Professions and professionalism from a gendered perspective in the Global North and the Global South

This editorial introduces the special issue by reframing professions as gendered and intersectional sites where professional legitimacy is sought under unequal conditions. Building on the sociology of professions, feminist scholarship, and intersectional theory, it defines professional legitimacy as a relational status granted within specific institutional, organizational, and geopolitical settings. The main argument is that professional legitimacy cannot be understood as the neutral outcome of formal professionalization. Rather, it is shaped by unequal access to legitimating resources, organizational routines that filter professional worth, and individualized trajectories of recognition. Bringing together contributions from different professional fields and socio-geographical contexts, the issue highlights how legitimacy is negotiated through everyday practices, institutional arrangements, and broader power relations. Reading the contributions across the Global North–Global South axis, the editorial shows how gendered and intersectional inequalities affect the terms under which professional claims become credible or remain fragile. In doing so, it outlines an agenda for studying the uneven routes through which work becomes professionally legitimate and socially recognized.