While organizational scholars increasingly acknowledge how fields shape gender regimes, understanding the ways that organizations navigate different levels of gender institutionalization across fields has yet to be fully explored, particularly as it relates to sustainability. This study examines how field-level gender dynamics manifest in organizational practice when organizations operate across fields with contrasting approaches to gender. Drawing on four years of ethnographic fieldwork in an environmental peacebuilding organization, this study shows how field-level gender institutionalization profoundly shapes organizational gender regimes. In the peacebuilding domain, where gender mainstreaming is institutionally embedded, the organization successfully implements gender-inclusive practices. In contrast, the environmental domain’s lack of institutionalized gender frameworks constrains similar efforts, prioritizing technical approaches that marginalize alternative, more community-centered perspectives. Simultaneously, organizational-institutional entrepreneurs attempt to bridge the contrasting gender regimes through hybrid initiatives, translating gender-inclusive practices across domains, creating organizational ecotones--spaces where different gender regimes meet and interact. However, in the absence of organizational and institutional support, their success remains limited. These findings reveal an important ‘road not taken’ in sustainability: the potential for more comprehensive approaches that emerge when gender-inclusive practices are translated into environmental work. This suggests that advancing effective sustainability solutions requires a fundamental reconsideration of how environmental organizations value different types of knowledge and expertise.
