The limits of gender and regional diversity in the European Association of Social Psychology

Abstract

Academic associations define the scientific standards and affect individual academic careers within a discipline. The European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) was founded in 1966 to become an association for all social psychologists in Europe. However, this was unattainable during the Cold War, and more subtle obstacles, such as women's underrepresentation in academia, prevented EASP from due representation of all social psychologists. Social psychological theory offers insights into why social hierarchies are maintained and how they can be dismantled. We used the case of EASP to analyse challenges to creating a diverse and inclusive association by analysing membership data, participation, distinction and influence throughout the organisation's history and conducting a more in-depth analysis for the 2011-2017 period.We found a glass-ceiling effect for women and a persistent underrepresentation of non-Western European scholars on all levels. We conclude that increasing diversity requires more fundamental changes to overcome structural inequalities.

“Unavailable, insecure, and very poorly paid”: Global difficulties and inequalities in conducting social psychological research

“…They were more cognizant of the ways in which their (relative) deprivation was rooted in disciplinary, societal, and global systems. Our respondents noted how non-Northerners' disadvantages in human, material, and social and political capital were amplified by Northern/hegemonic standards for the international mainstream of the discipline (see also Nyúl et al, 2021). Participants also noted that biases in collaborations and institutional and governmental preferences favored work that mimicked or depended on Northern research.…”

“…Despite some narrow progress over the decades (Hendricks & Moghaddam, 2020), this state of affairs has not changed fundamentally (e.g., Thalmayer et al, 2021). Indeed, in social psychology the dominance of Northern nations' research production and representation is increasing in some regions (e.g., Europe; Nyúl et al, 2021).…”

“…Contemporary systems have been hierarchy-reinforcing and homogenizing across the social sciences, amplifying historical inequities for disadvantaged researchers and those with perspectives diverging from those of the Northern mainstream. These include the systems of: a) political governance (e.g., Hanafi, 2016;Pető, 2021), b) political economy of academia (e.g., Bergland, 2018;Gupta et al, 2016), c) knowledge production and consumption (e.g., Bou Canagarajah, 1996;Readsura Decolonial Editorial Collective, 2021), and d) collaboration, recognition, and citation (e.g., Gazni et al, 2012;Lambert et al, 2019;Mhlongo, 2017;Nyúl et al, 2021). Some of these systems damage academia as an industry globally; others specifically enhance within-and between-nation hierarchies in academia.…”

“Some uninteresting data from a faraway country”: Inequity and coloniality in international social psychological publications

“…We defined Global South (GS: 26 countries, n = 61 researchers) as the set of developing and emerging non‐European countries. We defined South and East Europe (SEE: 20 countries, n = 99 researchers) as every European country outside Western and Northern Europe, reflecting the economic and academic divide we mentioned earlier (Ernst‐Vintila et al., 2016; Nyúl et al., 2021). We defined Global North (GN: 18 countries, n = 72 researchers) as every developed country in the sample outside South and East Europe, incorporating countries in North and Western Europe, North America, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and Japan.…”

“…For example, globalization legitimizes internationalized research above local production and dissemination (e.g., publishing in international rather than local journals); and internationalized research depends on political‐economic and ideological structures that evaluate careers and research based on “international” criteria that are in reality Anglophone and North Atlantic (e.g., Hanafi & Arvanitis, 2014; Losego & Arvanitis, 2008). Such power‐based discrepancies in systems of knowledge production are evident across various disciplines (e.g., Alatas, 2003; Gingras & Mosbah‐Natanson, 2010; Hanafi, 2016; Keim, 2008), and (social) psychology is by no means immune (e.g., Nyúl et al., 2021). Bhatia (2017), for one, argues that globalization in psychology has mostly meant the export of American psychological and epistemological assumptions and findings as human universals, rather than leading to a more egalitarian, inclusive, provincialization of American psychological research as an informative but distinct indigenous psychology.…”