Exploring Intersectionality of Gender, Race, and Personality Traits for Black Women Leaders in Online Higher Education

Researchers have used previous literature to suggest that Black women face challenges and obstacles in seeking leadership roles at higher education institutions (HEIs). Many of these Black women have consistently and pervasively faced prevailing stereotypes, biases, and barriers as they seek career advancements at online HEIs (Nigar, 2020; Tarbutton, 2019). This qualitative phenomenological study was undertaken to examine the intersectionality of gender, race, and personality traits of Black women leaders who hold positions of department chair level or higher in HEIs. Using the theoretical framework of Black feminist thought, this research was conducted to understand better the lived experiences of a selected group of Black women in leadership roles at HEIs. Purposive sampling of ten Black women leaders from Texas-based HEIs allowed for the participants to engage in virtual open-ended question interviews via video conferencing, Zoom. The participants shared experiences on their career trajectory and barriers encountered on their journey and reflected on what helped them overcome obstacles while seeking leadership roles at HEIs. The procedures of initial coding, NVivo coding, and descriptive coding were utilized to transcribe the obtained data and create three main themes and 11 subthemes. The three major themes identified included support systems, personality perceptions, and career pathways. The results of this study provide fresh viewpoints on the difficulties faced by Black women seeking leadership roles at online HEIs. The participants\u27 viewpoints may also help improve academic environments to identify potential leadership approaches for developing Black women to acquire leadership roles

White-collar Gender Discrimination in China: How legal system fails to protect women’s employment rights?

Inherited from the traditional Confucians value, men have played a dominant role in China, and women have suffered gender discrimination in multiple surfaces including health, education, expectation of social roles, and job markets. In this paper, I focus on women’s employment rights and gender discrimination at workplace in China. Despite joining international conventions and having general domestic laws against discrimination, women in China are treated unequally and less favored in the entire occupational lifecycle, including job selection, recruitment, allocation, training, promotion and benefits, firing, retirement, and pension. By examining policies and practices against white-collar women in regard to recruitment process, employment benefits, and sexual harassment, areas where the most common types of discrimination occur, I intend to identify three factors contributed to the inefficiency of the Chinese legal system in protecting female employees against gender discrimination: 1) Gendered stereotypes and social norms, 2) Inadequate legal and political regulation, and 3) Sketchy employer practices

Women’s adaptation to STEM domains promotes resilience and a lesser reliance on heuristic thinking

Experiences that compel people to challenge social stereotypes can promote enhanced cognitive flexibility on a range of judgmental domains. Women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields are chronically exposed to such experiences and may therefore also demonstrate these benefits. Two studies examined the differential effects of counterstereotypical experiences on women from STEM and non-STEM fields. Results showed that imagining or recollecting these experiences led women from STEM fields to exhibit a lesser reliance on heuristic thinking compared to women from non-STEM fields, and this difference was mediated by self-perceived resilience to the negative impact of gender stereotyping. Implications for psychologists’ and educators’ understanding of the relationship between counterstereotypical experiences and heuristic thinking are discussed

The effects of women\u27s studies on the fear of success and locus of control of female college students

The aim of this study was to assess the effects of women\u27s studies courses on the fear of success and locus of control of female college students. The relationship between fear of success and locus of control was also examined.;Subjects for the investigation included: 243 male and female students from The College of William and Mary (128 students) and Old Dominion University (115 students). The treatment group consisted of 153 students enrolled in women\u27s studies courses. The comparison group consisted of 81 students not enrolled in women\u27s studies classes. Both the treatment and comparison groups were pretested and posttested. The test battery included the Cohen Fear of Success questionnaire, the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale, Adult Form (ANS-IE) and a personal data sheet. The pretests were administered at the beginning of the academic term and posttests at the conclusion of the term.;The results of this investigation include the following findings: (1) The hypothesis that treatment by women\u27s studies would show a significant decrease in fear of success (FOS) for female college students as measured by the Cohen Fear of Success questionnaire could neither be accepted nor rejected. Six women\u27s studies classes were tested in this study. The female mean scores of three classes decreased in the anticipated direction. However, only two of the three classes showed decreases that reached the 0.05 level of significance. The female mean scores of the other three classes increased. However, they did not reach the 0.05 level of significance. (2) The hypothesis that female students enrolled in women\u27s studies would show a significant decrease in external locus of control as measured by the ANS-IE could be neither accepted nor rejected. The locus of control of females enrolled in one women\u27s studies class showed a significant decrease in the anticipated direction. However, the mean scores for the other classes either increased or decreased. The changes did not reach statistical significance. (3) The FOS mean for females was 30.3140 and the male mean was 26.5806. Thus, a significant difference between the female and male mean scores was found. (4) The difference between the male and female mean scores of the ANS-IE was not statistically significant. (5) There was a significant positive correlation between FOS and locus of control. (6) There was no significant difference in pretest scores between females in the experimental and comparison group as measured by Cohen\u27s Fear of Success questionnaire, indicating no evidence of self selection on this variable. The test results suggest that there may be an instructor and/or course content interaction which may account for the changes in the scores rather than a uniform treatment

Gender bias and women in leadership

The purpose of this study is to describe and evaluate the effectiveness of implementing a stronger equity plan to career major areas whose students have experienced inequity in a vocational program that perpetuates gender bias and harassment of female students. This particular sample involves twenty-two students who are in non-traditional career major areas. Interviews involved the Building Principal, the Affirmative Action Officer, a Guidance Counselor, and two Career Major teachers. Surveys were used to collect data from students in non-traditional career majors. Questionnaires were given to all academic teachers. Data analysis consisted of using the information from the interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and review of literature to discover, intervene, and alleviate the negative effects of gender bias and harassment. Weaving together the different aspects of gender bias, provides an understanding of how gender bias affects leadership roles for women. Gender bias is still a problem in American schools and in the work place. In our schools, it continues to perpetuate girls\u27 poor self-esteem, lack of interest in math and science and lost potential. It affects leadership roles for women not only in education but all aspects of the work world

Knock on the door: A feminist standpoint theory case study of internationally educated Chinese females finding academic positions in China

This study examines how gender shapes the experiences of internationally educated Chinese females in trying to obtain academic positions in Chinese higher education institutions from a feminist standpoint theory perspective. The interactions between education and gender in the contemporary globalized world have been an important theme in studies about education, gender, and social equity. Identifying the gaps in the statistic-based understandings of gender parity, this study adopts a qualitative narrative method and interviewed four female scholars who have applied and interviewed for academic jobs in China in the past four years. The findings are presented as four elaborate narratives. The life stories demonstrate various challenges, particularly gender-specific challenges, confronting women in starting and developing academic careers and women’s intentionality and subjectivity in pursuing their careers. This study reveals the limitations and negative effects of neoliberal measurability and objectivity, and suggests concrete measures for institutions to promote gender equity

Immigrant Nigerian women leaders in California: their experiences, challenges, and successes

This qualitative phenomenological research inquiry was designed to explore the lived experiences, challenges, and successes of 24 immigrant Nigerian women leaders living and working in California. It also explored the factors that influenced these women to aspire to leadership positions despite the challenges and closed doors they constantly face at work. The women who participated in this study were in leadership positions in both governmental and private sectors. Their positions ranged from a frontline supervisor to an assistant superintendent in a public school district. Like other minority groups living in the United States, including women, immigrant Nigerian women leaders face similar, or in some cases more, challenges than their White counterparts in the workplace. Through the interview questions, this study elicited the women’s experiences from early childhood through adulthood, including their current experiences and what they see in their future, as well as the influence these experiences have on their ability to be successful. The researcher conducted a one-on-one interview with each participant. Some participants were directly recruited by the researcher, and others were recruited by snowball sampling. Through the interviews, the participants shared the impact of their childhood upbringing, religion, and faith on their survival in the workplace as well as in the United States. Several themes emerged from the analysis of the interview data. The participants believed that they had to work harder than their White female counterparts to climb up the corporate ladder and to remain at each level they attained. They shared that they had to put in more hours and constantly had to prove that they had the skills and qualifications to do a job. They also noted that, despite their skills and education, they were not paid as well as, or compensated equitably for, doing the same work as their counterparts. Some discussed conflicts between their Nigerian culture and the American system and shared how they assimilated into their new environment. Some also expressed that their ascent sometimes prevented them from achieving some of the goals they set at work. Two participants expressed their frustrations with the American educational system because they did not receive credit for their degree or education in Nigeria and they had to start over again. Despite the challenges they faced, the women credited their faith, trust in God, and family upbringing as motivators for their success at work and in American society

An approach on disrupting sexism in the work place: mechanisms to break the glass ceiling

Women are a major part of today’s working force but still are not a representative part of leadership roles. Executive boards worldwide and top management positions are predominantly male and despite advances in terms of government policies, education and corporate measures to include women in senior positions, there is still a small percentage of women in leadership roles. This paper analyzes the perceived challenges women face

A defence of gender-based affirmative action grounded on a comparison of the United States and of the European Union models

This article presents a defence of gender-based affirmative action programmes against its critiques. It starts from an overview of the history and main criticisms addressing affirmative action programmes, and then proposes several arguments against these criticisms. Several rationales are to be found at the core of this article: first, women still face discrimination in regard to access to education and employment. This position relies on the statistical data referring to both the U.S. and the E.U. Second, gender-based affirmative action should be treated differently than race-based affirmative action since women's discrimination on the labour market stems mainly from traditional gender norms largely exerted within the family and exercised through state's family policies (e.g. childcare policies). Third, despite the fact that the article defends gender-based affirmative action against the main critiques, it also argues that this measure alone is an inefficient method to tackle gender inequality. The article concludes that gender-based affirmative action programmes are not effective methods to tackle gender inequality because they address only one part of the problem, namely gender inequality encountered in the public sphere (education and employment), while completely ignoring family and caring responsibilities

The Gender Wage Gap among recent European Graduates

The aim of this paper is to examine whether there is a gender gap in monthly wage among recent graduates in eleven European countries and which variables can explain it. In the first part of the paper previous literature is presented and some limitations of existing studies are discussed. In the theoretical framework the gender wage gap is conceived as a function of five main factors: human capital, employment characteristics, working hours, work-family conciliation aspects and residual discrimination. Different types of decomposition after OLS linear regression and Heckman selection models are applied; data comes from REFLEX survey on tertiary graduates in 2000. The main results indicate that the raw gender gap is higher in Austria and Germany, while it is lower in Belgium and United Kingdom, with Southern and Nordic countries placed in the middle. There is great variability in the unexplained part of the gender gap, which is mainly imputable to residual discrimination. This is low in Nordic countries, followed by Continental and Southern Europe. Overall the most important factors accounting for the gender gap are employment characteristics, followed by working hours. Human capital, work-family conciliation issues and individuals’ preferences matter in most countries, but their role is not prominent. There is also evidence of a correlation between several macro-institutional indicators (type of wage-setting institutions and welfare policies) and the extent of the gender gap, suggesting that wage determination is deeply rooted into institutional contexts.