Camilla Gaiaschi | Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy) (original) (raw)

Journal Articles by Camilla Gaiaschi

Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, 2021

The Italian academic system has recently been the object of reforms aimed at reducing costs and i... more The Italian academic system has recently been the object of reforms aimed at reducing costs and increasing its efficiency, as well as promoting a new managerial culture based on performance and entrepreneurship. Based on a case study conducted in a biological sciences department of a large Italian university, this research study explores to what extent the new academic culture has affected recruitment and career advancement processes and what the implications for women are. The results suggest that the «new» academic selection criteria, based on the meritocratic ideal, have certainly contributed to modifying the «old» university model based on hierarchy and affiliation, opening up new opportunities for female academics as well. However, gender inequalities still persist: they resist changes and acquire new forms, while the mantra of excellence risks making them more invisible. Moreover, the opportunities that academic transformations are opening up tend to be the prerogative of few women: those who can economically endure years of precarity and those who make specific maternity choices. Rather than exacerbating gender inequalities, recent neoliberal transformations risk increasing inequalities among women themselves.

Gender Studies and Research, 2016

The Project STAGES – Structural Transformation to Achieve Gender Equality in Research and Science... more The Project STAGES – Structural Transformation to Achieve Gender Equality in Research and Science (G.A. No.FP7-289051) was one of the very first funded projects in the framework of the new “structural change” strategy launched in 2011 by the European Commission with the aim to promote gender equality in science through multi-level and long-lasting transformations. The Project was based on the implementation of tailored Action Plan (AP) within different European university and research institutes. As member of the STAGES consortium, the University of Milan also implemented an AP. After four years of Implementation Phase (2012-2015) and the first year of the Sustainability Phase (2015-2019), in this paper we present some first experience-based reflections on a specific aspect and challenge among the different ones of structural change processes: that of ‘prevailing strategies’. We first describe the actions included in the UMIL’s Plan and the strategical reasoning which led to their planning and implementation. We particularly focus on the dynamics of strategical adaptation the Team used while implementing the Plan and on the need of taking into account uncertainty and emergence in this process. We finally present the Implementation Phase outcomes and the first outcomes of Sustainability deriving from the strategies employed and from their adaptation to emerging needs and changing contexts.

AG AboutGender Vol.3 N.6 anno 2014, Nov 15, 2014

The sharing of caring activities between men and women as an instrument for achieving gender equa... more The sharing of caring activities between men and women as an instrument for achieving gender equality is the result of a long debate within the studies on welfare systems in a gender perspective. Some authors have called for a «dual earner-dual carer» model, a form of «gender arrangement» requiring both partners working three-quarter of the time and equally sharing care.
The article is divided into four parts. The first part explores the theoretical foundations of the notion of «shared conciliation» and more in particular of the «dual- earner-dual carer» model. The second part is a review of the comparative literature on work-life balance policies. The third part will analyze the OECD data 2014 on time use. The fourth part aims to shed light on the limits of the «dual earner - dual carer model» and proposes a new interpretation of the notion of shared conciliation.

Working Papers Secondo Welfare 3/14 , Dec 15, 2014

L’esistenza di una politica di welfare da sola non basta per garantirne l’efficacia. Questo è ver... more L’esistenza di una politica di welfare da sola non basta per garantirne l’efficacia. Questo è vero anche per tutte quelle politiche che intendono favorire la concilia- zione dei tempi di vita con i tempi di lavoro. Il presente working paper intende rendere conto di quella letteratura, per lo più internazionale, che rispetto alle misure di conciliazione vita-lavoro si è spinta al di là della loro descrizione per entrare nell’ambito della valutazione della loro efficacia, e più in particolare dell’analisi dei fattori che ne favoriscono o ne impediscono l’utilizzo e dell’individuazione degli effetti sui potenziali beneficiari. L’obiettivo del presente contributo è triplice: ren- dere visibile in Italia un filone di ricerca pressoché sconosciuto; riflettere sui limiti e sulle sfide metodologiche che la valutazione delle pratiche di work-life balance comporta; fare luce sulla «cultura organizzativa», intesa come quel set di norme e valori condiviso all’interno di un’azienda che funge da facilitatore o da ostacolo al successo delle politiche e che pertanto non può non essere preso in considerazio- ne nell’ambito di un processo di valutazione. Sulla base dei risultati finora raggiunti dalla letteratura, verranno suggerite alcune possibili prospettive di ricerca.

Polis, 2017

This paper focuses on the penalties and premiums associated with marriage and parenthood among ph... more This paper focuses on the penalties and premiums associated with marriage
and parenthood among physicians. The research is based on a dataset of more
than one thousand doctors working in five hospitals in the Lombardy region of
northern Italy. The results show that, all else being equal, married fathers report
a 15% premium compared to childless single men while married mothers report
a 15% penalty compared to single childless women. Marriage and parenthood
significantly affect wages only when they are combined together. Moreover,
both males’ premiums and women’ s penalties grow as the number of children
increases, but if married fathers’ premium occurs from the first child, married
mothers’ penalty appears only from the second child on.

La Rivista delle Politiche Sociali, 2017

Le politiche di conciliazione vita-lavoro hanno effetti non solo sull’occupazione femminile ma an... more Le politiche di conciliazione vita-lavoro hanno effetti non solo sull’occupazione femminile ma anche sulla distribuzione dei carichi di cura tra uomini e donne e, di conseguenza, sull’uguaglianza di genere. Analogamente, anche le iniziative di welfare aziendale in ambito di work-life balance possono avere implicazioni differenti sulle opportunità di conciliazione vita-lavoro e di carriera dei lavoratori a cui si rivolgono, e in particolare della componente femminile all’interno delle organizzazioni. Il presente contributo analizza le politiche implementate dalle aziende attraverso lo studio dei contenuti di 148 accordi aziendali siglati nel periodo 2004-2014, nel tentativo di individuare le implicazioni di diverse «strategie» aziendali in ottica di genere.

Italian Journal of Gender-specific Medicine. 2018 4(2): 73-78, 2018

Women have made a significant progress in the medical profession, but despite this trend gender i... more Women have made a significant progress in the
medical profession, but despite this trend gender inequalities
in pay and career advancement persist. This study investigates
the determinants of wage and promotion differentials
among physicians based on a dataset of more than 1000
doctors working in five hospitals in the Lombardy Region,
Italy. Data were collected through an online survey with a
response rate of 48.7%. Controlling for differences in observed
characteristics, women earn 18% less than their male
colleagues while they are less likely to be promoted from
the early to the mid-level of the career ladder, while no adjusted
penalty in promotion persists from the mid-level to
the final step of the ladder. This result suggests that female
underrepresentation in senior positions is due more to a
sticky floor mechanism than to a glass ceiling effect.

Gender Work & Organization, 2019

Women have made significant progress in the medical profession, but despite this trend towards eq... more Women have made significant progress in the medical profession, but despite this trend towards equality, the gender pay gap persists. This study investigates the determinants of earning differentials among physicians in Italy. This analysis is based on a dataset of more than 1000 doctors working in five hospitals in the Lombardy region. Data were collected through an online survey with a response rate of 48.7 per cent. Women's concentration in the lower ranks of the career ladder, their lower propensity to work as private practitioners and their lower concentration in surgical specialties contribute to the gender income gap. Having children and a spouse or a cohabiting partner entails a premium on income for men, but no penalty for women, which suggests that positive discrimination towards fathers and husbands is stronger than negative discrimination towards mothers and wives. On the other hand, the gender gap associated with marital and parental status is stronger in public hospitals than in private hospitals, at least up to the second child. Once differences in characteristics are controlled, women earn 18 per cent less than men. This penalty should be ascribed to employer's discrimination and/or unobserved characteristics. These findings challenge the human capital perspective by calling for the role of structural mechanisms in producing inequalities.

Social Forces, 2021

This paper investigates the gender promotion gap in a particular highly skilled profession, that ... more This paper investigates the gender promotion gap in a particular highly skilled profession, that of physicians. The following analyses are based on a dataset of more than a thousand doctors working in Italy, a country in which hospitals play a central role in the national health care system. Given a three-step career ladder—first level, vice, and head—this research finds that women are 8% less likely than men to be promoted from the first level to vice, whereas no significant disadvantage is found in the promotion from vice to head. This suggests that the vertical segregation is due more to a sticky floors mechanism than to a glass ceiling effect. Moreover, no motherhood penalty occurs. Private organizations appear to be more gender equal than public ones and similar, albeit weaker, findings come from the analysis of the specialties, cautiously suggesting that the male-dominated area of surgery is more gender equal than the female-dominated area of medicine. These findings point out that women in highly skilled professions may encounter fewer obstacles to promotion than in the general labor market. Furthermore, they may encounter fewer obstacles within the most competitive organizations and specialty areas than across the profession in general. This is not, however, because of a greater number of opportunities, but because they represent a highly selected and career-oriented population. These results shed light on the costs of such achievement for women, both in terms of effort and in terms of equality among women themselves.

Professions and Professionalism, 11(1)., 2021

While witnessing a feminization of its workforce, the academic profession has experienced a proce... more While witnessing a feminization of its workforce, the academic profession has experienced a process of market-based regulation that has contributed to the precarization of early career phases and introduced a managerial culture based on competition, hyper-productivity, and entrepreneurship. This paper aims to investigate the implications of these changes for female academics. A mixed model research design was used based on administrative data on the Italian academic population and qualitative interviews with life scientists within a specific academic institution. Results show that the implications of university transformations in terms of gender heterogeneity are complex. On the one hand, the increased precarization of early career stages has increased gender inequalities by reducing female access to tenured positions. On the other, the adoption of performance-based practices has mixed consequences for women, entailing both risks and opportunities, including spaces of agency which may even disrupt male-dominated hierarchies.

Social Sciences, 9(9), 163., 2020

Recently, the Italian higher education system has experienced two profound changes: the strong fe... more Recently, the Italian higher education system has experienced two profound changes: the strong feminization of its academic staff and the implementation of market-based reforms aimed at fostering cost efficiency and economic productivity. Such reforms include the reshaping of the academic career ladder envisaged by the last university reform, the so called Gelmini reform (law 240/2010), and the adoption of a performance-based funding system. Both elements occurred in parallel with a strong cut in turnover. By accessing unique data on recruitment covering the last two decades, which were provided by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research’s statistical office, this study aims at investigating these changes from a gendered perspective. More specifically, it firstly aims at analyzing if the feminization of the academic staff is due to an effective improvement of gender equality in recruitment or, rather, to demographic dynamics; secondly, it investigates to what extent the recent neo-liberal transformations, and more specifically the reshaping of the career structure combined with the limitations on hiring, has had any implications in terms of women’s recruitment and advancement. The results suggest that the road to gender equality is extremely slow and non-linear. The introduction, with the Gelmini reform, of the new fixed-term assistant professor has tightened female access to the tenure track. Moreover, female recruitment remained substantially unchanged over the period among associate and full professors, thus suggesting that the feminization of the academic staff is not due to an effective improvement of gender equality in recruitment, but also to demographic dynamics, such as the retirement of men who are concentrated in the older cohorts.

Precarious Escapes. Participative research and collective knowledge production inside and beyond ... more Precarious Escapes. Participative research and collective knowledge production inside and beyond the academia Introduction T his paper addresses the issue of the contexts in which sociological knowledge is produced. It highlights the difficulties in doing critical and participative social research due to the ways how the university system is constructed and how it is changing. It gives insights into the crisis of social science in its relation to the social worlds studied, and in its capacity of building alliances with social actors and contexts outside academia.

Books by Camilla Gaiaschi

Bombelli, M.C. & Serrelli, E. (eds), La cultura del rispetto. Oltre l’inclusione. goWare & Guerini Next, 2021. , 2021

Feltrinelli, Jul 15, 2015

Come si muovono i giovani in epoca di crisi economica? Quali sono le direttrici degli spostamenti... more Come si muovono i giovani in epoca di crisi economica? Quali sono le direttrici degli spostamenti per lavoro che attraversano l’Italia? Negli ultimi anni la mobilità degli italiani è cresciuta: sempre più giovani sono disposti a oltrepassare le frontiere per trovare un lavoro all’estero e sempre più meridionali sono disposti a trasferirsi dal Sud al Centro-Nord. Nel frattempo, sono sempre meno gli stranieri che scelgono di arrivare nel nostro paese e sempre di più quelli che decidono di lasciarlo. La crisi ha modificato le traiettorie, introdotto nuove mete e nuovi soggetti. L’intento di questo libro è quello di ricostruire la mappa dei flussi che attraversano l’Italia: dall’Italia verso l’estero, dall’estero verso l’Italia e all’interno dei confini nazionali.

Conference Presentations by Camilla Gaiaschi

Articolo pubblicato all'interno degli atti del convegno "Genere e R-Esistenze in movimento", tenu... more Articolo pubblicato all'interno degli atti del convegno "Genere e R-Esistenze in movimento", tenutosi all'Università degli Studi di Trento a gennaio 2020. Atti a cura di Maria Micaela Coppola, Alessia Donà, Barbara Poggio, Alessia Tuselli.

Il processo di femminilizzazione del corpo docente delle Università italiane, inteso come costant... more Il processo di femminilizzazione del corpo docente delle Università italiane, inteso come costante e graduale aumento della presenza femminile tra gli strutturati e non, appare lento e non estraneo a possibili stagnazioni (Rossi 2015b). Secondo i dati Miur, nel 2015 le donne rappresentano il 37% dei docenti degli atenei statali (il dato comprende i ricercatori a tempo determinato e indeterminato, gli associati e gli ordinari ma non comprende gli assegnisti), in crescita di 3,8 punti percentuali in dieci anni (erano il 32,2% nel 2005). Ancora forti risultano i meccanismi di segregazione, sia verticale che orizzontale, con le donne concentrate nei livelli più bassi della scala gerarchica e nelle discipline umanistiche, a scapito di quelle tecnico-scientifiche. Particolarmente critico appare il dato sui ricercatori a tempo determinato (RTD), figura introdotta dalla L.240 del 2010, cosiddetta riforma Gelmini, dove la quota maschile supera di 5,5 punti percentuali quella dei ricercatori maschi pre-riforma, ovvero a tempo indeterminato (RTI), suggerendo un rallentamento del processo di femminilizzazione ai livelli di ingresso della professione. Analizzando i dati istituzionali dell'Università degli Studi di Milano, il paper intende offrire un contributo al dibattito sulle disuguaglianze di genere nelle carriere accademiche in Italia. Con circa 66mila iscritti e circa 2 mila tra docenti e ricercatori, l'Università degli Studi di Milano -detta anche Università Statale -è il più grande Ateneo della Lombardia e rappresenta un importante volano di crescita socio-economica del territorio. Composta da 33 dipartimenti e dotata di un'ampia offerta formativa, la Statale è tra gli istituti di ricerca leader in Italia e in Europa per la sua produttività scientifica e l'unica Università italiana a far parte della LERU, la Lega Europea delle Università di Ricerca. I dati relativi alla popolazione accademica presente in Statale sono stati raccolti presso gli uffici dell'Ateneo nell'ambito di una ricerca promossa dal CUG (Comitato Unico di Garanzia 2 ) e sono stati successivamente analizzati tramite descrittive. I dati, aggiornati al 31 dicembre 2015, sono stati analizzati in raffronto da una parte ai dati dell'Università degli Studi di Milano al 2007 e dall'altra ai dati nazionali al 2015 relativi agli atenei statali italiani. Nella presente ricerca la dimensione comparativa riveste infatti un ruolo 1 Il presente articolo è frutto della riflessione congiunta delle tre autrici. Se, tuttavia, per motivi di ordine accademico, dovesse essere attribuita responsabilità individuale, Camilla Gaiaschi ha scritto i paragrafi 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 e 9, Daniela Falcinelli il paragrafo 4, Renata Semenza il paragrafo 1. 2 La ricerca è stata promossa dal CUG dell'Università degli Studi di Milano con l'obiettivo di mappare i percorsi di carriera del personale accademico e tecnico-amministrativo con particolare attenzione alle differenze di genere e di età. I risultati della ricerca sono stati presentati per la prima volta all'interno del convegno "Genere e generazioni: quale parità tra le Università italiane?" tenutosi il 21 Novembre 2016 presso l'Università degli Studi di Milano e sono confluiti all'interno del primo Rapporto sulla parità di genere in Ateneo.