Gender disparity in the effects of COVID‐19 on academic productivity and career satisfaction in anesthesiology in the US: Results of a national survey of anesthesiologists
Autor/in:
Jankowska, Anna E.; Pai, Sher‐Lu; Lee, Jennifer K.; Austin, Thomas M.; Nyshadham, Soumya; Diachun, Carol Ann B.; Byerly, Stephanie I.; Hertzberg, Linda B.; Berenstain, Laura K.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic created unprecedented challenges for anesthesiologists both at work and home. This study examined whether the pandemic affected academic productivity and career satisfaction among anesthesiologists practicing in the United States during the early stages of the pandemic and whether these effects differed by gender. A survey was emailed to 25,473 members of the American Society of Anesthesiologists to learn about their experiences during the beginning of the pandemic. The survey directed respondents to rate their change in academic productivity, clinical care hours, scholarly and leadership opportunities, income, childcare duties, and household responsibilities during the first 5 months of the pandemic (March 1–July 31, 2020). The primary variable was gender, academic productivity was the primary outcome, and data were analyzed by multivariable proportional odds logistic regression models and correlations. Female anesthesiologists reported lower academic productivity and career satisfaction relative to male anesthesiologists during the study period. Career satisfaction positively correlated with academic productivity. Compared to male anesthesiologists, female anesthesiologists also had more household responsibilities before and during the pandemic. Being a female parent reduced academic productivity relative to that reported by nonparents of either gender. In conclusion, the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic had a greater adverse professional impact on female anesthesiologists than on their male counterparts. Efforts to support and retain female anesthesiologists, particularly those early in their careers and those with children, are essential for the specialty to maintain its workforce and promote gender equity in promotion and leadership.
Women academics experiences of maternity leave in the neoliberal university: Unmasking governmentality
Autor/in:
Jones, Karen; Floyd, Alan
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: Addressing a paucity of large-scale studies about women academics maternity experiences of leave in academia and under-theorizing the influence of neoliberalism on this phenomenon, this research provides one of the largest studies of women's experiences of maternity leave in the academic sector. Secondary analysis of a subset of data from a global online mixed method survey with 553 women academics (82% UK, 18% international) was undertaken to explore experiences and implications of maternity leave for women. The findings reveal that women academics continued to undertake core academic work duties during maternity leave such as writing grant applications and journal articles, supervising doctoral students, teaching, and responding to emails. We document four distinct orientations adopted by women during maternity leave that characterize neoliberal subjectivity and use Foucauldian governmentality to unmask the inculcation of such norms. Our analysis shows how neoliberal ideology has gained a hegemonic position in academia that leaves little space for maternity leave, resulting in many women effectively relinquishing their maternity rights to sustain academic productivity. We argue that neoliberalism and new managerialism within the academy undermine policies to support women's maternity rights. The findings of this study will be of interest to scholars and Human Resources professionals, academic mothers, managers, and policymakers who are championing change in the sector.
Business schools and faculty experiences of sexism: Gender structure tensions within and outside these schools
Autor/in:
Hughes, Emma; Donnelly, Rory
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: In this paper, we advance knowledge and theorization on the sexism experienced by faculty not only inside but also outside the physical boundaries of business schools. We enrich existing knowledge of gender and sexism by applying Gender Structure Theory (GST) to provide a more multi-dimensional analysis of the role of individuals, interactions, and institutions in shaping gender structures. Engaging with this theoretical framework, we use mixed-methods and data, integrating statistical data on gender in UK business schools with qualitative data from interviews with 52 academics from 15 schools to provide a nuanced insight into sexism at business schools. The framework developed from the findings extends GST by adding a specific “organizational” dimension, which is needed to examine interorganizational differences and how cultural and material organizational processes are influenced by wider national/international processes. We also identify three key interactional tensions cutting across the dimensions examined: organizational versus interorganizational relations, agency versus dependency, and employment relationships versus stakeholder relationships. The findings generate pressing implications for policy and practice in business schools and academia more broadly.
Gendered work in geoscience: Hard work in a masculine field
Autor/in:
Heimann, Samuel; Johansson, Kristina
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: Based on the meaning-making of women geoscientists in their descriptions of work and career experiences, this article explores the gendering of geoscience by analyzing women's hard work as a theoretical concept. Our findings show that the gendered requirements for women in geoscience involve “doing” various forms of hard work, including making one's work visible, asserting one's physical performance, and building social relations. Thus, hard work is found to be gendered in terms of being a perceived requirement shared by female geoscientists. It is a requirement that entails compensating for not being male in masculine organizations and simultaneously prevents women geoscientists from fully engaging in core geoscience work tasks. Hence, by gendering hard work and theoretically defining hard work as the work of the “other”, the study expands the theoretical understanding of the concept by suggesting that women's hard work is gendered and social rather than productive.
Schlagwörter:Arbeitsbedingungen; career; geoscience; Geowissenschaften; Organisationskultur; work
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Scientists explain the underrepresentation of women in physics compared to biology in four national contexts
Autor/in:
Chan, Esther; Di Di; Ecklund, Elaine Howard
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: Women are consistently underrepresented in biology when compared to physics. Yet how scientists themselves explain the causes of this underrepresentation is understudied outside the US context. In this research, we ask the following question: How do scientists in different national/regional contexts explain why there are fewer women in physics than biology? Using original survey data collected among academic biologists and physicists in the US (N = 1777), Italy (N = 1257), France (N = 648), and Taiwan (N = 780), we examine how scientists' social identities, social locations, and country context shape essentialist, individualist, and structural explanations of gender inequality. Findings indicate that scientists across national contexts attribute the unequal gender distribution in physics and biology to women's individual choices. Explanations for the gender distribution also vary by social identities and social locations (gender, discipline, and seniority) in country-specific ways. Scientists and advocates ought to engage conversations that explicitly confront scientists' assumptions about individual choices in global science.
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.
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.
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
Power and the perception of pregnancy in the academy
Autor/in:
Percival Carter, Erin
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: Becoming pregnant as an academic is risky. Many who want to become or find themselves pregnant structure their lives and careers to try to mitigate the potential negative effects of pregnancy on their future careers. Yet research continues to suggest that having been pregnant or being a mother significantly reduces the likelihood of career success compared to either being child-free or a father. While in some cases success is defined as research productivity, in many cases, it is defined as simply remaining in academia. Governments, societies, and institutions bemoan the resulting “leaky pipelines” and speculate as to the causes of seemingly reinforced glass ceilings. Yet, underlying so many of the formal and informal conversations, norms, and policies surrounding pregnancy and academia is an implicit assumption that pregnancy and pregnant people are the problem to be solved and solutions thus require repairing some deficit created in the individual by pregnancy. In this article, I argue that pregnancy discrimination in academia is in large part a problem resulting from power and how it is wielded against pregnant people, both by institutions and by individuals. Using both a personal narrative account of the process, experience, and outcomes of pregnancy in the academy resulting in filing a formal Title IX complaint and a review of contemporary research on power, discrimination, and pregnancy, I explore how academic structures and systems nominally tasked with supporting equity can instead serve to exaggerate power differences and foster discrimination.
Organizational norms of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in Danish academia: From recognizing through contesting to queering pervasive rhetorical legitimation strategies
Autor/in:
Guschke, Bontu Lucie; Just, Sine Nørholm; Muhr, Sara Louise
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: Studies of sexual harassment in professional contexts, including academia, provide detailed explanations of the predominance and pervasiveness of sexist organizational norms that enable harassing behavior—and offer a thorough critique of the structures and practices that support and reproduce these norms. When sexist organizational norms are linked to acts of sexual harassment, it becomes clear that harassment is systemic, and that organizations tend to justify and excuse the very norms and behaviors that propagate harassment. Focusing on the context of Danish universities, we do not ask whether sexism exists in Danish society generally and in academia specifically, but rather, why issues of systemic sexism and normalized sexual harassment have been ignored for so long and how sexist organizational norms have been maintained. Based on an investigation of prevalent rhetorical strategies for legitimating sexual harassment and gendered discrimination, we discuss how recognizing these strategies may translate into concerted action against them. Introducing queer organization studies as a lever for such translation, we suggest that a norm-critical approach may, first, explain how currently dominant norms offer sexist excuses for continued harassment and, consequently, delegitimize and change these unjust norms and the untenable practices they support.
