Reflections on women in internationalization

Abstract

Today, internationalization is among the most important strategic goals of higher education. In this context, academicians hold a significant place in academic knowledge exchange since they constitute the key mechanism in internalization. Despite this fact, female academicians continue to be underrepresented in the internationalization of higher education. Considering the emphasis on Sustainable Development Goal 5, which states that gender equality is the basis of sustainable development for all individuals until 2030, it is clear that women faculty members should be supported more in the internationalization process of the higher education. Further studies are required to determine how much of the inequalities experienced by women academics in terms of international academic mobility, visibility, and international publication opportunities are being transferred to international academic environment. For this reason, the present article aims to investigate the representation of female academicians in the internationalization of higher education from a feminist theory approach. Results of our study clearly indicate that there is a need for new policies in terms of the "visibility" of female faculty members in higher education in the world.
 
 Keywords: Internationalization; female academicians; gender inequality.

On the lack of women researchers in the Middle East & North Africa

“…Since national languages are often generally used in fields where we have national applications, data from other citation indices with more regional content, such as the Arabic Citation Index, might also be used in future work to provide more comprehensive analysis for policy makers Several possible reasons have been described to explain the evidence that men publish more than women during their career Larivière et al, 2011;Xie et al, 2003) such as differences in family responsibilities (Carr et al, 1998;Fox, 2005;Stack, 2004), academic rank (Van den Besselaar & Sandström, 2017), or career absence (Cameron et al, 2016). Some have argued that women's attrition in science is primarily attributed to women's personal motives and the notion of societal division of labour (Ceci & Williams, 2011;Ceci et al, 2009;Fox, 2005Fox, , 2006Fox et al, 2017;Tasci, 2021). Why are there more men than women starting a career as a publishing researcher?…”

“…To achieve true gender parity in MENA, several impediments on the societal, structural, institutional, and legal levels must be overcome simultaneously (Momani, 2016). Tasci (2021) has also provided a few recommendations to strengthen women scientists in the international research landscape. In the end, determining the best policies is very reliant on the context of each country.…”

Women Entrepreneurships’ Development in Imo State, Nigeria, Challenges and Prospects

“…These differences do not imply that women will be less effective in business than their men counterpart, but only that they may adopt different approaches which may not be equally as effective as the approaches adopted by men [23]. Socialist feminist theory also drew attention to the fact that the differences in the division of labor existed among women of different classes [24].…”

The Effect of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Mindfulness of Women Academics: A Qualitative Study

“…Women academics are one of the groups apparently influenced by the conditions that the pandemic caused (Deryugina et al, 2021;Minello, 2020;Oleschuk, 2020;Parlak et al, 2021;Pinho-Gomes et al, 2020;Tasci, 2021;Yildirim & Eslen-Ziya, 2020). With the COVID-19 pandemic, the sudden change in the system caused the transition to distance education and learning, more time was spent on house chores and on child and elderly care, the psychological health needs of students and faculty increased, and the time available for academic studies decreased (Deryugina et al, 2021;Minello, 2020).…”

“…With the loss of childcare and the changing working conditions, new demands arose, and the domestic workload of women increased (Minello et al, 2020;Petts et al, 2020;Parlak et al, 2021;Wenham et al, 2020). As a result of gender inequalities in-home responsibilities, women's academic productivity and scientific output were affected more negatively (Deryugina et al, 2021;Gabster et al, 2020;Tasci, 2021;Vincent-Lamarre et al, 2020). Studies showed that women submitted proportionally fewer manuscripts than men during the COVID-19 lockdown months (Squazzoni et al, 2020;Vincent-Lamarre et al, 2020).…”