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The Place for Gender Research in Contemporary Portuguese Science and Higher Education Policies within the Context of Neo-liberalism
Abstract
This article will discuss the place of gender research and gender studies in universities under the current neo-liberal modes of governance. Although gender studies has a considerable history within academia and science, gender studies’ contributions in several fields were either kept invisible or just voided. The current neo-liberal rationale has promoted commodification in higher education, individualisation, excessive workloads and performativity in academia. How can these new issues associated with the neo-liberal university be articulated with ‘old’ issues related to gender inequality and to the affirmation of gender studies? Critically analysing the trajectory of science policymaking and the evolution of gender studies in Portugal as well as gender mainstreaming policies implemented in recent years, we argue that it is possible to promote a gender science policy that is able to resist and ultimately make a transformative difference in the neo-liberal university.
... In Portugal, the development of gender studies was a late, scattered, and somewhat conservative process (Augusto et al. 2018). As a result of the constraints of the dictatorship and other reasons linked to the delay in the development of higher education in the country, only at the end of the 1980s did an area of studies begin to emerge. ...
... In Portugal, the existence since 1977 of a Commission for the feminine condition enabled the creation of this field of studies that until then had only the isolated work of a few social scientists carving gender issues within the framework of their own disciplinary area. It was only from the end of the 1990s on that we can refer to gender studies as an area in Portugal (Augusto et al. 2018). Some landmarks include, in 1999, the creation of APEM (Portuguese Association of Women Studies) and the publication of a journal (Ex Aequo) which remains the only existent journal in the country that is entirely devoted to gender research. ...
... In 1995, the first gender studies program was created in Portugal and only in 2012 the first and, thus far, only interdisciplinary research center on gender was born-CIEG (Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies). As one could expect from this background, there is a certain degree of conservatism about Portuguese gender studies (Augusto et al. 2018). For a long time linked mainly to family studies, gender research in Portugal is currently more interdisciplinary, but a strong tendency towards some dominant areas still remains. ...
The objective of this study is to present the development of a framework for assessing gender inequality in higher education institutions (HEIs) which reveals how this academic environment is progressing in terms of gender balance. It proposes a multi-dimension-based index comprised by five dimensions—Empowerment, Education, Health, Violence, and Time. The mathematical model used enables the user to assign a weight value to each dimension, customizing the results according to the institution addressed. The paper is based on a post-doctoral research project which analyzed six globally recognized indexes (Gender Inequality Index; Global Gender Gap Index; Women, Business, and Law Index; Gender Equality Index; Social Institutions Global Index; Women Empowerment Principles) to construct a new framework for gender inequality evaluation tailored for HEIs. It used a Laplace–Gauss-based scale. The research included an experiment of concrete application to two instiutions, one in Europe and the other in South America. While the first one had a Gender Equality Plan, the second had not. The analysis was successfully conducted in both institutions. The two institutions presented general results above 60%. These results need to be read in the specific context of each university. The Gender Equality in Higher Education Institutions Index (GEHEI) provides a user-friendly way of checking the existence of gender inequality, summarized into a single number but able to be detailed in several levels and to provide insight into progression over time. The handling of the GEHEI tool is also very straightforward. The proposal is designed to be used in different HEIs; it is recommended that researchers customize the weights of the dimensions according to their relevance in the specific organization. This paper provides a new methodological model to measure gender inequality in HEIs based on easy-to-obtain data, distinguishing itself from global indexes by its ease of application and interpretation.
... Seven years had passed since I first sat with them and asked about their experiences of negotiating WGFS' epistemic status. Those seven years were a significant time in Portuguese academia, bringing many changes (Deem 2016;Augusto et al. 2018;Ferreira 2018), including austerity and the emergence of what I call -drawing on Ball (2003) -an academic culture of performativity (Pereira 2017). ...
... Performative academic cultures have become institutionalised in the last decade across many countries and rest on two key pillars. One is the reconceptualisation of academic activity as work that should aim to achieve the highest possible levels of productivity and profitability, and whose quality can be assessed on the basis of number of products produced (whether articles, patents or successful/satisfied students) and income generated (Burrows 2012;Sifaki 2016;Augusto et al. 2018). To monitor individuals' and institutions' productivity (and reward/punish them accordingly), it is necessary to maintain elaborate structures of auditing and surveillance (Gill 2010;Mountz et al. 2015), which constitute the second pillar of those regimes. ...
... These structures are based on extremely complex technologies of metricisation and ranking, which enable a 'quantified control' of academic labour (Burrows 2012) and lend increasing importance to citation indices, impact factors and other bibliometric indicators. A key feature of these auditing structures is that they generate intense additional labour, as scholars and institutions are forced to regularly produce reports to account for and evidence performance (Augusto et al. 2018). ...
Science and higher education have undergone profound changes in recent decades, leading in many countries to the institutionalisation of academic cultures of performativity. In this article, I examine how that institutionalisation shapes women’s, gender, feminist studies (WGFS) in paradoxical ways. Drawing on an ethnography of Portuguese academia, I show that the growing emphasis on productivity has created opportunities for WGFS but also produced a mood of exhaustion and depression that has extremely detrimental impacts on WGFS academics’ bodies, relationships and knowledge production. I use this paradox to call for more debate in WGFS about contemporary academic working cultures, and our ambivalent personal investments in work.
... Estes dados não serão alheios às especificidades dos percursos do campo no contexto português, nomeadamente o difícil e complexo processo de institucionalização dos EMGF em Portugal até 2000 (Ferreira et al., , 2002Ferreira, 2001;Ramalho, 2001Ramalho, , 2009. Enquanto noutros países proliferaram projetos de investigação em EMGF e a criação de numerosos cursos e departamentos/centros de investigação nesta área a partir dos anos 1970, Portugal iniciou este percurso mais tarde, a partir do início da década de 1990 (Amâncio, 2003;Augusto et al., 2018). ...
In this article, we conduct the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of the incorporation of Women’s, Gender and Feminist Studies (WGFS) in higher education curricula in Portugal. Through a content analysis of course syllabi and study program plans available on institutional websites, we draw a picture of incipient, accessory and precarious incorporation of WGFS, typical of the early stages of the field’s institutionalization. The study shows that there is still a long way to go for an effective and consistent integration of WGFS in higher education in the country.
... In the EU and the US there are numerous projects on gender equality, diversity, mainstreaming, etc.with reports, articles and other publications indicating some degree of successalbeit that this is often simply at the level of creating gender awareness. Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) have become ubiquitous with the requirement by the EU that they be included in all Horizon Europe research funding applications (Augusto et al. 2018). Frequently, however, these GEPs include multiple actions with little attempt at prioritization and little appetite for implementing time-bound measures to promote substantive change (Roos et al. 2020) such as soft quotas as reflected in the cascade model, where the proportion of women to be promoted reflects the proportion at the level below that. ...
For the past 30 years, many researchers have highlighted the gendering of higher educational institutions. However, many organizations in the broadly defined Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) area in the EU have varying degrees of interest, or academic staff available, in the gender equality area with many being largely unaware of this literature. This article draws provocatively on existing concepts to 'make sense' of the persistence of gender inequality. Such concepts include gendered organizational power, which is frequently taken-for-granted and is reflected at structural and cultural levels. The concept of legitimating discourses (including excellence, choice, women's 'nature' and organizational gender neutrality) helps to explain why gender inequality is not perceived. Other manifestations of institutional resistance to gender inequality provide insights into why it is not tackled effectively. The article recognizes that gendered change does occur and uses the metaphor of bonsai-ing to highlight attempts to limit the impact of such changes. Finally, it identifies some key issues that need to be tackled. ARTICLE HISTORY
... This weak awareness around gender equality stems from the absence of debates around gender discrimination in the early years of democracy (Oliveira et al. 2009), the censoring of manifestations of feminism (Cerqueira et al. 2016) and the late development of the academic fields of women's studies/gender studies or feminist studies (WGFS) that are associated with a strong feminist movement. In this first period of democracy, research in WGFS was practiced in the outer circles of departments and faculties, not recognized as an autonomous field, and placed in the marginal position reserved to feminist epistemology in academic knowledge, as identified by Pereira (2012), a position that was only accentuated in recent years by neoliberalism in higher education and research (Augusto et al. 2018;Pereira 2019). In their analysis of the unfavourable academic context for WGFS in Portugal, Pereira and Joaquim (2009, p. 115) highlight the "rigid disciplinary structure of degree programmes". ...
In this review article, we argue that the transformations related to the modernisation of Portuguese society triggered by the implementation of democracy did not fully accommodate gender equality. In particular, when we consider the areas where the most progress has been made in keeping with a broadly shared urge for modernisation, education and science; whereas women have contributed to boosting the Portuguese population’s level of education, thus inverting the worst legacy of the dictatorship and developing scientific research, gender inequalities are still visible in highly qualified professions. Reviewing the results of studies from different professions, science, medicine and engineering, our analysis illustrates several factors that hinder not only the recognition of women’s competences and merit at work but also their career opportunities. Some of these factors are rooted in the type of gender ideology that was central to the propaganda of the dictatorship, thereby establishing continuity with the previous regime that seems particularly difficult to break in the absence of women’s voices to raise awareness on gender equality.
... While other sectors developed gender equality plans (for example, local entities and public companies), which have been imposed as an obligatory measure, education had not been taken into consideration until recently. (Augusto et al 2018) Stating the relationship between gender equality and quality/excellence in research and/or in education, in the 4th National Plan for Equality, Gender, Citizenship and Non-discrimination (2011-2013) research is signalled as a strategic area. ...
... Several obstacles are yet to overcome: most of the university engineering classroom materials (image, language, real world examples, etc.) do not promote gender equality; these kind of projects demand time and dedication. It is not easy to participate in these kind of initiatives, dedicated to local development and citizenship promotion, in the context of the performative university [30] where the stress to produce and show quick results is undoubtedly affecting academics agenda [31]. ...
In the last years, European Union has strongly promoted to increase the number of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) courses at universities, and consequently women presence in these labour markets. This effort is clearly reflected in the "Strategic engagement for gender equality 2016-2019" of the European Union, in the key action "promoting gender equality in all levels and types of education, including in relation to gendered study subject choices and careers" as a way to reduce the gender pay, earnings and pension gaps and to fight poverty among women, which are important concerns in several European countries. University of Beira Interior (UBI) has a gender equality plan (GEP) since 2011 and recently become a partner of the project "Women engineers for a day" (in Portuguese "Engenheiras por um dia"), developed under the "Agenda for equality in the labour market and in enterprises", framed in the "National strategy for equality and non-discrimination 2018-2030". The main objectives of the project are to promote engineering programs and to share experiences of women engineering professionals and university students with the students of secondary schools. This paper aims to report and discuss some of the strategies adopted by the departments of Civil Engineering and Electromechanical Engineering of UBI in the promotion of engineering programs in secondary schools, as well as some approaches carried out in university classes to ensure gender neutrality and gender balance. The experience of the two departments shows that secondary school students are unfamiliar with most aspects of the engineering occupations as well as women potentialities in this field of knowledge. The contact with successful women storytelling in engineering; sharing sessions of real-world experiences of women engineers and practical hands-on and ICT activities have demonstrated to be efficient approaches. Still, many obstacles remain, for example, most of the university classroom materials (image, language, real world examples, etc.) do not promote gender equality in the engineering education.
The book presents the functionalist, critical, Cultural Studies, alternativist, postcolonialist and feminist traditions in Communication theories, seen by Latin American and European authors, as well as an inter-continental dialogue regarding each one of them.
The book addresses the following questions:
What are the possibilities to establish bridges, comparisons and connections between/among Communication Studies in Europe and Latin America?
How can we describe, and put into perspective, the research in these two regions? How are they connected, in particular ways, to functionalism, critical thinkings, culturalist currents, alternative reflexions, postcolonial studies and feminist perspectives about the Communication?
These are important issues that are relevant to Communication scholars and students – This new book aims to stimulate the debate on the roles of these research traditions, and on the similarities and differences in the two regions.
In dealing with these questions, the aims to connect Communication studies in Latin America and Europe through the organisations of a serie of dialogues that involved important researchers, who accepted the challenges of working together.
They are: Nico Carpentier, Miguel Vicente Mariño, Leonardo Custódio, Juana Gallego Ayala, Maria João Silveirinha Cláudia Lago, Mara Coelho de Souza Lago, Monica Martinez, Tanius Karam Cárdenas, Antonio Castillo Esparcia, Alejandro Álvarez-Nobell, Pedro Russi, Ruth de Frutos, Javier Torres Molina, César Bolaño, Leonarda García-Jiménez, Manuel Hernández Pérez, Filipa Subtil, Marta Rizo, Alejandro Barranquero, Emiliano Treré, Lázaro Bacallao, Sarah Anne Ganter, Félix Ortega and Erick R. Torrico Villanueva.
Journal ex aequo
Call for papers
Dossier: GENDER STUDIES AND NEOLIBERALISM: THE LAST 20 YEARS
Editors: Maria João Silveirinha – Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra (FLUC) and ICNOVA–NOVA Institute of Communication (mjsilveirinha@gmail.com)
Cláudia Álvares – University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL) and Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES) (claudia.alvares@iscte-iul.pt)
Deadline – May 15 2020 (to be published in December 2020)
ex æquo invites the submission of papers that fall within the broad scope of
issues including, but not limited to, studies on:
- university management, scientific policies and the epistemic value of gender studies;
- challenges of gender studies in face of post-colonial, decolonial and LGBTIQ perspectives;
- implications of feminism critique in the epistemological recognition of gender studies;
- contesting gender studies from multiple sources, among others, conservative antigender
movements and feminist currents of sexual difference;
- contesting social sciences and gender studies;
- discussion of mainstreaming as a strategy for social change;
- political economy, corporatism, leadership;
- studies on media, journalism, advertising, social networks, consumption;
- studies on post-feminism, popular feminism, and liberal feminism.
Existe, hoje, um sério problema sobre quem determina a pesquisa, designadamente os temas prioritários de investigação, os problemas que vale a pena investigar, e também a pesquisa que justifica financiamento...
As higher education (HE) institutions globally become increasingly performative, competitive and corporatised in response to neoliberal rationalities, the exigencies of HE leadership are being realigned to accommodate its value system. This article draws on recent British Council-funded research, including 30 semi-structured interviews, to explore women’s engagement with leadership in HE in South Asia. A potent affective economy was discovered. Leadership was associated with affects such as competitiveness, aggression, impropriety, stress and anxiety, in ways that were intensified by highly patriarchal and corporatised HE cultures. Indeed, its difficulties and toxicities meant that leadership was rejected or resisted as an object of desire by many women. We illuminate how different forms of competition contribute to the affective economy of HE leadership. The research also raises wider questions about the possibilities of disrupting dominant neoliberal constructions of HE if those who question such values are excluded (or self-exclude) from leadership positions.
This article is based on our own experiences and that of several of our colleagues teaching social and cultural anthropology in different Dutch institutions for higher learning. We focus in particular on teaching and learning in two small liberal arts and science (LAS) colleges, where
anthropology makes up part of the social science curriculum and/or is part of the core curriculum. The data collected from our own critical reflections developed during informal discussion and from formal interviews with colleagues, together with literature on recent changes in academia, leads
us to argue that neoliberal individualism, shaped by management tactics that constantly measure individual performance and output, is making academia an increasingly insecure place in which to work and study. The consequences of this insecurity include increasing mental health problems among
both students and staff, intensifying competition at the expense of collegiality and collaboration and an overall decrease in the quality of academic jobs and teaching. Although the discipline of anthropology can help us better understand our own conditions, the personalisation of problems
and the focus on success obscure the anthropological lens, which looks at social and cultural structures of power and depends on critical reflexivity.
The project to develop a plan for gender equality for the University of Beira Interior surged in 2009 as an outcome of a research project. It is a groundbreaking initiative in Portugal since it will be the first equality plan in a public university. It receives public funding from the strategic framework (through the QREN-POPH). This paper promotes a reflection on the context of development of this project – UBIgual – discussing its proceedings and the main difficulties and potentialities of the application of a UE social policy.
This book offers an innovative rethinking of policy approaches to 'gender equality' and of the process of social change. It brings several new chapters together with a series of previously published articles to reflect on these topics. A particular focus is gender mainstreaming, a relatively recent development in equality policy in many industrialised and some industrialising countries, as well as in large international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the International Labour Organization. The book draws upon poststructuralist organisation and policy theory to argue that it is impossible to 'script' reform initiatives such as gender mainstreaming. As an alternative it recommends thinking about such policy developments as fields of contestation, shaped by on-the-ground political deliberations and practices, including the discursive practices that produce specific ways of understanding the 'problem' of 'gender inequality'. In addition to the new chapters the editors Bacchi and Eveline produce brief introductions for each chapter, tracing the development of their ideas over four years. Through these commentaries the book provides exciting insights into the complex processes of collaboration and theory generation. Mainstreaming Politics is a rich resource for both practitioners in the field and for theorists. In particular it will appeal to those interested in public policy, public administration, organisation studies, sociology, comparative politics and international studies.
This article utilizes the findings of a recently completed, eight-country research project to visit some key issues in the theory and practice of gender mainstreaming. The research results indicate that gender mainstreaming is a diverse entity when looked at from a crossnational perspective but rather hollow when considered within the national setting. To the extent that there is a “common core” to gender mainstreaming in action across countries, it lies in the tendency to apply the approach in a technocratic way and to be nonsystemic in compass. The argument is advanced that this is at least in part attributable to particularities in the development of mainstreaming. The article suggests that gender mainstreaming is underdeveloped as a concept and identifies a need to elaborate further on some fundaments. In particular, the conceptualization of mainstreaming needs to be rethought with special attention devoted to the understanding of the problematic of gender inequality that underlies it and the articulation of the relationship between gender mainstreaming and societal change.
Relying on the international literature on CV-based indicators, we select a sample of CVs from researchers applying to the
Spanish Ramón y Cajal programme to assess mobility patterns and look for evidence of links between mobility and research performance.
Evidence is found that mobility patterns vary across disciplines and that most internationally mobile researchers seem to
have better access to international funding sources and networks, which does not, however, imply that they are the most quantitatively
productive as far as publications and patents are concerned. The results thus support the idea that the qualitative dimension
of mobility impact is an important one to consider.
The paper explores gender relations in academia and discusses how gender is constructed within academic institutions. It is based upon the study of a business school, part of a British university. The construction of gender relations within this institution was of special interest because the majority of managerial roles were occupied by women. All female academic managers (dean, associate deans and heads of department) and a random selection of female and male academics were interviewed. The process of construction of gender relations is investigated through the analysis of the discrepancy between the ‘masculine culture’ of high education institutions and the dominance of women managers within this organization. It is suggested that the numerical dominance of women managers may create tensions between their individual identities as women and their managerial identities, due to the predominance of masculine practices and values within the organization. Additionally, it emerged that the maintenance of masculine ideals and practices is also associated with downplaying women’s achievements.
This article uses data from a French university to analyze gender biases in student evaluations of teaching (SETs). The results of fixed effects and generalized ordered logit regression analyses show that male students express a bias in favor of male professors. Also, the different teaching dimensions that students value in male and female professors tend to match gender stereotypes. Men are perceived by both male and female students as being more knowledgeable and having stronger class leadership skills (which are stereotypically associated with males), despite the fact that students appear to learn as much from women as from men.
Gender issues in research and innovation have gained increased recognition on policy agendas at national, European and international levels, as well as at the level of research organisations. This report on “Gender Equality Policies in Public Research” is based on a survey among the members of the Helsinki Group, the Commission’s advisory group on gender, research and innovation. It gives a detailed analysis of the current state-of-play of EU Member States’ and associated countries’ initiatives for promoting gender equality in research and innovation. It comes at a critical review point along the path towards a fully operational European Research Area (ERA) and provides a timely insight for the forthcoming ERA Progress Report 2014
What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary, even unremarkable, feature of institutional life. Yet diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the "brick wall." On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as "non-performatives" that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of institutional whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the institutionalization of diversity. Diversity is used as evidence that institutions do not have a problem with racism. On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers generate knowledge of institutions in attempting to transform them.
Synopsis
The aim of this paper is to raise and explore some of the challenges we as gender scholars have experienced in Sweden today in what could be conceptualized as ‘overed’ academic landscapes. Our argument is framed by Sara Ahmed's (2012) statement that the very idea that we are ‘over race’ is how racism is reproduced where it also has to be emphasized that the notion of being ‘over race’ needs to be understood as intertwined with being over gender. With autobiographical methods, we take leverage in a problematization of gender studies as ‘a room of our own’ and discuss related themes in academe such as the paradox of gender studies as a perspective and/or a discipline, pluralism and the academic institutional division of labour, feminism and neoliberal New Public Management, collaborative interdisciplinary work in audit cultures. The paper concludes with a discussion about resisting ‘overing’ through the conflicted position of the feminist scholar.
Synopsis
This article critically engages with the effects of the neoliberal turn on the complex position of feminist agency within the Croatian academia, taking the ‘unsettling’ Women's Studies within the academic framework as a point of departure. By focusing on the neoliberal impact on the status of feminist scholarship, politics of feminist epistemology within/crossing the academic framework and the role of feminist scholars, the analysis shows various shifts and contradictions on how the neoliberal procedures operate within this distinctive context and to what extent specific geopolitical contingencies matter in this regard. It also explores the modes of how an emerging neoliberal ‘rationality’ enhances not only the depoliticisation of the discourse on sex/gender issues but also new moments of coercion around areas of dependency and academic neo-colonialism that queries the self-critical referential stand of local feminist scholars and shifting perspective in understanding the different positions of feminists towards neoliberal claims.
Synopsis
In many regions, the past decade has been characterised by significant transformations of models of organisation and evaluation of academic work. These include processes of extensification, elasticisation and casualisation of academic labour, and the institutionalisation of regimes of “performativity” (Ball, 2003), enacted by apparatuses of measurement and auditing (Burrows, 2012). These interacting trends are having significant impacts not only on academic working conditions, but also on opportunities for sociopolitical intervention outside the academy. This article draws on an ethnography of Portuguese academia, and on debates about the “toxic” (Gill, 2010) and “careless” (Lynch, 2010) nature of contemporary academic cultures, to analyse the current (im)possibilities of articulating activism and academic work. I argue that in the present day “academia without walls” (Gill, 2010) this articulation is extremely difficult, but we must reject conceptualising that difficulty as an individual challenge, and reframe it as a structural problem requiring – urgently – collective responses.
Synopsis
This article explores the ambivalences and aporias that arouse from the institutionalization of degree-granting programs of Gender Studies in German-speaking countries at a time in which universities are being transformed into entrepreneurial managerially governed organizations. It asks if Gender Studies is a proactive element of those transformation processes or has, as a kind of premium segment of the academic market, even profited from them. It asks if Gender Studies has amassed sufficient academic capital to determine the rules of the academic “game” in Bourdieu's sense or if it is falling victim to global processes of academic accumulation and segmentation. The paper's main argument will be that if the paradoxical precondition for dissent is participation, and if critique and regulation are tied up in a fraught but intimate connection, then the point will be to reflect critically upon those circumstances and conditions under which we produce, distribute and consume knowledge.
Synopsis
This paper is concerned with the deep crisis affecting universities, as large scale institutional and structural transformations produce a psychosocial and somatic catastrophe amongst academics (and other university workers) that manifests in experiences of chronic stress, anxiety, exhaustion, insomnia and spiralling rates of physical and mental illness. Elsewhere these have been discussed as the ‘hidden injuries of the neoliberal university’ (Gill, 2010), highlighting the ways in which such experiences are simultaneously acknowledged and recognised by university staff, yet silenced and exorcised from formal spaces of the contemporary academy and without ‘proper channels’ of expression – being the subject of conference coffee breaks but not keynotes, of after seminar drinks but not departmental meetings, committee minutes or Senate or Council documentation. For future historians seeking to understand through such official records something about the texture of experience of current academic life, the archives will offer no insights.
However, in the last few years, this paper suggests, such injuries have moved from being almost completely silenced within universities to becoming the subject of a variety of new spaces and services designed with ‘academics in crisis’ at their heart. These include the rolling out of ‘well-being’ services within universities of programmes for stress management, mindfulness and resilience, the development of new ‘apps’ designed for busy or overworked people, and the rapidly expanding blogosphere which has become a key site for ‘naming’ and sharing such experiences of distress/injury. The paper looks critically at these three sites. It argues that whilst they recognise at least some aspects of the subjective experience of contemporary academic labouring, they remain locked into a profoundly individualist framework that turns away from systemic or collective politics to offer instead a set of individualised tools by which to ‘cope’ with the strains of the neoliberal academy.
Synopsis
The purpose of this study is to analyse the self-positioning strategies of Estonian female scientists in the areas of natural sciences and technology in order to understand how these strategies are influenced by discursive processes of career creation, success and excellence in science. An analysis of 20 in-depth interviews incorporates Laclau's and Mouffe's discourse theory to explore the hegemonies and boundaries in women's positioning strategies. The findings suggest that strategies that women use reflect different coping and resilience mechanisms in overcoming academic and career obstacles rooted in gendered processes in organisations. Gender neutrality, trivialising and superiority strategies reflect the tensions between women's self-positioning and academic excellence, which are framed by gendered symbols of achievements and careers in science. The findings contribute to the discussion of gendered organisations by focusing on the patterns that support the persistence of gender hierarchies and inequalities.
This article explores some of the most significant questions in feminist epistemology: how do academics demarcate what constitutes 'proper' academic knowledge? And to what extent is feminist theory and research recognised as such? I draw on material from an ethnographic study of academia in Portugal to examine the claims that non-feminist scholars make in classrooms and conferences about the epistemic status of feminist scholarship. I observed that feminist work was very commonly described as capable of generating credible and valuable knowledge, but only in some instances and in limited ways. I present examples of these adversative claims (i.e. propositions that express opposition or discrepancy through a 'but' or equivalent adversative conjunction) and analyse their structure, content and uses of caricature and humour, showing how epistemic boundaries are drawn in them and how feminist scholarship is positioned in relation to those boundaries. I argue that this boundary-work produces a representation of feminist scholarship as being located partly within, and partly outside, the realm of proper knowledge, a move which I designate as an epistemic splitting of that scholarship. I suggest that this splitting enables and legitimates a selective engagement with feminist work, because it provides non-feminist scholars with a recognised epistemological rationale for taking into account the feminist insights which broadly fit mainstream frameworks, while simultaneously rejecting as epistemologically unsound the feminist critiques of those frameworks.
In the context of neoliberal government policymaking in the UK, universities have become increasingly managerial in their approach. Growing market pressures and a commodification of higher education (HE) has had a significant effect on the work of academics, as producers and providers of HE. Human Resource Management — a management tool that focuses on individual performance — has increasingly been deployed in universities to monitor and direct the work of academics with the aim of ensuring consistency in their standards of educational delivery. This paper considers the impact of such an approach and draws on the results of a case study that investigated the deployment of HRM in three English universities. Although variable in its impact, the use of HRM raises serious questions concerning academic freedom, autonomy and identity.
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 12.3 (2005) 321-343
Gender mainstreaming is an essentially contested concept and practice. It involves the reinvention, restructuring, and rebranding of a key part of feminism in the contemporary era. It is both a new form of gendered political and policy practice and a new gendered strategy for theory development. As a practice, gender mainstreaming is a process to promote gender equality. It is also intended to improve the effectivity of mainline policies by making visible the gendered nature of assumptions, processes, and outcomes. However, there are many different definitions of gender mainstreaming as well as considerable variations in practice. As a form of theory, gender mainstreaming is a process of revision of key concepts to grasp more adequately a world that is gendered, rather than the establishment of a separatist gender theory. Gender mainstreaming encapsulates many of the tensions and dilemmas in feminist theory and practice over the past decade and provides a new focus for debates on how to move them on (Behning and Pascual 2001; Beveridge et al. 2000; Mazey 2000; Verloo 2001; Walby 2001; Woodward 2003).
There are at least six major issues in the analysis of gender mainstreaming. First is how to address the tension between "gender equality" and the "mainstream" and the attempts to reposition these two configurations. Second is whether the vision of gender equality invoked by the mainstreaming process draws on notions of "sameness," "difference," or "transformation"; or, in a parallel typology, inclusion, reversal, or displacement. Third is whether the vision of gender equality can be distinguished from the strategy to get there, or whether these are two dimensions of the same process. Fourth is the relationship of gender mainstreaming with other complex inequalities, especially those associated with ethnicity and class, but also disability, faith, sexual orientation, and age. Fifth is the relationship between "expertise" and "democracy," and the rethinking of the concept and practice of democracy to include gender relations. Sixth are the implications of the transnational nature of the development of gender mainstreaming, including the influence of international regimes, the development of human rights discourse, and the development of the European Union in the context of global processes.
The articles in this special issue of Social Politics take these debates forward in many significant ways. Most of the articles contributed to and drew from a series of seminars funded by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council on gender mainstreaming. They address the meaning of gender equality as well as the project of gender mainstreaming (Verloo), engage with diverse inequalities and their intersectionality and their implications for theories of democracy (Squires), consider the implications of the wider economic and political context for the potential of gender mainstreaming to create change (Perrons), address the tension between the agenda-setting potential of the strategy and integration into the mainstream (Lombardo), and investigate the relationship between theory and practice in diverse European settings (Daly).
Gender mainstreaming involves at least two different frames of reference: "gender equality" and the "mainstream." Thus gender mainstreaming is inevitably and essentially a contested process. Although there are attempts to bridge the gap between these two positions, it is important to note the frequent opposition to gender mainstreaming to understand the dualism between gender equality and mainstream agendas. Elgström (2000) argues that new gender norms have to "fight their way into institutional thinking" in competition with traditional norms, because established goals may compete with the prioritization of gender equality even if they are not directly opposed. This means that the process is contested and can involve "negotiation" rather than simple adoption of new policies. Perrons (this volume) provides a different perspective on the origin and nature of opposition to gender mainstreaming. She argues that, at least in the United Kingdom and perhaps more widely, the goal of the competitiveness of the economy takes precedence over equality considerations, thereby endorsing rather than tackling the low-paid work so frequently found among women. The issue is not articulated as opposition to the goal of gender equality, but rather the prioritisation of some other goal. In...
This article is about the subtle and complex ways in which discrimination against women takes place in higher education. A major finding of the Gender Equity in Commonwealth Higher Education Project was the way in which gendered power is relayed via everyday transactions and relationships. Even where there is a sophisticated equity policy context as in the case of South Africa, macro aspirations often do not reach the micro-level of experience. This article applies the conceptual framework of micropolitics in its analysis of women students' and staffs' experiences of the gendered organisational culture of higher education. It examines how gender discrimination can take place via informal networks, coalitions, and exclusions, as well as by formal arrangements in classrooms and boardrooms.
Despite some progress in recent years, achieving gender equality in scientific research remains an important challenge for policy-makers and the scientific community at large. Concordantly, the promotion of women at all levels of academic research has become a priority on the science agendas of many national and international political institutions. Although the number of female scientists has increased, true gender equality has not been achieved. Overall, women are still under-represented in many research fields, generally receive lower salaries, are less likely to have full-time contracts and have fewer opportunities to gain influential positions than their male colleagues.
The implications of the development of the European Union for gender equality are analyzed through an assessment of the development of a path-dependent form of the gender regime in the EU. Two issues underpin this analysis, one concerning the theorization of gender relations, the second concerning the nature of EU powers. The analysis of gender inequality requires more than a simple scale of inequalities and additionally requires the theorization of the extent and nature of the interconnections between different dimensions of the gender regime. The powers of the EU are extending beyond the narrowly economic in complex ways.
In this study the author analyses the bibliography on Portuguese historiography, from the 19 th and part of the 20* centuries, in the field of studies commonly designated as women and gender history. Along with the problem of the major theoretical questions raised by this historical research field (epistemological and documental, among others) the author describes the central guidelines of this research, and, in particular the major themes studied by other researchers.
Gender mainstreaming was endorsed as the official policy approach to gender equality in the European Union and its member states in the Amsterdam Treaty (1997). New member states have been obliged to adopt a gender mainstreaming approach as a condition of joining the EU. However, despite this endorsement, there remains considerable confusion as to what gender mainstreaming is and there has been uneven development in the adoption of gender mainstreaming tools. This article seeks to contribute to the debate by identifying three principles that appear to underlie gender mainstreaming in Europe – treating the individual as a whole person; democracy; and justice, fairness and equity. It then draws on the experience of a number of European countries to identify where tools associated with each set of principles have been introduced. These include gender-disaggregated statistics, gender budgeting and ‘visioning’. The article illustrates how there appear to be very few examples of a gender mainstreaming approach where promoting gender equality is the main policy goal (agenda setting). More often, gender mainstreaming is used as a means of delivering on or is subsumed under another policy (integration). Despite these weaknesses in practice, the article concludes that gender mainstreaming has significant potential as a transformative strategy.
Produtivismo, pesquisa e comunicação científica: entre o veneno e o remédio
- Teresa C Rego
Os media e as mulheres: horizontes de representação, de construção e de práticas significantes
- Maria Silveirinha
- João
Silveirinha, Maria João. 2004. Os media e as mulheres: horizontes de representação, de
construção e de práticas significantes. In As mulheres e os media, ed. by Maria João
Silveirinha, 5−12. Lisboa: Livros Horizonte.
Os planos para a Igualdade nas organizações e a estratégia de mainstreaming
- Virgínia Ferreira
Ferreira, Virgínia. 2011. Os planos para a Igualdade nas organizações e a estratégia de
mainstreaming. In Atas do seminário: Igualdade de Género -Responsabilidade Social
e Cidadania, ed. by Catarina Sales Oliveira and Susana Villas-Boas, 49−53. Covilhã:
Universidade da Beira Interior.
Feminismos, Estudos sobre as Mulheres ou “para onde vai este barco?
- Teresa Joaquim
Joaquim, Teresa. 2007. Feminismos, Estudos sobre as Mulheres ou "para onde vai este barco?". In O longo caminho das mulheres: feminismos 80 anos depois, ed. by Lígia Amâncio,
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Um novo olhar sobre as relações sociais de género: Feminismo e perspectiva crítica na psicologia social
- Conceição Nogueira
Nogueira, Conceição. 2001. Um novo olhar sobre as relações sociais de género: Feminismo e
perspectiva crítica na psicologia social. Lisboa: Fundação Gulbenkian.
O lugar do gênero, dos homens e das mulheres na sociologia portuguesa: uma análise a partir da Associação Portuguesa de Sociologia
- Elisabete Rodrigues
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A Igualdade de Género, Caminhos e Atalhos para uma Sociedade Inclusiva
- Manuela Silva
Silva, Manuela. 1999. A Igualdade de Género, Caminhos e Atalhos para uma Sociedade Inclusiva. Lisboa: Comissão para a Igualdade e para os Direitos das Mulheres.
The Epistemic Status of Women’s, Gender, Feminist Studies: Notes for Analysis
- Maria Pereira
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Pereira, Maria do Mar. 2008. The Epistemic Status of Women's, Gender, Feminist Studies:
Notes for Analysis. In The Making of European Women's Studies: Volume VIII. A Work
in Progress Report on Curriculum Development and Related Issues in Gender Education
and Research, ed. by Berteke Waaldijk, Else van der Tuin and Mischa Peters, 145-156.
Utrecht: Athena.
Measuring and Assessing Researcher Mobility from CV Analysis: The Case of the Ramón y Cajal Programme in Spain
- Pierre Bourdieu
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2004. Science of Science and Reflexivity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cañibano, Javier Otamendi and Inés Andujar. 2008. Measuring and Assessing Researcher
Mobility from CV Analysis: The Case of the Ramón y Cajal Programme in Spain. Research Evaluation 17 (1): 17−3.
- Teresa C Rego
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Estudos de Género numa perspetiva interdisciplinar
- Anália Torres
- Diana Maciel
- Helena Sant
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Torres, Anália, Diana Maciel and Helena Sant'Ana. 2015. Estudos de Género numa perspetiva
interdisciplinar. Lisboa: Mundos Sociais.
Positive Impact of Gender Mainstreaming in Academia and Research Institutions: Opinion Paper
- Eige
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População residente do sexo feminino com 15 e mais anos por nível de escolaridade completo
- Pordata
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escolaridade completo. http://www.pordata.pt/Portugal/Popula%c3%a7%c3%a3o+resi-dente+do+sexo+feminino+com+15+e+mais+anos+por+n%c3%advel+de+escolaridade+-completo+mais+elevado+(percentagem)-885. Accessed: December 5, 2016.
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Integrating Gender Mainstreaming in Academia and Research Institutions: Analytical Paper
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