Gender Inequalities in Academia: Multiple Approaches to Closing the Gap

31 May 2024

Gender Inequalities in Academia: Work, Organizational Cultures and Policies is the Special Issue just published in Sociology of Work in May 2024!

The editors, Emanuela Lombardo, Manuela Naldini and Barbara Poggio, introduce the issue with a discussion of Gender Inequalities in Academia: Multiple Approaches to Closing the Gap in this way:

The aim of this special issue is to contribute to the debate on gender inequalities in academia and gender equality policies adopted in universities to address such inequalities. The questions that the contributions address include the following: How are gender inequalities (re)produced in academic careers? How are they connected to the structural and cultural factors that operate at the individual, organizational, and institutional levels? Which theoretical approaches and methodological tools can be adopted in order to grasp the multidimensionality of the phenomenon and its pervasiveness in academia? What is the role of public policies and institutions in promoting change and enhancing equity? What are their limitations and areas for improvement? The argument developed in this introduction and illustrated in the contributions to this special issue is that, given the multiple interconnected dimensions of the problem of gender inequalities in academia, multiple approaches are needed for both understanding and transforming higher education institutions.

In the introduction the editors offer an overview of the debate and of the main research issues and theoretical perspectives, showing how a multiplicity of approaches are needed for both understanding and transforming higher education institutions. Macro, meso and micro level approaches illuminate the gendered individual, cultural and institutional factors that constrain and enable academic life, with special attention paid to how the neoliberal turn, and its organizational consequences, exacerbates gender inequalities. Women, gender, care, and intersectionality approaches allow scholars to focus on the different gendered or intersectional relationships within academia. Policy-oriented approaches allow us to analyse and assess progress in institutional efforts to close the gap on gender inequalities in academia. Actor-centred studies expose the power struggles between actors that oppose or promote gender equality policies in academia.

For more information, see: Lombardo, E., Naldini, M., & Poggio, B. (2024). Gender Inequalities in Academia: Multiple Approaches to Closing the Gap. Sociologia Del Lavoro – Sezione Open Access. https://doi.org/10.3280/SL2024-168001

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