Undoing Gender in Academia: Personal Reflections on Equal Opportunity Schemes

Microaggressions, Interrupted: The Experience and Effects of Gender Microaggressions for Women in STEM

“…In this work, we also explore how external buffers impact how women experience microaggressions, answering recent calls for more examination and explanation for why current diversity efforts are failing to close the gender gap (Täuber, 2020). The existing intervention literature, such as self-affirmation, role-modeling, and mindset priming (Emerson & Murphy, 2015;Hall et al, 2018;Kinias & Sim, 2016;Shapiro et al, 2013) help individuals cope with negative events at work.…”

Collective system‐supporting inaction: A conceptual framework of privilege maintenance

“…We hope that the framework we developed here serves as a guide for collective action research to investigate more systematically qualities (e.g., fragile entitlement versus allyship) and tactics (e.g., denial, making invisible, retaliation) of the powerful, as well as support for the disadvantaged (e.g., shared recognition of inequality regimes, resilience concerning backlash, solidarity). Policies that intervene at the individual level will not lead to equity, and might even harm those who are supposedly benefitting from these policies, as has been argued for gender and development initiatives backfiring on women (e.g., Täuber, 2019; Yasmine & Moughalian, 2016). This necessarily comes with exposing current as well as historical injustices (e.g., colonialism) that have led to these power asymmetries in resources and social and economic positions (Abimbola et al., 2021).…”

Harassment as a consequence and cause of inequality in academia: A narrative review

“… 29 Neglecting intersectional inequality undermines anti-harassment policies because it leads to unintended side effects of such policies 54 , 55 and can even harm those they intended to serve through backlash. 9 , 10 , 11 , 56 , 57 In addition, intersectional inequality harms science itself because some topics that are traditionally studied more by scholars from marginalized groups receive lower citation rates and become systematically less studied. 58 These authors showed that if “the author distribution over the last 40 y would have matched the 2010 US Census, there would have been 29% more articles in public health, 26% more on gender-based violence, 25% more in gynecology and in gerontology, 20% more on immigrants and minorities, and 18% more on mental health” (60, p. 6).…”

“… 2 In fact, scholars point to the situation getting worse, partly because the small steps towards more equality prompt disproportional backlash. 9 , 10 , 11 This is illustrated by the following quote by a researcher interviewed for a recent Nature survey on discrimination, who says “Everybody talks about equality in science, but it doesn't actually happen,” ... “There are so many articles, so much discussion, but over my 30 years it's gotten worse”. 12 …”