Promoting gendered structural change in leadership in higher education

Introduction and objectives. In the higher education and research sector, efforts have been employed in diverse countries to bring about gendered structural change, and most strategies pursue such a goal through the implementation of formal changes in its structures and policies. Leaning on the feminist institutionalism theory, the aim of this article is to discuss the importance of understanding how the formal and the informal institutional norms interact between each other in initiatives seeking gender equality in leadership and decision-making in the specific context of higher education institutions. Methodology. A qualitative approach has been followed. Interviews with members of the Board of Directors of a higher education and research institution in northern Spain have been conducted and analysed, aiming at identifying the barriers to the access of women to leadership positions and possible measures to overcome them. Results. The analysis confirmed the impact caused by the gendered dynamics present at both individual and institutional levels to GE initiatives. While the importance of formal institutional commitments to gender equality has been recognised, the analysis recalls the attention to the fact that informal settings shape the applicability of formal policies, with continuous references to the traditionally unequal distribution of power and attribution of value to women and men. Discussion and added value. Although much theoretical knowledge has been produced in the field of gender and institutions, especially concerning the gendered bases of institutions, the field still lacks within-process studies on the aspects influencing the obtained outcomes of developed initiatives pursuing gender equality in institutional leadership. The study developed in this paper allows for replication in different contexts, hence contributing to the refinement of the existing knowledge on the dynamics of change in gender-oriented initiatives

CEOs as agents of change and continuity

Purpose

Chief executive officers (CEOs) are increasingly seen as change agents for gender equality, which means that CEOs have to lead others to achieve gender equality. Much of this leadership is going to happen through talk, which raises the question as to how CEOs talk about gender equality to act as change agents. The purpose of this paper is to understand the arguments of CEOs deploy.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on interviews with global CEOs, who have publicly supported gender equality work, the article draws on discourse analysis to understand the arguments of CEOs deploy.

Findings

The analysis shows that CEOs deploy three arguments. First, CEOs argue that women bring special skills to the workplace, which contributes to a female advantage. Second, CEOs argue that the best person for the job is hired. Third, CEOs talk about how biases and privilege permeate the workplace. The analysis shows that CEOs are often invested in essentialised views of gender while holding onto ideals of meritocracy.

Originality/value

The article suggests that how leaders talk about gender equality leads to continuity, rather than change in regard to gender equality.

Undoing the 'Nordic Paradox': Factors affecting rates of disclosed violence against women across the EU

Measuring violence against women raises methodological questions, as well as the wider question of how to understand violence and locate it in relation to a societal context. This is all the more relevant given that measurement of violence against women in the EU has made an interesting phenomenon apparent, the so-called 'Nordic Paradox', whereby prevalence is higher in more gender equal countries. This article examines this phenomenon by exploring a range of factors-methodological, demographic and societal-to contextualise disclosed levels of violence. The analysis makes use of a multilevel analytic approach to take into account how macro and micro levels contribute to the prevalence of violence. The intercepts are then used to illustrate how taking these into account might provide an alternative ranking of levels of violence against women in EU countries. The results show that the 'Nordic Paradox' disappears-and can be undone-when factors at individual and country levels are considered. We conclude that the 'Nordic Paradox' cannot be understood independently from a wider pattern of violence in society, and should be seen as connected and co-constituted in specific formations, domains or regimes of violence. Our results show that the use of multi-level models can provide new insights into the factors that may be related to disclosed prevalence of violence against women. This can generate a better understanding of how violence against women functions as a system, and in turn inform better policy responses.

Introduction: Critically interrogating inclusion in organisations

This Special Issue seeks to begin to map out the key issues and contours of the emerging stream of literature on critical studies of inclusion in organisations. We aim to generate and develop further debates on critically theorising the concept, rhetoric and practices of inclusion, how inclusion manifests in different organisational contexts, how it works for different social groups, and how it continues to be implicated and interwoven with the logic of exclusion and inequality in contemporary organisations. The term ‘inclusion’ seems to have augmented the term ‘diversity’, resulting in the emergence of ‘diversity and inclusion’ as a standing term, with other terms, such as ‘equality’ and ‘equity’ currently less frequently used. In this Special Issue we treat diversity and inclusion as analytically distinct and question how far the ‘inclusion turn’ is changing practices in organisations. The papers in this Special Issue discuss how organisations ‘do’ inclusion, explore the conditions on which minority groups are included, and seek to develop a more nuanced understanding of the concept of inclusion by situating it into the broader social context and questioning the inclusion-exclusion binary.

A rights-based approach to board quotas and how hard sanctions work for gender equality

This article examines whether progress in women’s access to decision-making positions is best achieved through increased levels of development or targeted actions. Drawing on European data for the period 2006–2018, the article examines the association between how gender equal a country is and legislated measures such as board quotas with women’s representation on boards. The analysis then explores how this can be nuanced by differentiating between hard sanctions, soft sanctions and codes of governance. It shows that board quotas cannot be relied upon as instruments of progress independently of a contextual environment that is more gender equal. Furthermore, board quotas with hard sanctions work best, followed by codes of governance, particularly when associated with higher gender equality. However, board quotas with soft sanctions are associated with results that are only marginally better than not having any measure in place. The article concludes that for further and faster progress to be made, introducing legislated board quotas shows great potential, though only in combination with striving for a gender equal society and using hard sanctions. The results call for organizations not to lose focus on ‘rights’ at the expense of the more palatable ‘business case’ for board quotas when striving for equality on corporate boards.