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Research funding organisations (RFOs) are key R&D stakeholders in knowledge production and in development of research careers. How do these organisations address gender and other inequalities in their policies and practices? To what extent do they act as change agents towards equality and diversity with an impact on the whole sector? During recent decades, many national research funding organisations have increasingly become engaged in policies promoting gender equality, diversity, and inclusion Some RFOs are also collaborating increasingly in this area, both nationally and regionally, establishing collaborative networks. An important driver here has been the European Research Area (ERA), in which gender equality is one of priorities. However, the developments in this respect across Europe are complex and uneven, with advanced and ambitious policies established in some national contexts, on the one hand, and very limited and restricted engagements in some others, on the other hand. We compare the developments in national RFOs in five European national contexts, which vary in their research intensity and gender regimes: Austria, Ireland, Poland, Slovak Republic, and Sweden. We highlight advances and challenges in engagement of national RFOs with gender equality, diversity and inclusion, analyse the contextual factors driving development, and ask to what extent do the RFOs integrate intersectional approaches in their policies. The empirical material draws on policy document analysis and qualitative interview and observation research in GRANTeD (Grant Allocation Disparities from a Gender Perspective), a research project funded (2019-2023) by the EU Horizon2020 framework

This paper explores crisis management discourses in academia through a gender lens. It investigates, through these discourses, which academic management ideals dominate in HEI during and after immediate, emerging, and sustained crises (cf. Parsons, 1996). It addresses the research questions: Which crisis management ideals are performed and expressed by vice-chancellors/university presidents?; Which crisis management ideals are preferred, favoured, and promoted by HEIs?; To what extent are these ideals permeated by gendered management ideals? The paper builds on a theoretical framework that combines critical masculinities studies and critical feminist theory on gender, management, and leadership, particularly focusing on crises (e.g., Ericson & Mellström, 2016). These theories have demonstrated that crisis management is male-coded, emphasising risk taking, risk management and mastering fear as characteristics closely connected to masculinity and the performativity of masculine heroism (Whitehead, 2002). Other studies, however, suggest that interpersonally oriented leadership traits emphasising communication, and (stereo)typically associated with women, are particularly useful and relevant for crisis management (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Gartzia et al., 2012; Ryan et al., 2011). The analysis draws especially on Branicki’s (2020) definition of rationalist approaches to crisis management characterised by authoritarian leadership, determination, masculine logic, and militaristic language, privileging of the quantifiable, and a conceptualisation of crises as rational and linear processes. She contrasts this with an alternative feminist conceptualising of crisis management based on an ethics of care, with normative assumptions about interpersonal relationships, reciprocal care, situated knowledge, and a focus on marginalised issues and positions, improving lives, and social transformation, which also echo the servant leadership philosophy (Peterson, 2018). Th

Previous studies have highlighted how the academic peer review system has been marked by gender bias and nepotism. Panel meetings arranged by research funding organisations (RFOs), where reviewers must explain and account for their assessment and scoring of grant applications, can potentially mitigate and disrupt patterns of inequality. They can however also constitute arenas where biases are reproduced. This article explores, through a gender lens, the shift from face-to-face to digital peer review meetings in a Swedish RFO, focusing on the implications for an unbiased and fair grant allocation process. Drawing on twenty-two interviews with panellists and staff in the RFO, the analysis identifies both benefits and challenges of this shift, regarding use of resources, meeting dynamics, micropolitics, social glue, and possibilities for group reflections. RFOs deliberating digitalisation of their peer review processes need to consider these implications to develop policies promoting unbiased and fair grant allocation processes and procedures.

The project GRANteD (Grant Allocation Disparities from a Gender Perspective) started in January 2019, funded within the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme, to analyse the occurrence and causes of gender bias in research funding in Europe. Six project partners in five countries investigate from different perspectives and with a multi-method approach factors that may cause gender imbalances before, during and after grant submissions. The project adopts a broad, process-oriented perspective when investigating gender bias in grant allocation, paying particular attention to several different key organisational processes within Research Funding Organisations (RFOs), which structure and systematize grant allocation, such as decision-making processes, review processes, and selection processes. The GRANteD project includes five empirical, multi-level and multi-method, case studies in which gender bias and gender equality policies are studied in-depth, to produce a multi-faceted understanding of complex issues regarding gender disparities in higher education and science, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collection. The case study research design allowed for inclusion of five public RFOs in the European Research Area, situated in: Austria, Ireland, Poland, Slovak Republic, and Sweden, respectively. The countries and the core RFOs were selected to achieve not only a geographical spread but also a variety of research funding landscapes. In each of the five core RFOs,one funding instrument, targeting mainly early career researchers, was selected for a more detailed analysis of gender bias in the funding cycle. This GRANteD report constitutes a synthesis on contextual factors, gender equality policy analysis and gender bias risk analysis. It explores, first, national funding regimes and national gender equalityregimes as broader macro contexts of the five core RFOs. This contextual analysis includes how gender equality is or is not foreground, GRANTeD -Grant Allocation Disparities from a Gender Perspective

A decade ago, women’s position in Swedish Higher Education management and leadership was described using the glass cliff concept. Women had increased dramatically in positions as Vice Chancellor due to political goals and policies regarding gender equality and quantitative target agreements concerning women’s representation in academia. Interviews with the women themselves however highlighted that the feminization of academic leadership positions also should be understood against the backdrop of a restructuring of higher education and reforms in line with new public management, increased financial pressure and administrative burden. A shift in leadership ideals has thus followed the logic of the glass cliff phenomenon: explaining that women increasingly had been appointed to precarious leadership roles with declining status, merit, and prestige. The heroic leadership ideal had been replaced by a serving leadership ideal, reflecting women’s greater responsibilities for the so-called academic housekeeping, i.e., the service work in academia undertaken in addition to teaching and researching. This presentation elaborates on the development of these leadership ideals in Swedish higher education and explores the development during the last couple of years: has the trend towards feminization of academic leadership positions continued and increased during and after the Covid-19 crisis, which put extraordinarily pressure on leadership positions?

Gender inequality is a serious and complex challenge that needs to be addressed by academic managers and leaders, who should ensure that they facilitate increased gender equality with regards to both formal and informal institutional practices. This chapter argues for the importance of gender aware and gender competent academic managers and leaders who are willing to take on the role as change agent for gender equality and exercise gender equality change management and leadership. Explored here are the conditions for such successful change agency for gender equality. The chapter adds to previous research in this area by emphasizing the distinction between formal and informal change strategies, tasks and responsibilities. These distinctions are illustrated with examples from a study on gender mainstreaming in Swedish Higher Education where academic managers were interviewed about their implementation strategies.

This article investigates how Swedish higher education institutions (HEIs) conceptualized and organized the 2016 Swedish government directive to gender mainstream their operations. The directive provided the general guidelines for the programme Gender Mainstreaming in Academia (GMA), which was to be implemented by HEIs between 2017 and 2019. This analysis draws on interviews with people at 13 HEIs responsible for, or in other ways participating in, the development of tailor-made gender mainstreaming plans (GMPs), which served as the starting point for the GMA programme. Using organizational translation theory, the article explores how the informants translated gender mainstreaming, as a broad policy strategy, into more specific conceptual and practical terms to fit their local contexts. The analysis focuses on how these gender mainstreaming translation processes were organized and who was invited to participate in the process. The results highlight how the organization of the translation process, the appointment of translators and the local translation of the GMA programme were guided by different principles, most often resulting in an integrationist rather than transformative translation of gender mainstreaming. The limitations and potentials of different translations of gender mainstreaming in relation to achieving organizational change and ultimately a more gender-equal organization are discussed.

This article explores the experiences of micro change agents for gender equality in seven European Research Performing Organizations in seven different countries. The micro change agents were all participants of an international collaborative project consortium, implementing gender equality plans (GEPs), and funded by the European Commission during 4 years. The analysis draws on empirical data consisting of information submitted by the micro change agents during these 4 years and collected using three different monitoring tools, developed within the project to follow the progress of the implementation efforts, but also to provide an arena for individual and collaborative reflection and knowledge exchange between the partners. The aim of the article is to present a systematic analysis of the change practices that these micro change agents experienced as useful and important for promoting gender equality in their different organizational contexts. A total of six such micro change practices are identified, emerging from the empirical data: 1. communicating, 2. community building, 3. building trust and legitimacy, 4. accumulating and using resources, 5. using and transferring knowledge, and 6. drawing on personal motivation. The findings illustrate the multifaceted character of micro change agency for gender equality, particularly in a time-limited project context with a designated funding period. The results from this study can be useful when developing gender equality strategies, policies and practices and can also be used to empower gender equality micro change agents that face challenges while trying to implement GEPs and promote structural change in any kind of institution.