still takes the form of non-disclosure. However, he also found
encouraging signs that some respondents were willing to challenge the perceptions and
attitudes of others in the workplace through humour and/or adopting an educator role,

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although this was more likely to take place where gay men worked in organisations with
an established LGBT network or a prominent LGBT presence.
In the fourth article of the special issue, A lesbian advantage? Analysing the
intersections of gender, sexuality and class in male- dominated work, Tessa Wright
provides much-needed research on lesbians working in non-traditionally female work
and considers whether lesbians may actually experience an advantage over
heterosexual women in such settings as some writers have argued (Dunne, 1997). To
explore this question, the article presents empirical findings from an analysis of
thirteen in-depth interviews with lesbian workers, eight in transport and five working
in construction. Importantly, these 13 interviews are contextualised within a much
wider study of gender, sexuality and class in the construction and transport sectors,
including interviews with 36 heterosexual women as well as 15 key informants.
As Wright suggests, leaving womens sexual orientation unexplored in studies of
female work has not only overlooked the experience of lesbian and bisexual women,
but failed to investigate how dominant heterosexuality affects the lives of all women.
Her research offers unique insights into the interconnections between gender and
sexuality in work and life choices; the importance of organisation culture in
determining whether lesbians felt comfortable in coming out at work and their
personal accounts of dealing with harassment and organisational responses to it.
The research concludes that it is too simple to argue that there is a lesbian
advantage over heterosexual women in male dominated work. Wright points to other
factors which come into play. By adopting an intersectional approach the research
unmasks the ways in which factors such as ethnicity and class contribute to the
complexity and diversity of lesbian (and bisexual and heterosexual womens) experience
at work. Finally, the paper argues the need to recognise the ways in which these social
divisions are played out within organisational contexts and draws attention to the
positive impact of good organisation policy and practice on sexual orientation in
shaping the realities of working lives for lesbians working in male dominated work
settings.
The final two papers of the special issue thus appropriately turn to a consideration
of organisational equality and diversity policy and practice with respect to sexual
orientation in first the public and then the private sector. Both papers draw on research
done after the introduction of the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation)
Regulations (2003) which outlawed discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in
the United Kingdom for the first time. The fifth paper, Sexual equality and diversity in
UK local councils by Zorlu Senyucel and Steven Phillpott evaluates the impact of
equality and diversity initiatives for lesbian, gay and bisexual employees in a London
local authority based on research completed in 2008. It provides an overview of
the implications for sexual orientation equality of equality/diversity approaches in the
public sector plus recent political initiatives such as the modernization agenda and the
Equality Standard for Local Government (Improvement and Development Agency,
2007). Findings from lesbian, gay and bisexual respondents suggested that despite the
presence of equality policies, LGB employees were disappointed about a perceived lack
of sexual orientation equality in practice.
The research also identified barriers to effective equality and diversity policy
implementation from a managerial point of view. For example, managerial respondents
cited a lack of understanding of the challenges faced by LGB employees as a contributory

factor in their inability to turn policy into practice and address issues of homophobia
within the local authority. Senyucel and Phillpott argue that although managers within
the local authority possessed varying levels of hard knowledge about equality based
on legislation and organisation policy they did not seem to possess the soft knowledge
required to allow them to manage day-to-day issues of sexual orientation with
confidence. Importantly, the paper also suggests solutions to the problems identified.
The authors recommend that the local authority needs to develop a new, more strategic
model of diversity management in order to improve the transfer of equality and diversity
policy into practice. They suggest that this needs to recognise the critical role that line
managers play in managing diversity and incorporate a core organisational role for
diverse staff network groups in developing a climate of greater communication,
promotion and awareness raising of equality in a concerted effort to develop greater
organisational confidence in managing day-to-day equality and diversity issues
including sexual orientation.
In the sixth and final paper of the special issue, Equality, diversity and corporate
social responsibility: sexual orientation and diversity management in the UK private
sector, Fiona Colgan explores the triggers to the development of sexual orientation
diversity policy and practice in five UK private sector organisations based on the
perspectives of those championing sexual orientation diversity work. The paper is
based on analysis of company and trade union web sites and publications plus
22 in-depth key informant interviews including diversity specialists, trade union and
LGBT network group representatives. The research took place between 2004 and 2008.
Although the initial research set out to focus on the UK operation within the case study
companies, it soon became apparent that diversity management approaches in each
company needed to be understood in a global context. This included a consideration of
the country of origin of the company and the historical trajectory of its sexual
orientation diversity management initiatives in the UK. These were relevant in
understanding the development of sexual orientation diversity management work and
its diffusion at specific points in time.
There were differing views amongst those interviewed concerning the triggers to
sexual orientation diversity work. Academic literature in the British context has
sought to explore the implications of a social justice versus a business case-driven
equality and diversity agenda. However, the paper found this dichotomous analysis
could be unhelpful (Kirton and Greene, 2009; Tatli, 2010). Within the private sector case
studies, the difference between the two approaches was not clear-cut and stakeholders
held different points of view. The paper suggests that a corporate social responsibility
agenda seemed to offer a broader vision for sexual orientation diversity work in a
global diversity management context. Corporate social responsibility was identified as
a useful unifying term to cover what seemed at times to be coexisting social justice,
legislative and business case rationales. It hinted at a more activist approach to sexual
orientation diversity work which could take account of international human rights
standards, stakeholder involvement plus links between employee and customer rights
and concerns. Despite the at times daunting barriers which seemed to exist in moving
work forward in this area, it was reassuring to find that for some of those interviewed
sexual orientation diversity work was considered to be an important indicator of a
companys commitment to its corporate social responsibility agenda.

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Overall, we hope this special issue makes an important contribution to the ongoing
study of sexuality and sexual orientation in organisation and the development of
equality and diversity policy and practice. We would like to thank the journal editors
Mustafa Ozbilgin and Regine Bendl for providing us with the opportunity to edit a
special issue in this important and we hope, fast developing field.

630
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About the authors
Professor Fiona Colgan is Director of the Comparative Organisation and Equality Research
Centre (COERC) and a Senior Research Fellow in the Business School at London Metropolitan
University. She has published on a range of topics in the field of equality, diversity and
employment and is currently co-editing a book (with Nick Rumens), Sexual Orientation at Work:
International Issues and Perspectives for the Routledge Studies in Management, Organizations,
and Society Series. Fiona Colgan is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
f.colgan@londonmet.ac.uk
Dr Aidan McKearney is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the Business
School, London Metropolitan University. A member of COERC, his research interests include
equality, diversity and inclusion with a special focus on sexual orientation equality from an
international perspective.

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