PurposeAll entrepreneurs interact simultaneously with multiple entrepreneurial contexts throughout their entrepreneurial journey. This conceptual paper has two central aims: (1) it synthesises the current literature on gender and entrepreneurship, and (2) it increases our understanding of how gender norms, contextual embeddedness and (in)equality mechanisms interact within contexts. Illustrative contexts that are discussed include entrepreneurship education, business networks and finance.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper draws upon extant literature to develop its proposed conceptual framework. It provides suggestions for systemic policy interventions as well as pointing to promising paths for future research.FindingsA literature-generated conceptual framework is developed to explain and address the systemic barriers faced by opportunity-driven women as they engage in entrepreneurial contexts. This conceptual framework visualises the interplay between gender norms, contextual embeddedness and inequality mechanisms to explain systemic disparities. An extra dimension is integrated in the framework to account for the power of agency within women and with others, whereby agency, either individually or collectively, may disrupt and subvert the current interplay with inequality mechanisms.Originality/valueThis work advances understanding of the underrepresentation of women entrepreneurs. The paper offers a conceptual framework that provides policymakers with a useful tool to understand how to intervene and increase contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. Additionally, this paper suggests moving beyond “fixing” women entrepreneurs and points towards disrupting systemic disparities to accomplish this contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. By doing so, this research adds to academic knowledge on the construction and reconstruction of gender in the field of entrepreneurship.
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The moment of casting is a crucial one in any media production. Casting the ‘right’ person shapes the narrative as much as the way in which the final product might be received by critics and audiences. For this article, casting—as the moment in which gender is hypervisible in its complex intersectional entanglement with class, race and sexuality—will be our gateway to exploring the dynamics of discussion of gender conventions and how we, as feminist scholars, might manoeuvre. To do so, we will test and triangulate three different forms of ethnographically inspired inquiry: 1) ‘collaborative autoethnography,’ to discuss male-to-female gender-bending comedies from the 1980s and 1990s, 2) ‘netnography’ of online discussions about the (potential) recasting of gendered legacy roles from Doctor Who to Mary Poppins, and 3) textual media analysis of content focusing on the casting of cisgender actors for transgender roles. Exploring the affordances and challenges of these three methods underlines the duty of care that is essential to feminist audience research. Moving across personal and anonymous, ‘real’ and ‘virtual,’ popular and professional discussion highlights how gender has been used and continues to be instrumentalised in lived audience experience and in audience research.
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More women are attending university than ever before and a quarter of the world’s top universities have appointed a female president, but research shows that female academics are being pushed out of academia and are evaluated lower than male lecturers, which could stifle their careers. So what’s the state of play at the moment, and what can we do to redress the balance?
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The aim of the study is to investigate the influence of gender and gender pairing on students’ learning performances and knowledge elaboration processes in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). A sample of ninety-six secondary school students, participated in a two-week experiment.Students were randomly paired and asked to solve several moderately structured problems concerning Newtonian mechanics. Students’ pretest and posttest performances were analyzed to see whether students’ gender and the gender pairing (mixed or single-gender) were significant factors in their problem solving learning in CSCL. Students’ online interactions were also analyzed to unravel the dynamic process of individual knowledge elaboration. The multilevel analyses revealed that a divergent pattern of knowledge elaboration was a significant predictor for students’ learning achievement, and in mixed-gender dyads students’ knowledge elaboration processes were more inclined to diverge from each other. Moreover, females in single-gender dyads significantly outperformed females in mixed-gender dyads. But this was not the case for male students.
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This chapter applies the theory of symbolic interactionism to present the qualitative analysis of 51 sentencing decisions in domestic violence homicide cases processed in Polish courts. It is argued in this chapter that sentencing, like any other human action, is subject to interpretations at the hands of judges, who engage in the construction and meaning-making process of gender at the sentencing stage. The findings demonstrate the diversely-constructed presence of gendered narratives, which vary in terms of their inclusion of the domestic violence terminology and/or the discussion on the fulfilment of socially-prescribed gender roles. The analysis has exposed a powerful interplay between the judges’ perception of the (abusive) relationship, gender roles, and the defendant’s/victim’s acquiescence to them, which in consequence makes women more likely the subject of double standards of conformity. The chapter offers a qualitative outlook on the topic and invites a new theoretical perspective to shift the attention from the impact of gender – to the meaning of gender – in sentencing decisions.
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Diversity implies variety. Diversity refers to the differences between people. Visible aspects – such as age, skin colour, gender, disability – and less or non-visible aspects such as cultural and social background, skills and competencies, and style of working. If you can handle diversity, you will be able to handle different kinds of people. The concept of ‘equality’ can be seen as opposite from the concept of ‘diversity’. Dutch society can be characterized as a culture of equality. Due to increasing diversity it is argued this culture of equality will eventually turn out to be unfavourable. A culture of diversity is reasoned to be an inevitable alternative. A first exploration of the characteristics of such a culture and its significance for the work of the Social Worker is being done at present.
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Research has shown that female students cannot profit as much as male students can from cooperative learning in physics, especially in mixed-gender dyads. This study has explored the influence of partner gender on female students’ learning achievement, interaction and the problem-solving process during cooperative learning. In Shanghai, a total of 50 students (26 females and 24 males), drawn from two classes of a high school, took part in the study. Students were randomly paired, and there were three research groups: mixed-gender dyads (MG), female–female dyads (FF) and male–male dyads (MM). Analysis of students’ pre- and post-test performances revealed that female students in the single-gender condition solved physics problems more effectively than did those in the mixed-gender condition, while the same was not the case for male students. We further explored the differences between female and male communication styles, and content among the three research groups. It showed that the females’ interaction content and problem-solving processes were more sensitive to partner gender than were those for males. This might explain why mixed-gender cooperation in physics disadvantages females in high schools.
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This article investigates gender bias in narratives generated by Large Language Models (LLMs) through a two-phase study. Building on our existing work in narrative generation, we employ a structured methodology to analyze the influence of protagonist gender on both the generation and classification of fictional stories. In Phase 1, factual narratives were generated using six LLMs, guided by predefined narrative structures (Hero's Journey and Heroine's Journey). Gender bias was quantified through specialized metrics and statistical analyses, revealing significant disparities in protagonist gender distribution and associations with narrative archetypes. In Phase 2, counterfactual narratives were constructed by altering the protagonists’ genders while preserving all other narrative elements. These narratives were then classified by the same LLMs to assess how gender influences their interpretation of narrative structures. Results indicate that LLMs exhibit difficulty in disentangling the protagonist's gender from the narrative structure, often using gender as a heuristic to classify stories. Male protagonists in emotionally driven narratives were frequently misclassified as following the Heroine's Journey, while female protagonists in logic-driven conflicts were misclassified as adhering to the Hero's Journey. These findings provide empirical evidence of embedded gender biases in LLM-generated narratives, highlighting the need for bias mitigation strategies in AI-driven storytelling to promote diversity and inclusivity in computational narrative generation.
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Our study looks at gender differences among professors at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). Despite progress in female representation in higher education, women still make up only 43% of professors as of 2024. While this is a 12% increase from last year, gender gaps persist. Specifically, the Faculty of Business and Education has only 29% women in professor positions. In contrast, the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries and the Faculty of Health have more balanced gender distributions, with 50% and 55% women as full professors, respectively. We suggest AUAS should keep working to balance gender in full professor roles by strengthening executive commitment, setting clear goals, and monitoring progress closely. Our analysis has certain limitations. We lack specific details regarding the professors' appointment hours and their salary scale information. Furthermore, the recent inclusion of associate professors has not been accounted for in our analysis.
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De loopbaan van mannen wordt beperkt als ze kiezen voor een werkweek van 4 keer 9 uur, maar vrouwen profiteren juist van zo’n indeling. Dat is een conclusie van het arbeidsmarktonderzoek van economisch geograaf Inge Noback. Uit het onderzoek blijkt verder dat het aantal gewerkte uren per week voor beide seksen nog altijd daalt. Noback: ‘Als de overheid zich zorgen maakt over vergrijzing moet ze niet alleen de pensioenleeftijd verhogen, maar ook meer uren werken op de agenda zetten.’ Noback promoveert op 27 oktober 2011 aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Voor haar onderzoek naar de verschillen in loopbaanontwikkeling tussen mannen en vrouwen dook Noback in de administratie van een groot Nederlands bedrijf. Door met een loep te kijken hoe de carrière van mannen en vrouwen zich ontwikkelde, gerelateerd aan het aantal uren dat zij werkten, vond zij uit dat de seksen naar verschillende maatstaven worden beoordeeld: ‘Omdat het om één bedrijf gaat kun je niet generaliseren, maar je ziet wel hoe processen werken. Het blijkt dat vier dagen van negen uur voor mannen niet werkt. Zij worden geacht altijd beschikbaar te zijn. Als ze er één dag van de week niet zijn, worden ze daarop afgerekend. Voor vrouwen ligt dat anders, omdat men er toch al van uitgaat dat ze parttime werken. Zij kwamen dus sneller vooruit.’ Regionale verschillen Het onderzoek naar de verschillen in carrière is maar één onderdeel in het arbeidsmarktonderzoek. Noback keek bijvoorbeeld ook naar de regionale verschillen in arbeidsparticipatie. Vrouwen in een stedelijke omgeving blijken vaker en langer te werken dan hun seksegenoten op het platteland. Mannen werken in steden juist minder. Een andere opvallende conclusie is dat vrouwen van werk weerhouden worden niet alleen door zorg voor kinderen, maar ook die voor ouderen in de omgeving. Kinderen In Nederland hebben weliswaar relatief veel vrouwen een baan, maar gemiddeld werken ze veel minder uren dan vrouwen in de meeste andere Europese landen. Ook mannen werken steeds minder uren, zeker na de geboorte van het eerste kind, stelde Noback vast. Dat kan niet lang zo doorgaan, verwacht ze: ‘De overheid moet zorgen voor langere werkweken, want met alleen het verhogen van de pensioenleeftijd redden we het niet. Er is dus meer kinderopvang nodig. Nu zijn kinderen nog allesbepalend voor de loopbaan van vrouwen en eigenlijk is dat helemaal niet vanzelfsprekend. Natuurlijk heb je vrouwen met jonge kinderen die daarvoor een periode willen thuisblijven. Dat moeten ze vooral doen, maar dat hoeft niet de hele loopbaan te bepalen.’ Vingerafdruk Er zijn veel geaggregeerde gegevens beschikbaar over de arbeidsmarkt en ook over arbeidsparticipatie van mannen en vrouwen. Het CBS, de UWV en andere instanties publiceren ze met grote regelmaat. Dat veel vrouwen in Nederland een parttimebaan hebben, maar per saldo minder uren werken dan seksegenoten in veel andere landen is bekend, evenals de trend dat zowel mannen als vrouwen steeds minder werken. Maar Noback kreeg voor haar onderzoek unieke gegevens tot haar beschikking: ‘Ik mocht rondsnuffelen in de microdata van het CBS. Dat betekent geanonimiseerde informatie over tien miljoen individuele banen, en heel specifieke informatie over de dynamiek in bijvoorbeeld het aantal gewerkte uren. In tegenstelling tot de survey data is dat echt nieuw. Je mag ze alleen bekijken, je krijgt toegang vanaf je laptop met een vingerafdruk, dankzij een programma dat ze bij je thuis komen installeren. Echt heel bijzonder.’ Arbeidspotentieel Uit dit Sociaal Statistisch Banen Bestand maakte Noback een selectie van werknemers die tussen 2003 en 2005 dezelfde baan hebben gehouden, maar van wie wel het aantal werkuren kon zijn veranderd. Het blijkt dat de werkuren van vrouwen vaker veranderen dan die van mannen, helemaal als ze eerst een baan hadden van minder dan drie dagen per week. Noback: ‘Dat toont aan dat er nog behoorlijk wat arbeidspotentieel over is.’
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