Ivana Milojević, Marcia Chen & Sissi Wu
On May 28, 2026, the Women Alliance Group (WAG) convened a workshop in Shanghai on gender partnership and futures thinking, held at Sanofi’s venue with support from its Gender+ employee business resource group. Using Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) (Inayatullah, 2008) – moving through the four layers of litany, system, worldview, and myth/metaphor – this Perspectives article examines how a seemingly simple participation paradox can reveal deeper possibilities for transforming gender partnership in workplace futures. Around twenty participants joined from companies and organisations including PTC, Labcorp, Merck China, Decathlon, Sanofi, Baker Hughes, Schneider Electric, Reckitt, WPP Media, and WAG. The formal question was: how might we build gender partnership in China’s workplaces? The more revealing question emerged almost immediately from the room: if this was a workshop on gender partnership, why were participants only women?
That question could have stayed at the surface. It could have become a familiar complaint about attendance, awareness, or “male engagement.” Instead, guided by futurist and gender scholar Dr. Ivana Milojević, participants used Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) to go deeper. In doing so, the group began to see gender partnership not as a women’s issue to be solved by women, but as a cultural and organisational future that must be co-created by people across genders.
WAG is an inclusion and belonging corporate network in China with 37 member companies covering about 400,000 employees as of May 2026. The event brought together corporate inclusion practitioners, gender-focused employee resource group (ERG) leaders, and professionals from several sectors. The workshop framing drew on Riane Eisler’s distinction between domination and partnership: competition, conquest, hierarchy, and “power over” on one side; connection, collaboration, empathy, nurturing, and “power with” on the other (Eisler, 1987). Gender partnership was defined in the workshop as people across all genders jointly shaping the relational, structural, and cultural conditions in which everyone can fully contribute and thrive.
The workshop account and participant-generated CLA outputs reported below draw on unpublished internal workshop slides and a transcript (Women Alliance Group, 2026). These observations are qualitative reflections generated through the workshop discussions and group exercises rather than findings from a representative survey or quantitative study. Unless otherwise supported by an external source, statements concerning workplace experiences therefore reflect participants’ perceptions and interpretations during the session.
That definition mattered because the room itself revealed a paradox. Many participants were deeply committed to gender equality, but the people present were the people already carrying the work. During the discussion, participants observed that women often contribute “the extra mile” to broader organisational life, including employee groups and inclusion work. Participants also reflected that the way the workshop had been framed may not have invited men to see themselves as necessary contributors, and that men may care about gender issues but feel pressure, uncertainty, or fear when entering a space coded as “for women.”
The discussion surfaced a recurring challenge in organisational change: when a topic becomes strongly associated with an underrepresented group, responsibility for advancing it can also become concentrated within that group. Participants described an exhausting loop in which women advocate for gender equity, attend the events, and undertake much of the associated emotional and relational labour, while the absence of men can then be interpreted as a lack of interest. The workshop used futures methods to interrupt and reframe this loop.
The first tool was the Polak Game, based on Fred Polak’s work on images of the future (Polak, 1973; Hayward & Candy, 2017). Participants positioned themselves along two axes: whether they believed the future of gender equality was bright or bleak, and whether they felt personal agency or were constrained by powerful external forces. The exercise made plurality visible. Some participants were hopeful because of generational change, more women in leadership, and new technological possibilities. Others were cautious or pessimistic, pointing to long histories of male-dominated authority, persistent gender bias, and organisational systems that continue to reward masculine-coded forms of performance.
Overall, the visual distribution of participants during the exercise suggested a tendency towards personal agency and cautious optimism, with many participants positioning themselves in ways that indicated both hope for the future of gender equality and a belief that their own actions could contribute to change. As positions were not formally counted, this should be understood as a qualitative observation rather than a quantified finding.
The value of the exercise was not consensus. It was permission to hold contradictory futures in the same room. Gender equality can be advancing and fragile at the same time. Women can have more opportunities in the workplace and still carry invisible labour. Men can benefit from existing structures and also be harmed by narrow expectations of masculinity. Organisations can have public commitments to inclusion and still operate through performance systems that fail to count care, mentoring, listening, conflict mediation, and community building. All these tensions were surfaced into the open during the Polak Game.
CLA then enabled participants to apply these four layers systematically to the issues emerging from the workshop. Developed by Sohail Inayatullah, the method moves analysis beyond visible problems to examine the systems, worldviews, and deep narratives through which those problems are reproduced (Inayatullah, 2008). The litany is what is visible and measurable: headlines, numbers, complaints, and events. The system asks what structures produce those patterns. The worldview asks what assumptions make those structures seem normal. The metaphor layer asks what deep stories organise how people feel and act before they reason.
The four group outputs gave this method practical texture.
The first group examined women’s leadership pipelines. At the litany level, participants focused on the low proportion of women CEOs in major corporations – reported at 8-9 percent in Liu et al.’s (2022) 2008-2017 sample – and a preferred future of about 30 percent women CEOs by 2035. At the system layer, participants named male-dominated executive selection panels, earlier retirement expectations for women, and persistent pay gaps in the same role. At the worldview layer, they identified gender bias and assumptions that women’s biological and caregiving roles make them less suitable for executive continuity. The metaphor was not fully settled, but participants identified a tension between organisations’ stated commitment to “love talent” and structures they perceived as recognising a narrower, masculine-coded version of talent.
The future implied by this group was not simply more women at the top. It was a redesign of executive pathways so that selection, compensation, succession, and caregiving assumptions no longer quietly drain women from the leadership pool.
Infographic 1 “Bridging the Gap: The Path to 30% Female CEOs”: AI-assisted visualisation generated using ChatGPT from an original workshop chart produced by the authors and participants. See Generative AI Disclosure.
The second group returned to the opening paradox: how can organisations increase men’s participation in gender topics? At the litany layer, participants identified the limited presence of men at gender-focused events such as this workshop. At the system layer, they pointed to invitation lists and event networks where most invitees were already women. At the worldview layer, participants identified an assumption that “gender topics relate to women.” In the Chinese context, participants also named a familiar narrative: “women hold up half the sky.” While historically empowering, the phrase can sometimes be used to imply that gender equality has already been achieved, or that women are already strong enough and should stop asking for more.
At the metaphor layer, the group identified the deeper story: “women are a minority group and need support.” This story is not false. Women remain underrepresented in many senior roles and continue to face bias, care burdens, and unequal recognition. But as a guiding metaphor, “women need support” can unintentionally keep men outside the work. It casts women as the helped and men as helpers, observers, or beneficiaries of change rather than participants in transformation.
The group’s preferred future shifted the metaphor: “everyone needs support.” This does not erase gendered inequality. It expands the invitation.
In the future imagined by participants, men would participate as actively as women; more men would be intentionally included on invitation lists; event language would be more inclusive; activity design would speak to different interests; and organisers would consider what men might need in order to enter the conversation, including recognition, relevance, and a sense of return. In this preferred future, gender partnership would become less about correcting women and more about redesigning workplaces so that a broader range of human capacities could be recognised.
Infographic 2 “How to Increase Men’s Participation in Gender Topics?”: AI-assisted visualisation generated using ChatGPT from an original workshop chart produced by the authors and participants. See Generative AI Disclosure.
The third group focused on invisible work. At the litany layer, participants identified forms of women’s workplace effort that they felt were not always fully recognised, including listening, risk prevention, people skills, emotional support, handover preparation, and the quiet work that keeps teams functioning. At the system layer, they pointed to performance review that privileges outcomes while ignoring process, team maintenance, and social contribution. At the worldview layer, participants identified an assumption that results matter more than process, reinforced by workplace stereotypes participants identified: that men may be permitted greater carelessness while women are expected to be considerate, supportive, and attentive to others. At the metaphor layer, the group expressed the deeper story as women’s effort “won’t be fully seen,” while also questioning whether prevailing performance structures favour traditionally masculine-coded forms of contribution. A transformed future would count relational work as work. Mentoring, knowledge sharing, inclusion labour, risk prevention, and team care could be included in evaluation criteria, leadership expectations, and promotion discussions. Even a small percentage of performance assessment dedicated to mentoring or collaboration would signal that partnership is not decoration; it is part of how the organisation creates value.
Infographic 3 “Women’s Efforts/Work”: AI-assisted visualisation generated using ChatGPT from an original workshop chart produced by the authors and participants. See Generative AI Disclosure.
The fourth group explored voice and authenticity through a public debate over women’s expression in stand-up comedy. At the litany layer, participants focused on the controversy itself and what they perceived as the rapid policing of women’s expression. At the system layer, they identified social and workplace environments that can constrain or discourage women from expressing dissenting or unconventional views. At the worldview layer, participants identified an expectation that women should “act like women” according to established gender norms. At the metaphor layer, they expressed the underlying story bluntly: “women should be silent.”
The group’s preferred future was a culture in which different opinions could be accepted, supported by an open and inclusive environment for all opinions, and a stronger commitment to authenticity, inclusion, and diversity. In this future, women would feel able to speak out, while men would also have greater permission to move beyond restrictive expectations about how men should behave and what they could or could not say.
Infographic 4 “Women’s Voice and Expression”: AI-assisted visualisation generated using ChatGPT from an original workshop chart produced by the authors and participants. See Generative AI Disclosure.
These insights echo earlier futures work on gender equality in the Asia-Pacific region. In a 2022 workshop with gender specialists at the Asian Development Bank, participants used futures methods and CLA to shift metaphors from “walking on one foot” to “walking together,” from “counting women” to “women count,” and from “gender is not bankable” to a “Gender Bank” (Inayatullah et al., 2022). The Shanghai workshop brought a similar logic into the everyday life of corporate workplaces in China. The key was not only to imagine a better future, but to ask what present-day systems, assumptions, and stories would have to change for that future to become plausible.
The workshop also revealed a design challenge for gender partnership work. Women-only spaces can be necessary. As Dr. Milojević noted during the discussion, participants may express views in a women-only room that they might soften in a mixed-gender setting. Such spaces can build trust, confidence, and clarity. But if gender partnership is the desired future, women-only spaces cannot be the only spaces. The task is sequencing: create spaces where women can name their experience honestly, then create bridges where men can enter without defensiveness and without taking over.
Across the four groups, a shared pattern emerged. One group began with representation in top leadership. One began with the absence of men in gender conversations. One began with invisible work. One began with women’s public voice. These are different issues, but the CLA maps converged. Each moved from numbers or incidents into systems of invitation, evaluation, succession, and permission; then into worldviews about who counts as talented, whose work counts as work, who is allowed to speak, and who is expected to care.
The deeper understanding therefore requires moving from representation to transformation. Representation asks: how many women are in the room, in leadership, or on the list? Transformation asks: what kind of room is this? What behaviours are rewarded? What forms of intelligence are recognised? What stories define competence, leadership, care, and power? Representation remains essential, but without transformation it can leave the underlying culture intact.
Taken together, the four CLA exercises revealed a common movement from visible concerns – representation, participation, recognition, and voice – to the organisational systems, cultural assumptions, and deeper narratives that help reproduce them. What began as apparently separate questions about women CEOs, men’s participation, invisible work, and women’s expression therefore converged around a broader question: how might workplaces rethink whose contribution is recognised, who is expected to care, who is permitted to speak, and who shares responsibility for change? This convergence across the four CLA layers and the preferred future is synthesised in Infographic 5.
Infographic 5 “Gender Partnership in China and Beyond”: AI-assisted visualisation generated using ChatGPT from an original workshop chart produced by the authors and participants. See Generative AI Disclosure.
Viewed through Eisler’s (1987) partnership framework, the four CLA exercises suggest that gender partnership involves more than increasing representation: it also requires questioning organisational arrangements and cultural narratives that reproduce “power over,” while strengthening practices of shared responsibility, recognition, and “power with.”
The workshop also pointed towards emerging metaphors and narratives capable of supporting this shift: “everyone needs support,” everyone shares responsibility for partnership, and organisations can learn to see, reward, and hear a fuller range of human contribution. These narratives align with worldviews that value inclusion, diversity, openness, and authenticity and, in turn, could support changes at the system level – for example, in performance reviews, workshop design, and the selection of facilitators and participants. Such systemic changes would make the preferred future of measurable gender partnership more plausible.
This shift is small enough to act on and deep enough to matter. It suggests that the next phase of workplace gender work in China may require more than advocacy alone. It may require better invitations, redesigned metrics, safer dialogues, and new metaphors that make partnership desirable, practical, and shared.
Futures work begins when the present stops being taken for granted. On May 28, the absence of one gender in the room became the opening. The missing men were not simply missing participants; they were a signal from the system. By reading that signal through CLA, the group found both a more generous and more demanding future: not women adapting to the workplace as it is, and not men being shamed into attendance, but organisations learning to practice “power with” at every layer.
In that future, gender partnership is not a side programme. It is a way of redesigning work so that recognised contribution and shared responsibility allow everyone to become more fully human.
References
Eisler, R. (1987). The chalice and the blade: Our history, our future. Harper & Row.
Hayward, P., & Candy, S. (2017). The Polak game, or: Where do you stand? Journal of Futures Studies, 22(2), 5-14. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.2017.22(2).A5
Inayatullah, S. (2008). Six pillars: Futures thinking for transforming. Foresight, 10(1), 4-21. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680810855991
Inayatullah, S., Milojević, I., & Hung, S. (2022). Walking together: Gender equality futures 2042 in the Asia-Pacific region. Journal of Futures Studies, 27(2), 56-60. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.202212_27(2).0006
Liu, H., Liang, Q., & Ling, L. (2022). Underrepresentation of female CEOs in China: The role of culture, market forces, and foreign experience of directors. Research in International Business and Finance, 63, 101793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101793
Milojević, I., & Inayatullah, S. (2015). Narrative foresight. Futures, 73, 151-162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.007
Polak, F. (1973). The image of the future (E. Boulding, Trans.). Elsevier Scientific Publishing.
Women Alliance Group. (2026, May 28). Advancing gender equality; Developing women’s talent: Futures thinking and strategic pathways workshop [Unpublished internal workshop slides and transcript]. Shanghai, China.
- AcknowledgementsThe authors gratefully acknowledge the partners from the WAG member companies who participated in and contributed to the co-creation process underpinning this article. Their engagement, insights and contributions were invaluable to the development of the work presented here. All participants reviewed and confirmed their consent regarding the article content and the use of photographs included in the article.Generative AI Disclosure
Generative AI tools were used in the preparation of this manuscript for limited technical and editorial assistance, including grammar checking and language editing, and for the visual rendering of the authors’ original workshop materials. The infographics 1–5 were generated using ChatGPT, based on summary charts developed by the authors from participant-generated workshop outputs. The prompts instructed the tool to visually represent the content provided by the authors; the underlying findings, CLA analysis, categories, interpretations, and preferred futures originated from the workshop participants and authors rather than from the AI tool. All AI-assisted outputs were reviewed and edited by the authors. Generative AI was not used to generate the research findings, analysis, interpretation, arguments, or conclusions. The authors retained full intellectual control over the manuscript and take responsibility for its content. ↑
