Gendered inequalities in competitive grant funding: an overlooked dimension of gendered power relations in academia

ABSTRACT

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.     

Educators’ responses to policy concerns about the gender balance of the teaching profession in Scotland

Concepts of gender equity are changing and the necessity of actively developing a fairer gender balance is now enshrined in the Gender Equality Legislation implemented in 2007 that required public bodies to positively promote equality. This study examines, from the perspectives of educators, their understandings of gendered inequalities in teaching and the issues that they raise for the profession. Overall, respondents did not see the numerical domination of women as a problem but instead they saw the benefits of maintaining the diversity of the teaching profession, since all pupils could benefit from the range of interests and attributes offered by both women and men. Respondents were both embracing and disputing popular discourses about the gender balance in teaching but argued strongly that there should be no discriminatory barriers to the profession. It is concluded that a policy approach to gender equality should address the material and social disadvantage experienced by those working in female‐dominated professions like teaching and this would ensure people would be enabled to exercise gendered preferences without penalties or unfair advantages in income or status.     

Playing the field(s): an exploration of change,conformity and conflict in girls’ understandings of gendered physicality in physical education

This paper draws on data from a year‐long ethnographic study of a group of 12‐ to 13‐year‐old girls that explored the processes through which they negotiated gendered physicality within the context of physical education. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and social fields and McNay’s extension of his work underpin a discussion of three contexts where girls experience and process understandings of gendered physicality: football and curriculum; home/school; and (hetero)sexuality. Girls’ identification of inequitable practices, modifications of behaviours with regard to perceived norms, and reflections on inconsistencies within and across social fields indicated the susceptibility of the gendered habitus to subversions. The notion of regulated liberties rather than resistance captures girls’ more subtle negotiations of gendered power relations as well as the ambiguities most girls experienced. Implications for teaching include creating space for critical inquiry, incorporating inclusive practices, recognizing girls’ interests, and exploring the influence of peer groups and friends.     

Home,school and the museum: shifting gender performances and engagement with science

Abstract

Research has highlighted that engagement with science is highly gendered and that the masculinised culture of science makes it difficult for many girls/women to engage. Meanwhile, a growing body of research has explored the potential of out-of-school spaces to provide more equitable engagement opportunities. In this paper, I examine engagement with science among working-class, self-identified ‘girly’ girls aged 11-13. I discuss how gender performances and engagement with science shifted across science lessons, school trips and family trips to science museums. The findings suggest that engagement with science is complex, contradictory and varies across spaces – girls’ performances of hyper-femininity supported engagement with science in some spaces, but made it difficult in others. Different spaces also afforded the girls different opportunities for performing gender, which in some instances opened up new ways for engaging with science. I conclude by discussing the implications for more equitable science education.     

Emotional pedagogy and the gendering of social and emotional learning

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has predominantly been conceptualised as a neurological process, which has precluded understanding of how social, cultural and material discourses inform the expression of emotional experiences. Gender remains a notable omission. This article explores the micro-practices through which gender structures the development of young people’s emotional subjectivities within the context of a school-based SEL intervention. Particular emphasis is placed on the gendering strategies utilised by educational professionals during the course of their emotional pedagogy. Three strategies are considered: the overt coercion of girls to demonstrate their learning; the permission of boys’ passivity, with their docile bodies being indicated as a signifier of participation; and the restricting of occasions for emotional expression in accordance with perceived gender norms. Efforts to inculcate students with a gendered emotional subjectivity mean that differential learning opportunities are on offer, raising concerns about the introduction of new forms of gendered educational inequalities.     

Gendered educational leadership: beneath the monoglossic façade

Recent gender retheorisation has drawn on Mikhail Bakhtin's literary and linguistic theories of monoglossia and heteroglossia to reconcile seemingly contradictory gender discourses. Thus, girls/women and boys/men as they are biologically sexed might be discussed within a poststructural gender theory discourse that disconnects gender from the body. The concepts of gender monoglossia, gender heteroglossia and polyglossia have been applied here to empirical research into the construction of gendered leadership as it was seen to be done by one woman head teacher. The accounts of members of staff expose heteroglossia in the articulation of their understandings of gendered leadership beneath the construction of a monoglossic façade. They also reveal an understanding of polyglossic simultaneity as the head teacher is observed to ‘switch’ seamlessly between modes of doing gendered leadership depending on context and circumstances. There is also evidence of polyglossic simultaneity in the reports that might lead to the rejection and/or redefinition of gender theory discourses.     

‘Who cares?’ Gender,care and secondary schooling: ‘Accidental findings’ from a seclusion unit

A breadth of research explores gendered professional identities, practices and spaces across a range of UK educational institutions. One focus has been on links between gender, care and education in early years settings and primary schools, although less attention has been given to caring within secondary schools. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in London within an in-school seclusion unit, this article brings together a Lefebvrian conceptualisation of space with feminist theorisations of care to explore how the unit (conceived as a space of control, discipline and punishment) also became an unlikely space of care. In doing so, the article explores complex intersections between gender and care and how everyday caring practices in schools are inextricably linked to and embedded within broader institutional and spatial agendas and processes.     

Learning practices of femininity through gendered craft education in Finland

This paper discusses the processes and practices that link crafts and gender in the upbringing and education of girls. The paper is based on a study conducted among female primary school trainee teachers in Finland. The data are comprised of their experiences with crafts as schoolgirls. The methods of the study were memory work and writing of craft autobiographies. The processes that interlink gender and crafts are culturally established and maintained both through informal sociocultural learning and formal education at school. The impact of the gendered tradition of crafts is strong and affects the teaching of crafts at school in Finland. This became clear in the analysis of the processes of girls learning to become full members of a community of such femininity practices as textile crafts. The gender‐based teaching of crafts is an example of the unofficial gendered practices of the officially gender‐neutral school.     

Gender,sexuality and schooling: Everyday life in junior secondary schools in Botswana and Ghana

In this paper, the focus is upon daily school practices in Junior Secondary Schools in Ghana and Botswana. The data from 12 ethnographic case studies have been used to explore how the institution of schooling is gendered. The analysis focuses predominantly on the informal practices of the hidden curriculum through a theoretical perspective that highlights these institutional processes as significant to the production of gender/sexual identities. Remarkable similarities in the pervasive and inequitable gender/sexual practices within schools across country contexts are discussed in three key areas: school management and duties, gender space and gender violence. These discussions of everyday school life illustrate the ways in which both normative institutional practices and human agency produce and regulate gender/sexual identities. This micro-level analysis provides important substantive and methodological insights into what goes on inside schools and into the contexts and experiences of schooling that are significant to policy discourses of gender, education and development.     

Bridging the Gender Gap through Gender Difference: Aiding Patriarchy in South Sudan Education Reconstruction

Abstract

The persistence of gender inequality in education in Africa is due to poverty, cultural beliefs and traditions linked to gender-role expectations. This article presents the findings of a study that evaluated the outcomes of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Gender Equity through Education (GEE) programme aimed at increasing the participation of girls in education through scholarship and mentoring activities in South Sudan. Using a convergent mixed-method design and feminist critique of gender difference in education approach as the theoretical framework, the study established that the GEE programme was only partially successful. Though increased enrolment and completion of studies by female students in secondary schools and teacher training institutions was noted, the programme failed to deconstruct the prevailing gendered power relations that subordinate women and may have intuitively strengthened them. The programme sought to bring about changes in the educational milieu through modifications of policies and practices related to education access and retention rather than engage in a process leading to a seismic shift in attitudes towards gender in the society.     

Education and social justice: gender lessons of the past

In 1927 the Swedish grammar school opened up for girls. Thereby girls got access to higher education on the same conditions as boys, at least formally. Thus, many towns' boys and girls were seated in the same classroom. In the large cities, however, sex segregation remained, as separate grammar schools for girls were established and some boys' grammar schools were still reserved for boys. The main aim of this paper is to compare the process of gender construction in these different school forms during the period 1927–1960. The questions put are: Were the discourses and the discursive practices of these schools part of the politics of equality or the politics of difference with regard to gender? Which representations of gender and gendered patterns of communication and domination did they produce? The main data consists of interviews with 30 ex-students of coeducational schools and female and male single-sex schools. The conclusion is that the pedagogy in all school forms was inscribed within the meritocratic discourse of equality, which was also important in shaping the students' subjectives. Both girls and boys had to prove themselves worthy of the privilege of attending the grammar school, and in this respect girls as a group were more successful than boys. To begin with the politics of equality also operated in the norms for how girls should dress and look, but later on a discrete make-up was allowed. The politics of difference was manifest in the swot syndrome, the techniques for punishments and rewards, and also, at least partly, in physical education. It was also manifest in the traditional representations of masculinity and femininity, like the male breadwinner and the housewife, prevalent in boys' grammar schools. Girls in female single sex schools, on the other hand, were firmly determined to make a career of their own.     

Explaining the links between child marriage and intimate partner violence: Evidence from Ghana

ObjectiveThis study examined the relationship between child marriage and intimate partner violence (IPV) in Ghana, looking specifically for possible mechanisms driving the relationship.MethodNationally representative cross-sectional data were collected from 2289 ever-married Ghanaian women and analysed using random-effects regression techniques.ResultsWomen who married as children differed significantly from those who did not in their socio-economic characteristics, attitudes to societal gender norms and autonomy. Compared to those who married as adults, women who married as children had lower levels of education, were more likely to endorse patriarchal gender norms and had lower levels of autonomy within the household. Results also showed significant relationships between child marriage and three dimensions of IPV (physical, sexual and emotional). However, for physical and sexual violence, this relationship was completely mediated by differences in the socio-economic characteristics of the women, their attitude to gender norms and their autonomy within the household.ConclusionResearchers must pay attention to these intermediary factors when theorizing the relationship between child marriage and IPV. Policy makers in Ghana must ensure that young girls receive formal education and have the self-efficacy and skills to reject patriarchal gendered norms that threaten their security and well-being.     

Mapping the intersections of gender and college trauma

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the complex juncture of gender and experiences of trauma in college. Two research questions guided this investigation: (a) How does gender intersect with an individual’s experience(s) of trauma during college? and (b) What sociocultural contexts shape the role of gender intersecting with traumatic experiences in college? Data were collected using interviews and visual mapping/written response activities. Analysis revealed three dominant themes when gender was salient in traumatic experience, including: (a) gender norms contributing to the production of trauma; (b) gender norms restricting traumatic recovery; and (c) trauma catalyzing the interrogation of gender norms. Results of this study underscore the importance of continued attention in both research and practice to the complex ways in which systems of oppression around gender, in particular, but other identities broadly, offer both restrictions and possibilities for those navigating traumatic recovery.     

‘Man-up,go and get an ice-pack.’ Gendered stereotypes and binaries within the primary classroom: a thing of the past?

Gendered expectations are deeply embedded within the fabric of a society and the classroom is no exception; binaries habitually pervade attitudes, practices and pedagogies. This small-scale qualitative-interpretive study, undertaken in one rural primary school in North Wales, explores how the learning of gender is constructed, enacted and challenged by participants functioning within Key Stage 2 (children aged 8–11 years), issues experienced by, both girls and boys, to cogitate implications for gender equity and for teachers' work. The fieldwork revealed that many school participants continue to draw upon essentialist binary discourse, predominantly based on biological theories, to explain differences between boys and girls relating to classroom behaviour, subject attainment, curricular preferences and career pathways. Constant reference was made to acceptable ways of ‘doing masculinity’ and the ‘high-achieving, conforming school girl culture’. Children recognised gender binaries used by teachers and were aware of societal advances in gender equity. Despite decades of research and policies, we are still some way to ameliorating gender binaries and stereotypes in this phase of schooling. Therefore, there is an urgent need for practitioners to become more reflexively aware about the complex ways in which gendered dualisms and hierarchies perpetuate and dictate relations and pedagogical practices, which constrain experiences and opportunities for girls and boys and, to incorporate multiple ways of thinking and doing gender in classrooms.     

Assessing the gender climate of an evangelical student subculture in the United States

This study explored the gendered experiences of students belonging to an evangelical Christian religious community on a university campus in the United States. As some religious traditions harbour distinctive views on gender differences and roles, the study focused on community characteristics that pertained to beliefs about gender and the behaviours that emanated from those beliefs. The findings revealed that the community was defined by masculine norms, the endorsement of essential gender differences and separate roles for men and women with respect to leadership, modesty and dating/marriage. Suggestions for improving the conditions for women in religious groups and the broader college campus are discussed.     

‘It's not bullying’, ‘It's just a joke’: Teacher and student discursive manoeuvres around gendered violence

Threats or harassment related to the enforcement of gender norms remain largely unchallenged in many schools. Possibilities for meaningful interventions have been undermined by an over-reliance on individual, psycho-pathologised understandings of ‘bullying’ and a reluctance to examine contextual and socio-cultural mechanisms of power. Poststructural feminist approaches offer an alternative view of gendered violence and its responses—one that focuses on the meanings that individuals and groups constitute through discourse around gender, violence and ‘bullying’. This article examines focus group data from teachers and students from one Australian school that experienced a significant event of gendered violence referred to as ‘Kick a slut in the head day’. Results demonstrate that participants minimised or dismissed the ‘seriousness’ of this event through employing particular ‘discursive manoeuvres’ drawn from hegemonic discourses of ‘bullying’. Teachers utilised essentialist discourses to illustrate that the incident was ‘not bullying’, while students suggested that it was a ‘joke’ or that the girl/s were deserving of the treatment. These findings suggest that ‘discursive manoeuvres’ are a helpful indicator for understanding contextual resistance to addressing gendered violence.     

A (TRANS)formative approach to gender-inclusive science education

The teaching of science in K-12 schools has long been criticized as a process that propagates oppression for students who do not conform to entrenched norms of gender, sex, and sexuality. Academic standards, curriculum, and textbooks are rife with rhetoric that reinforces any deviation from cisheterosexuality as aberrant, unusual, or abnormal. However, these often-over-simplified conceptions discount the historic social and scientific intricacies of gender and sexual diversity as well as students' own lived experiences. While there have been advancements in LGBTQ+ and gender-inclusive science education reform, these movements have been stymied by a lack of cohesive guidelines for pedagogy and practice, particularly for trans, nonbinary, and gender-creative youth. Situated within trans-created conceptual frameworks for critical education, this study explored the pedagogical practices of 10 transgender science teachers with the purpose of learning from their experiences creating gender inclusive curriculum. From the data (in-depth interviews, instructional materials samples, and reflective teaching statements) emerged the TRANS (Trans and Research-informed Approaches for Nonbinary and gender-inclusive Science education) Framework for gender inclusive science education pedagogy. This framework is anchored in three domains for teaching science through a trans-informed lens:interrogating and accessing power, resisting essentialism, and embracing experiential knowledge and personal epistemologies. The findings of this study contribute to our growing understanding of gender-inclusive science learning environments. Importantly, this study amplified the experiential knowledge of teachers whose voices are critically absent from research surrounding gender and LGBTQ+-inclusive science education practice. Moreover, the framework derived from teachers' experiences can be used to guide educators in making their science classrooms safer and more gender inclusive.     

‘Walking yourself around as a teacher’: gender and embodiment in student teachers’ working lives

This paper considers the psychic and social dynamics reported by student teachers when learning to embody their teacher persona in the secondary school environment. Focusing on gender dimensions of embodiment and drawing on qualitative interview data from a UK study of postgraduate teacher‐training students, teaching is examined as a physical experience. The paper conceptualises findings under two related headings: the appropriately gendered body, signified by heteronormative readings of gender and sexuality; and the gendered authoritative body, conceptualised as male. The ‘teacher body’ emerges as an important element of student teachers’ stories of trying to fit with the new professional environment and the paper concludes by arguing for a consideration of gender and body politics in the practice and training of teachers, thus challenging the assumption that professional occupations are essentially ‘disembodied’ and gender neutral.