Sexist harassment as an issue of gender equality politics and policies at university (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sexism in Danish Higher Education and Research: Understanding, Exploring, Acting
Sexism in Danish Higher Education and Research: Understanding, Exploring, Acting, 2021
This book is the result of the hundreds of brave employees at Danish higher education institutions who dared to step forward, either with their names or with their stories about sexism and sexual harassment through the initiative concerning Sexism in Danish academia, which we started by launching a petition in early October 2020. As the initiator group—16 individuals from six different research institutions—we are forever grateful for their courage and solidarity with each other and with us. Their many voices and stories show the surprising pervasiveness of sexism, with its many facets and types. They reveal how sexism traps our human flourishing and constrains what we can become individually, collectively, institutionally, and as a society. This book is a revolutionary exposition of the many voices, the transformation from “I have suffered” to “We have suffered.” The awakening of the us is in itself a political action toward change, assuring that we won’t forget or hide away the suffering that gendered and sexual harassment courses this day today. We dedicate this book to the change that is necessary in our society and institutions and hope that we hereby provide some justice to all those who have suffered wrongs rooted in sexism. This book is structured in four parts. First, we introduce the nature and issues of sexism in the chapter “Understanding,” which provides information that will help readers understand what sexism is, how it operates, and how it is performed. Secondly, this is followed by the chapter “Exploring,” which presents a “methodological mix” including both qualitative and quantitative data to explore the multiple ways in which sexism operates. In the first part, we present an array of vignettes, developed from the accounts and testimonials submitted to our petition, which are divided into different categories of sexism. Each story is part of a category and presents questions that invite readers to work with the complexity of sexism. In the second part, we present our quantitative study—a survey questionnaire—which we sent out following our petition to capture the extent of sexism. The next chapter, “Acting,” includes practical knowledge and exercises for staff and managers to examine how they can approach local efforts to fight sexism, including tangible tips and tools for handling sexism in the workplace. Lastly, the book offers a collection of knowledge resources and references to learn more about the complexity and action possibilities to deal with sexism.
Sexual harassment is not only a pervasive concern in many institutions of higher learning but more recently has come under the spotlight in critical discussions of academic and gender citizenship within institutional contexts in South Africa. Recently, as part of the institutional response to recent incidences of sexual harassment, a new and independent Sexual Harassment Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand was formed. However, institutional responses and strengthening of sexual harassment policies can only go so far in addressing the problem of gender violence within higher education contexts. A more concerted effort is needed that engages and destabilises the ‘common-sense’ and normalised cultures of gender and identity that are inherent in everyday interactions between gendered beings. This normalised culture is functional in informing how staff and students within tertiary institutions both interpret and respond to incidences of sexual harassment. We present critical analyses of focus group interviews conducted with different groups of male and female students and support staff at the University. The analysis highlights the role and influence of taken-for-granted assumptions of gender, identity and power that are functional in promoting a ‘culture of violence’ within this context. In interrogating problematic assumptions and their normalisation we point to the need for interventions which expose their role and influence so that more effective institutional interventions can be realised. We argue that there is a need for interventions, to take cognisance of and actively engage the deeply entrenched beliefs concerning relations of gender. These beliefs influence how practices and relations of sexual harassment are both perceived as well as how they are challenged.
Journal of Gender Studies
The legal mandate to mainstream gender equality in Spain's universities has led to the establishment of gender equality units and the adoption of gender equality policy plans and protocols against sexual harassment. This research looks at how gender equality policies have been implemented within universities and what resisting and facilitating factors have hindered and promoted their implementation. These questions are addressed by studying the implementation of the 'Protocol against sexual and sexist harassment' at the biggest public Spanish university, Madrid Complutense University. Through a combination of content analysis, interviews, and a survey involving the university community, we show how the implementation of university policies against sexual harassment is dependent on a combination of factors against (obstacles/resistances) and in favour (opportunities/alliances). These factors include the form of institutionalization that gender equality took within the university, the existing formal and informal institutions, inertial resistances, and prevailing ideas about gender equality. We argue that implementation of the protocol was impeded by the scant awareness of the prevalence of harassment in daily university life, and the concomitant acceptance, by the academic community, of the phenomenon as a 'normal' practice.
Journal of Gender Studies
The term 'gender person' in an academic department is a colloquial expression which refers to someone who researches and/or teaches about gender, but whose primary affiliation is not to a gender studies department or centre. This role has particularly been discussed in relation to international development organisations, but has been neglected in relation to higher education institutions. The article reapplies Lucy Ferguson's 'gender person' framework to academics working as 'gender people' in the conditions of contemporary academia. Three cases of different manifestations of the 'gender person' role are explored in detail and analysed for the ways in which occupying the 'gender person' role impacts upon academic careers and gender knowledge. The article contributes an elaborated concept of the 'gender person' in academia and provides empirical evidence of being the 'gender person'. The article particularly shows that relying on a 'gender person' as a form of gender mainstreaming renders both gender academics and academic departments vulnerable in different ways.
Sexual Harassment in the European Union: A Pervasive but Still Hidden Form of Gender-Based Violence
Educational Theory, 2019
Around the world, academic communities are facing a reckoning regarding the everyday presence of gendered and sexual harassment. High profile cases have underscored how gendered harassment gets normalized in research contexts. These include, for example, the toleration of philosopher John Searle's harassment of students by the University of California-Berkeley, and the recent public defense of sexual harassment by National Prize of History Scholar Gabriel Salazar in Chile. 1 In ordinary discussions of harassment in higher education, women can also experience silencing in relation to the burden of proof, in working to confront norms that may be harmful to them, while men deny or dismiss charges, or are simply silent. 2 This atmosphere impacts the interrelated communities of students and academics.
Ethnologia Europaea, 2004
His well known that universities are male dominated both in history as well as in the dominant discourses. As knowledge producing organizations universities also carries the heritage of defending the scientific ethos of meritocracy and objectivity, these arc rules that many researchers still are trained to believe in. This makes often studying of gender inequality in academia a difficult task since it not only reveals the gendered structures of academia but also violates the norms of science i mplying that science is socially biased. This article explores how gender inequality is produced within the discourse of equality at Swedish universities. The underlying assumption is that gender inequality on the level of the academic departments is produced within the broader discourses of gender, power, science and equality operating in everyday academic working lives and in society in general.
Equality for excellence? : justification of sex equality promotion in transforming Finnish academia
2016
In the Nordic countries, educational and employment policies have embraced the aims of sex equality for some decades. These goals, however, fluctuate under the pressure of other educational and economic demands. This article examines how the promotion of sex equality is justified in Finnish academia in the context of the university reform in the 2010s. Through a variety of documentary materials on equality politics and higher education policies relevant to the reform, the aim is to identify different types of arguments and to observe, how sex equality appears within them. The findings indicate how universities’ equality agenda is strictly based on legislation, and as a part of human resources, also adapted on managerial practices. The instrumental approaches with utilitybased arguments on equality for organisational and national advantages are dominant. The arguments of common good and welfare are also widely expressed, but followed by abstract notions of fair and respectful treatme...