Just UnDo It: Men Faculty Addressing Gender Inequities in Academia

Abstract

This study examines the Advocates & Allies Program, a men faculty peer-to-peer professional development program designed to disrupt gender inequities in academia. The pedagogical approach is grounded in a grassroots-based critical analysis, was developed at a public land grant university, and has been introduced at over twenty additional higher education institutions. Data from five universities and two professional association conferences are included in this study. Results of this mixed methods case analysis illustrate why academic men may be motivated to engage in gender equity work; findings also confirm that the program increases participants' knowledge of unconscious bias and its impacts, prepares men with tools to enact change, and enhances personal commitment to gender equity, thereby affirming and extending the existing knowledgebase on effective allyship. The data suggest that the approach is an effective transformative model of intellectual activism that could be adopted by a wider sphere of academic institutions.

Pains and portends: A collaborative autoethnography of engineering faculty navigating gendered cultures

“…In our preceding fictionalized stories, Cathy sought to educate Victor on gendered issues in the workplace, and as a result Bobby continued to seek her out to educate him on those same issues. However, these narratives are not a call for women like Cathy to educate men on their gendered experiences; the onus of learning from a myriad of resources should fall squarely on men in such masculine cultures (Anicha et al, 2020). Yet, we recognize that this invisible form of labor-where women do educate men on gendered issuesis a reality in higher education, particularly in STEM cultures.…”

The Men Need to Be Involved: A Critical Frame Analysis of Gender+ Equity Narratives

“…One unique feature of the NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD initiative is the Advocates and Allies (A&A) program that was created at our university, a model that has been detailed and THE MEN NEED TO BE INVOLVED 8 evaluated in a number of publications (c.f., Anicha, Bilen-Green, & Burnett, 2018;Anicha et al, 2017;Anicha, Bilen-Green, Burnett, Green, & McGeorge, 2020;Bilen-Green, Carpenter, Doore, Green, Horton, Jellison, Latimer, Levine, & O'Neal, 2015;Bilen-Green, Green, McGeorge, Anicha, & Burnett, 2013). The program consists of Advocates, men faculty who educate themselves about issues of power and privilege as related to issues women faculty face, and Allies, men faculty trained by the Advocates.…”

“…Data available for our CFA is vast, including decades of demographic and climate statistics collected before, during, and after the ADVANCE IT grant, and evaluation findings from the IT initiative and from a PLAN-D grant that extended the A&A program to four institutions. We also turn to analyses in previously published articles (c.f., Anicha, Bilen-Green, & Burnett, 2018;Anicha et al, 2017;Anicha, Bilen-Green, Burnett, Green, & McGeorge, 2020) and draw on the collective knowledge of the co-authors of this study. Two of the co-authors were part of an initial group of researchers at NDSU who began investigating the possibility of an NSF ADVANCE grant in 2002, saw through the eight-year active period of the grant, and have secured additional NSF funding focused on Advocates and Allies.…”

Supporting Faculty and Students with Disability

“…Policy-focused actions were initiated at North Dakota State University during an NSF ADVANCE-funded Institutional Transformation project designed to recruit, retain, and advance women, including women of color and women with disabilities [24]. A report that reviewed practices at other universities was followed by the establishment of a Women Faculty with Disabilities Task Force.…”