Advancing Gender Equity Research Articles

Fostering Ph.D. aspirations among upward transfer students in computing

ABSTRACT Background Students who transfer from community colleges in pursuit of four-year degrees (i.e., upward transfer students) represent a diverse and talented group that is critical to advancing gender equity in STEM. However, research has not yet explored factors that promote Ph.D. aspirations among upward transfer computing students, resulting in missed opportunities to support this unique group. Objective We examine the predictors of upward transfer computing students’ Ph.D. aspirations, focusing on how these patterns might be unique for upward transfer women. Method Relying on longitudinal survey data from upward transfer students across 15 research universities, we use logistic regression with interaction terms to identify the predictors of Ph.D. aspirations. Findings We found that Ph.D. aspirations were especially frequent among upward transfer women, 14% of whom aspired to earn a Ph.D. Other results highlight the importance of faculty encouragement for graduate study in predicting all upward transfer students’ Ph.D. aspirations. Beyond the direct role of such faculty encouragement, perceptions of computing faculty uniquely predicted Ph.D. aspirations for upward transfer women. Implications Our findings provide insight into how to bolster more equitable access to faculty mentorship, support students throughout the transfer process, and create inclusive faculty policies, which impact students’ perceptions of academia.

The IWill MCW Campaign: Individual Actions to Advance Gender Equity.

Advancing equity for women remains an urgent and complex problem at academic health centers. Attempts to mitigate gender gaps have ranged widely and have been both slow to occur and limited in effect. Recognizing the limitations of previously attempted solutions and fueled by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) stepped outside known approaches (e.g., women's leadership plans and programming) to design and implement a strategic campaign that promotes gender equity through fostering change in systems and social norms. This campaign, IWill MCW (launched in 2019), emphasizes the power of individual responsibility for positive change. The IWill MCW campaign employs a 2-pronged approach. The first is the creation of personal call-to-action public pledges focused on 5 aspects of gender equity, along with the provision of supportive resources to reinforce positive change. The second is the use of those pledges to raise awareness of gender inequity in academic medicine by fostering meaningful dialogue meant to alter mental models of equity, relationships, and power dynamics. In the initial 6-week phase of the IWill MCW campaign, leaders reached out to all MCW faculty (2,002), staff (4,522), and learners (1,483) at multiple campuses. This outreach resulted in nearly 1,400 pledges, including 30% (n = 420) from men. The effort also engaged over 90% (n = 101) of members of MCW senior leadership teams. The feedback from the initial campaign has been positive. Lessons learned include realizing the importance of public pledges, engaging male allies, and following up. The authors suggest that the IWill MCW campaign provides a model for academic health centers to advance gender equity and shape an environment in which people of all genders can thrive.

OP0074 A FRAMEWORK OF POTENTIAL INTERVENTIONS TO ACCELERATE GENDER-EQUITABLE CAREER ADVANCEMENT IN ACADEMIC RHEUMATOLOGY

Background:A growing number of professional societies in clinical and medically related disciplines investigate evidence, make recommendations, and take action to advance gender equity. Evidence on women’s advancement and leadership in the context of the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology, EULAR, is limited [1].Objectives:The objective of the EULAR Task Force on Gender Equity in Academic Rheumatology was to establish the extent of the unmet need for support of female rheumatologists, health professionals and non-clinical scientists in academic rheumatology and develop a framework to address this through EULAR and Emerging EULAR Network (EMEUNET).Methods:Potential interventions to accelerate gender-equitable career advancement in academic rheumatology were gathered from a narrative review of the relevant literature, expert opinion of a multi-disciplinary Task Force (comprised of 23 members from 11 countries), data from the surveys of EULAR scientific member society leaders, EULAR and EMEUNET members, and EULAR Executive Committee members. These interventions were rated by Task Force members, who ranked each according to perceived priority on a five-point numeric scale from 1 = very low to 5 = very high.Results:A framework of 29 potential interventions was formulated, which covers six thematic areas, namely, EULAR policies, advocacy and communication, EULAR Congress and associated symposia, training courses, mentoring/peer support, and EULAR funding (Figure 1).Figure 1.A framework of potential interventions with the levels of priority, mean and standard deviation (SD)Conclusion:The framework provides structured interventions for accelerating gender-equitable career advancement in academic rheumatology.

Introduction: Strategies for How Men can Advance Gender Equity in Political Science

Introduction: Strategies for How Men can Advance Gender Equity in Political Science

Financial well-being of sportswomen

ABSTRACT Despite efforts to increase female participation and representation in sport, there has been little scholarly focus on sportswomen’s financial wel–being. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in the literature and to contribute to broadening theoretical understanding of subjective financial well-being. The study presents the results of the thematic analysis of interviews with 27 UK sportswomen to understand their experience of financial well-being, which is the ability to sustain current and anticipated desired living standards and financial freedom. Our analysis identified sportswomen’s subjective financial well-being, the personal and contextual factors influencing their perceptions of well-being and the consequences of their financial well–being on quality of life and general well–being. This study yields implications for a range of stakeholders, including governing bodies, policymakers, sports media, team and talent managers and financial institutions, and highlights the need to advance gender equity policies and practices that can positively impact on sportswomen’s financial well-being.

Increasing gender equity in sport organizations: assessing the impacts of a social learning initiative

This article describes an initiative to promote gender equity across sport organizations in Western Canada. Twelve sport leaders and six mentors cultivated a Community of Practice (CoP) as a space to co-create solutions to existing problems, and advance gender equity in sport. Each sport leader implemented a project to promote sport participation for women, girls, and in other disadvantaged communities. Our study examines the results of these projects in terms of the impact on their sport organizations and participants, and the types of value that were created. Data were collected from the sport leaders, the program participants, and the sport leaders’ supervisors, and analyzed inductively and deductively. This resulted in three main themes: increased equity; long-term investments and organizational buy-in; and increased confidence, comfort, and connection. The data highlights an increase in equity (i.e. sport opportunities for girls) and the creation of some types of value (i.e. strategic value).

Advancing Gender Equity and Sense of Belonging in Computing: Are Documented Best Practices Representative of Upward Transfer Students?

ABSTRACT Supporting upward transfer students is critical to diversifying STEM. This study provides insight into how we can best support upward transfer students in computing, one of the least diverse STEM disciplines. Specifically, we expand upon recent research on sense of belonging to examine how the predictors of belonging might be unique for upward transfer students, focusing closely on upward transfer women’s experiences. Findings highlight three unique predictors of sense of belonging for upward transfer students beyond those documented in prior research on students in the aggregate. Other college experiences – like feeling supported by computing peers – positively predicted belonging for all students, but were not equitably available to upward transfer students, with upward transfer women reporting the lowest levels of peer support compared to all other groups.

Advancing gender equity in medicine.

KEY POINTS The medical profession has an equity problem, particularly in leadership. Several Canadian studies have highlighted the extent of gender inequity in leadership in medicine, and the extent to which opportunities in academic medicine are inequitable by gender. Gender (as defined in [Box 1][

A critical analysis of the study of gender and technology in government

Research at the intersection of feminist organizational theory and techno-science scholarship notes the important role that gender plays in technology design, adoption, implementation, and use and how technology shapes and is shaped by gender and gendered work life. While governments are committed to advancing gender equity, feminist theory is rarely applied to the study of technology in government, thus limiting our ability to fully understand gendered outcomes of e-government. In this paper, we argue that e-government research and practice can benefit from drawing from three streams of feminist research: 1) studying gender as social construction, 2) researching gender bias in data, technology use and design, and 3) assessing gendered representation in technology management. Drawing from feminist research, we offer six propositions and several research questions for advancing research on e-government and gender. We contribute to research on gender and e-government by advocating for a feminist approach to the analysis of the adoption and implementation of technology in government settings from the perspective of public managers and employees.

Strategies for forming effective women's groups.

Women are under-represented at the highest levels of leadership in health care, so many institutions have started forming "women in medicine" affinity groups. In this The Clinical Teacher's Toolbox, we review the history of women's professional peer-to-peer networking groups in health care, describe the rationale for establishing a women's group, discuss the goals and common content covered by successful women's groups, share best practices on forming and sustaining women's groups, and describe common pitfalls to avoid. When forming a women's group, identifying the group's vision, mission, and primary aim statements are important, and early meetings should deliberately establish a tone of inclusion. We acknowledge that the term "women's groups" implies that gender identity is binary - in reality, these groups are for all who want to combat gender inequities in health care. While early stages of women's groups typically focus on community-building, peer networking, and inviting guest speakers to speak about relevant topics, successful groups often ultimately pivot to advocacy, internal capacity-building, evaluation, and dissemination. To sustain and maintain the group, succession planning, regular opportunities for evaluation, and deliberate planning are essential. Although usual principles of successful small group creation apply, this article outlines unique considerations for how women's groups can advance gender equity.

Three lessons for gender equity in biodiversity conservation.

Amid a growing global agenda, biodiversity conservation has embraced gender equity as a pillar of equitable and effective practice. Gender equity has become enshrined in the global environment and development agenda through global commitments, policy and funding. However, for various reasons, conservation biodiversity often takes a simplistic view of gender as synonymous with women or as a dualism between women and men. This narrow view risks promoting inequitable processes and ineffective outcomes. Deeper engagement with feminist theory, and feminist political ecology in particular, could help advance biodiversity conservation's approach to how gender is understood, framed and integrated. Engaging with lessons from feminist political ecology can help advance gender equity in conservation through attention to power dynamics, intersectionality, and subjectivity.

Gender Equality Discussion within the G20

This note discusses W20’s contributions to the gender equality agenda and policies promoted by the G20 and the G20 member states. The first part analyses the progress made by G20 countries on gender equality as framed by W20 recommendations. The assessment focuses on improvements on the main pillars and relies on existing standardized indicators and research reports.3 The second part draws some lessons from the previous analysis, identifying several areas where the W20 Saudi Arabia could help strengthen the overall W20 mission as well as its effectiveness in advancing gender equity at the global level. Finally, the last part of the note identifies three areas of priority for the W20, hence offering some guidance on potential topics of discussion for the W20 Saudi Arabia.

Using a Social Ecological Model Framework for Advancing the Careers of Women in Science in Academic Medical Centers

Social Ecological Models (SEMs) offer a multilevel framework highlighting the dynamic, interdependent relationships between individuals, behaviors, and their social context. While this approach has been developed within the fields of public health and community psychology, in this paper we explore the applications of the SEM framework to gender equity initiatives. This case study is based on our experiences with the NSF-funded Center for ARROWS (Advancement, Recruitment, and Retention of Women in Science) at the [blinded for review]. ARROWS was designed to cast a broad net of change to support faculty gender equity and increase the number of women in leadership positions. In addition to utilizing a SEM framework to design ARROWS, a SEM Mapping Exercise was conducted as part of the evaluation, which revealed indirect impacts and some unanticipated gaps. The multilevel framework offered by SEM guides practitioners and evaluators to create institutional transformation. This case study is meant to serve as an example of the application of the SEM framework to a project designed to advance gender equity within one institution.

Toward a Feminist Future: A Political Strategy for Fighting Backlash and Advancing Gender Equity

AbstractExamining two cases from twentieth-century US history, I explore feminists’ disengagement from electoral and party politics and its consequences. I argue that in these pivotal moments femin...

Gender Equity and Vitamin A Supplementation: Moving Beyond Equal Coverage.

Vitamin A supplementation (VAS) is currently implemented in over 80 countries worldwide, but little attention has been paid to gender equity in the design or implementation of these programs. This article describes the ways in which gender equity can impact or be impacted by VAS programs and suggests ways to ensure these programs better support gender equity in the future. We undertook a desk review of research on gender equity in health services and extrapolated findings to VAS, highlighting gender equity issues throughout the VAS implementation process and across delivery platform types. We also amassed secondary data on VAS coverage from 45 surveys in 13 countries and analyzed it to examine differences in VAS coverage between boys and girls. Despite few significant differences in coverage between boys and girls, we identify numerous ways in which gender equity can impact or be impacted by VAS programs, including through the choice of VAS distributors and the communication materials used to promote VAS campaigns. Examining these different entry points reveals that there are several missed opportunities for better integration of gender within VAS. VAS program implementers and policymakers should revisit VAS approaches to identify opportunities for advancing gender equity through this wide-reaching platform.

Gender Differences in the Global Music Industry: Evidence from MusicBrainz and The Echo Nest

With digital music consumption being at an all-time high, online music encyclopedia like MusicBrainz and music intelligence platforms like The Echo Nest are becoming increasingly important in identifying, organizing, and recommending music for listeners around the globe. As a byproduct, such sites collect comprehensive information about a vast amount of artists, their recorded songs, institutional support, and the collaborations between them. Using a unique mash-up of crowdsourced, curated, and algorithmically augmented data, this paper unpacks an unsolved problem that is key to promoting artistic innovation, i.e., how gender penetrates into artistic context leading to the globally perceived gender gap in the music industry. Specifically, we investigate gender-related differences in the sonic features of artists’ work, artists’ tagging by listeners, their record label affiliations, and collaboration networks. We find statistically significant disparities along all these dimensions. Moreover, the differences allow models to reliably identify the gender of songs’ creators and help elucidate the role of cultural and structural factors in sustaining inequality. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of gender differences in music production and inspire strategies that could improve the recognition of female artists and advance gender equity in artistic leadership and innovation.

Women and leadership: advancing gender equity policies in sport leadership through sport governance

ABSTRACT This paper uses a multilevel framework to deconstruct the role board members play in advancing gender equity policies in leadership positions in sport governance. Data were collected using in-depth interviews with Triathlon board members of the International Federation and two National Federations. The results show that within the multilevel framework, at the individual (micro) level, male equity champions pave the way for both challenging existing stereotypes at an organisational level (meso) within the boards, and at the sport level (macro) through the introduction and implementation of strategies and policies in the organisations studied, and constitutional changes that encourage women to engage in leadership roles. These strategies and policies display the power of equity champions of change and their willingness and ability to create a gender equitable governance culture. Equity champions of change enable women to feel valued in leadership roles, and further encourage and promote the acceptance of women in the governance of sport organisations.

The changer and the changed

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the evolving theories of change of the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) ADVANCE program to increase the representation of women on academic faculties in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). ADVANCE supports efforts to transform the cultures and structures of US institutions of higher education by removing gendered barriers to STEM faculty women’s employment, advancement and success, and by developing change strategies that others may adopt.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical study is based on qualitative, longitudinal analysis of nine requests for proposals (RfPs) for the ADVANCE program (2001–2016), complemented by historical analysis of funded ADVANCE projects using public records.FindingsThe analysis identifies changes over time that suggest shifts in NSF’s rationale and theory of change for ADVANCE. Increased guidance directs how institutions should best undertake change, document outcomes and share best practices. The RfPs reveal growing attention to equity, rather than simply to representation, and to intersectionality – how gender, race, social class and other identities intersect to produce disparate experiences and outcomes for individuals differently positioned in social systems. Gendered organizations theory helps to place these experiences and outcomes in a structural context. Iterative processes of organizational learning are postulated to account for these changes over time.Originality/valueWhile many studies have examined ADVANCE projects’ activities and outcomes, none have examined the premises and design of the ADVANCE program itself. This analysis offers insight into how the ADVANCE RfP has driven innovation and learning about transformative institutional change to advance gender equity in STEM.

Institutions Developing Excellence in Academic Leadership (IDEAL)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe the objectives, activities and outcomes of the National Science Foundation ADVANCE project, Institutions Developing Excellence in Academic Leadership (IDEAL) during 2009–2012. The goal of IDEAL was to create an institutional learning community empowered to develop and leverage knowledge, skills, resources and networks to transform academic cultures and enhance gender equity, diversity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines at six research universities in the northern Ohio region. Over the three-year period, these institutions developed academic leaders and institutionalized gender equity transformation through multi-dimensional and multi-level initiatives, improving the advancement and leadership of women faculty in STEM disciplines.Design/methodology/approachThe authors describe the objectives, activities and outcomes of the NSF ADVANCE project, IDEAL during 2009–2012. The six research institutions included in IDEAL were Bowling Green State University, Case Western Reserve University (the lead institution), Cleveland State University, Kent State University, University of Akron and University of Toledo.FindingsIDEAL’s outcomes included the institutionalization of a number of gender equity initiatives at each university, an increase in the number of tenured women faculty in science and engineering disciplines over three years across the six universities, and increases in the numbers of women in faculty and administrative leadership positions. Out of 62 of the IDEAL participants (co-directors and change leaders), 25 were promoted or appointed to roles of leadership within or beyond their institutions during or after their participation in IDEAL. A number of new institutional collaborations and exchanges involving the six universities occurred during and emerged from IDEAL. An integrative model of the IDEAL program is developed, describing the nested components of each institution’s gender equity transformation within the IDEAL partnership consortium and the larger NSF ADVANCE community, and highlighting the dynamic interactions between these levels.Social implicationsThe IDEAL program demonstrates that systemic change to achieve equity for women and underrepresented minority faculty in STEM disciplines must be rooted on individual campuses but must also propagate among higher education systems and the broader scientific community. The effort to develop, sustain and expand the IDEAL partnership model of institutional transformation (IT) in higher education illuminates how innovative, context-sensitive, cost-effective and customized institutional strategies may be implemented to advance gender equity, diversity, inclusion and leadership of women faculty at all levels across the country.Originality/valueThis is an original description of a unique and distinctive partnership among research universities to foster gender equity IT. The manuscript details the objectives, activities and outcomes of the IDEAL program, established with the aim of broadening participation in the STEM academic workforce and advancing gender equity, diversity and inclusion in institutions of higher education. An integrative model is developed, illustrating the key components and outcomes of the IDEAL program.

Learning from our mothers: examining the role of intergenerational knowledge transfer in advancing gender equity among Sri Lankan youth

Abstract Background In a 2013 survey, over half of Sri Lankan men and women expressed gender-inequitable attitudes that equated masculinity with violence, and femininity with obedience to men. High rates of gender-inequitable attitudes are a community-level risk factor for gender-based violence including rape and intimate partner violence. In Sri Lanka, public health practitioners focused on reducing the health disparities resulting from gender inequity need to better understand the processes by which gender-inequitable attitudes develop and how to prevent them. The goal of this research was to identify potential points of intervention at which appropriate programmes and policies could most effectively cultivate gender-equitable attitudes among young people in Sri Lanka. Methods Over 9 months in 2016 and 2017, we interviewed more than 30 young adults in Sri Lanka to understand how their experiences helped them to develop their own gender identity, as well as to understand and respond to gender norms. Their responses were analysed using a grounded theory approach to explore which factors have most influenced the processes of gender norm learning, acceptance, or rejection throughout Sri Lankan young adults' lives. Findings Many interviews focused on the impact of elder family members on the interviewee's perception and acceptance of gender norms. Many young adults who did not agree with gender-inequitable norms reported receiving advice from their parents or other elder relatives to disregard norms and pursue their own non-conforming interests. In one example, many non-working mothers insisted on their daughters working and becoming financially independent. Interpretation Young people in Sri Lanka are repeatedly confronted by gender-inequitable attitudes in school, the media, politics, and society at large. However, family members can support youth to develop gender equitable attitudes and behaviours within this gender-inequitable society. Harnessing elders' positive wishes for their offspring's future may prove essential to advancing gender equity in the next generation of Sri Lankan adults. Even from gender-inequitable roles, parents may still support gender equity, and could be encouraged through public health interventions to support their children in realising their full potential. Elder family members are an untapped public health resource for advancing gender equity and reducing its related health disparities among Sri Lankan youth. Funding 2016 Fulbright US Student Grant.