Academy for Gender, Work and Leadership

This project is interested in understanding how gender inequality is culturally constructed. Through innovative and unique diagnostic tools the project will illuminate the taken-for-granted and underlying attitudes, values, and assumptions that prevent gender equality efforts within Business and Management Schools. Collaborative conversations with project partners and iterative analysis of gender equality theory and organisational practice will facilitate the creation and implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) specific to each partner university. The GEPs include specific tasks and practices that address issues of discrimination such as slowed career progression, gender pay gap, and lack of women in leadership positions. The GEPs move beyond generalized discussions on gender discrimination to focus on the needs and constraints of the specific partner School. With this knowledge, the GEPs can then create tasks to address the named barriers. The partnering of structurally and geographically diverse B&M Schools adds depth and richness to our understanding of gender equality within Business and Management Schools and requires the TARGETED-MPI team to think beyond one-size-fits-all responses and solutions to the generic outcomes of gender inequality.

The GEPs will set key benchmarks for improvement and rely on outside monitoring to make sure the partner Schools meet their expected deadlines. While acknowledging and preserving the need for context and organisation specific gender equality plans, the project hopes to conclude with ‘best practices’ that can inspire other B&M Schools in their own gender equality efforts.

Women face a double hurdle in influencing decisions that affect basic human rights including access to food, water and education though difficulty in gaining access to decision-making roles and for those actually in decision-making roles the ability to influence. In this pilot project, funded by Lancaster University Global Challenges Research Futures Kick-starter Fund, we wish to understand the constraints which women face and identify possible solutions to address these.

Dr Valerie Stead, Dr Robyn Remke, Professor Claire Leitch, Dr Cynthia Forson, Deputy-Provost, Lancaster University (LU) Ghana

Examining the perceptions and experiences of network managers and members of formally established women-only networks, we have found that there is a disconnect between the intent and the impact of public policy initiatives which aim to empower and encourage women into entrepreneurship but instead continue to perpetuate and reproduce the embedded masculinity of the entrepreneurship domain.

Professor Claire Leitch, Professor Richard Harrison (University of Edinburgh), Professor Maura McAdam (Dublin City University).

While some prior work argues that women have been marginalised in the context of family businesses through complex forces of patriarchy or paternalism, others point to alternative gender practices and discourses and find evidence of resistance and challenge to these forces. In examining the role of women and the barriers they may face in the complex entrepreneurial context of the family business, this stream of research raises questions about the nature of gendered identities and power relations in the family business. Family businesses represent the dominant form of business across the globe, and the importance of women in their emergence and continuity cannot be underestimated. Current work is revealing the diverse pathways that women engage into to start, develop and ensure the continuity of family businesses in diverse cultural contexts, discussing the role of gendered norms in a business family and challenging prior misconceptions about men’s and women’s role and participation.

Dr Giovanna Campopiano, Dr Allan Discua Cruz, Professor Ellie Hamilton, Professor Sarah Jack, Professor. Helene Ahl

As part of this project, the Embla research group, with the support of the Kamprad Foundation, has been studying women's entrepreneurship in rural areas over the past three years. Using register data, they have mapped the scope, industry, size, demographic data and disposable income for all women who run rural businesses in Sweden.

As a job share a number of benefits from an employee, employer and leadership development perspective were discovered. In particular, the job share created opportunities for the authors to overcome some of the barriers women leaders can face, such as achieving a better work–life balance and having increased levels of confidence. We are now extending this research by comparing our experience with other people who are performing senior leadership roles through a job share.

Emma Watton and Sarah Stables, Enterprise and Business Development Lead, University of Cumbria.

However, against all odds, some Syrian women have maximised their extremely limited resources and innovatively responded to these harsh conditions by setting up home-based micro-enterprises based on traditional and typically feminised indigenous skills, such as cooking, tailoring and craftwork; leaving the notion of entrepreneurship as arguably the only vehicle for economic survival.

The aim of this project is to bring to life the resilience and voices of these women and understand how the women utilise entrepreneurship as a means of survival in their context of crisis. This project began in 2015 and is funded by Lancaster University Global Research Futures Kick-Starter Fund 2017, as well as Lancaster University Management School Pump-Prime Scheme 2017-2018.

Dr Sophie Alkhaled and Professor Sarah Jack

This research examines the marginalising effects of practices in innovation-intensive organisations for women and minorities. The focus of the research is on inclusion in innovation, paying attention to women’ and minorities’ participation to innovation processes. This research aims at directing attention towards the gendering practices that women and men shape in association with creating innovation and its impact on an organisation’s creative efforts. The project also aims at informing organisations on the need for more inclusive practices at work that can stimulate and support their innovative capacity.

You can learn more about the project by following the Inclusive Innovation blog.

Universities in developing economies are now increasingly expected to become more responsive and play a direct role in knowledge-based economic and social development. In this context, relevant institutional bodies such as the Association of African Universities have been organising workshops and seminars for university leadership to promote partnerships between industry and universities. However, previous scholarship shows that women are not only underrepresented in higher education institutions in Africa, but they are also glaringly absent from the most senior ranks and leadership positions. In essence, women are likely to be excluded from the ongoing workshops and consequently, their exclusion may lead to the creation of gender-blind innovation systems that offer gender-biased, flawed innovations and products with different qualities of effectiveness for women and men in Africa.

Drawing on the perceptions and experiences of members of the Women Innovators Network for Africa (WINA) and other external individuals, this project explores the extent to which women academics and researchers are involved in university-industry collaboration in the sub-Saharan African context, and how gender affects their level and type of participation.

The research team comprises Afua Konadu Owusu-Kwarteng, Dr Lola Dada, Professor Sarah Jack, and Dr Cynthia Forson.