Excellent and gender equal? Academic motherhood and ‘gender blindness' in Norwegian academia

This article explores Norwegian female academics' experiences with academic motherhood in an organizational perspective. A main finding is that academia as an organization is greedy, uncertain, and has ‘blind spots' that reveal gender bias related to gender and parental status, especially mothers. By analysing the link between gendered organization of work and the legitimatizing of gender inequality, the article reveals ‘gender blindness' in the academic organization concerning gender and parental status. The article concludes that changes in academia — in line with academic capitalism — may indicate that the Norwegian model of work–life balance is under pressure. This article suggests that the organizational conditions for academic motherhood are important factors in order to understand the persistence of gender inequality.     

Gender,Work and Organization: A gender–work–organization analysis

This article, celebrating 25 year of Gender, Work and Organization, reflects on some of the events that led to establishing the journal. It proceeds to consider the three central elements that have inspired the journal ‐ gender, work and organization ‐ and how they have become more problematic, perhaps much more problematic, over the lifetime of the journal. Indeed, paradoxically, these shift have occurred at the same time as GWO and the field of which it is part have become more established. Just as the field of gender and organizations has become more legitimate area of study, the concept of ‘gender’ has become more complex, more contested, less certain. This also applies to the notion of ‘organization’, perhaps less so to ‘work’. The latter part of the article considers what happens when one views the GWO itself in terms of gender‐work‐organization analysis, and how such questions may develop in the future.     

Doing Gender in Academic Education: The Paradox of Visibility

Recent contributions in the field of gender and organization point to the notion of paradox to unveil the persistence of gender inequality in organizations. This article seeks to contribute to this growing body of knowledge. We used the notion of paradox to reveal the processes of doing gender at an earth science department of a Dutch university in order to find out whether gender segregation in academic and professional careers has already started during academic education. We focused on the study choices of female students in earth sciences and discovered the paradox of visibility, which enabled us to show the contradictory and ambiguous nature of how gender is done at this department. In this article we discuss the relationship between doing gender and paradox on a theoretical as well as an empirical level. We argue that paradoxes could be very useful when analysing doing gender in organizations, because paradoxes focus on the social process in which individual agency and social structures come together. We even suggest that paradoxes might help us to disrupt the hierarchical nature of the gender binary, because they allow for a constant reflection on ambiguity and contradictions in theorizing as well as in practice.     

Gender discourses in academic mobility

Despite increasing geographic mobility among academic staff, gendered patterns of involvement in academic mobility have largely escaped scrutiny. Positioned within literatures on internationalization, physical proximity, gender and parenthood in academic mobility and understandings of gender as a process enacted through both discursive and embodied practices, we use discourse analysis based on interviews with academics in New Zealand to examine differences in language that create differing realities with regards to gender and obligations of care in academic mobility decisions. The findings reveal how academic mobility is discursively formulated as ‘essential’ to successful academic careers, with the need for frequent travel justified despite advances in virtual communication technologies. Heteronormative discourses are shown to disrupt and fragment the opportunities female academics have to engage in academic mobility. However, we also uncover ways in which these discourses are resisted, wherein fathers articulate emotional strain associated with academic mobility. The article shows how discourse works to constitute the essentialization of academic mobility, and the uneven gendered practices associated with it, whilst also giving voice to gender inequities in academic mobility from the southern hemisphere.     

Eléments pour une sociologie des études féministes en Europe centrale et orientale

Women's/gender studies were established in the Eastern European post-communist countries during the 1990s, as a new field of academic research and higher education. Works produced in this framework are often used as expert studies and aim to contribute to the improvement of the condition of women in that region, being at the core of the social and political reconstitution programs during the post-communist era. They were established by agents who were simultaneously active in different social spheres (scientific space, civil society associations, or institutionalized politics) and who exemplarily personify the multisituated feminism of the globalization era. These studies criss-cross national and international levels as well as scientific and militant logics. Hence they seem a pertinent entry to study the reconstruction of social sciences, the emergence of new academic topics, the international circulation and the importation of scientific questions and, finally, the recomposition of the academic elites within the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The article begins with a general point about the East-European context of the 1990s, when the socio-economic degradation of women's condition met a widely-spread rejection of feminist ideas due to their ideological manipulation by the socialist regimes. Then a zoom on the Romanian case allows us a reflection on the construction of the ‘women's issue’ during the post-communist transition, when several types of agents involved in the democratization reforms make theirs the transnational concern for women's rights. Finally, on the basis of these preliminary ideas, some research axes and working hypotheses are presented, such as: the sociology of gender studies as a new academic discipline, in a perspective inspired by the social history of social sciences; the sociology of the international circulation of feminist ideas and of the dynamics of East–West intellectual debates on the topic of women's condition in the post-communist countries; the analysis of the multiplying bureaucratic uses of ‘gender’ consequences.     

‘I Just Couldn’t Fit It In’: Gender and Unequal Outcomes in Academic Careers

This article reports on the findings of two pieces of research that were designed to test and challenge widely accepted theories about the causes of gender inequity in academic employment at the national level, and subsequently in a more detailed case study of one of Australia's largest and most prestigious universities. Both research projects used large‐scale surveys to capture information about levels of human capital, family responsibilities, career preferences, workloads and objective experiences of appointment and promotion. The case study, conducted in 2002, also utilized focus group discussions with particular groups of women who seemed, from the survey data, to be located just under the glass ceiling. The case study research confirmed the earlier national survey research which concluded that discrimination or bias in appointments, promotions and workloads were not significant in explaining men's domination of the senior levels. It also confirmed the significant gender differences in some kinds of human capital (particularly possession of a Ph.D.). But it also pointed to a quite particular explanation for the failure of women to progress to Level D (associate professor/reader) which involved other more general demographic changes — particularly, high rates of separation and divorce, far higher rates of partnering among men than women and the impact of older children's needs.     

Gender,education and training: an international perspective

This article examines the causes and consequences of sex discrimination in education in developing countries and considers whether the available educational structures improve gender equity or reinforce the status quo. After an introduction that distinguishes between "education" and "schooling" and identifies schooling as a means of patriarchal control, the article sketches the growing awareness of gender disparities in education. The next section describes how gender inequality in education leads to low participation of women in the labor market and limits women's access to information and services, to mobility, and to decision-making. The article then reviews the international agenda on promoting female education that has resulted in donor-driven initiatives arising from such events as the 1990 World Conference on Education For All. A look at the benefits of educating women then focuses on the "family welfare" perspective and the acknowledgement of women's full socioeconomic role. After pointing to the slow progress towards gender equity in education, the article discusses barriers to this goal posed by poverty, social conventions, early marriage, violence in schools, and curricular gender stereotyping. The article then considers problems encountered by efforts to provide informal education and training and the fact that educational initiatives are donor-driven and fail to address the causes of the gender gap. It is concluded that governments and donors must transform schools as part of a larger program of socioeconomic reforms designed to improve women's status.     

Bridging the Gap: ‘Doing Gender’, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’, and the Educational Troubles of Boys

This article reviews popular and social scientific perspectives on the academic gender gap in education, specifically the finding that boys underperform compared to girls. The article highlights the utility of sociology in analyzing the gender gap and in guiding how educators respond to students’ gender. It suggests that contemporary gender theories ‘doing gender’ and ‘hegemonic masculinity’ offer the best lenses through which to view academic gender differences. These perspectives can frame boys’ academic troubles as an important social problem, but one that is rooted in the social construction of masculinity rather than institutional discrimination against boys.     

“Why are you trying to destroy the last good thing men have?” Understanding resistance to women in combat jobs

This article argues that opposition to expansion of women's roles in the US military and peer armed forces, particularly into combat-related military occupational specialties, is based on defending a means of proving masculinity and preserving access to power. Research is based on policies of US, UK, and other NATO countries, public statements made by officials, academic articles, and interviews with current and former members of the US military. The article examines shifting definitions of combat, historical examples of American women’s military service, and common and persistent themes of resistance to women in combat roles. The article argues that resistance to women in combat roles is not only inconsistent with operational realities, but is both counterproductive to mission effectiveness, and may even put lives at risk. The article concludes that in an ever-shifting security environment requiring critical thinking, cross-cultural communication, and civil–military collaboration, rethinking gender roles may be advantageous.     

Crumbling Ivory Towers: Academic Organizing and its Gender Effects

The under‐representation of women at the top of the academy is a persistent and fascinating issue, mostly analysed as a result of women's choices or as an issue of personnel management. In this article, the focus is on the functioning of universities as social institutions, where gender is ‘done’ in a specific way. We analyse how the structural, cultural and procedural arrangements of academic organizing constitute gender relations and are specifically interested in the social construction of scientific quality. The ‘normal’ standards for scientific quality reflect the traditions of the natural sciences, with the Olympus as dominant image: the excellent scientist as lonely hero at the top, far distanced from everyday practices. This conception reflects a hegemonic position privileging masculinity. Alternatively, in an Agora model, science is not an autonomous institution, but becomes a societal practice tightly bound with other societal practices concerning the production, transmission, translation and exchange of knowledge. The scientific ideal of the Agora entails greater public accountability, social responsibility and transparency. This model reflects to a certain extent the scientific activities and achievements of female scientists, and we expect that gender will be done differently in it. In our view, the integration and mainstreaming of gender issues within the academy will serve as a strong impetus to the necessary modernization of academia and academic organizing. But this implies a critical reflection on the social constructed nature of any conception of ‘quality’.     

“Not Your Average Nerd”: Masculinities,Privilege, and Academic Effort at an Elite University

Research on hybrid masculinity shows that privileged men incorporate aspects of subordinated and/or marginalized masculinities into their gender performances, contributing to the persistence of hegemonic masculinity. This scholarship has centered on white, straight, cisgender, class-privileged men. Yet, it is reasonable to imagine that not all privileged men enact hybrid masculinities and that at least some less-privileged men engage in hybrid identity work. Here, we draw on 24 interviews with a diverse group of men attending an elite university, examining their beliefs about contemporary masculinity in relation to academic pursuits. Generally, race- and class-privileged respondents rejected academic effort as unmanly while less-privileged men unapologetically committed themselves to their academic endeavors. Exceptions to these patterns—privileged men who embraced academic effort and less-privileged men who rejected it—revealed hybrid identity work attempted by both groups. However, only privileged men were able to successfully hybridize their masculine identities, while less-privileged men were left straddling competing cultural imperatives without clearly accomplishing either. We discuss the implications of these findings for both individual men and for larger patterns of inequality and offer new theoretical insights regarding how race- and class privilege shape men's performances of hegemonic, complicit subordinated, marginalized, and hybrid masculinities.     

Gender in Academic Career Tracks: The Case of Korean Biochemists

How important is academic performance in obtaining a tenure‐track position in academic science? I use data on Korean biochemists and analyze them from both institutionalist and gender perspectives. In so doing, I illustrate the ways academic performance and gender interact with one another to maintain a gender barrier for Ph.D.s entering an academic career. The main findings are as follows. First, academic productivity did influence the job market outcomes, but the male scientists benefited from publications in both SCI and non‐SCI journals, whereas the female scientists benefited only from those in SCI journals. I also found a positive effect of overseas doctoral training only for the female scientists. Such analysis suggests that women as a minority in academic science are pressured to prove their legitimacy through more rigorous criteria of academic performance. Thus, ostensibly gender‐neutral rules of academic performance can be applied in such a way as to maintain gender inequality.     

Agents for Change and Changed Agents: The Micro‐politics of Change and Feminism in the Academy

This article explores gender politics and processes in the academy and investigates change from the perspectives of feminist academics. In particular, it explores the experiences of women academics attempting to effect change to the gendered status quo of their own institutions. Focusing on micro‐politics, the feminist movement is empirically explored in localized spaces of resistance and in the small but significant individual efforts at making changes in academic institutions. The analysis is based on interviews with female academics working in business and management schools and focuses on the challenges for change and how change attempts affect their personal and professional identities. The article explores the range of change strategies that participants use as they try to progress in their academic career while staying true to their feminist values and priorities through both resisting and incorporating dominant discourses of academic work. The analysis highlights such tensions and focuses on a contextualized, bottom‐up perspective on change that, unlike more totalizing theorization, takes into account mundane and lived experiences at the level of the individual.     

Should There Be Mentoring Efforts to Help Retain and Recruit More Males Into Baccalaureate and Master's Social Work Programs?

Social work programs need to actively set mechanisms in place to attract more men into a predominately female academic major through mentoring, recruitment, and retention efforts. This article conducts a review of the literature to examine whether mentoring efforts should be directed at male social work students. It is inconsistent for the social work profession to embrace the concept of providing culturally competent practices to clients but fail to address and combat a significant gender gap in the delivery of services to male clients.     

The Pay Equity Bargaining Process in Newfoundland: Understanding Cooperation and Conflict by Incorporating Gender and Class

In the latter half of the 1980s, when it was becoming apparent in Canada that previous equal pay policies had failed to close the gender wage gap, a number of provincial governments introduced pro–active pay equity policies. All these initiatives required the negotiation of pay equity in unionized workplaces. Leading up to the implementation of pay equity in Ontario, industrial relations specialists predicted an insurmountably conflictual process, whereas governments expected a new level of partnership with unions. Given these opposite expectations, the article aims to identify any significant patterns of cooperation and conflict in the pay equity bargaining process and to explore reasons for their dynamic. Based on a case study of Newfoundland’s health sector, neither prediction was correct as both conflict and cooperation occurred. It is argued that both the specificity and differences in the negotiations studied can be better understood by exploring the complex intertwinings of gender and class, namely, the ongoing articulation of their main manifestations: a reinforcing hierarchy and a transformative labour–feminist politic in the unions involved. The article concludes with some theoretical and policy observations concerning the importance of building in gender and class to current models of cooperative collective bargaining, as well as recognizing their importance in the pay equity process.     

The Market Model and the Growth and Decline of Academic Fields in U.S. Four‐Year Colleges and Universities, 1980–20001

Conventional sociological accounts of the rise and fall of academic fields have been challenged by accounts based on the idea of market‐responsive change. In this article, we focus on the period 1980–2000, the period during which, according to its proponents, the market model of change became dominant in academe. We find changes in the student market to be strongly associated with increased institutionalization of academic fields. We also find the preferences of donors to be associated with increased institutionalization of academic fields. By contrast, we find relatively little support for labor market signals or changes in federal funding priorities as important influences on the institutionalization of academic fields. We find that higher‐status institutions are more market responsive than lower‐status institutions.     

Transforming academic work: Communities of practice in Australian universities

Abstract

This article explores the model of communities of practice as an alternative to the competitive, corporatised model of universities prescribed in current Australian federal government policies and described in the document Universities: Backing Australia's Future (2003) and associated papers. The article argues that the federal government's policies, which include the proposal to create niche Australian universities, with specific purposes such as teaching-only, will reduce intra-institutional plurality and interdisciplinary activities. This represents a significant shift for most Australian tertiary institutions which have, over the past two decades, invested significant resources addressing disparate agendas of an increasing range of stakeholders. The current policies, with their emphasis on individualism and competition, have been criticised as demonstrating a poor understanding of academic work (Murray and Dollery 2005). The authors concur with this criticism and suggest that intra-institutional plurality, which may be reduced by the proposed changes, is more conducive to creative academic work. We argue that a government-regulated environment will limit the opportunity for collaborative and scholarly ways of doing academic work, such as the natural formation of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991). The article suggests that the communities of practice model can offer a transformative approach to the organisation of academic work, by recognising and building on diversity, promoting collaboration and encouraging interdisciplinary research.     

Women,Poverty, and the Microenterprise: Context and Discourse

The article discusses the claims of success of microenterprise development programmes (MDPs) in poverty reduction and gender equality. It also deals with the broader theoretical and methodological issues related to the ways in which context and discourse interact in the assessment of anti‐poverty and gender equity strategies. MDPs are considered among the most viable strategies for helping women overcome poverty and promoting gender equity. However, there has been significant debate over these claims. The relationship between business ownership, poverty reduction and gender empowerment is still to be proved. The article presents the voices of women engaged in a microenterprise (ME) from a context‐informed and discourse analysis perspective, and considers the women's insights about ME as an anti‐poverty and gender empowerment strategy. The findings show a complex picture. On one hand, the new occupational status promises a tangible alternative to multiple personal, social and gender constraints. Additionally, women in the study perceived the ME as a space for self‐definition and as an outlet for expressing their oppressed identities. On the other hand, the findings seriously challenge the capacity of the MDP strategy to promote gender equity and combat poverty among low‐income women. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

Gender and the Limits to Diversity in the Contemporary British Army

This article considers equal opportunities and diversity management policies in the contemporary British Army for what they indicate, not only about policy frameworks for women's military participation, but also for what they tell us about the construction of ideas about gender and difference within that organization. The article sets out contextual information on women in the British Army and describes the research methodology on which this article is based. It looks at the evolution of equal opportunities policies and the more recent shift towards diversity management policies in the Army, focusing on their contributions towards female equity. The article examines the consequences of the shift towards the management of diversity, noting how embracing the ideas of diversity management is ultimately limited by the Army's construction of female difference. It concludes with a discussion of the issues of female and military specificity in relation to the management of diversity.