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Inclusive universities: promoting gender equality and sex-gender diversity Open PDF
(Frontiers Media SA, 2026-02-12)
Sánchez Torrejón, Begoña
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Machín Álvarez, Macarena
INTRODUCTION: This study investigates the implementation of gender equality and sex-gender diversity policies in a higher education context, within the G-FORCE Project funded by Erasmus+. METHODS: Two focus groups (N = 20) were conducted with participants from the academic community, administrative staff, research personnel, and external stakeholders, ensuring diverse generational and gender representation. Data were collected through guided focus group discussions, transcribed, and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis with an interpretive approach. RESULTS: Three dimensions emerged: (1) knowledge and awareness of gender equality and sex-gender diversity, (2) institutional practices and university policies, and (3) university culture. Results indicate that although participants are aware of existing protocols and training, these initiatives are perceived as isolated, minimally innovative, and largely symbolic. CONCLUSION: A gap exists between formal policies and actual practices, reflecting a bureaucratic culture that limits inclusive transformation. Resistance is present among faculty and students committed to equality, yet systemic barriers persist. The study concludes that effective inclusion requires structural change, curricular integration of inclusive perspectives, creation of safe spaces, participatory governance, and alignment of institutional culture with gender equality and sex-gender diversity.
Engaging and Empowering Future Female Surgeons: Development of the Medical Student Section of the Society of Women in Urology Open PDF
(Elsevier BV, 2025-10)
Booher, Allison G.
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Vereecken, Sasha J.
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Kim, Erin
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Penmatcha, Neharika
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Aponte, Alexandra
OBJECTIVE: To describe a replicable model for a large-scale, cross-institutional, and student-driven initiative to promote gender equity within surgical fields. METHODS: To address the lack of a national infrastructure to support female medical students pursuing careers in Urology, a historically male-dominated specialty, the society of women in urology (SWIU) established its medical student section, called SWIUdents, as a student-led initiative to offer mentorship, education, and networking resources for future female urologists. In 2022, SWIUdents convened its first medical student leadership board, comprised of two co-chairs and four subcommittees focused on membership, program implementation, mentorship, and community relations. SWIUdents membership was open to medical students of all gender identities, and recruitment for the organization took place via official SWIU communications, social media, and word of mouth. RESULTS: As of April 2025, there are 319 SWIUdents members, 195 of which are current medical students, representing all regional sections of the American Urological Association (AUA), as well as international medical students. In the 2024 to 2025 academic year, SWIUdents paired 87 medical students with resident or faculty members in Urology. SWIUdents also maintains an active social media presence and offers a broad array of programming, with robust attendance at monthly webinars and journal clubs. CONCLUSIONS: This paper outlines the development and infrastructure of SWIUdents, a national, student-driven model which may be replicated by other specialty organizations aiming to engage and empower women and other groups underrepresented within their respective field.
Current institutionalized sexism in nursing degree classrooms: A multicenter qualitative study in Catalonia Open PDF
(Elsevier BV, 2025-09)
Feijoo-Cid, Maria
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Llena-Riu, Andres
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Biurrun-Garrido, Ainoa
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Fuentes-Pumarola, Concepció
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Cámara-Liebana, David
Everyday sexism is not always consciously identified in nursing degree classrooms. This leads to the reproduction of inequality that is legitimized in interpersonal relationships and institutional dynamics. AIM: Describe how nursing students perceive and experience everyday sexism in the classroom at various universities in Catalonia. METHODS: Multicenter study using quantitative and qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews. The study population comprised fourth-year nursing students in Catalonia. The interviews were conducted online from February to June 2022. An ad hoc interview script was designed based on the scientific literature on the perception of sexism and discrimination in the classroom. The anonymity and confidentiality of participants and data were ensured. RESULTS: Twenty fourth-year nursing students participated, 18 women and two men, ages 21 to 49. Use of the space was unequal: men occupy the back rows of the classroom, forming male-only groups. Moreover, men participate more often in large groups when a debate is established, and they do so impulsively. Women are more respectful and ask questions about class content. Male students tend to do less work in group projects but present more. Female students lead the group work, especially in terms of coordination and organization, and take responsibility for the more complex parts. However, they participate less in oral presentations. CONCLUSION: In the nursing classroom, women are invisibilized and limited in their use of space. They also take on excess work but participate less. Men participate more, reject inclusive language, and work together to claim their space. These dynamics create the conditions for a nursing degree education steeped in legitimized everyday sexism.
Replication of an Intervention to Mitigate Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching Yields Variable Results Across a Biology Department Open PDF
(American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), 2025-09-01)
Mitchem, Lisa D.
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Rupnow, Rachel L.
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Jaeger, Collin P.
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Pezdek, Marissa N.
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Ganeng, Brenda K. Anak
Student evaluations of teaching (SET) have repeatedly been shown to be biased against women instructors. Although few have been able to mitigate these biases, one team reported success in two courses by adding a short AntiBias statement to the beginning of SETs. We conducted a conceptual replication of that study to investigate the effectiveness of the AntiBias statement across a Department of Biological Sciences over three semesters. The AntiBias treatment inconsistently affected the SETs, sometimes improving women's scores but often not having any effect. Qualitative analysis showed that the types of comments students gave were mostly not affected by the conditions of treatment or instructor gender and were most frequently framed in positive connotation, implicitly about the instructor, and about course characteristics such as the logistics of the course. Our findings do not support the consistent replicability of the original work scaled to the department level yet shine an important light on SETs in the biology context. Moreover, this work suggests that a simple intervention to mitigate gender bias in teaching evaluations is not sufficient to remedy the multitude of issues with SETs. We discuss differences among studies and suggestions from the literature on ways to improve the evaluation of teaching.
Accidental Scientists: How Undergraduate Research in Political Science Can Help to Patch the "Leaky Pipeline" in STEM Education Open PDF
(2023)
Mueller, L
Education advocates lament the "leaky pipeline" in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), whereby students-especially minorities and women-drop out of STEM at successive stages of the educational system. Defining empirical political science as a branch of STEM, this article proposes that undergraduate research in political science can help to patch this leaky pipeline and expand access to scientific skills and habits of mind. I elaborate on three rationales to support my claim: (1) political science is a relatively diverse field of STEM; (2) college primes students to think like (political) scientists; and (3) students often encounter political science research opportunities for the first time as undergraduates, presenting an opportunity for faculty to "catch" those who selected out of STEM after high school. I substantiate my arguments by drawing on enrollment data, archival documents, the theories of John Dewey, and testimonials from former undergraduate researchers. I also recommend ways for political science departments to provide a meaningful STEM education by enhancing research programs.
A “scientific diversity” intervention to reduce gender bias in a sample of life scientists Open PDF
(American Society for Cell Biology, 2016)
Moss-Racusin, C.A.
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van der Toorn, J.
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Dovidio, J.F.
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Brescoll, V.L.
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Graham, M.J.
Mounting experimental evidence suggests that subtle gender biases favoring men contribute to the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including many subfields of the life sciences. However, there are relatively few evaluations of diversity interventions designed to reduce gender biases within the STEM community. Because gender biases distort the meritocratic evaluation and advancement of students, interventions targeting instructors’ biases are particularly needed. We evaluated one such intervention, a workshop called “Scientific Diversity” that was consistent with an established framework guiding the development of diversity interventions designed to reduce biases and was administered to a sample of life science instructors (N=126) at several sessions of the National Academies Summer Institute for Undergraduate Education held nationwide. Evidence emerged indicating the efficacy of the “Scientific Diversity” work-shop, such that participants were more aware of gender bias, expressed less gender bias, and were more willing to engage in actions to reduce gender bias 2 weeks after participating in the intervention compared with 2 weeks before the intervention. Implications for diversity interventions aimed at reducing gender bias and broadening the participation of women in the life sciences are discussed. © 2016 C. A. Moss-Racusin et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education.
Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students Open PDF
(2012)
Moss-Racusin, C.A.
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Dovidio, J.F.
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Brescoll, V.L.
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Graham, M.J.
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Handelsman, J.
Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student - who was randomly assigned either a male or female name - for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants' preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.
Underrepresentation of Women in Undergraduate Economics Degrees in Europe: A Comparison with STEM and Business
(Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), 2021)
Megalokonomou, Rigissa
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Vidal-Fernandez, Marian
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Yengin, Duygu
In the last decade, the proportion and academic performance of women who pursue university degrees has increased relative to men in a range of developing countries (OECD, 2015). Nonetheless, the percentage of undergraduate economics degrees awarded to women has remained between 30% and 35% during 2001-2018 in the U.S. (Siegfried, 2019). In a recent work by Lundberg and Stearns (2019), they show that the gender gap worsens as women economists progress in their professional careers in the U.S., where they end up representing only 10% of university professors. European countries seem to have less of a "leaky pipeline," where the same figure sits at 22% (Auriol, Friebel, and Wilhelm, 2020). To put this figure into perspective, our paper describes the cross-country underrepresentation of women graduating in economics degrees in Europe relative to their country-specific women/men university graduation rates. Second, we compare the underrepresentation of women in economics to its closest alternative namely business, as well as its gender underrepresented counterpart, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Finally, we lean on recent evidence to suggest policies to increase the relative share of women pursuing undergraduate economics degrees in Europe with a strong focus on policies aimed at high schools. Overall, we find that, over the period 2013-2018, the underrepresentation of women in economics graduates has worsened in Europe and that on average two of every five students are women. While the gender representation of university graduates in STEM is worse than in economics, it has experienced a mild increase over the period of study. Unlike Economics, its closest alternative, business, has a slight women overrepresentation, with 1.1 women graduating for every man.
Academic Students’ Progress Indicators and Gender Gaps Based on Survival Analysis and Data Mining Frameworks Open PDF
(Springer Science and Business Media B. V., 2020)
Marshall, A.H.
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Zenga, M.
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Kalamatianou, A.
This paper examines gender differences according to two new indicators in higher education studies. One indicator represents the length of studies beyond the minimum requirement and the other represents a harmonised graduation mark. We explore these indicators in a statistical framework that consists of Survival analysis Kaplan–Meier methods, Accelerated Failure Time models, Survival Trees, Multivariate Regression Trees and a modified Gender Parity Index. This unique combination of statistical methods allows both to analyse data involving censoring and to incorporate other explanatory variables in the analysis. The approaches were applied to data taken from a Greek and an Italian University and provide evidence that the survival analysis is a useful tool for exploring gender gaps in higher education while the Accelerated Failure Time model permits the investigation of how other variables can influence the gaps. The data mining techniques of survival trees and multivariate regression trees allows for the importance of such influencing variables to be measured and illustrates these in a simple to view tree structure. The Multivariate Regression Tree approach allows us to consider more than one continuous outcome variable so we were able to consider the two proposed indicators simultaneously. Interesting insights from this analysis are that gender has an important role and women outperform regarding these new indicators by taking less length of studies, less graduation time with higher performance, controlling also for other student characteristics. The modified gender parity index enriched the results in all stages. © 2020, Springer Nature B.V.
A Capabilities-based Gender Equality Policy for Higher Education: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations Open PDF
(Routhledge, 2016)
Loots, S.
;
Walker, M.
Abstract: The complex transformative intent of policy goals is often marginalized in favour of tangible, measurable outcomes. Such a pattern is evident in the tracking of global social justice goals, such as gender equality, where sole reliance on numerical parity data to track progress has led to the simplification of the concept for the sake of measurement. This intensifies the need to focus both on conceptual and methodological considerations in policy development and evaluation to enhance human development and promote the transformation of inequalities towards social justice. Through reporting on a mixed-methods process to inform and develop a capabilities-based gender equality policy at a South African university, the paper asks what gender equality should look like conceptually, and identifies empirically valued functionings and capabilities which could act as transformative policy evaluation indicators. The paper reports on diverse student data from 57 qualitative interviews and 843 survey respondents, which indicate differences between what social groups value and where interventions are needed. The paper suggests that the capabilities approach could be an important evidence-based policy driver in higher education, with the possibility to combine both a rich conceptual approach and methodological considerations in operationalization so that social justice goals and outcomes result. © 2015 Human Development and Capability Association.

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