Critical Approaches to Women and Gender in Higher Education


Book Description

This volume provides a critical examination of the status of women and gender in higher education today. Despite the increasing numbers of women in higher education, gendered structures continue to hinder women’s advancement in academia. This book goes beyond the numbers to examine the issues facing those members of academia with non-dominant gender identities. The authors analyze higher education structures from a range of perspectives and offer recommendations at individual and institutional levels to encourage activism and advance equality in academia.




The Gender-Sensitive University


Book Description

The Gender-Sensitive University explores the prevailing forces that pose obstacles to driving a gender-sensitive university, which include the emergence of far-right movements that seek to subvert advances towards gender equality and managerialism that promotes creeping corporatism. This book demonstrates that awareness of gender equality and gender sensitivity are essential for pulling contemporary academia back from the brink. New forms of leadership are fundamental to reforming our institutions. The concept of a gender-sensitive university requires re-envisioning academia to meet these challenges, as does a different engagement of men and a shift towards fluidity in how gender is formulated and performed. Academia can only be truly gender sensitive if, learning from the past, it can avoid repeating the same mistakes and addressing existing and new biases. The book chapters analyse these challenges and advocate the possibilities to ‘fix it forward’ in all areas. Representing ten EU countries and multiple disciplines, contributors to this volume highlight the evidence of persistent gender inequalities in academia, while advocating a blueprint for addressing them. The book will be of interest to a global readership of students, academics, researchers, practitioners, academic and political leaders and policymakers who share an interest in what it takes to establish gender-sensitive universities. This book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license




Gender and Higher Education


Book Description

Encyclopedic review about gender and its impact on American higher education across historical and cultural contexts. The contributors describe the ways in which gender is embedded in the educational practices, curriculum, institutional structures and governance of colleges and universities. Topics included are: institutional diversity; academic majors and programs; extracurricular organizations such as sororities, fraternities and women's centers; affirmative action and other higher educational policies; and theories that have been used to analyze and explain the ways in which gender in academe is constructed.




Sexual Harassment of Women


Book Description

Over the last few decades, research, activity, and funding has been devoted to improving the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine. In recent years the diversity of those participating in these fields, particularly the participation of women, has improved and there are significantly more women entering careers and studying science, engineering, and medicine than ever before. However, as women increasingly enter these fields they face biases and barriers and it is not surprising that sexual harassment is one of these barriers. Over thirty years the incidence of sexual harassment in different industries has held steady, yet now more women are in the workforce and in academia, and in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine (as students and faculty) and so more women are experiencing sexual harassment as they work and learn. Over the last several years, revelations of the sexual harassment experienced by women in the workplace and in academic settings have raised urgent questions about the specific impact of this discriminatory behavior on women and the extent to which it is limiting their careers. Sexual Harassment of Women explores the influence of sexual harassment in academia on the career advancement of women in the scientific, technical, and medical workforce. This report reviews the research on the extent to which women in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine are victimized by sexual harassment and examines the existing information on the extent to which sexual harassment in academia negatively impacts the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women pursuing scientific, engineering, technical, and medical careers. It also identifies and analyzes the policies, strategies and practices that have been the most successful in preventing and addressing sexual harassment in these settings.




Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education


Book Description

This open access book offers pioneering insights and practical methods for promoting diversity and inclusion in higher education classrooms and curricula. It highlights the growing importance of international education programs in Asia and the value of understanding student diversity in a changing, evermore interconnected world. The book explores diversity across physical, psychological and cogitative traits, socio-economic backgrounds, value systems, traditions and emerging identities, as well as diverse expectations around teaching, grading, and assessment. Chapters detail significant trends in active learning pedagogy, writing programs, language acquisition, and implications for teaching in the liberal arts, adult learners, girls and women, and Confucian heritage communities. A quality, relevant, 21st Century education should address multifaceted and intersecting forms of diversity to equip students for deep life-long learning inside and outside the classroom. This timely volume provides a unique toolkit for educators, policy-makers, and professional development experts.




Intellectual Leadership, Higher Education and Precarious Times


Book Description

This book draws on interdisciplinary social science and philosophical frameworks to offer new dimensions to debate about intellectual leadership and higher education. The chapters are focused on provoking readers to think critically about intellectual leadership in precarious times. The contributors frame critical questions about the unevenness, ambivalences, and disruptions that now mark everyday life and interactions. Rather than thinking about 'freedom from precarious times and precarity' they consider 'freedom from within' and how the sovereignty and autonomy of the individual to think and speak within the public realm might be retained, if not reclaimed. In the precarious present and in times of precarity, what has changed and why? What might now be the new social reality within which we work? Each of the contributors have been invited to take up their own perspective on what is precarious, and to examine the impacts on intellectual leadership. What does it mean to do intellectual work and be an intellectual leader? What are the implications for intellectual work and leadership if the academy itself is in precarious times?




Feminist Critical Policy Analysis: A perspective from post-secondary education


Book Description

This text sets out to challenge the traditional power basis of the policy decision makers in education. It contests that others who have an equal right to be consulted and have their opinions known have been silenced, declared irrelevant, postponed and otherwise ignored. Policies have thus been formed and implemented without even a cursory feminist critical glance. The chapters in this text illustrate how to incorporate critical and feminist lenses and thus create policies to meet the lived realities, the needs, aspirations and values of women and girls. A particular focus is the primary and s.




Hard Labour? Academic Work and the Changing Landscape of Higher Education


Book Description

Drawing on data from Australia, England and New Zealand, this book addresses how neo liberal policies of successive governments have decreased autonomy of academics and increased regimes of surveillance, radically altering how academics think about and engage in their intellectual work.




Creating a Totally Inclusive University


Book Description

This book introduces the concept and practices of Total Inclusivity to universities around the world. It is written to help universities contend with increasing public scrutiny and uncertainty around issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice now at the forefront of global higher education. Providing a guide and template to higher education leaders, the book addresses such issues as work culture, free speech, student wellbeing, racism, LGBT+ identities, managerialism or ‘simply’ the ability of the institution to survive post-Covid. Whitehead and O’Connor argue that handling these issues can best be done in a university climate and system which is Totally Inclusive. This is the standard for any higher education institution to aim for, not only in its teaching but in its fundamental principles and everyday practices if it is to meet its obligations to its members and to wider society. The book aims to support universities as well as challenge the status quo as they grapple with the different global and societal pressures confronting them. It is an essential read for anyone working in leadership in higher education institutions and those interested in creating inclusive practices within their institution.