Despite the well‐documented resistance to feminism and gender equality within universities, the profound implications for feminist academics have not received sufficient…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the well‐documented resistance to feminism and gender equality within universities, the profound implications for feminist academics have not received sufficient attention. In this paper the author aims to focus on the inauthentication of feminist academic work by powerful actors in higher education and the implications for feminist academic careers. The author illustrates through her professional experience at a UK medical school how the othering and exclusion of feminists, sustained through surveillance and power mechanisms of organisational life, can disrupt and interrupt feminist academic identity.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a reflective piece of work that attempts to illustrate the author's experiences of occupational segregation and marginalisation within a patriarchal and an emerging “entrepreneurial” academic department. The author attempts to represent her lived professional experiences as a feminist academic in a medical school, through the use of narrative and metaphors.
Findings
Drawing on notions of othering, interrupted and storied subjectivities, the author illustrates how gendered expectations and constructions of academic performance and success within patriarchal organisations can “make up” and “break up” the professional self and affect the nomadic nature of academic careers and identities.
Practical implications
This paper contributes to theory about workplace identities and practice of gender equality in academia.
Originality/value
The author illustrates how the intersections of identities (feminist, social scientist, woman) can shape personal stories, professional experiences and careers within universities. The author demonstrate how personal stories can uncover gender inequalities and challenge dominant paradigms of knowledge and research within a micro‐web of emotionality and power relations.
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Maria Tsouroufli, Mustafa Özbilgin and Merryn Smith
Attempts to modernise the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK involve promoting flexible approaches to work and training, restructuring postgraduate training and increasing…
Abstract
Purpose
Attempts to modernise the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK involve promoting flexible approaches to work and training, restructuring postgraduate training and increasing control and scrutiny of doctors' work. However, the medical community has responded with expressed anxiety about the implications of these changes for medical professionalism and the quality of patient care. This paper aims to address these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on literature on nostalgia, gender, identity and organisations, the paper explores the narratives of 20 senior NHS hospital doctors to identify ways in which doctors use nostalgia to react to organisational and professional challenges and resist modernisation and feminisation of medicine.
Findings
This paper illustrates how senior hospital doctors' nostalgic discourses of temporal commitment may be used to constitute a highly esteemed professional identity, creating a sense of personal and occupational uniqueness for senior hospital doctors, intertwined with gendered forms of othering and exclusionary practices.
Practical implications
Nostalgia at first sight appears to be an innocuous social construct. However, this study illustrates the significance of nostalgia as a subversive practice of resistance with implications for women's career and identity experiences. Change initiatives that seek to tackle resistance need also to address discourses of nostalgia in the medical profession.
Originality/value
The main contribution of this study is that we illustrate how supposedly neutral discourses of nostalgia may sometimes be mobilised as devices of resistance. This study questions simplistic focus on numerical representation, such as feminisation, as indicative of modernisation and highlights the significance of exploring discourses and head counts for understanding resistance to modernisation.
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Katherine J.C. Sang, Simy Joy, Josephine Kinge and Susan Sayce
Adedoyin Atewologun and Victoria Showunmi
The purpose of this paper is to report on the 2008 inaugural Equal Opportunities Conference held at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on the 2008 inaugural Equal Opportunities Conference held at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The report is based on delegate observations, notes and audience reactions to some of the papers presented on research conducted across Europe, Asia and North America.
Findings
The papers represented new boundaries in diversity research. This included research on women's experiences in traditional male domains of Science Engineering and Technology, developments in investigating diversity such as intersectional analysis, resource dependency theory and social movement theory, and insights on the experiences of specific minority ethnic groups, challenging some of the assumptions of within‐group homogeneity in diversity research.
Originality/value
This report integrates a number of themes from diversity research across the world, highlighting some of the progress accomplished so far as well as the suggested direction for future diversity research.
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Catherine Hogan, Maria Barry, Mary Burke and Pauline Joyce
The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that explores healthcare professionals' experiences of the implementation of integrated care pathways (ICPs).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that explores healthcare professionals' experiences of the implementation of integrated care pathways (ICPs).
Design/methodology/approach
This study used a phenomenological research approach with a purposive sample of ten multi‐disciplinary healthcare professionals across two acute hospitals in Ireland. Data were collected via semi‐structured interviews and analysed using Colazzi's framework.
Findings
The findings of the study are presented under four themes: buy‐in from all disciplines, multidisciplinary communication, service‐user involvement, and audit of ICPs. These themes emanated from the questions asked at interview.
Research limitations/implications
The limitations of the study include the small sample size and the use of two different interviewers across the sites. The inexperience of the interviewers is acknowledged as a limitation as the probing of some questions could have been improved. In addition the themes of the findings were predetermined by the use of the interview guide.
Practical implications
Changes in existing institutional structures and cultures are required when introducing ICPs. It is necessary for senior management in organisations to lead by example. They also need to identify where support can be offered, such as in the provision of an ICP facilitator, education sessions in relation to ICPs and the development of strategies to improve multi‐disciplinary buy‐in and participation.
Originality/value
The findings of this study respond to a gap in the literature in Ireland on the experiences of healthcare professionals who have implemented ICPs. Key findings of the study are the perception that the doctor is pivotal in driving the implementation of ICPs, yet the doctor was not always interested in this responsibility.