Screwing diversity out of the workers? Reading diversity

“Managing diversity” has emerged as a new and contested vocabulary for addressing issues of difference in organisations. This paper uses a New Zealand case study to exemplify a feminist post‐structuralist reading of managing diversity. The paper argues that a feminist post‐structuralist approach not only addresses feminist theoretical debates about identity, equality and difference, but also opens up new opportunities for practitioners in managing diversity and equal employment opportunities (EEO) to reflect on their own organisational change practice. The paper presents three readings of managing diversity: a discourse of exploitation which provides oppositional readings of managing diversity as a form of human resource management; a discourse of difference, drawing on refusals of managing diversity in accounts from minority group perspectives; and a discourse of equality where EEO practitioners have questioned managing diversity in the context of EEO.