Quelle: SI (Social Inclusion), 9 (2021) 3, S 69–80
Inhalt: In this article, we investigate how the globalized academic labor market has changed the composition of teaching and research staff at Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish universities. We use national statistical data on the gender and country‐origin of universities’ teaching and research staff between 2012 and 2018 to study how the globalized academic labor market has influenced the proportion of women across career stages, with a special focus on STEM fields. We pay special attention to how gender and country‐origin are interrelated in universities’ academic career hierarchies. The findings show that the proportion of foreign‐born teaching and research staff rose substantially at the lower career level (grade C positions) in the 2010s. The increase was more modest among the most prestigious grade A positions, such as professorships. The findings show significant national differences in how gender and country‐origin of staff intersect in Nordic universities. The study contributes to research on the gendered patterns of global academic labor markets and social stratification in Nordic universities.
Some findings among post-docs:
The total number of post-docs increased during the period 2012–2018.
In 2018, the proportion of post-doc women overall was about 45 per cent in Finland and Sweden and 46 per cent in Norway.
In Norway, the proportion of post-doc women fell a bit, from about 48 per cent in 2012 to 46 per cent in 2018.
Among post-docs, the percentages of both foreign men and foreign women increased. For Norway, the combined percentage jumped from 50 per cent to 68 per cent.
The share of foreign men among post-docs in Norway grew from 29 per cent in 2012 to 40 per cent in 2018.
In Sweden, the share of foreign women in post-doc positions climbed from 19 up to 30 per cent. The proportion of Swedish women fell from 27 per cent to 15 per cent. The total proportion of women post-docs dropped by one percentage point.
Some findings among professors:
The proportion of women increased in all three countries and was quite similar.
In 2018, 31 per cent of professors in Norway were women, 27 per cent in Sweden and 28 per cent in Finland.
The percentage of foreign women professors varied across the three countries.
Of all professors in Norway, 8 per cent were foreign women.
Un/making academia: gendered precarities and personal lives in universities
Autor/in:
McKenzie, Lara
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2021) , S 1–18
Inhalt: Recent scholarship on universities explores how academics’ families and partners restrict their careers and how academic labour limits these relationships, both in highly gendered ways. Such research less often considers how people’s close relations might unevenly support them in continuously relocating; dedicating unpaid time to ‘career development’; or taking on or influencing them to remain in short-term, poorly paid precarious roles. This paper explores precariously employed post-PhDs in Australia, investigating their gendered careers and personal lives. Drawing on interviews at three public universities, it shows how women with children and partners in particular raise concerns over how their relationships and work interact. Here, certain kinds of workers – men and single women, unencumbered by family responsibilities and restrictions on travel, and with access to financial resources – appear better able to navigate moves to more secure work. This paper argues that support from close relations is productive and restrictive for precarious academics’ careers.
When faith intersects with gender: the challenges and successes in the experiences of Muslim women academics
Autor/in:
Ramadan, Ibtihal
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2021) , S 1–16
Inhalt: This paper explores the experiences of eight Muslim women academics (MWA) within a range of sciences and humanities disciplines. The data draws from my doctoral study which examined the experiences of men and women Muslim academics at UK universities. Findings from in-depth interviews with participants highlight the intersectionality of religio-gendered identities as central to their experiences. Being hijabed in academia triggered gendered-Islamophobic micro-aggressions, whose potential impact on the participants was buffered by their resilience, positive outlook, and belief. Further, they capitalized on their visible faith to demystify negative perceptions about Muslims and to advance their career-through utilizing the diversity logic within academia, while recognizing its tokenistic nature. Despite facing challenges, the participants share certain qualities that facilitate success, with agency being the uppermost quality.
Schlagwörter:academics; akademische Karriere; Großbritannien; Intersektionalität; Islam; microaggressions; Muslim; muslim woman; Rassismus; UK
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Diversity, Europa und Internationales, Geschlechterverhältnis
Fra visjon til praksis : En surveyundersøkelse om likestillings- og mangfoldsarbeidet ved forskningsinstitutter, høyskoler og universiteter
Autor/in:
Tica, Sabina
Quelle: Komité for kjønnsbalanse og mangfold i forskning; Oslo, 2021.
Inhalt: The report is a survey-based review (in Norwegian only) of how research institutes, universities and university colleges work to promote gender equality and diversity. It was authored by Sabina Tica and commissioned by the Committee for Gender Balance and Diversity in Research (KIF committee).
The report was presented via webinar. The KIF committee initiated the survey to obtain more data and review the current status of efforts to promote gender balance and diversity in research, for use in its future work.
The KIF committee designed and sent out the survey to a variety of research and higher education institutions. The responses form the empirical basis of the report.
The survey was sent to HR heads at 64 institutions, of whom 48 responded. The sample consists of 18 research institutes, 17 university colleges, 10 universities and 3 unspecified.
Some of the main findings:
The responding institutions dedicated relatively little resources to promoting gender equality and diversity.
The proportion of institutions that had drawn up an institution-wide action plan for gender equality and diversity: universities (80 per cent), university colleges (76.5) and research institutes (38.9).
Gender was the discrimination basis that was included in every institution’s action plan, but disability, ethnicity and sexual harassment were often incorporated as well.
Just 25 per cent of responding institutions with an action plan (7 of 28) had drawn up a department- or faculty-level action plan.
Roughly half of institutions (23 of 45) had a coordinating group for equality and diversity or a gender equality committee.
Expertise in gender equality and diversity is seldom a requirement in management hiring and leadership development at the institutions responding.
Analysis shows that among the respondents, the universities had institutionalized their gender and diversity efforts to a greater extent than the university colleges and research institutes.
No respondents from the universities characterized their efforts on ethnic diversity as ‘good’.
Institutions without an action plan more often assessed their work on ethnic diversity as ‘good’ compared to those with an action plan.
Only 10.2 per cent of respondents felt the pandemic had caused delays in planned efforts to promote gender equality and diversity at their institutions.
Among the institutions responding, the majority felt that international students and researchers were the most vulnerable group during the pandemic, followed by other at-risk groups. Respondents also expressed concern about the pandemic’s impact on women’s working conditions.
Quelle: GENDER (GENDER – Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft), 13 (2021) 1-2021, S 43–58
Inhalt: In der Soziologie bezeichnet der Begriff der Ambivalenz gegensätzliche, konflikthafte oder widersprüchliche kulturelle Ziele einer Gesellschaftsstruktur. Dieser Beitrag wendet den Begriff auf die im Europäischen Forschungsraum institutionalisierten kulturellen Normen und Werte an, um eine strukturelle Ambivalenz europäischer Integration in der Wissenschaft zu untersuchen. Ziel ist eine Analyse des Verhältnisses von Gleichstellungsnormen und Exzellenzidealen am Beispiel der durch den European Research Council (ERC) repräsentierten europäischen Exzellenzinitiative. Die These ist, dass das aktuell dominante Exzellenzparadigma eine Umsetzung supranationaler Gleichstellungsnormen in der Wissenschaft erschwert. Diese These wird anhand sekundärstatistischer Analysen und qualitativer Befunde zu geförderten Forschungsprojekten einer Überprüfung unterzogen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es u. a. aufgrund existierender Widerstände gegen die Umsetzung von Gleichstellungsstandards unwahrscheinlich ist, dass es dem ERC in naher Zukunft gelingen wird, seine selbst gesetzten Gleichstellungsziele zu erreichen.
Inhalt: m Juni hat der Europäische Forschungsrat (ERC) einen neuen Plan zu Gender Equality für die Laufzeit des Rahmenprogramms Horizont Europa (2021-2027) angenommen. Eine der Neuerungen im aktuellen Plan ist die Berufung sogenannter „ERC ambassadors“, die im Kontext der Aktivitäten des ERC gezielt zu genderspezifischen Themen und Aspekten sprechen werden. Auch sollen geschlechterspezifische Daten zu einzelnen Ländern und Institutionen gesammelt werden, um noch zielgerichteter besonders Frauen zur Antragstellung beim ERC zu ermutigen. (FiF-Newsletter)
Quelle: The gender-sensitive university. A contradiction in terms? Eileen P. Drew (Hrsg.), Siobhán Canavan (Hrsg.), Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2021, S 1–15
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: This study aims to explore the COVID‐19 experiences of Turkish female academics in terms of gender roles by focusing on how these women have dealt with domestic and academic responsibilities. The study group consisted of 21 female academics working from home, along with their spouses. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyze the data collected through semistructured telephone interviews. The findings were clustered under five main themes: the early days of the pandemic, work life after the pandemic, domestic responsibilities after the pandemic, family relationships after the pandemic, and the perception of gender roles. The results indicate that the pandemic has deepened gender inequalities, and the academic life of female academics has changed in terms of academic productivity. Therefore, we recommend that more research examining the quarantine process and involving women in other occupations and of different socioeconomic statuses should be done to develop more effective social policies.
Gender equality: a neglected or rhetorical dimension of rankings in higher education?
Autor/in:
O'Connor, Pat
Quelle: Research Handbook on University Rankings. Ellen Hazelkorn (Hrsg.), Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA, UK; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. 2021, S 150–162
Inhalt: 'Gender Equality: A neglected or rhetorical dimension of rankings in Higher Education'. Global rankings, which are essentially external benchmarks of higher education institutions, are seen as increasingly important and are proliferating in number and kind. They constitute a response to increased global competition in what is an international student and academic labour market. Such rankings have been widely critiqued as reflecting and reinforcing Western hegemony (and particularly English language hegemony), promoting elite ‘world class’ institutions, devaluing heterogeneity, deepening inequalities within higher education systems, encouraging the devaluation and neglect of national objectives and ultimately encouraging the permeation of higher education by neo-liberalist objectives and practices. It is suggested that decisions about what factors to include in the rankings and the weight to be attached to them reflect and reinforce an implicitly masculinist and overtly neo-liberal perspective. Despite a concern to facilitate the global battle for talent, the overwhelming majority of these have not included any indicators of a reduction in gender inequality /promotion of gender equality. This arguably reflects the male dominated, masculinist character of the discourses within which such rankings and the critiques of them have been located. In that context the ranking of higher educational institutions based on their impact on Goal 5 (Gender Equality) of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals is an interesting development. Using a feminist institutional perspective, this chapter compares the elements in this gender equality measure with other constructions of gendered success such as that provided by the European Research Area. It discusses the relative usefulness of alternative benchmarking exercises, such as Athena SWAN in the UK as well as recent policy initiatives by the Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA) which identified gender equality as a strategic objective in promoting excellence and accountability. The extent to which the compacts between the individual Irish higher educational institutions and the HEA will deliver in terms of gender equality remains to be seen. However, the link between gender equality indicators and state funding potentially resolves many of the problems related to institutional support. The ranking of such institutions on the UN Sustainable Development Gender Equality Goal provides a further lever. The chapter concludes by highlighting additional indicators that might be included in such global ranking schemas so to promote gender equality. Keywords gender equality; institutional transformation; Athena SWAN; quotas; organisational culture; Ireland, United Nations Gender Equality Sustainable Development Goal.