When Gender Equality in Academia Takes a Toll on Agency and Well-being

Abstract

The present paper aims to investigate the limits surrounding the implementation of gender equality in academia and the correlation between gender measures and the consequences on personal well-being. Despite the efforts to build more inclusive and equal environments, fatigue seems to affect all the university’s components, especially regarding the uncertainties of an academic career, seen as stressful, delusional, impossible to conciliate with motherhood. Even appropriate measures cannot deal with the fatigue of what is considered a “double presence”: they only allow complying with those standards. Moreover, emotional issues are deriving from choices seen as gender deviant, like not being the major caregiver in the family, and the personal agency is often diminished. The purpose of this study is to show how gender measures in universities are not as neutral and unambiguous as they may seem, but rather fall into one of four approaches to gender inequality itself. These four approaches can be identified as neoliberalism, gender mainstreaming, work-life balance, and the capabilities approach. Agency and well-being could be seen as pivotal aspects and the mix of those elements in each approach results in a different level of fatigue, which, along with stress and mental charge, could play a major role in diminishing the effectiveness of gender equality measures. The significance of this four-sided framework lies in the possibility to reclassify every single gender equality measure and the data collected to support it into one of the four approaches, alongside the opportunity to acknowledge fatigue and evaluate university politics like gender-responsive budgets and gender equality plans.

Gender Narratives in Academia: how gender is constructed through gender policies in Italian universities

“…In fact, the paper also aims to offer a critical overview of different possible frameworks, in order to unmask those academic policies that present themselves as neutral on the one hand (e.g., focusing on the concept of merit and productivity) or as pro-equality on the other, but in reality, they continue to reproduce a neoliberal model of academia, while at the same time continuing to celebrate fatigue as a paradigm of success (Arena, 2022). Another reflection is also due following Bacchi and Eveline's lesson on what remains unproblematized: in the context of Italian universities, heavily affected by the reforms mentioned earlier and chronically plagued by a lack of resources, it is surprising that the documents on gender equality analysed here hardly ever mention the issue of precariousness, which has also become an existential figure for young researchers (Raffini, 2017).…”

Género y Política en la Universidad Globalizada: Hacia una Reacción Colectiva

“…Como observan Arena (2022) y Birch (2015), el neoliberalismo pone énfasis en la responsabilidad individual, no colectiva. El intelectual ideal en la universidad, considerando su compromiso con el tiempo y la flexibilidad en sus horarios, es un intelectualno una intelectual (Sallee, 2012), pues las mujeres no poseen significativa flexibilidad en cuestiones de tiempo dada la división sexual del trabajo en el mundo doméstico.…”