The Complex Interventions Necessary to Push the Academy toward Gender Equality. A Commentary on the Symposium “Don’t Fix Women, Fix Academia? Gender Inequality in National Academic Contexts”

Barbara J. Risman

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/18243

Authors

Barbara J. Risman University of Illinois at Chicago

Barbara J. Risman is College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at SciencesPo, Paris. Her areas of expertise include gender inequality, work and family policies and gender identity. She currently serves as the Editor in Chief of Gender & Society, the most highly cited American journal about gender, published by Sociologists for Women in Society. She currently sits on the National Chapter Advisory board for the Scholars Strategy Network. She has held leadership roles in several professional organizations including President of the Board of Directors and Executive Office of the Council on Contemporary Families, President of Sociologists for Women in Society, President of Southern Sociological Society, and Vice-President of the American Sociological Association. Her most recent book is Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure (Oxford, 2018). She has two major current research projects, a study of Covid & Caregiving (with Jerry Jacobs, Kathleen Gerson, and Jennifer Glass) and an international study of people who reject gender categories (with Emanuela Abbatecola, Arantxa Grau, Lucy Nichols, and William Scarborough).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/18243

Keywords:

Gender structure, science, women, university, transformation

Abstract

Women are under-represented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines across the globe. For decades this has been recognized as a serious problem, and many governments have funded programs that address the issue. The earliest projects, towards the end of the 20^th Century, attempted to “fix women” to help them succeed. These projects failed because the causes of women’s exclusion were not simply their socialization, but rather systematic institutional discrimination. Current attempts to include women in scientific disciplines focus on re-designing the institutions. In my brief introduction to the symposium, I introduce a way to think about gender that can help us evaluate what kinds of change each essay is describing and integrate their insights and findings so that they can inform future work in the area. To do this, I introduce the framework that suggests we must think about gender as a social structure. I then use the gender as a structure framework to briefly summarize the findings of each essay and suggest directions for the future for each project. I conclude with a summary of what we have learned overall from the essays in the Symposium and how this might inform future efforts at gender transformation in universities world-wide.

References

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Cannito, M., Naldini, M., & Santero, A. (2023). Investigating the Glass Ceiling in Italian Academia. Women’s Strategies and Barriers to Career Advancement. Sociologica, 17(2), 93–114. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/17592

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Linková, M., Langhammerová, G., Andreska, Z., & Oliva, E. (2023). Co-creating Gender Equality in Czech Academia: External and Internal Factors. Sociologica, 17(2), 59–72. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/16915

Mcquillan, J., & Hernandez, N. (2021). Real-Life Conundrums in the Struggle for Institutional Transformation. Gender & Society, 35(3), 300–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432211013147

Myers, K., George, S., Danell, A., & Morehead, A. (2023). Bringing the Men Back In: Catalyzing Gender Equality at Universities Through Advocates & Allies. Sociologica, 17(2), 37–57. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/16914

Risman, B.J. (2004). Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism. Gender and Society, 18(4), 429–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243204265349

Risman, B.J. (2017). 2016 Southern Sociological Society Presidential Address: Are Millennials Cracking the Gender Structure? Social Currents, 4(3), 208–227. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496517697145

Risman, B.J. (2018a). Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press USA.

Risman, B.J. (2018b). Gender as a Social Structure. In B.J. Risman, C. Froyum and W. Scarborough (Eds.), Handbook of the Sociology of Gender. New York City, NY: Springer International Publisher.

The Complex Interventions Necessary to Push the Academy toward Gender Equality. A Commentary on the Symposium “Don’t Fix Women, Fix Academia? Gender Inequality in National Academic Contexts”

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