Call for Papers / Workshop

Beyond the Gender Blind Spot: Intersectional Feminist and Gendered Perspectives to Business and Human Rights

Research Workshop 12-13 November 2026 · in Nürnberg/Erlangen Hosted by FAU CHREN, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and European University Viadrina Abstract

Submission deadline: 5 July 2026

 Concept Note

Almost fifteen years after the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), corporate accountability frameworks still often overlook gendered and especially intersectional harms. Current due diligence approaches tend to focus on formal employment risks, while paying less attention to harms that disproportionately affect women, girls, queer, and gender-diverse persons and especially their intersections, including informal and reproductive labour, land dispossession, environmental violence, sexual and gender-based violence, and the weakening of community and care infrastructures.

These gaps cannot be solved simply by adding a “gender lens” to existing due diligence tools. They reflect deeper structural problems in how corporate harm and responsibility are understood. Although the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights has called for a gender-transformative approach to the UNGPs, implementation remains limited, and feminist BHR scholarship is still fragmented across disciplines.

This workshop therefore asks how Business and Human Rights framework can be reimagined through feminist, intersectional, decolonial, and Global South perspectives. It takes place at a key moment, as diverse developments across the world, inter alia, the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG), the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the EU Forced Labour Regulation, the EU AI Act, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, proposed due diligence laws in South Korea and Thailand, as well as UN Binding Treaty negotiations are shaping the future of corporate accountability.

The workshop aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from law, social sciences, political economy, sustainability research, gender studies, information systems, and management studies to contribute to the foundations of an intersectional feminist BHR research agenda.

 Thematic Strands

We welcome papers addressing one or more of the following themes, but not limited to:

• Intersectional feminist critiques of HRDD laws, including the LkSG, CSDDD, and related frameworks, including BHR frameworks outside of Europe
• Gendered harms in extractive industries, agribusiness, and global value chains
• Social reproduction, care work, and corporate value creation
• Gender, climate change, and corporate environmental responsibility
• (Harmful) algorithmic decision-making, (feminist) artificial intelligence, platform labour, and gendered and intersectional digital harms
• Access to remedy for marginalised rights-holders, judicial and non-judicial enforcement, and feminist legal mobilization
• Decolonial, Third World, and Global South perspectives on gender and corporate accountability

Papers that connect several strands or offer interdisciplinary perspectives are especially welcome.

Format

The workshop is a closed, non-hierarchical space for discussing works-in-progress in facilitated sessions rather than formal panels. Papers will be pre-circulated, and each will be assigned a discussant. The workshop will also include a public evening keynote and roundtable, open to the FAU community, partner institutions, and the wider FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg public.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit:

• an abstract of up to 500 words, in English, outlining the main argument, methodology, key prior research, and contribution to the workshop theme;
• a short biography of up to 150 words, including institutional affiliation (if applicable), career stage, and research focus.

Please submit the above to this Google Form.

Deadline: 5 July 2026

Notification of acceptance: 25 July 2026

Full draft papers: 6,000-8,000 words, due by 10 October 2026.

Envisioned maximum of participants: 10 to 15.

 Eligibility

We welcome submissions particularly from early-career researchers, including doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers within five years of their PhD award. Contributions may come from law, political science, sociology, anthropology, political economy, sustainability research, gender studies, information systems, business and management studies, or related fields.

 Funding and Travel Support

There is no participation fee. Accommodation for up to three nights will be provided for all participants. A limited number of travel grants may also be available, subject to funding confirmation, with priority given to early-career researchers, scholars without institutional travel budgets, and participants from the Global South.

This event is funded by state funds of the Free State of Bavaria to support “Realisation of Equal Opportunities for Women in Research and Teaching” by the FAU Cluster of Excellence “Transformin Human Rights” and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) project “Beyond access – the potential of non-judicial grievance mechanisms to improve effective remedy for vulnerable groups in the field of Business and Human Rights”.

Please direct all queries to: otgontuya.davaanyam@fau.de