Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity
A new open access journal open to academics and practitioners globally. Hosted by The Department of Business Management, Heriot Watt University HWU and published by SML.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Journeys to Systemic Change: The process of designing evidence-based interventions to improve career progression for marginalised academics
This paper describes how the Evidence Base project used a two-stage approach as a foundation for designing systemic policy and practice interventions, with the goal of improving career progression for marginalised scientists at the University of Edinburgh. Stage one involved carrying out qualitative research with new principal investigators in the physical sciences at Scottish universities who had participated in fellowship and career development programmes. Using in-depth interviews to understand the challenges that participants had encountered in regard to their career progression, we share our research results through two ‘personas’ and ‘journey maps’, storytelling and product design tools from consumer research that have rarely been applied to the academic sphere. We used the ‘pinch points’ that were identified through the journey maps as the foundation for creating evidence-based interventions. In stage two of the project, we engaged with a number of stakeholders across the University of Edinburgh to talk about the research results, discuss these possible interventions, and explore the opportunities and challenges to implementing them. We explore why it has been essential for this work to involve engagement with other stakeholders within the University system, particularly within the context of the major disruption and wide-reaching impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In conclusion, we offer a number of recommendations based on our experience, with the hope that others can use these to better facilitate the process of designing interventions to create systemic change to improve equality, diversity, and inclusion in higher education organisations.
Copyright (c) 2021 Emily F. Porth, Jean E. O'Donoghue, Katie Nicoll Baines, Catherine Lyall, Sara Shinton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Backlash and false progress: Exploring diversity management in the engineering industry
Recent typological theory highlights potential unintended consequences of diversity initiatives, including backlash and false progress. This study aimed to explore the impact of diversity initiatives on two dimensions: horizontal dimensionality in terms of majority and minority groups, and vertical dimensionality in terms of both surface and deeper levels of organisational culture. A mixed-methods design was adopted, comprising a survey of male and female engineers to allow for comparisons between majority and minority groups attitudes, and interviews with internal stakeholders within a global engineering organisation attempting to enhance gender diversity, to explore alignment between diversity initiatives and underlying attitudes, beliefs, and values. The findings revealed that superficial efforts to promote diversity can potentially threaten the perceived legitimacy of such initiatives, creating perceptions of positive discrimination and tokenism. The findings also highlight the importance of alignment between what an organisation espouses (both internally and externally), and how its members truly think and act. These findings support recent theoretical propositions regarding potential unintended consequences of diversity initiatives. We propose that to mitigate unintended effects, diversity initiatives must embrace greater horizontal dimensionality through inclusion of majority and minority groups, and vertical dimensionality through achieving change at both surface and deeper levels of organisational culture.
Copyright (c) 2021 Zara Whysall, Elizabeth Foley
लॉकडाउन में स्त्री दशा (State of Women in Lockdown)
This Hindi poem highlights the gendered impact of Lockdown. Women around the globe have suffered, more so in the low- and middle-income countries. There are girls who are out of the education system because of the Lockdown (less resources); the burden of house work has increased; domestic violence has increased and the mental health of women has been adversely impacted.
Martial Arts: The possible benefit that can be obtained during a period of lockdown.
The following thought piece follows one individuals’ experience of being in lockdown in the United Kingdom and how the practice of martial arts assisted in this experience. Through the use of diary entries, their feelings and thoughts are expressed and how the bad ones of these are assisted through the practice and ability to focus on something other. There is a discussion that draws on other academic and authors perspectives, that evidence and support the thought pieces viewpoint. The piece concludes that practicing martial arts can help individuals through enabling them to have a focus and outlet to help cope with deeper emotional states caused by a situation such as lockdown.
Save lives, protect the NHS: An autoethnography of a community midwife during the COVID 19 pandemic.
COVID 19 is an unprecedented pandemic unparalleled to any global health issue experienced in the modern world. Consequently there is no data, research or guidance to follow to provide effective, quality healthcare that protects and promotes well being in patients and staff. Research is currently being collaborated rapidly into patient and public experience during the pandemic, however, research into the experiences of front line staff during the pandemic is currently minimal. This article aims to initiate this discussion by use of an autoethnography to provide rich qualitative data into the experience of working as a community midwife during the COVID 19 pandemic.
The potential implications and inequalities in the care of older people in a post-COVID world: An autoethnographic account
Healthcare smart homes have been positioned as a potential innovative solution to the current global ageing crisis and an alternative for the care of older people within a post-COVID-19 world. However, such innovations have emerged within a dominant discourse in which older people are framed and pathologized as societal burdens. This autoethnographic paper, based on my reflections and recent (but pre-pandemic) ethnographic fieldwork with older residents of healthcare smart homes, explores the potential changing landscapes of care and home that older people may experience in a post-COVID-19 world. Previously, these homes were associated with wellbeing, choice and autonomy, however, with the negative impacts of COVID-19 on care homes and the care sector, healthcare smart homes and digital-by-default care may become the prominent means for the future care of older people. I argue this may cause increases in the social, economic and geographical inequalities around access to smart healthcare technologies. Many of these inequalities are experienced more strongly by individuals from different intersectionalities including age, disabilities and class. Furthermore, potential feelings of autonomy experienced by older people using smart healthcare technologies may be reduced when a post-COVID-19 move to digital-by-default health and social care becomes a necessity rather than a choice. <div class="ms-editor-squiggler" style="color: initial; font: initial; font-feature-settings: initial; font-kerning: initial; font-optical-sizing: initial; font-variation-settings: initial; forced-color-adjust: initial; text-orientation: initial; text-rendering: initial; -webkit-font-smoothing: initial; -webkit-locale: initial; -webkit-text-orientation: initial; -webkit-writing-mode: initial; writing-mode: initial; zoom: initial; place-content: initial; place-items: initial; place-self: initial; alignment-baseline: initial; animation: initial; appearance: initial; aspect-ratio: initial; backdrop-filter: initial; backface-visibility: initial; background: initial; background-blend-mode: initial; baseline-shift: initial; block-size: initial; border-block: initial; 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Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Gender Based Violence: notes on the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil
The Covid-19 pandemic can be discussed from the perspective of how different countries reacted to the public health crisis. In Brazil, in particular, we witnessed an increase in gender-based violence (GBV) cases. Focusing on the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism, this essay analyzes how the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro in the presidency has impacted on the development of GBV policies. Firstly, we discuss a significant change in rightist collective action, with a shift in the public debate from socioeconomic to sociocultural terms. Secondly, considering the aversion to the constitutional protection of minority groups as a central element of this social and political stance, we maintain that GBV has been an important battlefield for feminist activists and movements. Thirdly, we observe different solutions proposed by regional governments and civil society in an exceptional context of demobilization in the country. Finally, taking Bolsonaro's Brazil as an example, we draw some considerations of an ongoing research agenda. This essay advances the literature on GBV in Brazil in its intersection with authoritarian neoliberalism, but also in epidemics and crisis conjectures.
Copyright (c) 2021 Simone Gomes, Talita Tanscheit
Stigmatizing the already stigmatized: Destigmatization of the LGBT+ Community as a solution for COVID-19
Stigma attached to the LGBT+ community is historically rooted, as demonstrated by the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Yet, little is known about the role of sexuality in individuals’ experiences with the current COVID-19 pandemic, especially in dealing with State responses to the outbreak. Using South Korea as a case study, this article examines how the LGBT+ community has become scapegoats and become even more excluded from the healthcare system during the current crisis than they were before. Drawing on queer, feminist, and stigma theories, this article argues that structural destigmatization can be a short-term, as well as a long-term solution for health emergencies. It offers important implications for states and societies for how to more efficiently and effectively prevent future outbreaks and protect the health and wellbeing of marginalized groups.
Diversity Monitoring as Qualitative Research: an empirical study exploring the value of free-text demographic monitoring for organisational learning
Diversity Monitoring (DM) is a process by which organisations and communities gather information about the personal characteristics of stakeholders. The standard method of DM uses tick-box surveys to gather quantitative data about predetermined group identities. This paper reviews existing research to argue that this standard method fails to produce data appropriate for achieving many of the organisational purposes for DM. Tick-box surveys ignore the complexities of human identity and can lead to exclusion and diminished engagement. The researchers advocate developing alternative approaches to DM. They describe an original, empirical study conducted with two UK-based professional membership organisations: the College of Mediators and the Diaconal Order of the Methodist Church in Britain. This study used a primarily qualitative method, inviting free-text responses to identity questions. The paper explores themes emergent from the resulting data, examining data validity and utility, and participant experience and engagement with the research method. The researchers describe the methodological considerations of gathering qualitative data for DM and the resulting analytical process. They argue that free-text DM represents a viable method for organisations to balance the need for data validity and practical utility, while ensuring greater inclusion and nurturing positive relationships with participants.
Copyright (c) 2021 Christopher William Barrow Stephens, Lia Dong Shimada
The Good Girls: Locked up, Locked Out and Locked Down.
On the 24thth March 2020, the New Zealand Prime Minister announced the country would go into a Covid-19 lockdown. Two days later a new reality dawned with all businesses, organisations and educational institutions closed, except those deemed ‘essential’. Within a week media reports started to emerge, suggesting that Covid -19 would adversely impact on women and girls to a greater extent and that women make up the majority of workers in frontline essential work. In order to make sense of this lockdown experience, the authors of this article, four academic women, reached out to each other to share their lockdown experiences in a collaborative research project. Drawing on narrative inquiry methodology, this article highlights storytelling as a method to explore, analyse and present new understandings about the phenomenon. This article confirms how lockdown created boundaries for the authors. These are reflected in the creation of a personal experience story i.e one summative narrative in which Lisa is the representative character, the “good girl”. The story illustrates the dislocation and disconnection imposed on the authors during lockdown and depicts the internal and external struggles of being “expected” to continue in various ‘gendered’ roles as a caring mother, manager, daughter, grandmother, and academic. <div class="ms-editor-squiggler" style="color: initial; font: initial; font-feature-settings: initial; font-kerning: initial; font-optical-sizing: initial; font-variation-settings: initial; forced-color-adjust: initial; text-orientation: initial; text-rendering: initial; -webkit-font-smoothing: initial; -webkit-locale: initial; -webkit-text-orientation: initial; -webkit-writing-mode: initial; writing-mode: initial; zoom: initial; place-content: initial; place-items: initial; place-self: initial; alignment-baseline: initial; animation: initial; appearance: initial; aspect-ratio: initial; backdrop-filter: initial; backface-visibility: initial; background: initial; background-blend-mode: initial; baseline-shift: initial; block-size: initial; 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text-align: initial; text-align-last: initial; text-anchor: initial; text-combine-upright: initial; text-decoration: initial; text-decoration-skip-ink: initial; text-indent: initial; text-overflow: initial; text-shadow: initial; text-size-adjust: initial; text-transform: initial; text-underline-offset: initial; text-underline-position: initial; touch-action: initial; transform: initial; transform-box: initial; transform-origin: initial; transform-style: initial; transition: initial; user-select: initial; vector-effect: initial; vertical-align: initial; visibility: initial; -webkit-app-region: initial; border-spacing: initial; -webkit-border-image: initial; -webkit-box-align: initial; -webkit-box-decoration-break: initial; -webkit-box-direction: initial; -webkit-box-flex: initial; -webkit-box-ordinal-group: initial; -webkit-box-orient: initial; -webkit-box-pack: initial; -webkit-box-reflect: initial; -webkit-highlight: initial; -webkit-hyphenate-character: initial; -webkit-line-break: initial; 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Copyright (c) 2021 Barbara Myers, Irene Ryan, Fiona Hurd, Cassandra Mudgway
COVID-19 Among Ethnic Minorities: How Missing Data and Colour-Blind Policies Perpetuate Inequalities in the United Kingdom and the European Union
COVID-19 continues to disproportionately impact ethnic minorities across the globe in the absence of disaggregated ethnicity-based data. In Europe, governments continue to take a "colour-blind" approach to reporting COVID-19 cases and deaths, with a purported effort to avoid discrimination. However, dichotomising populations as either Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) or White masks differences between ethnic groups by homogenising risk factors including gender, age, residential area, occupation, and socioeconomic status (SES), leading to vast oversimplification. Furthermore, in some European countries, data reported by ethnicity or birth country are limited or even non-existent, although recent reports from France and Scandinavia suggest a hugely disproportionate mortality rate in immigrants from low SES countries compared with Indigenous populations. Limited data on ethnicity in relation to COVID-19 infection and mortality restricts the understanding of causation factors and outcomes, a need, which must be addressed urgently as a public health priority.
Copyright (c) 2021 Tomasz Chwałek, Anna Greszta, Kyla Belisario, Catherine E Rycroft, Talya Underwood, Michelle M King-Okoye
Precarity, a Pandemic and a 'Hostile Environment'
Within migrant communities, the precarity which characterises neoliberal, neo-colonial and patriarchal global society can be exacerbated as these dimensions intersect with legal precarity and curtailed service access – rooted within xenophobic and racist policy structures. In a time of pandemic, interlocking dimensions, which already induced heightened precarity, have been exacerbated. Insecure immigration status intertwines with constrained access to healthcare, exclusion from the social safety net, inequitable bargaining power and discriminatory labour practices, all of which have stark consequences in the COVID-19 context.
Opinion: COVID-19 has fuelled an epidemic of gender-based and intersectional abuse online
COVID-19 lockdowns have created an epidemic of gender-based and intersectional abuse online. It is time tech companies, governments and employers took action while exploring a public health approach.
Risk and Resistance Strategies in the Cleaning Industry
The voices of migrant women in precarious and poorly paid work have been missing from recent debates on the impacts of the COVID-19. This article aims to redress this balance by exploring how a migrant woman cleaner understands and balances risks relating to COVID-19. The cleaning sector has been characterised by the lack of PPE, the impossibility of physical distancing and pressure from employers to work in the absence of adequate social distancing norms. A series of in-depth interviews with a Sri Lankan cleaner sheds light on the strategies developed to counter risks to herself and to her family. The paper uses Cindi Katz’s (2004) theoretical insights on the spectrum of resistance available to powerless and marginalised people. The finding is that the cleaner deploys a reworking strategy, in which diasporic knowledge is used to protect her health. The result is that the pandemic is understood as an unexpected but manageable risk which does not interfere with her long-term life goals. This article provides an essential perspective from a low-paid worker: a presence which has been invisible in reporting and policy-making on the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19: A turning point to further sanitation justice?
Sanitation has received increased attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the heterogeneity of infrastructures, investments, practices and needs that exist on the ground, have often been overlooked. Consequently, the intersecting inequalities shaping how COVID-19 and sanitation interact remain unaddressed. This paper suggests it is possible to move beyond ‘deficit narratives’, and to support pathways towards just sanitation for all women and men, girls and boys during and beyond the pandemic. Tracking down past, ongoing and projected sanitary arrangements, exploring the political economy of both grid and off-grid investments and promises, and paying attention to the diversity of needs and practices from an intersectional perspective that considers, among other things, class, gender, age, ethnicity and ability, are three directions to do so. Together, these three directions can account for how illness or health, poverty or prosperity, suffering or well-being, stigma or respect are generated for different people who are dependent on, or who are providing, sanitation services. COVID-19 marks a turning point to critically reframe how we talk and act upon just sanitation and to challenge long-term inequalities.
Copyright (c) 2021 Allen Adriana, Pascale Hofmann, Nelly Leblond, Julian Walker, Wilbard Kombe, Claudy Vouhé, Robin Bloch, Braima Koroma, Colin Marx, Sulaiman Foday Kamara, Georgina Montserrat Petit, Tim Ndezi, Sandra de Castro Roque, Catarina Simões Mavila
The renewal of women's history: an analysis of the Women of Peace Project
Related violence and social policies facts, as well as the discourses oriented towards the citizenship promotion, pervade the public and private spheres of the peripheries living women lives. This research sought to identify the uniqueness of these women activities in the everyday politics and within the communities where they live, approaching to the female subject construction. Accordingly, it is proposed to comprehend how the participation in the "Women for Peace" project (Ministry of Justice/Brazil), developed in Porto Alegre between 2010 and 2012, has organized itself when women step in the public space and in the violence approach. It has been shown that women are producing new meanings for their own life course.
Copyright (c) 2021 Anelise Gregis Estivalet
Inclusive Casting Debunked: Towards Holistic Interventions in Staged Performance
The conditions surrounding the recent resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement illustrate the persistence of systemic racism in social life, including the cultural sector. Cultural practices in the Western world rarely dehumanise individuals, but they can play a crucial role in legitimising and perpetuating discriminatory dispositions against marginalised identities. Systemic domination works in covert ways and manages to capitalise even on cultural diversity initiatives, such us casting practices that have been developed to address the underrepresentation of marginalised communities of colour, gender and ability in staged performance. Drawing on theatre studies, sociology and theatre-related statistics and journalism that relate to casting diversity initiatives, this paper coins the term ‘inclusive casting’ to expose how such practices have surreptitiously perpetuated multiple and intersecting discriminations in staged performance across the UK and the US since 1970. It argues that such diversity initiates are tokenistic because they improve quantitative representations, such as the number of people with marginalised identities on stage, but ignore how they perpetuate inequalities through qualitative representation, such as the breadth and substance of the roles on offer. It suggests that interventions in the cultural sector should not target isolated manifestations of social inequality, but, instead, develop holistic practices and evaluation models that also condemn the misuse of inclusive casting and prioritise inclusive authorship.
Culture Jamming as a Strategy of Survival: Pop Music, Video Remixes, and Cultural Efficacy
This article aims to critically consider video remixes of US pop songs and their music videos using an intersectional framework. The four remakes examined include a feminist revision and a queer rendition of Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, as well as a chant against gender-based violence and a pro-immigrant remix to the tune of Despacito by Luis Fonsi. In examining these remixes, this article argues that the messaging of pop culture and the response of culture jamming has the potential of socialization and education, as a strategy of survival. Through the concepts of hidden curriculum, cultural efficacy, and intersectionality, I suggest ways that video remixes may contribute to community in the face of marginalization.
Copyright (c) 2020 Micaela Segal de la Garza
Reflections on Researching Within a Structurally Racist Institution
During a required group research assessment at our higher education institution, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD), we uncovered multiple underlying and intersecting axes of oppression that affected our research. These axes include silence, gatekeeping, discrimination, white fragility, and emotional labour. This article explores how our research process was affected by these axes of oppression in an academic setting. First, we unpack the scope of our initial research which included a heuristic methodology and Critical Race Theory. Next, we uncover how this internal study around structural racism was interrupted by the oppressive practices and to what extent they affected the research process and our final assessed presentation. Finally, using autoethnography we investigate how, as three researchers with different backgrounds and ethnicities (two Black women and one white woman), we seemingly disrupted an internal research conference at a higher education institution. Writing this article is a necessary act of liberation for us as researchers to contextualise and define our experiences through Critical Race Theory. Through this paper, we aim to expand the dialogue among researchers and institutions on how structural racism and oppressive practices become evident in the fabric of academia. Furthermore, any lack of dialogue will inevitably continue to cause acts of oppression within institutions until they are faced with resilience, honesty, and a balance of power free from oppression.
Ethnic and Racial Inequity in the Cultural Sector: Confront, Eradicate, Transcend
This is the editorial for the IPED special issue titled ‘Intersections, Institutions and Inequities: Axes of Oppression in the Cultural Sector.' We first conceived of this special issue in the spring of 2018. At the time, the need to address a lack of diversity, problematic discourses around diversity, and the absence of holistic understandings of multiple and intersecting axes of oppression in the cultural sector were vital and critical questions. We received enthusiastic, thought-provoking, generous, and -- at times -- viscerally raw responses to our call for papers. As editors, we were grateful, enthused, and honoured to be able to provide a platform for such rich and important discourse. Now, as we publish this issue in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, these issues feel more urgent than ever. Many cultural institutions have issued statements of support upholding the message of Black Lives Matter. Some have been genuine, while others have been performative. Nonetheless, the movement has laid bare -- for those who previously ignored such truths -- the many racist practices, structures, and attitudes embedded in the cultural sector’s daily operations. The summer of 2020 brought forward brave and honest accounts of the lived experience of inequity experienced by numerous Black and ethnically diverse students, cultural workers, and artists. As a contribution to those conversations, this special issue could not be timelier.
Copyright (c) 2020 Roaa Ali and Asif Majid
Resisting Neo-colonialism in Participatory Theatre
Artistic Reflection: As a theatre-maker who tells stories about migration, I use participatory theatre tools to work with communities of asylum-seekers, forced migrants, and others who have been displaced from their homes. Yet in my work volunteering with organisations across the Global North, I have observed a number of artistic interventions that replicate systems of oppression within their community-based work. In this article, I reflect on a workshop series in which an organization’s neo-colonial framework obscured the aim to empower newly arrived refugee women.
The Politics of the Other in Canadian Theatre/Performance
Artistic Reflection: In this reflection paper, we delve into the difficulties and obstacles encountered in creating a critical artistic practice in Canada, especially when coming from an ‘ethnic’ background.
How I Got Over: The Staging of Gendered Blackness and Homelessness
In 2012, Theatre Lab collaborated with playwright Jennifer Nelson to write the play My Soul Look Back and Wonder: Life Stories from Women in Recovery, which is based on the stories of women residing at N Street Village, a recovery community that provides housing and services to homeless and low-income women in Washington, D.C. The creation of this play as well as the resulting performance at the Kennedy Center are the focus of the documentary How I Got Over (2014). The structure of the documentary paints a story of healing and recovery as the audience learns the women’s backstories, witnesses community affirmations and emotional post-production family reunions, and learns about the women’s lives since the Kennedy Center performance. How I Got Over ends with a follow up with the women participants one year after the production. Throughout the follow-up coverage, one participant is markedly absent: Cheryl K. Barnes. In this essay, I inquire into Barnes’ absence as a consequence of her being an unruly body, demonstrating how commonsensical representation of her and her fellow N Street Village residents -- as well as moments of their erasure -- highlight the limits or, at least, potential drawbacks of using historically white spaces and performance structures to illuminate Black subjectivities.
Copyright (c) 2020 Kimberly Chantal Welch
Reacting to adolescent suicide in schools – taking a resilience-based approach
Violence has many forms. One form of violence relates to auto-aggression, which includes self-harm, suicide attempts and suicide. In this article we will focus on adolescent suicide and how school staff and students can be supported in the context of such an event. Adolescent suicide endangers in many ways the wellbeing of all groups involved in a school context (teachers, parents, students). Danger of a “Werther effect” forces the system to react appropriately, thus the focus should not only be on bereavement but also on future suicide prevention. The support or intervention described here focuses on the school system and suggests various steps which includes a) building and training a school based crisis support team within schools, b) crisis support in the phases (short-, medium- and long-term) after the suicide. The intervention is based on resilience building, thus how to (sustainably) activate or initiate the system to strengthen the resilience of individuals, groups and the school as a whole. Additionally, the adverse event (i.e. suicide of the adolescent), the reaction to it and the intervention will be described using intersections of power, inclusion and exclusion and gender.
Copyright (c) 2020 Heidi Siller, Ruth Warger, Barbara Juen, Silvia Exenberger
The significance of empowering social relations: challenges for LGBTIQ students in Vienna
Against the backdrop of a quantitative online survey of nearly 700 LGBTIQ youth in Vienna, Austria, on the living situations of LGBTIQs, this article contests the expectation of queer students necessarily experiencing mental or physical health problems based on minority stress. Even though the responses show substantial rates of bullying and violence in the education context as well as very high numbers of street harassment, especially for gender non-conforming young LGBTIQs, our findings suggests that positive experiences of peer, family or school support may play a largely ameliorative role in the relationship between minority stress and well-being. Against the common trope of the “young queer victim” our respondents seem happier than we expected them to be, which may largely be due to empowering environments and affirmative social relationships.
Intersectional aspects of school related gender-based violence in Europe
Thsi is the editorial for the special issue.
‘Intersections of ethnicity, culture, religion, sexuality with gender and school related gender based violence (SRGBV) in England’
Abstract This paper draws on qualitative analysis of interviews with 24 teachers and 4 focus group discussions with year 9 to 11 students in secondary schools in England. Data was collected across 3 schools for the project: ‘‘Developing Gender Equality Charter Marks in order to overcome gender stereotyping in education across Europe’. The analysis presented here focuses on intersections of gender with constructs of ethnicity, culture and religion, sexuality norms and enactments of SRGBV. The intersectionality of gender with sexual norms emerged in essentialist views about female academic and professional competence and normative expectations of sexual conduct, sustaining a culture of gender disrespect and a gender regime in which GBV was the penalty of transgressions of gender and sexual norms and the means to reiterate male privilege in two schools. The intersectionality of gender with culture, ethnicity and religion emerged in one of the three schools in teachers’ discourses of ethnic deficit associated with perceived lack of ability, freedom, and choice in ethnic minority girls’ and women’s lives and inappropriate expressions of sexuality that diverted from white British norms. Further research is required to enhance knowledge about whole school cultures and gender regimes in which gender injustices are performed alongside other axes of power and discrimination.
School related Gender based Violence (SRGBV)
Intersections of gender, sexual orientation and gender-based violence in Hungarian secondary schools.
This paper addresses the intersections of gender, sexual orientation and school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV), and enquires into students and teachers’ perceptions of gender-based violence (GBV) among students in Hungarian secondary schools, their personal opinions, attitudes and experiences on GBV, and institutional responses to GBV in these schools. It specifically aims to find out how three types of GBV, sexual harassment of girls by boys, same-sex violence and homophobic violence, are perceived and handled. The paper is based on data from semi-structured interviews with 30 teachers and 3 focus groups with students in 3 Hungarian secondary schools in the framework of the project “Developing Gender Equality Charter Marks in order to overcome gender stereotyping in education across Europe.” Exploring discourses about cases of violence according to the gender and sexual orientation of the targets has revealed teachers’ and students’ ambivalence towards what was considered to be violence. Different types of GBV were approached differently and mostly on an individual basis. These differences reflect a lack of awareness and an ambivalent mixture of ideas of staff and leadership about gender inequalities in general, and lack of understanding the intersections of gender and sexuality with school violence, which potentially influences the implementation of institutional policies to tackle gender-based violence.
Intersections of Gender and Religion in School related Gender-based violence in Italy
The paper focuses on gender equality and gender-based violence in schools and in society in Italy. In particular, it focuses on the intersections of gender with religion in perceptions of gender stereotypes. It reports a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with a sample of 30 teachers and three focus group interviews with year 11 to year 14 students in three schools in Italy as part of a European project entitled: “Developing Gender Equality Charter Marks in order to overcome gender stereotyping in education across Europe which included research in schools in England and Hungary as well as Italy. The paper discusses two fundamental issues: gender stereotypes and gender discrimination at school and Muslim girl discrimination in the present era, when people are especially fearful through terrorism and with a very high risk of creating negative stereotypes of Muslim people. As literature and these data research show, Muslim girls and women are particularly vulnerable.
The organizational gendering of adulting: negotiating age and gender in the workplace
While growing up is recognized as an important transitional period that lays the foundations for future gendered expectations, behaviours and trajectories, we know little of how this process is negotiated within the context of specific organizations. This paper advances life course approaches to age and employment through developing the popular cultural concept of ‘adulting’ as a lens through which to understand the ongoing process of growing up in the context of work, and how ageing traverses gender in this regard and vice versa. Drawing on 31 interviews with employees from a UK hedge fund, it presents three analytical motifs to help illuminate the gendered negotiation and reproduction of adulting at work. These concern: how men and women entered the hedge fund and progressed within it; decisions around starting a family; and how parenthood is navigated in this organization. Situating our findings within relevant debates surrounding gender, age and organizational life, we argue that adulting provides a way of articulating some of the complex ways that gender manifests in the formative stages of men and women’s career trajectories. Equally, the broader destabilizing of emerging adulthood notwithstanding, our analysis also suggests the enduring seduction and attraction of ‘stabilizing’ gendered ageing practices, shedding some light on why they might continue to persist.