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.
Inhalt: Frauen entscheiden sich seltener für eine Karriere in MINT-Berufen und gelangen seltener in Führungspositionen. In der Folge sind weibliche Führungskräfte in MINT eine Rarität. Doch was muss geschehen, damit mehr Frauen hier Karriere machen können? Ein natürliches Experiment von Forscher/innen der Northwestern University, Boston University und LUISS University und des ZEW Mannheim zeigt, dass höhere Frauenanteile in Aufsichtsräten und Vorständen sowie modernere Unternehmenskulturen die Geschlechtervielfalt in MINT-Berufen erhöhen können. Vor diesem Hintergrund sind interne Quotenregelungen und etablierte Verhaltenskodizes in Unternehmen zur Förderung der Diversität sinnvoll.
„Ein höherer Frauenanteil in den Führungsgremien von Unternehmen ist ein wesentlicher Baustein, um die Geschlechtervielfalt in MINT-Berufen zu erhöhen. Dies allein reicht aber nicht aus, um den Anteil weiblicher Führungskräfte in dem Bereich signifikant zu erhöhen“, erklärt Bernhard Ganglmair, Wissenschaftler im ZEW-Forschungsbereich „Innovationsökonomik und Unternehmensdynamik“ und Leiter der Nachwuchsforschungsgruppe „Wettbewerb und Innovation“. „Mindestens genauso wichtig sind die informellen Normen und Werte der Unternehmen. Schließlich haben sie es in der Hand, ein Umfeld zu schaffen, in dem Frauen gerne arbeiten und Karriere machen wollen“.
Die Vorteile der Geschlechtervielfalt
Die Forscher/innen nutzen ein natürliches Experiment innerhalb der Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Im betrachteten Zeitraum von 2005 bis 2020 wurden insgesamt 209 Mitglieder für das Komitee, das die IETF-Führungskräfte ernennt, erfasst. Sie wurden nach dem Zufallsprinzip ausgewählt. In den 2000er Jahren führte ein höherer Anteil weiblicher Mitglieder im Komitee nicht zu einer Erhöhung der Zahl der Frauen, die für Führungspositionen ernannt wurden. Vielmehr verringerte ein höherer Frauenanteil die Chance, dass Frauen in Führungspositionen berufen wurden. Erst nachdem die gesamte IETF für die Vorteile von Geschlechtervielfalt sensibilisiert wurde, wählte das Komitee mehr weibliche Führungskräfte aus. „Interessant ist vor allem, dass mehr Frauen im Komitee nicht automatisch dazu führen, dass auch mehr weibliche Führungskräfte berufen werden. Es ist daher ratsam, sowohl Männer als auch Frauen für das Thema Geschlechtervielfalt zu sensibilisieren“, erklärt Ganglmair.
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.
Inhalt: The fourth benchmarking analysis conducted by GENDERACTOINplus depicts the current landscape for GEP requirements in R&I at national/regional level. It provides an overview of the overall policy framework on GEP requirements concerning ERA stakeholders and presents relevant policy developments, mainly targeting national authorities.
The results of the survey conducted among 15 national authorities indicate that in the majority of the countries/regions assessed, GEPs are obligatory, primarily for public sector entities. The presence or absence of national requirements for GEPs underscores the ongoing disparity between Member States (MS) that joined the EU before and after 2004. For Member States that joined after 2004, Research Funding Organizations can play a significant role in establishing favorable conditions for the development of GEPs.
Furthermore, the Horizon Europe GEP eligibility criterion has been demonstrated to have made noticeable impact on the national gender equality activities in R&I. It is substantiated by the increase in approved GEPs in R&I institutions, the organisation of workshops and trainings on GEPs, dedication of resources for gender equality work and an increase in requests addressed to the National Contact Points (e.g., queries in relation to GEP elaboration or EC requirements).
Advancing women’s representation in top academic positions – what works?
Autor/in:
Drange, Ida; Pietilä, Maria; Reisel, Liza; Silander, Charlotte
Quelle: Studies in Higher Education, 48 (2023) 6, S 877–891
Inhalt: Which gender equality measures do Nordic universities use, and to what extent are the measures effective in increasing the share of women in top academic positions? Based on theories that distinguish between actor and structure-oriented measures, and between strategies of inclusion and transformation, we identified four types of measures: career enhancing measures offered for women, training and awareness-raising measures, organizational responsibility measures and preferential treatment measures. We investigated the use and efficacy of the four types of policy measures in 37 universities in Sweden, Norway and Finland, implemented between 1995 and 2018. The policy data was collected through on structured interviews with universities’ HR staff and equality officers. By combining these unique survey data and register data on universities’ teaching and research staff we assess the impact of institutional gender equality policy on the gender composition of academics in grade A positions. We find strong growth in the use of organizational responsibility and awareness-raising measures over time, and weaker use of career enhancing measures and preferential treatment. Overall, the institutional measures have a limited effect on the growth in the share of women in grade A positions. Nonetheless, we find that the implementation of structural measures is associated with the growth of women in grade A positions.