Women’s refusal of racial patriarchy in South African academia
Autor/in:
Raymond, Zaakira; Canham, Hugo
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2022) , S 1–18
Inhalt: This paper explores the career experiences of women academics at three South African universities. To understand the experiences of women academics, we conducted an intersectional interrogation of the politics and practices of belonging in departmental cultures. The sample consisted of thirty women academics whose interviews were analysed through a discursive thematic frame. We found that while all participants experienced gender-based discrimination which hinders academic progression, the barriers experienced by black women academics are compounded by the intersections of race, gender, and motherhood. Patriarchal and racist institutional, disciplinary and departmental cultures served as further challenges to belonging. On the other hand, through counter storytelling and refusal, women created alternative spaces of sociality where suffering co-exists with pleasure, refusal and survival. Ultimately, the paper suggests refusal as a generative theoretical lens to surface the complexity of women academics.
Gendering excellence through research productivity indicators
Autor/in:
Nygaard, Lynn P.; Piro, Fredrik N.; Aksnes, Dag W.
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2022) , S 1–15
Inhalt: As the importance of ‘excellence’ increases in higher education, so too does the importance of indicators to measure research productivity. We examine how such indicators might disproportionately benefit men by analysing extent to which the separate components of the Norwegian Publication Indicator (NPI), a bibliometric model used to distribute performance-based funding to research institutions, might amplify existing gender gaps in productivity. Drawing from Norwegian bibliometric data for 43,500 individuals, we find that each element of the indicator (weighting based on publication type, publication channel, and international collaboration, as well as fractionalization of co-authorship) has a small, but cumulative effect resulting in women on average receiving 10 per cent fewer publication points than men per publication. In other words, we see a gender gap that is not only caused by a difference in the level of production but is also amplified by the value ascribed to each publication.
Student violence towards teaching assistants in UK schools: a case of gender-based violence
Autor/in:
Holt, Amanda; Birchall, Jenny
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2022) , S 1–16
Inhalt: In recent years significant research attention has focused on the problem of student violence in schools and, to a lesser extent, on its relationship to gender-based violence. However, student violence towards teaching assistants has not been studied, despite evidence suggesting that teaching assistants are at significantly more risk from student violence than other staff members. In this article, we draw on data from 16 in-depth interviews with teaching assistants who have experienced student violence. We conclude that violence towards teaching assistants is ignored, in both research and in schools, precisely because of the feminized and under-valued nature of the role, and argue that the continual victimization of teaching assistants diminishes their status further. We highlight its parallels with gender-based violence and argue that applying such a framework is key to recognizing the personal and social harms that this violence causes and the organizational responses that leaves teaching assistants particularly vulnerable.
University, neoliberalism and hegemonic bodies: narratives of international students in Chile
Autor/in:
Martinez, César Augusto Ferrari
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2022) , S 1–15
Inhalt: This article investigates the production of neoliberal subjectivities in Latin American international students in Chilean universities. In last years, Chile have registered plenty political uprisings regarding its economic, social and gender inequalities. The premise is that Chile is a country where Neoliberalism is rooted not only in the form of political and economic guidelines, but as rationality. It proposes that these forms of thought-action reinforce typically male success stereotypes, dismissing bodies challenged of non-hegemonic paths. Narrative interviews with doctoral students in Chile are used to describe how the topic of academic excellence sustained by the Chilean neoliberal university market materializes differently in each body. Students report the interpellation of success discourses affecting their bodies and relating their nationhood, gender and sexualities experiences to feelings of diminishment, loneliness, discrimination, etc. I argue that the presence of neoliberal rationalities in the Chilean university favours the exercise of sexist practices, naturalized as market practices, and impose normative adjustments on the gender and sexuality performance of students.
Inhalt: This article examines the significance of neoliberalism in re/shaping the gendered timescapes of higher education in Ghana through its intersection with patriarchal forces. It draws from a project aiming to create non-hierarchical, co-mentoring spaces in which participants collaboratively generate feminist analyses. Letter-writing was identified as a form of feminist praxis and an auto/biographical method to access the multidimensional inequalities women navigated in their careers. Opening counter-hegemonic time–space and providing feminist conceptual resources, the women explored their aspirations, experiences, and subjectivities. In Ghana, women are attempting to balance the accelerated temporalities of neoliberal higher education, as productive subjects, with the explicit demands of patriarchy, which construct them primarily in reproductive terms as wives and mothers. Our collective reflections illustrate that intersecting forces are at play that impact women’s higher education careers in unpredictable and contradictory ways.
Beyond the neoliberalized academy: caring and careful practices of women full professors
Autor/in:
Castelao-Huerta, Isaura
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2022) , S 1–16
Inhalt: This article reveals how some women full professors have developed caring and careful practices with their students despite the neoliberalization of public higher education, thus, avoiding individualization and establishing trust and solidarity. It presents interviews with 24 women full professors from a Colombian public university, an ethnographic study with three of them and nineteen interviews with their students and colleagues. The content analysis of the fieldwork shows that the professors have caring practices, which include rebuscarse to ensure the well-being of the students and providing financial support, as well as careful practices such as intervening to prevent harm and being open to listening. Caring and careful practices of the professors serve to improve the lives of the people that are close to them and to build a much friendlier and more supportive university. However, care activities are complex, undervalued and represent a double burden, which is why modifying university policies is an urgent task.
Schlagwörter:academia; academic care; Care; Ethnographie; higher education; Kolumbien; Latin America; neoliberal university; professor care; Professorin; Solidarität
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Un/making academia: gendered precarities and personal lives in universities
Autor/in:
McKenzie, Lara
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2021) , S 1–18
Inhalt: Recent scholarship on universities explores how academics’ families and partners restrict their careers and how academic labour limits these relationships, both in highly gendered ways. Such research less often considers how people’s close relations might unevenly support them in continuously relocating; dedicating unpaid time to ‘career development’; or taking on or influencing them to remain in short-term, poorly paid precarious roles. This paper explores precariously employed post-PhDs in Australia, investigating their gendered careers and personal lives. Drawing on interviews at three public universities, it shows how women with children and partners in particular raise concerns over how their relationships and work interact. Here, certain kinds of workers – men and single women, unencumbered by family responsibilities and restrictions on travel, and with access to financial resources – appear better able to navigate moves to more secure work. This paper argues that support from close relations is productive and restrictive for precarious academics’ careers.
When faith intersects with gender: the challenges and successes in the experiences of Muslim women academics
Autor/in:
Ramadan, Ibtihal
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2021) , S 1–16
Inhalt: This paper explores the experiences of eight Muslim women academics (MWA) within a range of sciences and humanities disciplines. The data draws from my doctoral study which examined the experiences of men and women Muslim academics at UK universities. Findings from in-depth interviews with participants highlight the intersectionality of religio-gendered identities as central to their experiences. Being hijabed in academia triggered gendered-Islamophobic micro-aggressions, whose potential impact on the participants was buffered by their resilience, positive outlook, and belief. Further, they capitalized on their visible faith to demystify negative perceptions about Muslims and to advance their career-through utilizing the diversity logic within academia, while recognizing its tokenistic nature. Despite facing challenges, the participants share certain qualities that facilitate success, with agency being the uppermost quality.
Schlagwörter:academics; akademische Karriere; Großbritannien; Intersektionalität; Islam; microaggressions; Muslim; muslim woman; Rassismus; UK
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Diversity, Europa und Internationales, Geschlechterverhältnis
Inhalt: In this paper, we examine the experiences of female students and academics to understand the factors that underpin the persistence of sexual harassment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) institutions. We draw on data from interviews and focus group discussions with female students and academics who participated in a study that focuses on gender inequality in science and technology universities in Ethiopia. Drawing on the concept of institutional betrayal, we argue that the high prevalence of sexual harassment in these universities is perpetuated by institutional actions and inactions through which universities fail to proactively prevent and effectively respond to sexual harassment. We suggest efforts to tackle sexual harassment need to focus on proactive and preventive measures that involve revisiting institutional policies and structures. We further suggest that grievance procedures need to be accessible, responsive, trustworthy and supportive.
Gender equality as a resource and a dilemma: interpretative repertoires in engineering education in Sweden
Autor/in:
Silfver, Eva; Gonsalves, Allison J.; Danielsson, Anna T.; Berge, Maria
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2021) , S 1–17
Inhalt: This article explores how female university students’ abilities to present themselves as ‘authentic’ engineers are imbricated with discursive constructions of gender and gender equality. The empirical data comes from interviews and video diaries collected with three female engineering students. The analysis demonstrates the power of the Swedish gender equality discourse to inform the students’ talk as they negotiate their gendered identities to become intelligible as engineering students and engineers. We suggest that gender equality is used as a resource in the repertoires, but we also demonstrate that this discourse becomes a dilemma in that it limits possibilities for gender performances to go beyond old patterns. Despite this, the article still shows three unique ways of negotiating gender and other social categories in different situations connected to university learning and participation in internships.
Schlagwörter:discourse; Diskurs; engineering; Gleichstellungspolitik; Identität; Identitätsbildung; Ingenieurwissenschaft; Schweden; Studentin; Sweden
CEWS Kategorie:Naturwissenschaft und Technik, Studium und Studierende