Jeni Hart

Color-Blind Racial Attitudes, Social Dominance Orientation, Racial- Ethnic Group Membership and College Students' Perceptions of Campus Climate

AbstractMethodParticipantsInstruments Assessment of Campus Climate for Underrepresented Groups (URG; Rankin, 2000)Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS; Neville et al., 2000)Social Dominance Orientation Scale (SDS; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) ProcedureResultsPreliminary AnalysesDiscussion Graphics Table 1Table 2Table 3Table 4 Abstract Racial-ethnic group membership, color-blind racial attitudes (i.e., unawareness of racialprivilege, institutional discrimination, and blatant racial issues), and social dominanceorientation were used to predict perceptions of campus climate in general and specifically forpeople of color among a sample of 144 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students ata predominately White university. Results indicate that after controlling for racial-ethnicminority status, perceptions of “general campus climate” (GCC) and “racial-ethnic campusclimate” (RECC) are predicted by color-blind racial attitudes. Post hoc analyses indicated that Provided by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library

Playing Soccer on the Football Field: The Persistence of Gender Inequities for Women Faculty

Sports metaphor is employed as an epistemic tool for describing psychological, sociocultural, and organizational factors that contribute to enduring gender bias, inequalities, and discrimination faced by women faculty at colleges and universities. Quantitative and qualitative data from two comprehensive institutional campus climate studies show that women and men faculty experience their work lives differently. Based upon our analyses, we argue for restructuring the embedded normative values and processes that inform the academic playbook.

Starring Students: Gender Performance at a Women’s College

The purpose of this qualitative study is to better understand how gender is constructed at a women’s college. Specifically, the researchers use Judith Butler’s (1990) work on performativity to frame how members of the campus community perceive transgender students are integrated into the college. Through semi-structured interviews with faculty, staff, and students, three themes emerged: transgender students are both invisible and hyper-visible and they experience a certain degree of oppression in their lives, oppression that carries with it unique circumstances due to the location of this study. The influence of these themes on the campus community and on what it means to be a women’s college when gender is considered as performance are explored. Finally, implications of the findings for research and practice are also considered.

Beyond Gendered Universities? Implications for Research on Gender in Organizations

The purpose of this study is to understand the extent to which Acker’s (1990) concept of gendered organizations frames extant scholarship and to explore the implications of using this framework to address gender inequities in organizational life, and particularly in academe. Through a systematic analysis of articles, we found that while Acker’s work is highly cited, few studies use Acker’s theory as it was originally intended. We also identified limitations of Acker’s theory as well as the ways in which scholars have applied it in their own work. We argue the need for scholars who are informed by Acker to engage with all aspects of her theory and push it in new directions. We also challenge scholars of gender and organizations to integrate multiple, and perhaps more complicated, frameworks in order to understand academe in more nuanced ways and to generate new ideas to enhance social justice.

Feminist Faculty: Striving to Be Heard

This chapter explores the experiences of early career feminist women academics and how their feminist positionalities are constrained and liberated as scholars. Two years of interviews with 12 women feminist academics in a variety of disciplines and institution types in the United States provide the data for this study. Their narratives demonstrate that many feel exploited for their labor and self-censor in light of the intersections of their gendered, feminist, academic, and activist identities. They also consider much of their academic labor as activism and embraced opportunities to speak up and speak out. The argument put forth in this chapter is that academic culture has a powerful influence on how these women feminist academics participate in activism and this has implications for practice and for transforming the academy to become more equitable and socially just.

Disrupting the Culture of Silence: Confronting Gender Inequality and Making Change in Higher Education by Kristine De Welde and Andi Stepnick

Kristine De Welde and Andi Stepnick’s (2015) edited text, Disrupting the Culture of Silence: Confronting Gender Inequality and Making Change in Higher Education, is an ambitious volume that explores many of the systemic challenges women faculty face in higher education in the United States, how they are sustained through policy and patriarchy, and potential activist solutions to dismantle institutionalized sexism. The editors draw on Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations and concepts of institutional culture, structure, and climate to guide their understanding of the status of women faculty in the academy and the potential for organizational transformation to improve their status. De Welde and Stepnick pose four primary questions that guide the book:

Most College Students Are Women: Implications for Teaching, Learning, and Policy (review)

is important to ask whether support for democracy is the “only” role of the humanities. I cannot believe that it is or that Nussbaum thinks it is. Rather, a good liberal arts education—one that produces graduates able to think for themselves, to understand their very diverse world, and to make decisions based on understanding the “other”—is its own best justification. It is, in fact, the only true “education” rather than specific training in skill sets. It is important to all aspects of our entire society, including the economy. Moreover, it is vitally important to sustain this model of education in the face of budgetary exigency for our own sake as well as for that of the world. Martha Nussbaum is to be congratulated for issuing her manifesto, even though she does not go far enough in her criticism of the serious lack of support for the humanities in higher education in the United States.