Cross-national variations in postdoc precarity: An inquiry into the role of career structures and research funding models
Autor/in:
O’Connor, Pat; Le Feuvre, Nicky; Sümer, Sevil
Quelle: Policy Futures in Education, (2023)
Inhalt: Insecurity and intense competition for permanent academic positions appear to be common experiences for early career researchers across the globe. With academic precarity now firmly on the international research and policy agenda, this article looks comparatively at postdoc precarity in three European countries: Ireland, Norway and Switzerland. It suggests that the career prospects and status of these early career stage researchers depend to a large extent on societal variations in academic career structures and research funding models. The article underlines the implications of an increasingly competitive academic labour market on postdoc precarity and identifies both common and specific (national and/or disciplinary) challenges facing postdocs in these different contexts.
Schlagwörter:career structures; early career researcher; international comparison; internationaler Vergleich; Post-doc; precarity; prekäre Beschäftigung; research funding; wissenschaftliche Karriere
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Wissenschaft als Beruf
Women's leadership gamut in Saudi Arabia's higher education sector
Autor/in:
Akbar, Hammad; Al‐Dajani, Haya; Ayub, Nailah; Adeinat, Iman
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: This paper explores women's leadership in Saudi Arabia's three university settings—gender segregated (women or men-only), unsegregated (co-educational) and the majority of partially segregated universities where women's campuses exist within male-dominated universities. While Saudi Arabia's accelerated reforms are creating new opportunities for women's leadership, these are not reflected in the higher education sector yet. In adopting a feminist institutional theory perspective, this study employed a feminist qualitative approach, including 14 semi-structured interviews in Saudi Arabia's three university settings. The findings revealed that the barriers to women's leadership were most significant within the partially segregated universities, rendering women leaders as effectively powerless. In contrast, women's leadership flourished in the women-only university setting. As such, the findings suggest that the dominating partially segregated model is ineffective and problematic for women's leadership, and contradict the dominant view that gender segregation disempowers women. These insights have implications for the transformation of Saudi Arabia's higher education sector, aligned with the Kingdom's Vision 2030 policy.
Information intervention on long-term earnings prospects and the gender gap in major choice
Autor/in:
Peter, Frauke; Schober, Pia; Spiess, C. Katharina
Quelle: European Sociological Review, (2023)
Inhalt: This study investigates whether an intervention that provided high school seniors with information on costs and economic returns to tertiary education and on the long-term earnings prospects of college graduates from different study fields enhances the probability that male and female students opt for financially more rewarding study fields and for business-related or STEM fields with a lower share of women. It extends our understanding on the potentials of information interventions for reducing gender segregation in tertiary education. We draw on a field experiment in one German federal state, Berlin, which included a randomized information intervention, and analyse longitudinal data from 1,036 students in schools with a high share of less privileged students. Our results show that a short and low-cost information intervention on costs and returns to college education, including returns in different fields of study, can substantially reduce women’s enrolment in care/social subjects, increase their enrolment in other, non-technical fields while also increasing men’s enrolment in technical fields with above-average earnings. The overall effects appear limited in challenging the gender-typicality of enrolment choices, as students tend to choose more profitable majors while avoiding gender-atypical fields.
Fruen verdienen in Deutschland nach wie vor weniger als Männer. Der sogenannte Gender Pay Gap hängt dabei auch von der Studienfachwahl ab. In Berufen, in denen höhere Löhne erzielt werden, zum Beispiel in den Bereichen Ingenieurwesen und Naturwissenschaften (sogenannte MINT-Fächer), arbeiten immer noch weniger Frauen und es studieren auch weniger Frauen diese Fächer. Eine gemeinsame Studie von BiB und DZHW zeigt, dass die langfristigen Gehaltsaussichten bestimmter Studienfächer den Abiturientinnen und Abiturienten jedoch nicht umfassend bekannt sind. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersuchte die Studie, ob Informationen darüber die Studienfachwahl beeinflussen.
Die vor kurzem in der renommierten Fachzeitschrift „European Sociological Review“ veröffentlichte Studie basiert auf den Daten des Berliner Studienberechtigtenpanels. Dafür wurden Daten von über 1.000 Berliner Schülerinnen und Schülern mit einem hohen Anteil an bildungsfernen Haushalten ausgewertet. Es zeigt sich, dass schon eine zwanzigminütige Information zu den Kosten eines Studiums und den erzielbaren Gehältern nach Studienrichtungen sowie zu Finanzierungsmöglichkeiten eines Studiums dazu führt, dass junge Frauen sich seltener für die meist geringer bezahlten „sozialen Studienfächer“ entschieden. Stattdessen wählten sie häufiger andere nichttechnische Studienfächer. Bei den Männern stieg der Anteil derjenigen, die sich für ein technisches Fach mit überdurchschnittlichen Einkommensaussichten einschrieben.
Die Studie zeigt, dass die Studienfachwahl ein weiteres Puzzleteil für die Reduzierung des Gender Pay Gap sein kann. „Vorstellungen von ihrem späteren Einkommen können Frauen in der Entscheidung für ein Studium, aber auch in ihrer Studienfachwahl beeinflussen und damit zum Gender Pay Gap beitragen, wenn die Wahl vor allem bei jungen Frauen auf finanziell weniger ertragreiche Fächer fällt“, erklärt C. Katharina Spieß, Direktorin des Bundesinstituts für Bevölkerungsforschung (BiB). „Der Gender Pay Gap könnte reduziert werden, indem junge Frauen über die Gehaltsaussichten der Studienfächer besser informiert werden“, sagt Pia Schober von der Universität Tübingen. Neben dem Gehalt halten sich auch etliche weitere falsche Vorstellungen, die zu geschlechterstereotyper Studienwahl beitragen. „Um den Gender Pay Gap zu reduzieren, wäre es zudem sinnvoll, junge Menschen darüber zu informieren, in welchen Branchen sich im späteren Arbeitsleben Familien- und Erwerbsarbeit ohne große Einkommensabschläge vereinbaren lassen“, betont Frauke Peter vom Deutschen Zentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung (DZHW). Zudem seien mehr Frauen in Führungspositionen wichtig. „Sie könnten ein Vorbild für junge Frauen sein und zeigen, dass Karriere (und Familienleben) auch in männerdominierten Branchen möglich ist“, meint Spieß. (idw)
At the intersection of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and business management in Canadian higher education: An intentional equity, diversity, and inclusion framework
Autor/in:
Ruel, Stefanie; Tajmel, Tanja
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: In this study, the authors address the persistent discrimination cis women face in the Canadian science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) higher education context. Pulling on the notion of interrelationships that cross educational faculty boundaries and on intersectionality scholarship to unsettle the structural and disciplinary domains of power, the authors ask, “How can business education and STEM education work together with respect to social considerations, such as gender/race/ethnicity/etc., and social equity and inclusivity, within the Canadian higher education system?” This study aims to build on these interrelationships among diverse, complex individuals who participated in a graduate-level STEM and business management summer institute to provide an evidence-based and intentional equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) framework for STEM higher education contexts. Using a mixed-methods approach, which saw data collection via a survey instrument and semi-structured interviews, the subsequent quantitative analysis points to expanding interrelationships to broader areas beyond STEM and business management programs. The close reading of the collected qualitative data, via antenarrative spirals, elevates the participants' complexities beyond focusing “just” on their intersecting identities to looking at their perceptions of STEM fields, the order that ensues and the potential for the undoing of that order. The findings, results, and analyses of these collected data led to an intentional EDI framework, the main contribution of this study, constructed into three main pillars represented by the figure of a tree: the foundational elements (roots) built on individuals' complexities and experiences of Othering, the interrelationships (trunk) possible across various educational and professional dimensions, and a call to structural change initiatives (branches) with the possibility for growth in other areas. This work then contributes to not only filling a significant literature gap and building awareness regarding EDI concerns in STEM contexts via active interrelationship-building activities but also to unsettling the structural and disciplinary domains of power by embracing a holistic strategy to address systemic discriminatory practices in the Canadian STEM higher education context.
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.
Salary transparency and gender pay inequality: Evidence from Canadian universities
Autor/in:
Lyons, Elizabeth; Zhang, Laurina
Quelle: Strategic Management Journal, (2023)
Inhalt: We examine whether salary transparency influences gender pays inequality in the context of Canadian universities by exploiting a policy change enacted in one Canadian province that required salary disclosure through a publicly searchable database, thus lowering the cost of monitoring the gender pay gap.
We find that, on average, salary disclosure improves gender pay equality but institutions respond in different ways. Despite little media attention around gender equality at the time of the policy, institutions most likely to anticipate higher scrutiny, such as top ranked institutions, respond more aggressively to improve gender pay equality-both in terms of the magnitude and type of response. Combined, our findings suggest that the extent of change from salary transparency depends on the reduction in monitoring costs and organizational characteristics.Managerial Abstract: Salary transparency has been implemented in various ways around the world as a strategy by firms and policy makers to reduce the gender pay gap. However, whether and how it can achieve this in practice is unclear. We examine a salary transparency policy that mandated disclosure to the public through an online database in one Canadian province by comparing the change in gender pay inequality in that province relative to the change in the gender pay gap in provinces without disclosure. We find that salary transparency improves average gender pay equality primarily within the most visible organizations that likely anticipate high levels of public scrutiny. Our findings imply that facilitating low-cost public monitoring of gender inequalities can motivate organizations to enact change.
Connected early‐career experiences of equality in academia during the pandemic and beyond: Our liminal journey
Autor/in:
Scholz, Frederike; Szulc, Joanna Maria
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: In this paper, we draw on our subjective experiences as two female early-career academics during the global COVID-19 pandemic. While we acknowledge that the pandemic had negative implications for many female scholars due to compulsory telework or increased family responsibilities, we also want to shed light on the empowering experiences shaped by collegial support that became an important part of our pandemic story. We build on the theory of liminality to explain how the events triggered by the pandemic allowed us to break out of our uncomfortable occupational limbo (i.e., feeling “locked-in” to the identity of a foreign-born PhD graduate) and, through creating a kind of equality, resulted in some unique opportunities and challenges. During these difficult times, shaped by an increasing fear of us or our family catching COVID-19, we embarked on a betwixt-and-between state that allowed us to grow as academics as a part of a collective.
Schlagwörter:COVID-19; early career researcher; family responsibilities; female scientist; liminality