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.
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
„Mit Geschlecht hat das aber nichts zu tun“ : Über die Schwierigkeiten von Professorinnen, über Geschlecht (nicht) zu sprechen
Autor/in:
Paulitz, Tanja; Wagner, Leonie
Quelle: GENDER (GENDER – Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft), 15 (2023) 2, S 117–131
Inhalt: Historisch wie aktuell finden sich in Interviews mit Professorinnen Konstruktionen von Geschlechtsneutralität, mit denen sie versuchen, die Widersprüche zu bearbeiten, die sich aus der Meritokratienorm der Wissenschaft und gleichstellungspolitischen Versprechungen einerseits und alltäglichen Erfahrungen in der Hochschule andererseits ergeben. In einer aktuellen qualitativen Untersuchung an Hochschulen (Universitäten, Hochschulen für angewandte Wissenschaften, Kunst- und Musikhochschulen) wurden erstmals seit den 1980er-Jahren Erzählungen von Professor:innen über alltägliche Erfahrungen bzw. deren Einordnung in eine vergeschlechtlichte Organisationskultur analysiert. Zentraler Befund ist die regelmäßige und proaktive Dethematisierung von Geschlecht als relevanter Faktor für erfahrene Marginalisierungen. Diese Aussagen werden im vorliegenden Beitrag nicht als nahtlose Deskription einer heute erreichten Geschlechtsegalität gedeutet, sondern als Praktiken der Bürgschaft für eine vermeintlich erreichte geschlechterneutrale Hochschule sowie als eigene Statussicherung auf der Position als Professorin und meritokratisch anerkannte Leistungsträgerin.
Both historically and currently, interviews with women professors reveal constructions of gender neutrality with which they try to work through the contradictions that arise from the meritocratic norm of science and equality policy promises on the one hand and everyday experiences in higher education on the other. In a recent qualitative study conducted at higher education institutions (universities, universities of applied sciences, art and music academies) professors’ narrations about everyday experiences and their placement within a gendered organizational culture were analysed for the first time since the 1980s. The key finding is the regular and proactive de-thematization of gender as a relevant factor in experienced marginalization. In this article, these statements are not interpreted as a seamless description of that gender equality that has been achieved to date, but as practices that vouch for a supposedly achieved gender-neutral university and that serve to protect one’s status as women professors and meritocratically recognized high achievers.
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
Academic women’s silences in Iran: exploring with positioning theory
Autor/in:
Lotfi Dehkharghani, Leila; Menzies, Jane; Suri, Harsh
Quelle: Gender & Education, (2023) , S 1–18
Inhalt: In this paper, we seek to understand the complexity of women outside ‘the centre’ of scholarship by exploring women’s silences in an Iranian University. Building on a framework of external and internal silencing and positioning theory, we analyse in-depth interviews with 15 women and five men from an Iranian University. Using inductive and deductive approaches to data analysis, we find that women's silences are influenced by their positioning due to constraining forces stemming from the political and societal environment as well as their own perceptions of self. We find prevalent storylines rooted in the broader patriarchal Muslim society, sexist cultural norms and unjust laws in Iran that reify women’s oppressed position, exclusion, and silence within the academic workplace. Manifesting through socialization processes and stereotypical perceptions of gender roles, these prevalent storylines silence academic women and position them to be silent. We identify emerging emancipatory storylines that foster women’s positioning from being silenced to being heard.
Schlagwörter:academic work; exclusion; Interview; Iran; muslim woman; Norm; positionality; qualitative method; silencing; women
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Hochschulen, Geschlechterverhältnis
Precarity of post doctorate career breaks: does gender matter?
Autor/in:
Jones, Karen
Quelle: Studies in Higher Education, 48 (2023) 10, S 1576–1594
Inhalt: Against a background of Bologna process goals to improve employment prospects for PhD graduates, and the crisis of precarious employment conditions and prospects afflicting postdoctoral researchers – hitherto postdocs, the OECD ([2021], “Reducing the Precarity of Academic Research Careers.” In OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers. Paris: OECD Publishing,) called for research into postdoctoral careers and the precarity phenomenon. This paper responds by giving attention to career breaks as these represent a prevalent but under researched aspect of postdoc precarity in the contemporary academic labor market. Utilizing a substantial international mixed-method dataset with a sample of 950 postdocs, the study examined experiences and perceptions of the professional and personal implications of academic career breaks. Results reveal significant differences between males and females in key areas: maternity was the main reason for females’ career breaks, and redundancy/end of contract for males. Females resumed employment more with the same employer and males with a different employer. Support surrounding career breaks was mixed, largely inadequate, but not associated with gender. Perceptions of career breaks differed significantly across groups of postdocs that previously experienced a career break, those on a career break, and postdocs that had never had a career break. The latter two groups perceived negative career outcomes and positive personal outcomes more than postdocs who had previously had a career break, however, significant gender differences indicate females were more negative about the personal implications of career breaks. Discussion of the findings concludes that under neoliberalism postdocs represent a growing lumpen proletariat, leading to recommendations for policy, practice and further research into gender, precarity and postdoctoral careers.
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.
Gender pay gaps in economics: A deeper look at institutional factors
Autor/in:
Kim, MinSub; Chen, Joyce J.; Weinberg, Bruce A.
Quelle: Agricultural Economics, 54 (2023) 4, S 471–486
Inhalt: Using rich data on graduate tenure‐track faculty, we explore the gender pay gap in academic departments of economics and agricultural/applied economics and the differences between them. We find that the gender pay gaps in economics and agricultural/applied economics are 8.3% and 4.1%, respectively, controlling for faculty rank, experience, and university affiliation. The gender pay gap increases with rank and varies across institutions. Productivity is an important determinant of wages but it explains little of the gender pay gap. While the lower unexplained gap in agricultural/applied economics is laudable, a greater share of women who are assistant and associate professors is part of the explanation. Given institutional differences, we explore the extent to which institutional factors—differences in the returns to observed characteristics, such as rank; unobserved characteristics; and institutional differences in pay levels—contribute to the gender pay gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
