Sexism in the silences at Australian Universities: Parental leave in name, but not in practice
Autor/in:
Duffy, Sarah; O’Shea, Michelle; Bowyer, Dorothea; van Esch, Patrick
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: Unequal distribution of child rearing and domestic responsibilities between parents contributes to gender inequity, a wicked problem in Australia. Inequitable parental leave policies at Australian public Universities place the burden of care squarely on the mother, diminishing or absenting the father. We examine how the gendered nature of the existing policies are constructed in ways that create inequities and discourage their uptake. A post-structural feminist lens provides us with a theoretical vantage point from which this wicked problem can be problematized. We present three recommendations for enabling more equitable outcomes for parents. The first is to eradicate the punitive approach and support flexibility; second, the policies must be parental leave in name, provision and practice; and finally we recommend a minimum parental leave standard for Australian universities nationally. These findings have policy-level significance for redressing parental leave inequity within the Australian university context. The paper concludes with theoretical contributions, practical implications, and suggestions for future research.
A typology of sexism in contemporary business schools: Belligerent, benevolent, ambivalent, and oblivious sexism
Autor/in:
Yarrow, Emily; Davies, Julie
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: The legitimacy of business schools is based on rankings, revenues, branding, and opportunities to support staff and students “to make a difference in the world”. Yet sexism in business schools is endemic. Drawing on Acker's inequality regimes framework and a thematic analysis of reports in Poets&Quants, EFMD's Global Focus and AACSB International's BizEd/AACSB Insights over a decade, this study explores how business schools are dealing (or not) with sexism. We propose a typology of four categories of sexism in business schools: belligerent, benevolent, ambivalent, and oblivious sexism. Our findings contribute to understandings of institutional theory and the institutional development of business schools as important sites of (sexist and gendered) knowledge production and dissemination and entrenched inequalities. We posit that media constructions of sexism may better inform individual decisions, organizational development, and governance about the imperative to eliminate sexist behaviors and discrimination. We argue that business schools need to gain substantive legitimacy as effective role models by reforming themselves. They must actively tackle institutional and cultural sexism from within. Implications for practice include the effective inclusion of mandatory sexism reporting in international business school accreditation standards and rankings criteria as well as requirements for research funding.
Circling the divide: Gendered invisibility, precarity, and professional service work in a UK business school
Autor/in:
Seymour, Kate
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: Within UK business schools, there are large numbers of female and feminized white-collar professional service (PS) employees in disproportionately low-paid, low-status roles, but surprisingly, they are largely invisible within the literature on sexism and gender inequalities in academia. This paper conceptualizes PS experiences by examining how forms of gendered invisibility affect professional staff working in the hybrid “third” space between academic and administrative realms. I develop a conceptual analysis of invisibility—of invisible work and as invisible worker—arising from the performance of professional and academic work. This allows me to analyze and distinguish forms of what I call service, professional and professional-academic housework, demonstrating how these are thoroughly imbricated in dominant patriarchal cultural ideologies of gender. In developing this schema, I draw self-reflexively on my own experiences of “circling the divide” within a UK business school, developing a rich, multi-perspectival account of the ways visibility and invisibility were experienced in the role of a particular third space professional and “academic-in-waiting.” This paper therefore contributes a systematic conceptualization of gendered invisible housework performed by PS staff within a politicized third space of UK business schools. It also brings often hidden PS “academics-in-waiting” into the literature on feminized precarity in the academy.
Schlagwörter:academic housework; business school; gender inequality; invisibility; MTV; professional service; professional staff; sexism; UK; Verwaltung
CEWS Kategorie:Hochschulen, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
“That's bang out of order, mate!” : Gendered and racialized micro‐practices of disadvantage and privilege in UK business schools
Autor/in:
Śliwa, Martyna; Gordon, Lisi; Mason, Katy; Beech, Nic
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: The existence of gendered and racialized inequalities in academia has been well documented. To date, research has primarily addressed the intersectional disadvantages faced by members of minority groups with much less attention paid to the privileges experienced by dominant group members. This paper draws on 21 interviews and 36 audio-diary entries completed by a diverse group of senior higher education leaders who have successfully navigated the career ladder in UK business schools. By juxtaposing minority with dominant group members' narratives, the study advances intersectionality research, offering a contextualized analysis of the micro-practices of both disadvantage and privilege in academia. Through a focus on how micro-practices perform differently for members of different groups, it foregrounds “obvious” as well as nuanced differences that contribute to the accumulation of disadvantage and privilege throughout an individual's career and emphasizes simultaneity as crucial to understanding the workings of gendered and racialized disadvantage and privilege.
Athena SWAN: “Institutional peacocking” in the neoliberal university
Autor/in:
Yarrow, Emily; Johnston, Karen
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: This paper contributes to understandings of how Athena SWAN (AS) is shaping contemporary equality work in the context of the neoliberal university, and whether it is contributing to performative ways of doing equality work. We center our research on the exploration of the question of how the gender-agenda is being captured by the neoliberal agenda, drawing on 35 in-depth qualitative interviews with AS champions across the UK and Republic of Ireland. The core aim of the study is to explore how AS has been co-opted and mobilized as a vehicle for contemporary (neoliberal) equality work. We argue that rather than contributing to transformational change, AS serves as an effective tool for institutional reputation gains and (extended) virtue signaling, conceptualized and coined here as “institutional peacocking.” This in turn, functions and is implemented in diverse institutional settings, with primarily institutional benefit, at the cost of AS champions who carry out gender equality work. We contribute empirically and conceptually to theorizations and current understandings of gender equality work in higher education, especially through AS champions' experience and the institutional benefits that present opportunity costs for some individuals, potentially serving to further entrench stereotyped perceptions of who should be doing equality work in universities, and critically, how institutions benefit.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), 28 (2021) S1, S 39–57
Inhalt: In this article, as have many Black women scholars in the past, we again call for collective action against anti‐blackness and White supremacy in the academy. Drawing from black feminist theory, we discuss the long history of Black women academics' activism against anti‐black racism and introduce the current movement: Black Lives Matter (BLM). Although BLM is often construed as resisting anti‐black violence outside the academy, it is also relevant for within the academy wherein anti‐blackness is likely to be manifested as disdain, disregard, and disgust for Black faculty and students. We discuss some of the ways in which anti‐blackness and liberal White supremacy are manifested in the lives of Black faculty and students, and propose that non‐Black allies have key roles to play in resisting them. Like second‐hand cigarette smoke that harms everyone in proximity, anti‐blackness and White supremacy harm us all, and a shared movement is needed to dismantle them.
Schlagwörter:academia; black feminism; black women; Hochschule; racism; Rassismus; Schwarze Frauen; Schwarzer Feminismus; white supremacy
Dirty Body Politics: Habitus, Gendered Embodiment, and the Resistance to Women's Agency in Transforming South African Higher Education
Autor/in:
Idahosa, Grace Ese‐osa
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), 27 (2020) 6, S 988–1003
Inhalt: In discussing the difficulty with transformation, research notes that women and Blacks are excluded and marginalised by the cultures and practices within universities in South Africa. While the literature highlights the invisibility of these minorities in universities, with their bodies only becoming visible as tokens, or when representing minority issues, it is silent on how this plays out in interchanges in the transformation process, the embodiment of gender, and the resistance to women's agency within the field of higher education transformation. Adopting a hermeneutic phenomenological lens and Bourdieu's concept of field and habitus, this study examines ten academics' experiences of having agency to effect transformation. In particular, it explores women's narratives of body‐centered attacks in expressions of resistance to their transformation strategies, revealing the normalisation of the White, male body. This normalisation obscures the gendered processes of transformation and the bodily resistance to women's agency, revealed in tugging, pulling, shutting doors and having metaphorical knives pulled from their backs. The study argues that this not only prevents women from exercising their agency, but also ensures the reproduction of oppressive relations within the university and should be directly addressed in the struggle for transformation.
Schlagwörter:body; Bourdieu; Feldtheorie; Gender; Gewalt; Habitus; higher education; Hochschule; Körper; minority; Organisationswandel; people of color; racism; Rassismus; resistance; sexism; Sexismus; South Africa; Südafrika; Transformation; violence; Widerstand
CEWS Kategorie:Diversity, Europa und Internationales, Hochschulen, Geschlechterverhältnis
Context matters: Problematizing the policy‐practice interface in the enactment of gender equality action plans in universities
Autor/in:
Ní Laoire, Caitríona; Linehan, Carol; Archibong, Uduak; Picardi, Ilenia; Udén, Maria
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2020)
Inhalt: This study argues for recognition of the constitutive role of context in shaping the dynamics of the policy‐practice interface in the field of gender equality in universities. Using a comparative and reflective case‐study approach, we draw on our experiences, as action‐researchers, of developing and implementing Gender Equality Action Plans (GEAPs) in four universities in four different European countries and we explore the role of national and local context in the mediation and translation of the GEAP model. Drawing on the concepts of gendered organizations, dialogic organizational change, and policy mobilities, we argue for the need to be critical of approaches to gender equality in higher education (HE) that presume policy measures and good practice models transfer unproblematically to different HE organizations in different international contexts; instead, we draw attention to the contingent ways in which uneven gender relations articulate and manifest in different contexts, shaping possibilities for, and obstacles to, gender equality intervention. Thus, we argue that context plays a crucial constitutive role in the interpretation, enactment, and impact of gender equality policy in HE.
Schlagwörter:action research; case study; gender equality plan; gendered organization; Gleichstellungsmaßnahmen; Gleichstellungsplan; good practice; Hochschule; internationaler Vergleich; Organisational Change; Organisationswandel; translation
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Hochschulen, Gleichstellungspolitik
Maneuvering within postfeminism: A study of gender equality practitioners in Danish academia
Autor/in:
Utoft, Ea Høg
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2020)
Inhalt: In Denmark, gender equality in academia has seen limited progress during the past 30 years. To improve our understanding of this persistent problem, this article examines gender equality practitioners in relation to the wider discursive context of Danish society. Theorizing Denmark as a “postfeminist gender regime,” I analyze how practitioners negotiate a space for action in a context which generally opposes gender equality initiatives. I introduce the notion of “maneuvering” as a way to understand this negotiation between hegemonic, postfeminist discourses, on the one hand, and marginal and potentially subversive discourses on the other. Practitioners may maneuver in how they understand inequality and potential solutions, and in the meetings between them, their work and the postfeminist gender regime. Successful maneuvering enables the use of more radical change strategies than postfeminism otherwise allows. Practitioners' ability to maneuver rests on their critical reflexivity, which in turn is conditioned by their knowledge of gender and power dynamics. The study thus points to the centrality of selecting highly qualified individuals as gender equality practitioners.
Informality, emotion and gendered career paths: The hidden toll of maternity leave on female academics and researchers
Autor/in:
Maxwell, Nicola; Connolly, Linda; Ní Laoire, Caitríona
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2018)
Inhalt: While the negative impact of child‐raising and caring on women's career progression in academia is well‐established, less is known about the role of academic women's lived experiences of maternity leave as an institutional practice. This article presents the findings of a qualitative study of the lived experiences of female academics and researchers in an Irish university. The analysis intrinsically links organizational structures and problems with the lived and felt dimensions of work. The findings point to the need for better structural accommodations for maternity leave which address the relationship between caring and career disadvantage within academia. The article adds to existing literature on the intersection of motherhood and academia by unpicking the specific role of maternity leave as both a lived experience and an institutional practice that can reinforce gender inequalities in academia.