Entrepreneurship and Gender Equality in Academia – a Complex Combination in Practice

This article takes as its starting point two current trends in academia – the promotion of academic entrepreneurship and innovation and the promotion of gender equality – and discusses how different gender equality perspectives are interwoven, or not, into academia’s transformation processes towards entrepreneurial universities. On the basis of an analysis of 26 interviews conducted with personnel at two Swedish universities, the article investigates how concepts of academic entrepreneurship and innovation on the one hand and gender equality on the other hand are constructed and filled with meaning as well as how they are entangled and what effects are produced by this way of thinking and acting. Our analysis reveals tensions between the two policy goals, together with tensions within each goal. An overall conclusion is that articulations and ways of speaking about the policy goal of academic entrepreneurship and innovation were to some extent interwoven with the policy goal of gender equality, especially in the broader perspectives on academic entrepreneurship. However, the articulations of strategies and practice of the two policy goals essentially ran parallel, and were not entangled with one another. This is because strategies or substantial initiatives for merging gender equality into the agenda of academic entrepreneurship and innovation were lacking

Att peka med hela handen : Om arbetsvillkor och kön bland första linjens chefer

Historically, leadership research has focused on managers’ characteristics and behavior, their leadership style and its implications for a business’s success. In contrast, this dissertation examines how working conditions in the workplace affect first-level managers’ everyday work, their possibilities to practice leadership, and consequently their leadership style. The theoretical framework guiding the dissertation is a gender analysis with a doing gender perspective and the methodology is a case study. Two workplace organizations in a Swedish municipality are studied: a male-dominated manufacturing industry and a female-dominated elderly care service. The empirical materials consist of twenty-six semi-structured interviews, primarily with male and female first-level managers, but also with their immediate supervisors. In addition, the materials include a questionnaire and organizational documents. The results show that organizational structure and culture have implications for managers’ working conditions and consequently the leadership style they are willing and able to implement. The sex ratio among employees did not have any implications for which type of leadership informants described in their everyday practices. The ideal leadership and the everyday leadership practices portrayed by informants entail being explicit, controlling and rational managers who are able to make decisions and carry forth extensive structural changes. Their narratives reveal an authoritarian and task-oriented leadership style that has its roots in early industrialism. Leadership is strongly marked by masculinity, and even though women and men describe practicing the same type of leadership in their everyday work, their ideas about gender depict two complete opposites in which women and femininity is subordinated to men and masculinity. This indicates a divergence between the gender we think and the gender we do. Nonetheless, sex ratio among employees has implications for the level of sexism. While informants in both workplace organizations described gender discrimination, only those in the manufacturing industry described experiencing sexual harassment

Dignity : A Prerequisite for Attractive Work in Elderly Care

This article explores discourses of new public management (NPM) and dignity at work by considering how attractive work is represented by managers and professionals in Swedish elderly care. The analysis, guided by critical discursive psychology, uses qualitative interviews with 31 managers, nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists at nine workplaces. Three storylines of how attractive work is represented were identified: salary and status, high-quality care, and working conditions and competence. These storylines revealed two strategies by which dignity is attained and defended: strategies of resistance and strategies of organizational citizenship. A conclusion is that identity, power and position are key aspects for interpreting how managers and professionals navigate between discourses of dignity. Work in elderly care is under pressure from the major shift towards neoliberalism and the techniques of NPM. Discourses upholding NPM are present to only a limited extent, whilst discourses rejecting NPM principles and safeguarding dignity at work and dignity as care providers constitute the basis of the representations. Hence, another conclusion is that the consequences of NPM undermine prior conceptions of the importance of care work. Although dignity at work appears to be a prerequisite for attractive work, it may be an unattainable goal for organizations.Supplement: 1Hur ska äldrevården bli mer attraktiv och kunna rekrytera kompetent personal I en tid av ökande antal äldre i befolkningen? En genusanaly

Postfeminism as Coping Strategy : Understandings of Gender and Intragroup Conflict among Swedish Welfare Workers

This paper explores how workers in the women-dominated public sectorin Sweden speak about and make sense of gender and intragroup conflictand the consequences of this way of thinking and acting for genderequality at work. Using qualitative interviews with 26 first-level managersand employees, we introduce an analytical framework that employs criticaldiscourse psychology and the conceptualization of a postfeministsensibility at work. We identified three competing meanings (postfeministstorylines) of gender and intragroup conflict: Supporting the genderedmeanings of conflict, Unawareness of conflict’s gendered meanings andCounteracting the gendered meanings of conflict. The welfare workersacknowledged the role of gender in intragroup conflicts but, paradoxically,constructed their own workplaces as gender neutral, withoutinequalities related to gender. We interpret these three postfeminist storylinesas coping strategies; that is, as ways to make sense of the falsepromise of gender egalitarianism that characterizes the Swedish labourmarket

The silent voices : Pupil participation for gender equality and diversity

Background: The international body of research on student voice concludes that active pupil participation has multiple positive effects on the work environment and learning for pupils. In a large study on gender equality and diversity work in Swedish schools, it became evident that pupils wanted to be active participants. However, pupils considered that their wishes were, to a large extent, ignored. Therefore, it is important to try to understand this further by investigating pupils’ perceptions of their experiences. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore how discourses of participation and power are practised, not practised, and materialised, by focusing in-depth on pupils’ representations of gender equality and diversity work within a small sample of Swedish schools. Methodology: The study is based on data from 10 focus group interviews with 43 pupils from 4 different schools, 2 compulsory schools (pupil ages 6–15) and 2 upper secondary schools (pupil ages 16–18), in Sweden. The thematic analysis utilised a gender perspective anchored in a critical policy analysis approach. Analysis and Findings: The analysis of focus group data identified three pupil representations of gender equality and diversity work: a onetime occurrence, longing for participation and the (un)fair teacher. These representations were derived from and intertwined with discourses on pupil participation and power. Three sub-discourses were found within the discourse on participation and power: normative barriers to participation, structural barriers to participation and openings in the barriers to participation. The first two sub-discourses support the maintenance of unequal power relations between adults and pupils, while the third challenges these power relations. Conclusions: Our study suggests that no substantial levels of participation or power among the pupils were represented at the schools. Instead, the analysis visualises pupils as expressing powerlessness and disengagement. However, the discourse Openings in the barriers to participation, together with pupils’ democratic abilities, has the potential to enable change and the development of pupil participation in schools

Development and validation of the InEquality in organisations Scale (InE-S) : a measure based on Acker’s inequality regimes

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a scale that can be used to assess inequality at work based on gender, age and ethnicity that is grounded in Acker’s (2006) inequality regimes. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used three representative samples (total N = 1,806) of Swedish teachers, nurses and social workers to develop and validate the scale. The validation process included the assessment of content validity, confirmatory factor analysis for factorial validity, internal consistency and associations with theoretically warranted outcomes and related constructs to assess criterion-related validity and convergent validity. Findings: The authors found evidence supporting the content, factorial, criterion-related and convergent validity of the InEquality in organisations Scale (InE-S). Furthermore, the scale demonstrated high internal consistency. Originality/value: The newly developed scale InE-S may be used to further the understanding of how inequality at work influences employees. This study makes a contribution to the current literature by providing a scale that, for the first time, can test Acker’s hypotheses using quantitative methods to demonstrate the consequences of inequality at work

What is zero tolerance in practice? : a study of sexual harassment within academia

Svensk version: Vad innebär nolltolerans i praktiken?: En studie om sexuella trakasserier i akademin. URL: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-190722</p

Vad innebär nolltolerans i praktiken? : En studie om sexuella trakasserier i akademin.

2022-01-04: Korrigerad version (justering rubrik s. 23)</p