LGBTQ Young Adults’ Attitudes Toward Workplace Antidiscrimination Policies: A Cross-National Analysis Between the USA and Japan
Autor/in:
Ueno, Koji; Ritter, Lacey J.; Kane, Melinda D.; Bastow, Skyler; Dominguez, Rachael; D’Amours, Jason V.
Quelle: Sex Res Soc Policy (Sexuality Research and Social Policy), 21 (2024) 1, S 177–192
Inhalt: Previous US studies showed that LGBTQ workers played a key role in persuading their employers to include LGBTQ workers as a protected category in antidiscrimination policies. These studies tended to assume that LGBTQ workers are generally supportive of the policy change, but the assumption has not been directly examined. Further, the assumption may be unrealistic for countries where LGBTQ worker activism is uncommon. To address these gaps in the literature, this study investigates how national contexts shape LGBTQ workers’ attitudes toward antidiscrimination policies by comparing the USA and Japan. The study analyzes data from in-depth interviews with LGBTQ young adult workers. The data were collected in the USA between 2011 and 2020 (n = 27) and in Japan between 2018 and 2022 (n = 29). The analysis reveals that US LGBTQ workers strongly support antidiscrimination policies by expressing a sense of collective identity as LGBTQ people and their trust in formal rules. In contrast, Japanese LGBTQ workers question the necessity and effectiveness of antidiscrimination policies by interpreting policy implementation as employers’ PR performance and by underscoring their need to develop interpersonal trust with colleagues while staying closeted. US and Japanese workers’ contrasting views on antidiscrimination policies reflect national differences in how LGBTQ people experience and cope with social marginalization in each country. We make policy recommendations as to how employers and governments in the USA and Japan can support LGBTQ workers while addressing limitations of antidiscrimination policies that LGBTQ workers perceive in each country.
Steps towards the Integration of the Gender and Sex Dimension in R&I: The Case of a Public University
Autor/in:
Jordão, Carina; Diogo, Sara
Quelle: Education Sciences, 13 (2023) 1, 35 S
Inhalt: Gender equality has been placed at the centre of European research policy recently. The inclusion of gender and sex considerations into research and innovation (R&I) is an essential factor for scientific excellence and a key requirement for producing knowledge that can benefit society as a whole. However, the adoption of a gender/sex dimension is still a problematic issue in several Research Performance Organisations (RPOs) of European Union (EU) countries. Through the experience of implementing a gender equality plan (GEP) within the scope of a Horizon 2020 (H2020) project at a public Portuguese university (PPU), this study aims to explore the EU policies’ impact on the integration of the gender dimension in research, considering both institutional policies and scientific outputs. To achieve the purpose of the study, a mixed approach that combines a qualitative analysis of institutional documents and data collected through interviews with a quantitative analysis of secondary data is used. The implementation of the H2020 project brought the issue of gender inequality to the institutional agenda of the PPU under study and the formalisation of the GEP marked a transition point towards an integrated and intersectional approach that embraces gender dimension concerns in R&I. This transition coincided with a period characterised by an increase in the scientific outputs incorporating the ‘gender/sex dimension’, which may highlight the importance of European policies in stimulating and accelerating the introduction of the gender dimension in scientific practices in RPOs.
Schlagwörter:bibliometric analysis; gender equality plan; Gender in research; Horizon 2020 project; Portugal; research; research performing organisation; transformative change
Unlocking the Power of Mentoring : A Comprehensive Guide to Evaluating the Impact of STEM Mentorship Programs for Women
Autor/in:
Wolf, Elke; Brenning, Stefanie
Quelle: Soc. Sci. (Social Sciences), 12 (2023) 9
Inhalt: Although mentoring programs for female STEM students are often carried out with a great deal of passion on the part of program managers and mentors, robust results on their effects are often missing. However, regular evaluations are indispensable for an efficient allocation of resources towards gender balances in STEM. To accomplish this requirement, empirically valid and easy-to-use evaluation concepts are needed. We therefore develop an evaluation concept which corresponds to a Logic Chart, capturing three levels of expected effects (output—outcome—impact). On each level of impact, we derive a set of success indicators that can be measured by qualitative methods. A major advantage of our evaluation design is that the effect of a mentoring program can be observed directly after the end of the program. Furthermore, the results provide information about different channels of impact (e.g., reduced stereotypes or increased self-efficacy) and hence offer concrete indications for the further development of the program.
Faculty allyship: Differences by gender, race, and rank at a single U.S. University
Autor/in:
Ro, Hyun Kyoung; Campbell‐Jacobs, Blaze; Broido, Ellen M.; Hanasono, Lisa K.; O’Neil, Deborah A.; Yacobucci, Margaret M.; Root, Karen V.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: Within the growing literature about allyship in the workplace, few studies have specifically addressed faculty allyship for faculty colleagues. Previous studies on faculty allyship for inclusive academic environments address only men's contributions as allies. Using an expansive definition of faculty allyship and including any faculty members with membership in at least one dominant social group, we sought to better understand how faculty members perceive allyship, their concerns about allyship, and how those perceptions vary by gender, race, and rank. We examined the responses of faculty who participated in an allyship training program that was offered at a university in Ohio, USA as part of a National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant intended to reduce gender inequity among science, technology, engineering, and mathematics faculty. We framed this study by employing Hardiman et al.'s (2007) three-dimensional matrix of oppression and used a mixed-method research design. Participants' primary concerns about engaging in allyship related to their academic rank. We offer several implications for policies, practices, and future research on faculty allyship for faculty colleagues by considering positional power and rank as well as race and gender.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: In response to persistent systemic gendered and racial exclusions in the sciences, unconscious or implicit bias training is now widely established as an organizational intervention in Higher Education (HE). Recent systematic reviews have considered the efficacy of unconscious bias training (UBT) but not the wider characteristics and effects of the interventions themselves. Guided by feminist scholarship in critical psychology and post-structuralist discourse theory, this article critically examines UBT across STEMM and in HE institutions with a discursive analysis of published studies. Drawn from systematic searches in 4 databases, we identify three types of UBT reported in 22 studies with considerable variation in intervention types, target groups, and evaluation methods. Guided by limited cognitive problematizations of unconscious bias as a problem located inside individual minds, interventions follow established patterns in neoliberal governmentality and make available specific feeling rules and subject positions. These current Equality, Diversity & Inclusion practices present a new technology of power through which organizations may regulate affect and behavior but leave structural inequalities and barriers to inclusion intact.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: The article illuminates how gender inequality in Ireland's higher education sector continues to be constituted at policy and at local institutional levels as a problem that requires ‘fixing the women”. It analyses two gender equality projects' discursive materials targeting female academics in Irish universities, showing that while these projects embrace elements of feminist praxis and critique, they ultimately propagate “cruel optimism”. They do this by exhorting women academics' subjectification to burdensome practices of strategizing, self-auditing and self-promotion, lured by the promise of awards that only a few will attain. Presented are two cases of what we call “promising promotional projects” that we have encountered in our work in our university. We use the term “projects” to refer to time-limited, bounded interventions that respond to “gender equality” as a field of government, where problems have been diagnosed and where practicable and pragmatic solutions are seen to be required. Our discursive-deconstructive reading of these projects' discursive materials highlights how gender equality projects target women for “promotion” through mobilizing gendered technologies of the self.
Intersectional barriers to women’s advancement in higher education institutions rewarded for their gender equity plans
Autor/in:
Crimmins, Gail; Casey, Sarah; Tsouroufli, Maria
Quelle: Gender & Education, (2023) , S 1–18
Inhalt: This paper reports on a research project designed to understand the work experiences and career opportunities of people working in higher education institutions (HEIs) across the UK, which received formal recognition for supporting gender equity between 2015 and 2020. The findings reveal multiple intersecting barriers to women’s full engagement, inclusion, support and career success in higher education, despite the implementation of organization-based gender equity plans, and institutional inter/national recognition for advancing equity. Most axes of de/privilege that are based along lines of gender, race, ethnicity and religion are enacted as everyday sexism that resist gender equality policy. Moreover, our findings suggest that ‘place’ is a constitutive element of intersectional dis/advantage, not merely a context within which compounded barriers to inclusion and advancement may exist. In addition, the findings demonstrate that whilst inter-categorical intersectionality is based on the notion that all social categories (such as age, race and gender) are equally salient, the degree of importance of any category will likely depend on location or context of the phenomena being examined. Our findings therefore invite further, iterative and translocational research into the impacts of the intersections of gender, ethnicity, race and religion in spaces of higher education, particularly those with colonial legacies and presence.
Schlagwörter:Athena SWAN; career development; gender equality plan; gender equality policy; Gleichstellungsplan; Gleichstellungspolitik; Great Britain; higher education; Hochschule; intersectionality; microaggression; Organisation; sexism; spatial analysis; UK
Shaped by resistance: Discursive politics in gender equality work
Autor/in:
Stierncreutz, Micaela; Tienari, Janne
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023) 30, S 1178–1198
Inhalt: While existing research offers an understanding of the antecedents, forms, and consequences of resistance to gender equality work in organizations, studies primarily regard resistance as a challenge to be overcome or as something that can at times be beneficial for change. In this paper, we argue that resistance shapes gender equality work. We focus on covert forms of resistance and give voice to experts in Finland and Sweden who work for gender equality in organizations. Analyzing the discursive politics involved in (de)legitimizing and (de)politicizing equality work, we elucidate how experts deal with resistance by shaping the meaning of equality and working for it. Our findings suggest that covert resistance undermines the quest for gender equality by molding the conditions for how equality work can be done, thus influencing what it can achieve in organizations and in society.
Is gendered power irrelevant in higher educational institutions? : Understanding the persistence of gender inequality
Autor/in:
O’Connor, Pat
Quelle: Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 48 (2023) 4, S 669–686
Inhalt: For the past 30 years, many researchers have highlighted the gendering of higher educational institutions. However, many organizations in the broadly defined Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) area in the EU have varying degrees of interest, or academic staff available, in the gender equality area with many being largely unaware of this literature. This article draws provocatively on existing concepts to ‘make sense’ of the persistence of gender inequality. Such concepts include gendered organizational power, which is frequently taken-for-granted and is reflected at structural and cultural levels. The concept of legitimating discourses (including excellence, choice, women’s ‘nature’ and organizational gender neutrality) helps to explain why gender inequality is not perceived. Other manifestations of institutional resistance to gender inequality provide insights into why it is not tackled effectively. The article recognizes that gendered change does occur and uses the metaphor of bonsai-ing to highlight attempts to limit the impact of such changes. Finally, it identifies some key issues that need to be tackled.
