‘Mentoring and sponsorship in Higher Educational institutions : Men’s invisible advantage in STEM’?
Autor/in:
O’Connor, Pat; O'Hagan, Angela; Myers, Eva Sophie
Quelle: Higher Education Research and Development, 39 (2019) 4, S 1–14
Inhalt: This article is concerned with the source of men’s invisible advantage in the male dominated disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It is suggested that this advantage has been obscured by combining sponsorship and mentoring. The research asks: Are men or women most likely to be mentored? Is it possible to distinguish between mentoring and sponsorship? Is there gender variation in either or both of these depending on the source – whether from the academic supervisor, line manager or other senior academics. This qualitative study draws on interview data from 106 respondents (57 men and 48 women) at junior, middle and senior levels, in four universities: one each in Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland and Turkey. It shows that both men and women received mentoring from their PhD supervisor, albeit with slightly different reported nuances. Men were more likely than women to receive sponsorship in that relationship. Both men and women received sponsorship from the Head of Department, whose wider responsibilities may have reduced homophily. Men were more likely than women to receive sponsorship and mentoring from senior men, with most women indicating a lack of access to such senior academics. By distinguishing between mentoring and sponsorship, this article contributes to our understanding of the way male dominance in STEM is perpetuated and suggests the source of men’s invisible advantage in STEM.
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 46 (2019) 2, 411 S
Inhalt: Despite increasing geographic mobility among academic staff, gendered patterns of involvement in academic mobility have largely escaped scrutiny. Positioned within literatures on internationalization, physical proximity, gender and parenthood in academic mobility and understandings of gender as a process enacted through both discursive and embodied practices, we use discourse analysis based on interviews with academics in New Zealand to examine differences in language that create differing realities with regards to gender and obligations of care in academic mobility decisions. The findings reveal how academic mobility is discursively formulated as ‘essential’ to successful academic careers, with the need for frequent travel justified despite advances in virtual communication technologies. Heteronormative discourses are shown to disrupt and fragment the opportunities female academics have to engage in academic mobility. However, we also uncover ways in which these discourses are resisted, wherein fathers articulate emotional strain associated with academic mobility. The article shows how discourse works to constitute the essentialization of academic mobility, and the uneven gendered practices associated with it, whilst also giving voice to gender inequities in academic mobility from the southern hemisphere.
Inhalt: With the climate crisis as backdrop, university employees have demanded a reduction in air travel. Could cutting air travel also lead to greater gender equality?
Quelle: American Journal of Sociology, 125 (2019) 2, S 534–576
Inhalt: This study advances understanding of gender pay gaps by examining organizational variation. The gender pay gap literature supplies mechanisms but does not attend to organizational variation; the gender and science literature provides insights on the role of masculinist culture in disciplines but misses pay gap mechanisms. A data set of federal workers allows comparison of men and women in the same jobs and workplaces. Agencies associated with traditionally masculine (engineering, physical sciences) and gender-neutral (biological, interdisciplinary sciences) fields differ. Pay-gap mechanisms vary: human capital differences explain a larger share in gender-neutral agencies, while at male-typed agencies men are frequently paid more than women within the same job. Although beyond the federal workers’ standardized pay scale, some interdisciplinary agencies more often pay men off grade, leading to higher earnings for men. Our theory of organizational variation helps explain local agency variation and how pay practices matter in specific organizational contexts.
The role of women scholars in the Chilean collaborative educational research : A social network analysis
Autor/in:
Queupil, Juan Pablo; Muñoz García, Ana Luisa
Quelle: High Educ (Higher Education), 78 (2019) 1, S 115–131
Inhalt: Collaboration is an indispensable tool to promote and increase research. However, little is known about the role of women in collaborative efforts among educational scholars, especially in developing countries, such as Chile. We apply social network analysis (SNA) to examine the relationships and patterns that emerge from a dataset retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) of coauthored scholarly publications. Using sociograms and networks’ centrality indicators (density, degree, betweenness, and closeness) and bibliometric results, this study focuses on detecting the role of women in the collaborative networks. Our results show that the presence of women in the research space is stable across time, but they tend to collaborate more than men, acting as important bridgers since 2000, and that their contribution is relevant in promoting networking. This paper invites a reflection about the policies of research and gender, as well as the positionality of women doing knowledge on education.
‘You must aim high’ - ‘No, I never felt like a woman’: women and men making sense of non-standard trajectories into higher education
Autor/in:
González Ramos, Ana M.; Räthzel, Nora
Quelle: International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology, 10 (2018) 1, 17 S
Inhalt: It is no secret that the ‘glass ceiling’ preventing women advancing to leadership positions exists in academia as well. Spain is no exception. Gender relations are usually investigated independently of other power relations like class and ethnicity. In our sample (80 men and women in different academic institutions across Spain) we found that not only women but also men from working class backgrounds have difficulties making successful academic careers. Therefore, we use an intersectional approach to investigate the relationship between gender and class. Comparing two life-histories, we explore what strategies individuals employ to overcome the barriers with which they are confronted. We present the stories of a woman with a middle class but non-academic background and of a man with a working-class background. Their strategies can be understood as the result of specific individual trajectories under specific societal conditions, but they also illustrate the barriers and possibilities men and women with non-standard backgrounds encounter in academia. Analysing successful strategies as well as their limitations, we aim to provide perspectives that might contribute to changing the culture of hegemonic masculinities in academia.
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Diversity, Europa und Internationales, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Geschlechterverhältnis, Wissenschaft als Beruf
Gendered images of international research collaboration
Autor/in:
Zippel, Kathrin S.
Quelle: Gender, Work & Organization, 4 (2018) 1, 139 S
Inhalt: Joan Acker's theory on gendered organizations offers important tools for understanding subtler forms of inequalities and gendered practices in the workplace. According to Acker, invisible mechanisms in organizations such as the symbolic and material/structural aspects of organizations reproduce gendered inequalities. My application of Acker's theory demonstrates how imagery itself assigns value to collaborative practices in gender stereotypical ways. In an institutional context that devalues international research collaboration among faculty, gendered images of exploiter, patronizing helper, partner, or friend ultimately serve to construct glass fences - obstacles to international collaborative engagement - particularly for women. The reflection and potential recreation of gendered inequalities among academics simultaneously reconstructs inequalities between the U.S. and abroad, as institutional reward structures attach gendered symbolic and material values that (re)shape (international) collaborations themselves. Together, these processes construct the gendered organization of global science and academia.
Schlagwörter:Forschungskooperation; gendered organizations; Geschlechterungleichheit; Internationale Kooperation; Internationalisierung; Organisation; Organisationstheorie; Ungleichheit; USA
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Netzwerke und Organisationen, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Family configurations and arrangements in the transnational mobility of early-career academics : Does gender make twice the difference?
Autor/in:
Toader, Alina; Dahinden, Janine
Quelle: MIGRATION LETTERS, 15 (2018) 1, S 67–84
Inhalt: Previous studies have pointed out the highly gendered character of academia in general and international mobility in particular: women academics are confronted with a ‘glass ceiling’, and they are less geographically mobile than men, mainly as a result of family obligations. This paper examines whether gender plays twice a role in how women and men consider family arrangements in regard to a long-term post-PhD period of transnational mobility. Using data from an online survey and face-to-face interviews at the Universities of Cambridge and Zurich, we focus first on family configurations when academics decide to become mobile, then on how the family arrangements evolve while abroad. We show that the transnational mobility of academics has become more complex and varied than the ‘classical model’ of mobile academic men and non-mobile or ‘tied mover’ women. While having a child continues to impact gender roles, institutional characteristics in the context of mobility also play a role that needs to be further analysed.
Academic careers and the valuation of academics. A discursive perspective on status categories and academic salaries in France as compared to the U.S., Germany and Great Britain
Autor/in:
Angermuller, Johannes
Quelle: High Educ (Higher Education), 73 (2017) 6, S 963–980
Inhalt: Academic careers are social processes which involve many members of large populations over long periods of time. This paper outlines a discursive perspective which looks into how academics are categorized in academic systems. From a discursive view, academic careers are organized by categories which can define who academics are (subjectivation) and what they are worth (valuation). The question of this paper is what institutional categorizations such as status and salaries can tell us about academic subject positions and their valuation. By comparing formal status systems and salary scales in France with those in the U.S., Great Britain and Germany, this paper reveals the constraints of institutional categorization systems on academic careers. Special attention is given to the French system of status categories which is relatively homogeneous and restricts the competitive valuation of academics between institutions. The comparison shows that academic systems such as the U.S. which are characterized by a high level of heterogeneity typically present more negotiation opportunities for the valuation of academics. From a discursive perspective, institutional categories, therefore, can reflect the ways in which academics are valuated in the inter-institutional job market, by national bureaucracies or in professional oligarchies.
Gender Differences in Publication Productivity Among Academic Scientists and Engineers in the U.S. and China : Similarities and Differences
Autor/in:
Tao, Yu; Hong, Wei; Ma, Ying
Quelle: Minerva, 55 (2017) 4, S 459–484
Inhalt: Gender differences in science and engineering (S&E) have been studied in various countries. Most of these studies find that women are underrepresented in the S&E workforce and publish less than their male peers. The factors that contribute to gender differences in experience and performance in S&E careers can vary from one country to another, yet they remain underexplored. This paper is among the first to systematically compare gender differences in the publication productivity of academic scientists and engineers with doctoral degrees in the U.S. and China. Findings from negative binomial regressions show that women publish less than their male counterparts in science but not in engineering in the U.S. In China, women do not differ from men in publication productivity in science but publish more than their male counterparts in engineering. In addition, we find that some background variables affect men’s and women’s publication productivity differently. The findings are analyzed in the context of the different cultures of the two fields (science vs. engineering) and of the two countries (the U.S. and China). Limitations and policy implications are also discussed.