Theme 11-12: Gender Paradoxes in Changing Academic and Scientific Organisation(s)

By Katherine Harrison on 19 Aug | 0 comments

Gender paradoxes in how academic and scientific organizations are changing and being changed are the main focus in this research theme. Science is here understood in its wider meaning, as in the German term “Wissenschaft” or Swedish “vetenskap”, including all disciplinary areas, referring not only to natural sciences. Having said that, the research theme will give special attention to medicine, natural science, technology and engineering as these are generally key priority areas in research policy development and research funding in Europe and elsewhere.

Academic and scientific organizations are key sites of societal, academic and scientific knowledge production. These sites, as well as the nature of much academic and scientific work, have experienced rapid changes in recent decades. Such changes include: globalization and internationalization of institutions, policies and academic/scientific work; new forms of governance and increased accountability; new stratifications of institutions and professions with increased emphasis on excellence, top performance and competition; and prioritizing technology and natural science in research policy. These changes are increasingly shaping the contexts of academic and scientific work, organisations and knowledge production nationally, regionally and globally.

Both the changes that are constituted by long-term macro trends, on the one hand, and the more immediate changes aimed for, in terms of policy interventions, on the other, are of interest here. Many of these changes seemingly appear as non-gendered or are represented as such. This research theme interrogates the gender dimensions and gender impacts of both these sets of changes on academic and scientific organizations, on academic and scientific work, and knowledge production.

Along with these rapid changes, inertia rather than change characterizes the gender patterns in many, even most, academic and scientific organizations and settings. Gender patterns have been shown to be highly persistent and resistant to change. Horizontal, vertical and even contractual gender segregations continue to characterize the academic and scientific labour force. Men continue to be over-represented among gatekeepers setting the academic and research agenda. Workplace cultures, networks and interactions in academic and scientific organizations continue to show highly gendered patterns. This remains so despite the fact that the recruitment pool to academia and research has been feminizing rather heavily in several fields, and despite a wide variety of different interventions aimed at changing academia and science towards greater gender balance and awareness. The evidence accu¬¬mulated on the dynamics of gender equality interventions in academia and scientific organi¬¬zations, and the experiences of different change agents, show significant organizational gender inertia and various forms of resistance, implicit and explicit, against changing the asymmetric gender order.

Applications should explain how they address and relate to the subthemes: 

(a) The paradox of change:  rapid “non-gendered” change and gender inertia in academic and scientific organizations; gendering “non-gendered” change processes; gatekeepers promoting and preventing change.

(b) The paradox of excellence: gendering new and emerging stratifications of academic and scientific organizations, disciplines and professions; gender impact of different excellence programmes and initiatives.  

(c) The paradox of interventions: gender dynamics of gender equality promotion, resistance and change; gender equality change agents in science and academia; gender impacts of seemingly non-gendered interventions such as reforms in appointment, evaluation, funding or salary systems.

Selected relevant literature
Blanplain, Roger and Numhauser-Henning, Ann (eds.): Women in Academia and Equa¬¬lity Law. Aiming high – Falling Short? Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom. The Hague: Kluwer Law International 2006. 
Essed, Philomena: Cloning amongst professors: normativities and imagined homogeneities. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 12 (2004): 2, 113-122. 
ETAN (European Technology Assessment Network): Science Policies in the European Union. Promoting Excellence Through Mainstreaming Gender Equa¬¬lity. A Report from the ETAN Network on Women and Science. Brussels: Eu¬¬ropean Commission, Research Directorate-General  2000.
European Commission (EC): The Gender Challenge in Research Funding. Map¬¬ping the European national scenes. Official Publications of the European Communities Luxembourg: 2009. 
European Commission (EC), Gender and Excellence in the Making. Luxembourg: Office for the Official Publications of the European Communities 2004.
Eveline, Joan: Ivory Basement Leadership: Power and invisibility in the changing university. Rawley: University of Western Australia Press 2004.
Fogelberg, Paul, Jeff Hearn, Liisa Husu and Teija Mankkinen (eds.): Hard Work in the Academy. Research and interventions on gender inequalities in higher education. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press 1999.
Hearn, Jeff: Gendering Men and Masculinities in Research and Scientific Evaluations, in EC: Gender and Excellence in the Making. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2004, ss. 57- 67.
Husu, Liisa: Gatekeeping, gender equality and scientific excellence, in EC: Gender and Excellence in the Making. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2004, ss. 69-76. 
Husu, Liisa: Women's work-related and family-related discrimination and support in Academia. Advances in Gender Research (Gender Realities: Local and Global)  9 (2005):161-199.
Husu, Liisa: Sexism, Support and Survival in Academia. Academic Women and Hidden Discrimination in Finland. University of Helsinki, Social Psychological Studies 6, 2001. 
Journal of Technology Management and Innovation, thematic issue The Gender Dimension of Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship 5 (2010):1.
Leemann, Julia and Heidi Stutz (eds.) Forschungsförderung in wissenschaftlichen Laufbahnen: Zugang, Erfolg, Bedeutung und Wirkung aus Geschlechterperspektive. Zürich: Rüegger 2010. 
Morley, Louise: Sister-matic: Gender Mainstreaming in Higher Education. Teaching in Higher Education - Special Issue on Diversity. 12(2007): 5/6, 607-620.
Morley, Louise: The micropolitics of quality. Critical Quarterly 47(2005): 1-2, 83-95.
Morley, Louise: Organising feminisms, the micropolitics of the academy. New York: St.Martin’s Press 1999.
National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine: Beyond Bias and Barriers. Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. Washington D.C.: National Academies Press 2007.
Pincus, Ingrid: Politics of Gender Equality Policy Örebro Studies in Political Science 5, 2002.
Riegraf, Birgit, Brigitte Aulenbacher, Edit Kirsch-Auwärter och Ursula Müller (eds.): GenderChange in Academia. Re-Mapping the Fields of Work, Knowledge and Politics from a Gender Perspective. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag 2010.
Sagaria, Mary Ann Danowitz (ed.) Women, Universities and Change. Gender Equality in the European Union and the United States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2007.
Schiebinger, Londa (ed.): Gendered innovations in science and engineering. Stanford University Press 2008.
Schiebinger, Londa: Has feminism changed science? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1999. 
Siemienska, Renata and Annette Zimmer (eds.): Gendered career trajectories in Academia in Cross-National Perspective. Warsaw: SCHOLAR 2007. 
Van den Brink, Marieke: Behind the Scenes of Science. Gender practices in the recruitment and selection of professors in the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Pallas Publications 2010.