Gender & diversity; Policies and practices summary of lectures
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Table of contents
Lecture 1: organisations as key sites of (in)equality................................................................................2
Lecture 2: the role of organizations in contemporary societies..............................................................5
Lecture 3: The history of gender & diversity policies and practices......................................................11
Lecture 4: Affirmative action and positive discrimination approaches.................................................17
Lecture 5: mainstreaming and inclusion approaches............................................................................20
Lecture 6: Leadership and change agency............................................................................................26
Lecture 7: Power and resistance in organizations.................................................................................31
After completing this course, you will be able to:
- explain the most important concepts, debates and strategies regarding gender & diversity in
public and private organizations;
- identify and analyse organizational processes that reproduce (gender, ethnic, age, sexual etc.)
inequality in organizations;
- describe the challenges in implementing diversity-related policies in public and private
organizations, and identify these challenges in your case study organization;
- review various conceptions of effective and successful practices in diversity- related policies;
- design a policy report with regards to gender & diversity for a case study organization,
applying the concepts, debates and strategies discussed during the course;
- cope with the uncertainties of a research/policy process in which there is no one best way of
achieving its goals
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,Lecture 1: organisations as key sites of (in)equality
Diversity as concept
- Social categories / identities. It’s about differences in the society, social categories. The most
common categories in this course:
o Gender, ethnicity & race, class, (dis)ability, age sexuality, religion
- There is a separation between visible and invisible (sometimes it’s both at the same time):
o Surface level / visible differences
Visible categories like gender, ages and race
o Deep level / invisible differences
Less visible or underlying categories like religion, education, sexuality
It could be possible to try to hide the identity of sexuality, so it’s not directly
visible.
- Diversity is always related to a unit – a single person cannot be diverse (You cannot be
diverse by definition, it is related to your social context)
- Intersectionality it’s not about simple identities, but they always overlap. Your gender,
religion, class makes who you are. You could be a woman and also be black.
Inequality in organizations
Organization theory perspective: organizations are not neutral entities or containers. Organizations
play a key role in (re)producing inequalities in contemporary societies.These inequalities are
structured along social identities
Organizations produce inequalities inside and outside their organizations
- Internal workforce (permanent contract but also outsourced, interns etc) who is part of the
organisation.
o Inequality within the organisation
- Outside: clients, citizens, students, global production chains
o Example: moving factories to other countries and poorly paying people in these
countries.
o A Dutch example: Toeslagen affaire in Nederland; had veel invloed op inwoners in
Nederland
o Example: students with other ethnicity get lower advice for high school than Dutch
students, so schools make a difference in ethnicity for the students.
Inequality regimes
- Systematic disparities between participants in power and control over goals, resources, and
outcomes; workplace decisions; opportunities for promotion and interesting work, security in
employment and benefits; pat and other monetary rewards; respect and pleasures in work and
work relations.
- Interlocked practices and processes that result in continuing inequalities in all work
organisations.
- How inequality is produced through situation, everyday practices
Inequality regimes is a lens which helps you study inequality in different units.
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,There are 4 elements of inequality regime:
- Unique
o Every organisation has its own unique regime, like every university has its own or
every restaurant has its own regime
- Bundle of practices that reinforce each other
- Linked to macro context
- Changeable
o Inequality regimes can change and have changed.
More in detail of the lens: There’s a difference made in structural inequality practices and cultural
inequality practices.
Structural inequality practices
- Decision making power / vertical segregation who has decision making power? Do I see
patterns of the persons with decision making power?
o Inclusive decision making: who has a seat at the table? Who will they listen to?
participation (‘medezeggenschap’)
- Division of tasks/ role allocation
o Horizontal segregation Who is given which task?
Who does the different jobs? Why are the cleaners most of the time
foreigners?
Example: in a cleaning team, women clean the toilets (norm), men vacuum.
Some jobs ‘naturally’ fit better to certain people, ‘’men shouldn’t clean the
toilets’’.
- Contract and benefits
o Permanent contracts? Parttime contracts? Are there patterns in those contracts?
o Benefits are connected to contracts.
- Compensations
o Example: Salary differences for example, Gender gap.
o Example: Whether we pay interns.
- Hiring and promotion
o Its is a natural thing because making decisions who you want to hire is about making
difference between people, but on a legitimate way
o Evaluation based on cultural similarity / cloning or similar to me effect
you prefer people who are similar to you. You also prefer people that are
similar to the people who had always done that job.
o Unreflective use of tools and intstruments (AI)
AI can make the hiring process more neutral, but it also makes it more
inequal.
Example: AI put the women files away because it doesn’t fit the profile,
because men have always worked on this position.
o Reliance on informal networks
Informal network= social capital, your connections
Diversity of the network gives input if the network helps to create more
diversity.
Important in your chances: can people put in a good word for you? Do you
have people around you who tell you about new jobs, who are active looking
for you?
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, Informal network is crucial for your career.
- Facilitating differences
o To what extent is an organisation willing to facilitate difference in the company?
o Are they actually making the steps with facilitating differences as much as they want?
o Example: Does the university take into account students who have poor hearing or
who are visually impaired? Do they take into account gender neutral toilets?
Cultural inequality practices
What are the norms of the organisation? How do we interact? How do we deal with eachother?
- Ideal worker norms
o = for every position (leader etc) we have in mind the ideal worker. Who would fit
ideally in the position, job. People who are always available, can handle everything
etc. But also what kind of background does someone have etc.
- Interactions: micro-aggressions, discrimination and (sexual) harassment
o How do we deal with complains in the company? Its not only the fact that these things
happen, but also how the organisation response to it. How do we treat people who
come forward
- Parties, events and celebrations
o Look how these things are done. Parties could be exclusive for some workers.
o Example: halal or vegetarian options at parties. Alcohol served?
o Kind of event you’re doing with team events, for example: laser gaming with people
who are quickly overstimulated is not convenient
o Another example: A few employees get a Christmas present but others not.
- Resistance against diversity (management)
o Resistancy against diversity in your workteam
o Resistancy against management;
- Work environment / exclusionary spaces
o Who do we celebrate?
o Who is visible during work context?
o Voorbeeld: Radboud University has come up with all kinds of women's names as
building names, so that there is more diversity on campus.
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