Abstract
Gender injustice remains a persistent concern in organisational life. Within organisations, accounting devices are often introduced to make such injustices visible, comparable, and manageable. Yet, gender injustices persist. Drawing upon feminist theory, this thesis approaches gender injustice as a multidimensional phenomenon shaped by economic, cultural, and political dynamics, often discussed in terms of redistribution, recognition, and representation in the accounting literature.
Building on insights from feminist accounting scholarship, the thesis examines how the dynamics between different barriers to gender justice shape our understanding of what is gender “just”, and how accounting devices are implicated in this process. To understand this phenomenon, the author draws upon a lived experience from a Swedish football club in their efforts to integrate women’s football into a previously men’s football club.
The thesis shows that the organisation’s understanding of gender justice is shaped by ongoing change and rarely unfolds in a predictable way. Accounting devices introduced to support justice may lead to unintended consequences, shifting priorities, and new constraints as they are enacted. By following these processes over time, the thesis demonstrates how accounting is involved in what the author calls the unfolding of justice: how meanings of gender justice shift, how organisational actors experiment with different initiatives, and how women learn to live with limits.