ECREA WOMEN'S NETWORK OBJECTIVES

The Women’s Network aims to address all challenges women face in research and in higher education. The initial objective is to create a platform for female scholars to speak up about the problems they encounter in the academia and be in solidarity with colleagues around the world. Actually, being a woman in academia has always been challenging, especially in societies with strong patriarchal traditions. Apart from difficulties for finding a balance between everyday routines and conducting research, women in higher education have to face gender bias in any academic setting.

The ECREA’s Women’s Network intends to stimulate, contribute to, and disseminate (research on) women scholarship. By bringing people together, stimulating the exchange of insights and practices, and promoting the visibility and inclusion of all women, our aim is to contribute to equality in all its dimensions and identify diverse practices in higher education in Europe and beyond, revealing differences, strengths and weaknesses. We commit to be in close collaboration with all ECREA sections, transcending boundaries between disciplines and between academic and professional worlds.

By means of these collaborations, the ECREA’s Women’s Network aims to function as a platform to increase the visibility and impact of women scholarship within all ECREA sections. The network aspires to support exchange of ideas, promote effective discussions in various fields of communication and disseminate contemporary case studies, new methodologies and research that focus on gender equality in higher education. In this way, the ECREA’s Women’s Network intends to initiate and maintain discussions surrounding women scholarship in all ECREA sections and go beyond national as well as institutional borders.

Furthermore, the Women’s Network is to support critical research initiatives, give voice to research based on gender issues and methodologies, and support critical perspectives that challenge white male perspectives on knowledge. Generally speaking, the position that not only women but also LGBTQ+ people occupy in the academy is not neutral. Both cultural (e.g. misogyny, sexism, transphobia) and structural (e.g. gendered precarity) conditions intervene to define, give visibility to and legitimise the competences, expertise and knowledge of female and LGBTQ+ scholars. The existing system of practices embedded in the academic context—at the level of both the labour market and organisational and cultural systems—reinforces a gender regime that has consequences in different areas.

With an attempt to achieve all these, the ECREA’s Women’s Network calls for support to organize events such as conferences, seminars, panels, lectures and workshops, collaborate in research projects, provide and disseminate information about the work of women and LGBTQ+ scholars in higher education. The network aims to coordinate knowledge and initiate discussions concerning the issues in its scope in different channels including its website, Facebook page, ECREA discussion forums and weekly digest. In this way, the ECREA’s Women’s Network seeks to inspire further research and collaborations that promote gender equality in higher education in the European academic context and beyond.