A Comparative Approach on the Relevance of National Gender Equality Legal Frameworks in Israel, Portugal, and Slovakia to Improve Equality at the Institutional Level
Quelle: Journal of International Women's Studies, 22 (2021) 5, 21 S
Inhalt: In the last decades, women’s participation in Higher Education has increased in most Western countries, even if the well-known phenomena of horizontal and vertical segregation still persist (O’Connor, 2017). The reasons for the persistence of these phenomena have been widely studied (Ridgeway, 2011; Pearce, Wald, & Ballakrishnen, 2014; Rhode, 2016), highlighting the importance of defining and implementing affirmative actions to improve women’s situation in Higher Education. In this context, the European Union (EU) has placed the topic of gender equality (GE) in Higher Education with high relevance in the political agenda. As a result, several research projects have been approved to design and implement Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
This paper reflects the design and implementation process of GEPs in a group of countries integrating an international project. Based on data analysis of national legal documents, this paper examines the macro factors that can contribute to improving GE at the institutional level. The empirical analysis is based on a qualitative approach sustained on the analysis of national legal documents related to the economic, political, and social domains of Portugal, Slovakia, and Israel.
The comparative analysis among the countries reveals that there are relevant actions already in place in national legal frameworks that can be seen as positive to design and implement GEP in HEIs.
What professors do in peer review : Interrogating assessment practices in the recruitment of professors in Sweden
Autor/in:
Mählck, Paula; Kusterer, Hanna Li; Montgomery, Henry
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 54 (2020) 2, 9 S
Inhalt: Sweden is known for its political will to gender equality. Sweden is also a country with a strong tradition of transparency in university recruitments. In this article, the assessment practices in the appointment of full professors in one Swedish university are investigated from an intersectional and postcolonial perspective on gender and place/space. Using a multimethod approach to investigate written evaluations of applicants, recruitment group meeting minutes and interviews with reviewers, the results show that there is great variation in how evaluation criteria are applied and filled with meaning. Moreover, in more than half of the appointment decisions the reviewers disagreed. The interview results show a structural bias operating towards researchers applying from non‐Western university contexts. At an aggregated level, national applicants have 3.88 times greater chance to be proposed for a position and national women applicants are the most likely to be proposed for the position.
Schlagwörter:Berufungsverfahren; Gender; intersectionality; intersektionale Perspektive; Intersektionalität; Peer-Review; Schweden; Sweden
CEWS Kategorie:Diversity, Europa und Internationales, Geschlechterverhältnis, Hochschulen, Berufungsverfahren
Caring during COVID‐19 : A gendered analysis of Australian university responses to managing remote working and caring responsibilities
Autor/in:
Nash, Meredith; Churchill, Brendan
Quelle: Gender, Work & Organization, 27 (2020) 5, S 833–846
Inhalt: OVID‐19 is dramatically reconfiguring paid work and care. Emerging evidence in the global media suggests that academic women with caring responsibilities are being proportionately impacted. This article fills a key knowledge gap by examining how Australian universities are supporting academics to manage remote work and caring during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We conducted a desktop analysis of public information about remote working and care from 41 Australian universities and compared them to the world’s top 10 ranked universities. Findings suggest that during the pandemic, the Australian higher education sector positions decisions about caring leave and participation in the paid labour force as ‘private’ matters in which employees (mainly women) design their own ‘solutions’ when compared with international institutional counterparts. We argue that COVID‐19 provides another context in which universities have evaded their responsibility to ensure women’s full participation in the labour force.
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
Understanding Intersecting Gender Inequities in Academic Scienfitic Research Career Progression in sub-Saharan Africa
Autor/in:
Liani, Millicent L.; Nyamongo, Isaac K.; Tolhurst, Rachel
Quelle: GST (International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology), 12 (2020) 2, S 262–288
Inhalt: The slow progression and under-representation of women in senior scientific career positions is a well-known and persistent global problem, especially among university-based academics, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To inform action for change, we need to go beyond numerical evidence of inequalities to understanding the underlying social, cultural and institutional drivers and processes producing gender inequities in science careers. This requires a theoretically rigorous gender analysis framework that is relevant to SSA and sufficiently accounts for variations among both women and men. Since no such framework is available, we conducted a literature review of emerging theories and empirical evidence on the dimensions of and reasons for the prevailing gender inequities in higher education institutions in SSA. Based on this, we propose an integrated conceptual framework, identify available empirical findings to support it and develop a preliminary explanation of observed inequities. Our findings demonstrate that women’s (lack of) progression in academic/scientific research careers is shaped by intersections between gender roles and social power relations of gender within the family, wider society and academic institutions themselves. We argue that this integrated model provides implications for theory, practice at institutional and policy level, and future research.
Schlagwörter:academic career; Afrika; akademische Karriere; gender analysis; gender inequality; Geschlechterungleichheit; higher education institution; Hochschule; intersectionality; Intersektionalität; literature review; sub-Sahran Africa
CEWS Kategorie: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.
“She Wasn’t Resisting”: Students’ Barriers to Prosocial Intervention as Bystanders to Sexual Assault Risk Situations
Autor/in:
Hoxmeier, Jill; O'Connor, Julia; McMahon, Sarah
Quelle: Violence against women, 25 (2019) 4, S 485–505
Inhalt: The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault recommends bystander training as part of campus sexual assault prevention efforts. The current study sought to understand salient themes among students’ qualitative responses for why they did not intervene in sexual assault risk situations. In 2014, undergraduate students (N = 9,358) at a large public university completed a web-based survey to assess bystander opportunities and responses for six risk situations. Content coding analysis indicated that students report several unique barriers to intervention. These findings have important implications for bystander training programs, as well as future research on bystander behavior.
Schlagwörter:acceptance; Akzeptanz; bystander interventions; Gleichstellungsmaßnahmen; Intervention; sexual assault; sexual violence; sexuelle Belästigung; sexuelle Gewalt
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Hochschulen, Sexuelle Belästigung und Gewalt