As a panel participant of the Gender roundtable that took place at the International Association for Critical Realism (IACR) conference on Friday August 2nd 2024 at the University of Warwick, I understood this event as a critical moment in the trajectory of CR gender and feminism studies. I document the presentations and something of the discussion that followed, and set out my commitment to continued generative dialogue in the face of potentially divisive philosophical differences.

As I have written elsewhere with colleagues, gender studies and feminism finds itself in crisis over a series of debates that to some may seem unresolvable. The casual efficacy and continued relevance of the body and materiality is something that critical realists bring as a challenge to discourse-centric poststructuralist feminism. Our panel brought this topic to the fore from different angles: Steph Grohmann discussing how gender, once considered emergent from sex, seems to have in late stage capitalism become its progenitor, Caroline New reaffirming both the centrality of sexual dimorphism and the fluidity of gender, while noting the challenges of generating meaningful listening and discourse between radical feminists and trans activists, Ngozi Cadmus exploring the potential for distributed corporate agency of Black women in C-Suite executive positions, and Michiel Van Ingen introducing scholarship on social reproduction theory and masculinities to CR debates. For my part, I applied the CR depth ontology and the structure-agency-culture model to intersectional organisational inequality regimes. I was grateful to the audience for introducing additional relevant theory and concepts, as well as suggestions of inclusive practice, to further stretch our thinking.

Importantly, our panel was one of the most racially and gender diverse panels of the conference. This was by design, an intentional choice which was achieved by facilitating the participation of panellists focusing on intersectionality, and including an early career researcher. I agreed with one of the audience members that inclusive panels are achievable with care and effort. As a result of what took place both at our panel and during the AGM earlier in the conference, wherein women early career researchers highlighted the exclusivity of all-male panels and the lack of action since these issues were raised the year prior, I suggest that the IACR organisers have a strong responsibility to improve attendees’ experiences by standardising and exercising inclusive practices. That this was a subject of discussion that emerged in response to our panel happened because there were few other places to raise it. I hope IACR leverages the expertise, positive comments and collaborative energy that was shared in the discussion to form a regular means by which inclusivity can be improved.

Central to the debates in our panel was the issue of gender ontology, and how theorising about contemporary topics of sex and gender such as those regarding trans, intersex and nonbinary issues affects real people, and members of our communities. What I tried to make clear in my contributions to the discussion was that while we are indeed all affected by these concerns, we are affected in different ways and to different degrees.

Positionality matters, and our philosophical undertakings have real world implications. In that spirit, while I acknowledge that we may not agree with each other’s stances on sex and gender, and that we may not be able to bridge our ontological positions, we can commit to building an ethical bridge where we aim to reduce harm and violence that occurs as a result of people’s beliefs and behaviour around gender, and to centre those at most risk, while not ignoring effects on others.