Gender Reports Research Articles

Exploring Learners' Expectations of Sustainability Objectives and Organizational Change: The Case of Gender Reporting Training

Sustainability reporting (SR) practices at higher education institutions (HEIs) appear fragmented and underutilized. Research is needed to persuade HEIs to adopt SR standards, explaining the SR advantages of achieving sustainability objectives and realizing organizational change. Only a few research studies have investigated how HEIs employees can be trained on SR and how this can affect SR implementation. This research explores SR training for HEIs employees, focusing on gender reporting (GR) training as a means to achieve sustainability objectives and realize organizational change. Among the United Nations' Sustainable and Development Goals (SDGs), gender equality (GE) emerges as a relevant topic to investigate, also in the HEIs context, with current research being limited. Through a survey among Italian HEIs employees who attended a GR training course, this study investigates the effects of learning outcomes of respondents' expected achievement of GR objectives and organizational change after GR implementation. The research also studies whether the perceived organizational barriers to GR affect the expected realization of organizational change. The results support the impact of learning outcomes on the expected achievement of GR objectives and organizational change. Conversely, the perceived organizational barriers to GR do not affect the expected realization of organizational change. The study enters the debate about GR at HEIs and contributes to literature on sustainability training for HEIs employees, providing practical implications for organizations that intend to implement such training and showing their advantages.

Gender, the gender gap, and their interaction; analysis of relationships with children's mental health problems.

The present study seeks to examine gender differences in internalizing and externalizing problems either parent/teacher or self-reported and to investigate the influence of country-level gender gap on children's mental health problems across countries with high and low gender gap across Europe. The School Children's Mental Health in Europe (SCMHE) survey collected data on primary school children living in six European countries, using self-reports (SR) from children (Dominic Interactive), as well as combination of parent- and teacherreports (P/T C) (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) to assess internalizing and externalizing mental health problems. The World Economic Forum's (WEF's) Global Gender Gap report's Gender Gap Index (GGI) was used to categorize countries with high and low gender gap. Boys had greater odds of externalizing problems (OR = 2.6 P/T C, 1.95 SR), and lower odds of internalizing problems (OR = 0.85 P/T C, 0.63 SR). The gender gap's association with mental health problems was different depending on the informant used to identify these problems. A small gap was a risk factor based on reports from adults for externalizing (OR = 1.53) and internalizing problems (OR = 1.42) while it was a protective factor for SR internalizing problems (OR = 0.72). For these problems the gender gap impacted boys and girls differently: a small gender gap was protective for boys but not for girls, including when controlling for key confounding variables. The differential impact of country-level gender gap observed between self-reported and parent- or teacher-reported mental health is complex but nevertheless present trough mechanisms that are worthwhile to study in depth, with a special attention to the informants and the type of problems examined.

WOMEN SPORTS REPORTERS: HAVE THEY CAUGHT UP?

A sports reporter's perceived competence and actual persuasiveness were examined as a function of reporter's gender, audience member's gender, athletes' gender, and communication medium. Two different sports commentaries were created, concerning men's basketball and women's gymnastics. One of the two commentaries was presented to each respondent, either in the form of a sports magazine column or as a radio sportscast. In the commentary, either a male or a female sports reporter promoted an unlikely winner in NCAA competition. The reporter's perceived competence was significantly influenced by his or her gender: The female reporter was rated less competent than the male. This effect was consistent across male and female respondents, across men's basketball and women's gymnastics, and across print and broadcast media. No differences were observed in the respondents' acceptance of the reporter's projections of a long-shot winner. However, when the commentaries challenging the “consensus” winner (e.g., Duke in basketball) were attributed to a female reporter, compared to a male reporter, respondents adhered more strongly to the consensus team in their own choices of expected winners. Respondents thus resisted the reporter's arguments against the consensus team significantly more if the reporter was female. This effect also was consistent across respondent gender, athlete gender, and medium.