Untangling hope labour from care labour: LGBT+ people navigating equality, diversity and inclusion work in higher education.
This article reports on the 'Whose Rainbow?' project, exploring LGBT+ staff and students' conflicted relationships to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) work in UK Higher Education (HE). Drawing on interview data, we illustrate the expectation on LGBT+ people to 'embody diversity' within HE, an...
| Published in: | Journal of Gender Studies Vol. 35; no. 4; pp. 946 - 967 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
May2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=193123910&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 193123910 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09589236 JGS jtl: Journal of Gender Studies issn: 09589236 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2026 vid: 35 iid: 4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 193123910 10.1080/09589236.2025.2517343 ppf: 946 ppct: 21 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T db: hlh ui: 193123910 – @attributes: type: P db: hlh ui: 193123910 tig: atl: Untangling hope labour from care labour: LGBT+ people navigating equality, diversity and inclusion work in higher education. aug: au: Slater, Tig Simms, Drew Formby, Eleanor affil: Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK su: LGBTQ+ people Higher education Labor unions Emotional labor Institutional theory (Sociology) Minorities Diversity & inclusion policies sug: subj: LGBTQ+ people Higher education Labor unions Emotional labor Institutional theory (Sociology) Minorities Labor Unions and Similar Labor Organizations Diversity & inclusion policies keyword: Academia Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) LGBT student transgender university Academia Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) LGBT student transgender university ab: This article reports on the 'Whose Rainbow?' project, exploring LGBT+ staff and students' conflicted relationships to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) work in UK Higher Education (HE). Drawing on interview data, we illustrate the expectation on LGBT+ people to 'embody diversity' within HE, and the labour that comes with such expectation. Whilst most participants undertook some EDI work, they were aware of their own potential exploitation, and the limits of the work itself. Yet, participants felt a responsibility to make change for other LGBT+ people, particularly those with less institutional power. We theorize this conflict through the concepts of hope labour and care labour. Whilst hope labour is usually used to think about (exploitative) voluntary work done in the hope of secure(r) employment, we argue that it can be productively used to think about marginalized people's relationships to EDI work. We conceptualize care labour, however, as a more radical act involving collective efforts to redistribute power. We show that whilst most participants were striving towards care labour, this was hard to disentangle from institutionally demanded hope labour. Nevertheless, we highlight glimmers of care: through trade unions, informal networks, acts of defacement and radical reimaginings of universities. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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