Pooja Khatija

Although often denied or unnoticed, anti-fat bias exists in society and organizations. To battle anti-fat bias, educators must proactively address it in management education. Despite clear evidence of negative outcomes from stigma and stereotypes experienced by fat individuals, interventions remain limited. This experiential exercise uses role-play to challenge students’ explicit and implicit anti-fat biases, suitable for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education settings. Despite evidence of negative outcomes of the stigma and stereotypes experienced by fat persons, there has been little and nascent work done to disrupt the bias and reduce it. Our roles as management educators provide the opportunity to expand the notion of who deserves social justice and what it means to support body size equity. In this exercise, we present an experiential learning experience using role-play that educators can use to interrupt students’, undergraduate and graduate, explicit and implicit anti-fat biases.

This chapter provides an overview of select theories from the organizational and management sciences that inform women in leadership research. These theories are categorized by level - individual (micro) level, interpersonal (meso) level, and organizational (macro) - to look at the various leadership research focused on women that has been conducted at each level of analysis. Further, potential research questions that may advance extant understanding of women and leadership from the perspective of each theory are provided. The authors encourage future researchers working on women in leadership topics to continue to draw extensively on the organizational and management science theories discussed in this chapter. The multilevel approach offered by these theories can help address barriers to and opportunities for women and leadership at all levels in efforts to advance knowledge and practice leading to lasting change.

This symposium showcases a set of four papers that adopt innovative approaches to uncover the inherent biases in describing and assessing women and racial minority leaders. The perspectives that th...