Thinking business, acting queer: Employee/business resource groups and their activist endeavours in Slovakia

Since their inception into the North-American corporate environment in late 1980s and early 1990s, LGBTIQ business or employee resource groups (B/ERGs) have been steadily fostered also across the globe thanks to mimetic isomorphism (Raeburn 2004). Fueled by the ideologies of good business and workplace ethics, B/ERGs dedicated to LGBTIQ employees have demonstrated a variety of activities and purposes, which range from creating support networks for employees, to lobbying management for equal benefits. The engagement of LGBTIQ B/ERGs has been also known to spill over outside of the corporate environment, which is represented in the engagement in charity for civil society actors, marketing to and recruiting LGBTIQ employees or clients/customers, or the desire to be present at Pride parades. Slovak LGBTIQ B/ERGs are not an exception to this. However, looking at the broader social and political context, one must recognize that the mainstreaming of ‘gender ideology’ rhetoric, the disinterest of Slovak political elites in legal protection of same-sex couples or the low levels of social acceptance of LGBTIQ persons in the country, create an interesting positioning for these groups, which are present at diverse, yet still Slovak workplaces. This study scrutinizes the experiences of core activists, members of LGBTIQ B/ERGs working in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, as it puts these collective actions into perspective of modern social movements, as defined by Alberto Melucci (1985). By having conducted semi-structured interviews with the active employees, I wish to focus on their demands, activities and organizing, and thus showcase how they engage in various uses of identity, including the strategic deployment of identity for education (in terms of sameness) and for criticism (in terms of difference) (Bernstein & Olsen 2009). By doing so, I argue that while the resources and strategies of these groups may be sometimes short on lobbying management for change, they need to be recognized as valuable participants of the Slovak LGBTIQ movement, as they successfully challenge the hegemonic discourses of heteronormativity within their own institutional environment. Bernstein, M., & Olsen, K. A. (2009). Identity Deployment and Social Change: Understanding Identity as a Social Movement and Organizational Strategy 1. Sociology Compass, 3(6), 871-883. Melucci, A. (1985). The Symbolic Challenge of Contemporary Movements. Social Research, 52(4), 789–816. Raeburn, N.C. (2004). Changing Corporate America from Inside Out: Lesbian and Gay Workplace Rights. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.