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Report United States of America
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This report is an output from the EU-funded GENERA project, No 665637, conducted between September 2015 and August 2018.The aim of the project was to implement Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in physics research organisations. The significance of GENERA lies in the involvement of physicists as the implementing actors, and targeting physics, a field well known for its persistent gender imbalance in the participation of women and strong masculine cultures, as an area for structural change in research performing organisations. The GENERA partner, Jagiellonian University, devised a questionnaire to be used by the 11 GEP implementing partners to assess how researchers, women and men, at junior and senior career levels perceive their own work and career-advancement conditions and the opportunities to succeed opened to them, as well as the barriers that prevent them achieve professional excellence. The report analyses the responses of nearly 90 interviews.
The report presents the issue of intersectionality in Bulgaria and tries to answers the key question for the STRIQ part of the QUING project, namely: what are the implications of the intersection of multiple inequalities for the quality of gender+ equality policies.
By reviewing the analytical concepts on the issue of intersectionality, the first chapter of the report sets the leading research questions for STRIQ:
• How are inequalities and their intersections conceptualised in terms of their structure and mechanisms?
• To what extent does context matter in the (re)production of inequalities across Europe?
• What attention must be paid to other structural (in)equalities in the making and implementing of European gender equality policies?
The literature review chapter also sets few additional question for investigation which concern the contextual specifics of the policies in Bulgaria, a major part of which pays attention to the post socialist character of the country, and its importance for the policies during the transition, and to the EU accession process as the greatest influence on the adoption of new legislation and new institutional establishments in the field of the gender+ equality policies.
The third chapter of the report uses the information from the issue histories report and the country context study in identifying the timeline of the legislation and the institutional transformation in order to find significant ‘turning points’ in the treatment of intersectionality in gender equality policies. It outlines some of the important structural rerequisites of the relation between gender and other inequalities in the gender+ equality policies.
The fourth chapter of the report takes a closer look at the coded documents and by using the document analysis it provides empirical outputs on various definitions of “gender equality” and the way that gender equality is de-gendered. By conceptualisation of the forms of inequalities as they are constructed in the policy documents, the analysis provides grounds for the definition of the range of meanings or frames of intersectionality for the four QUING issues – general gender equality, non employment, intimate citizenship and gender based violence, and their comparison.
The fifth chapter of the report explores the range of meanings of intersectionality and the dynamics of their construction as analytical ground for conclusions on the possible implications of intersectionality for gender equality.
The sixth chapter draws conclusions from the research results and tries to answer the research questions addressed in the literature review.
Resumo: Este artigo discute as mudanças paradigmáticas actuais que ocorrem no ensino superior, envolvendo o funcionamento organizacional, administrativo, científico e pedagógico das instituições. Estas mudanças estão consubstanciadas, por um lado, na Declaração de Bolonha e, por outro, no novo RJIES (Regime Jurídico das Instituições do Ensino Superior).
Palavras-Chave: Ensino superior-Europa do conhecimento-Processo de Bolonha.
Antarctica is often associated with images of masculine figures battling against the blizzard. The pervasiveness of heroic white masculine leadership and exploration in Antarctica and, more broadly, in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) research cultures, has meant women have had lesser access to Antarctic research and fieldwork opportunities, with a marked increase since the 1980s. This article presents findings from an exploratory online survey examining how 95 women experienced research and remote Antarctic fieldwork with the Australian Antarctic Program. Although women are entering polar science in greater numbers, a key theme of the qualitative findings of this survey is that gendered barriers to participation in research and fieldwork persist. We discuss five key gendered barriers including: 1) Physical barriers, 2) Caring responsibilities/unpaid work, 3) Cultural sexism/gender bias, 4) Lack of opportunities/recognition, and 5) Unwanted male attention/sexual harassment. We argue that the lack of attention paid to gender and sexuality in polar fieldwork contributes to the invisibility and exclusion of women and other marginalized identities broadly. To conclude, we point to the importance of targeted inclusivity, diversity and equity initiatives through Antarctic research globally and specifically by National Antarctic Programs.
Gender inequality in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) is well documented internationally. The Athena SWAN (AS) Charter was launched in the UK in 2005 to provide an impetus for positive cultural and structural changes to advance gender equality in UK universities. The Australian pilot of the AS Charter began in 2015 and is overseen by the Australian Academy of Sciences. Despite extensive engagement with AS over the last 15 years in the UK and more recently in Australia, qualitative research on the awards application process and its impact on AS Self-Assessment Team (SAT) members is limited. To fill this knowledge gap, we undertook a qualitative interview study examining how gender and gender equity are operationalised and understood by SAT members in the first year of an AS pilot at a regional Australian university. Findings indicate key gender differences in SAT members’ motivations for AS participation which, we argue, potentially translates into unequal gendered workload distributions on the SAT. Although AS is positioned as a key mechanism for addressing inequality in STEMM broadly, this study suggests that the initiative’s impacts in Australia risk being undermined by its unintentional reproduction of gender inequality in the academic workforce.
Research grant funding influences the organisation of academic work and academic careers. We problematise general approaches to gender bias in research grant funding and argue that it fails to include the wider structures of inequality and the unequal gendered power relations in academia. Approaching the subject with gender budgeting we challenge assumed gender-neutral practices. The objective is to illuminate how the gendered funding system and (the previous and subsequent) gendered structures of academia are maintained. The whole grants scheme is assessed, drawing on statistical data collected on the whole population of a medium-size, comprehensive research and educational institution in Iceland, and two types of competitive grants. The data is measured against the pool of applicants and comparisons within and between fields and ranks are made. By including the structures of inequality and the gendered power relations, the results show how the funding system is biased not only in favour of men, but towards the male-dominated and culturally masculine positions and fields. This approach illustrates the need to address the whole academic system in order to challenge the norms that maintain and reproduce gender inequalities.
Gender inequality in science is a real issue, and without frank and open discussions leading to positive action it is likely to remain so. In February 2019, Nature Reviews Cancer was kindly invited to be part of a 'Women in Science Mentoring' panel discussion, which took place at the Lorne Cancer Conference in Victoria, Australia. Inspired by the scientific career paths and experiences of the women on the panel, we decided to share their stories with our readers in this Viewpoint article, along with their opinions on how men and women must equally take responsibility for supporting and empowering female scientists. To this end, we hope we might contribute in some small way to highlighting a few of the issues surrounding gender bias in cancer research, as well as science more generally, and show our commitment to ensuring gender diversity within the journal.
In the era of global competition, academic institutions are increasingly being managed as efficient organizations where early career academics are the most vulnerable group in the academic hierarchy. We use gender budgeting to deconstruct the financial and managerial processes and procedures in a selected academic institution in Iceland. Drawing on multiple data collection methods, we argue that new managerialism enhances the precarious position of early career academics, especially women and those in the more feminized fields. Furthermore, we show that the system's bias in favour of so‐called hard science generates gendered consequences for early career academics. We demonstrate this structural gender bias in each of the first three stages of an academic career: PhD, postdoc and other temporary positions, and assistant professorship. By highlighting the gendered consequences of new managerialism, we want to direct attention to the need to include a gender perspective in the budgeting and all the decision‐making processes in academic institutions.