Gender

Convocation 2022

Graduate Stories

Business

STEM

U of T Scarborough

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Vanshika Agarwal landed an eight-month, remote internship as an equity research and product intern at Canalyst, a leader in the industry of market data and analytics with offices in New York City and Vancouver.

Although she was still a student in the University of Toronto Scarborough's bachelor of business administration co-op program, Agarwal was not shy about putting forward her ideas in the office. She successfully pitched the company's CEO to establish a system of automated outreach tactics to offer Canalyst to finance students. In short order, she secured clients from American MBA programs, mainly at Ivy League schools, and increased membership to more than 300 participants across the U.S. within six months.

“No one usually wants to hear what a 20-year-old has to say, but I held sessions with more than 50 people interested in the product. It was a fun and fascinating experience,” Agarwal says.

Graduating this week, Agarwal says she's eager to put her energy toward leveling the playing field in business once she joins the work force. “Leadership for me means that everyone can be a leader in some capacity. I want to make an impact and help people realize the idea of ‘experience to lead,’” she says.

Agarwal credits her parents for teaching her determination and about the importance of empowering women. Shortly after arriving in Canada as an international student from Mumbai, she worked for Accelerate Her Future (AHF), a career accelerator for self-identified Black, Indigenous and other women of colour in business and STEM. The accelerator started as pilot at U of T, in 2019.

At AHF, Agarwal helped develop networking programs as an advisory board member and special initiatives intern through ICUBE UTM, U of T Mississauga’s entrepreneurship incubator.

“I became extremely passionate when I noticed people who didn’t look like me in the industry. Everyone has some power to bring change, and I saw this gap that needs to be filled, especially with women in finance,” Agarwal says.

Alongside volunteering for organizations seeking to advance gender equality in finance, Agarwal also worked at U of T Scarborough as a teaching assistant for five management courses. As a co-op career coach, she also provided students with tips for job interviews, work-term success and networking.

Last year, she received the Management Co-op Student of the Year award for her extensive work-integrated learning (WIL) experience and impact in fintech.

“It was quite humbling and motivating to have received that award,” she says. “It made me realize how I can start to give back to my peers at different stages of their academic career.”

With her sights currently set on business school and working within equity research and capital markets, she hopes to eventually build a side project to create a pipeline for women to find opportunities in STEM and business straight from high school.

As for her advice for incoming students, Agarwal’s key piece of wisdom includes having confidence in yourself and being open to taking chances.

“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Never second guess yourself and always be willing to take chances.”

'There’s definitely a romance about it': How letterpress printing made an impression on women writers

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 20 May 2022 20:39:59 +0000

'There’s definitely a romance about it': How letterpress printing made an impression on women writers

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 05/20/2022 - 16:39

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In her new book, Claire Battershill looks at the history of women and the letterpress from the 1920s to the 21st century (photo courtesy of Claire Battershill via Simon Fraser University)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

History

Women

When Claire Battershill took part in the printing fellowship program at Massey College in 2009, she discovered its cast iron printing presses were far more than simply relics of a bygone era.

For many women writers and printers – from Virginia Woolf to Anaïs Nin – letterpress printing embodied a liberating spirit, as well as the freedom of artistic control that still draws and inspires artists and writers today.

“There’s definitely a romance about it,” says Battershill, an assistant professor cross-appointed to the department of English, in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and the Faculty of Information. Her book, Women and Letterpress Printing 1920–2020: Gendered Impressions, will be released in July. It explores the relationship between gender and literary letterpress printing from the early 20th century to the beginning of the 21st, as well as the ongoing presence – and even revival – of the letterpress in the age of iPhones, email and 3D printers.

Letterpress printing involves taking blocks of text or images and placing them on a raised surface, similar to a rubber stamp. Ink is applied to the raised surface and then paper is pressed directly against it to transfer the text or image.

Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century, letterpress printing was the standard form for printing for hundreds of years, though it remained in wide use for books well into the 20th century, when more modern printing methods took over for books and newspapers.

“It was a pretty labour-intensive process,” says Battershill, adding that the two steps of typesetting and then printing would take countless hours. “I saw how slow it was and how hard it was to do,” she says speaking from her own letterpress experience. “As an amateur printer, it would take me at least two days of work to typeset and print a small run of a single poem.”

Battershill is fascinated by women writers who used letterpress printing to take full control of both their writing and the production of their work – including Woolf (1882-1941), who along with her husband Leonard, founded The Hogarth Press in 1917.

“Woolf said, ‘The editors told me to write what they liked. And I said, no, I'll publish myself and write what I like,’” says Battershill.

Nin (1903-1977), the French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist and writer of short stories and erotica, created Gemor Press in New York in 1942 in response to the Second World War disrupting the distribution of her books by large publishing companies.

“She came to the conclusion that it allowed her to think more precisely about what she called ‘the essential words,’” says Battershill.

The surrealist writer, poet and political activist Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) was a self-taught printer who wrote a memoir about the experience of running her own printing house called These Were the Hours: Memories of My Hours Press, Reanville and Paris, 1928-1931.

Battershill was intrigued by how letterpress printing compelled writers to stop and reflect on their poetry and prose, in addition to giving them full artistic control.

“A lot of writers comment that it really slows you down,” says Battershill. “It focuses you on one letter at a time. So, this idea of breaking language down into tiny little units seems to change the way they think about the words they're writing.”

Anaïs Nin operating a letterpress at her Gemor
Press in New York in the 1940s.

Would Battershill ever want to publish a book of her own using letterpress printing?

“Yes, I would, though I shied away from doing it in the past, partly because, as a writer, I find it painful to imagine spending so much time with my own work,” she says.

Battershill’s book also explores why the letterpress still holds so much charm, and how its role has shifted over time, moving from the dominant commercial printing technology to the preferred tool for fine artists, writers and poets.

She believes using a letterpress is part of a resurgence of hand-based arts such as knitting or calligraphy.

“We don't have to do these things manually, but there is a hobby community that connects around hand practice and handwork,” she says. “In a similar way, contemporary letterpress communities are at the intersection of fine art, literature and crafting.”

As well, Battershill comments on the continued appeal of letterpress for women and activists – reflecting the ability to print and spread a message in a genuine and uncensored way. She notes that several Black Lives Matter posters were created through letterpress printing.

And letterpress continues to be a conduit for artistic expression.

In her book, Battershill mentions Ladies of Letterpress, an international trade organization for letterpress printers and print enthusiasts that promotes the craft of letterpress printing and encourages the voice and vision of women printers.

She also highlights the work of Norwegian artist and graphic designer, Ane Thon Knutsen, whose art comes from her personal letterpress studio.

“Her work is letterpress interpretations of Virginia Woolf,” says Battershill. “She creates room-sized installations of her stories where she'll print one or two words per page, and then you walk through the room. It's like you're walking through the story.”

Battershill hopes readers of her forthcoming book with enjoy taking a stroll through history and be inspired to make something of their own, in their own way.

“The printing press can seem like an antiquarian technology that belongs to an earlier time, but there’s something in the contemporary world we can learn from these older technologies,” she says.

Using a sex and gender lens, U of T graduate students focus on brain, mental health research

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 15:57:18 +0000

Using a sex and gender lens, U of T graduate students focus on brain, mental health research

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 03/17/2022 - 11:57

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Michelle De Pol and Emily Schwartzman are among five U of T graduate students to receive funding to incorporate sex or gender into their brain and mental health research (photo courtesy of De Pol and Schwartzman)

Peter Boisseau

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Graduate Students

Mental Health

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

A group of graduate students at the University of Toronto are receiving support to incorporate sex and gender considerations into their brain and mental health research.

The initiative, part of a collaboration led by the Faculty of Arts & Science, aims to help fill sex and gender gaps in research data for a range of health issues from Alzheimer’s disease to clinical depression.

It will also better position students to get future support from funding agencies, who are increasingly insisting sex or gender considerations be included in all health research.

“This is part of a capacity-building effort so students can be more successful in their current and future grant applications, but also to develop and support researchers interested in a fundamental aspect of human diversity,” says Gillian Einstein, a professor in the department of psychology who is the Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging.

“There’s so much research that is only done on males – and even when it’s done on males and females, they don’t design the study to determine whether the males and females are different. They just put the two sexes together and analyze their data.”

Analyzing research data without accounting for sex or gender differences may impede the search for treatments and cures, adds Einstein, whose chair is teaming up with the department of psychology to award funds to five graduate students to expand their brain and mental health research to include sex or gender considerations.

Professor Gillian Einstein (photo courtesy of Einstein)

Einstein says omitting gender considerations can also skew research data because a person’s socio-economic standing – or the stress and stigma they endure due to prejudice or stereotypes – can affect their biology, including cognition and memory.

“Whether we’re talking about individual psychological differences or precision medicine, we’ve got to ask: Why aren't we taking these sex and gender differences into account in the research? We need to think about this more.”

More than 30 graduate students applied for the sex and gender funding initiative, which is also supported by the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience (CPIN). The CPIN is funded by 16 academic departments and seven U of T faculties.

The five graduate students selected for funding include psychology PhD students Emily Schwartzman and Tanner McNamara.

Schwartzman says the funding has allowed her to expand the number of participants in her studies on the impact of gender stereotypes and prejudice, including on climate change and pro-environmental behaviours.

“Biology and gender have strong implications that should be examined in any research,” says Schwartzman, who earned her master of arts degree in psychology from U of T in 2020.

“It's really essential to look at how aspects of sex and gender might be influencing people's health, experiences and choices at all levels.”

McNamara says the funding has allowed him to expand his pre-clinical trials by examining conflict-avoidance behaviour to include more women.

“Prior to receiving the top-up funding, I just had to rely on some preliminary behavioural data,” says McNamara.

The other graduate students chosen for the funding include PhD student Ali Golbabaei of the Institute of Medical Sciences, master of applied science in biomedical engineering student Alexandra Santos and Michelle De Pol, a masters student at the Institute of Medical Science who earned her honours bachelor of science degree in neuroscience from U of T as a member of St. Michael’s College in 2020.

De Pol’s research is exploring sex- and gender-based considerations in borderline personality disorder and depression, which are both predominantly diagnosed in female-identifying individuals.

“The funds definitely help because it is costly to do neuroimaging research, particularly PET scans,” says De Pol.

“I hope the work I and other funding recipients are doing can inspire other researchers to add sex and gender considerations into their own research.”

Einstein says that, by holding the chair in women’s brain health and now leading a collaboration to fund sex and gender research, U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science is positioning itself as a leader in the field, which will also help attract and retain students.

U of T study calls for renewed commitment to gender equality in inter-university sport

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 22:30:38 +0000

U of T study calls for renewed commitment to gender equality in inter-university sport

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 11/09/2020 - 17:30

Cutline

A study by researchers at U of T and McMaster University found that a gender gap continues to exist in Canadian inter-university sport both in terms of participation and coaching and administration (photo by Jill Clark)

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Breaking Research

Equity

Sport

Researchers from the University of Toronto and McMaster University have found that a significant gender gap continues to exist in Canadian inter-university sport and leadership positions such as coaching and administration.

The study, published recently in the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, combined results from four separate studies of gender equality in Canadian inter-university sport conducted from 2010 to 2017 across the 56 universities that comprise U Sports, the pan-Canadian governing body for Canadian university sport.

“While Canadian women’s participation and sporting achievements have risen dramatically over decades, both equality and equity have proven elusive for several reasons,” says Peter Donnelly, a professor at U of T’s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE) who co-authored the study with Professor Bruce Kidd and Mark Norman, a post-doctoral researcher at McMaster University.

“First, governments and sports organizations have rarely followed up their policy announcements regarding gender equality with monitoring and enforcement for compliance. Second, Canada’s federal system means that laws, policies and funding vary significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Third, elected governments frequently overturn their predecessors’ policies, making for a patchwork of conditions.”

The findings from the study show that men comprised 56 to 58 per cent of student-athletes in the four seasons studied. According to the researchers, the gender gap becomes even more pronounced when the overall percentage of male full-time students in Canadian universities – 44 per cent as of 2016-17 – is factored in.

With regard to coaching and administrative leadership, the study found that men comprised 81 to 84 per cent of head coaches and 78 to 80 per cent of assistant coaches. Men also made up 76 to 83 per cent of directors of athletics and 42 to 60 per cent of assistant directors of athletics.

“Certainly, there are individual athletics departments that, despite good intentions, face challenges in recruiting qualified women coaching candidates,” says Kidd. “Yet, U Sports’ gender equity policies, which have not been revised since 2004, do not identify any equity goals or propose any concrete solutions to tackle this gender gap in coaching.”

While the data does not extend past 2016-17, the researchers point to a recent report by Canadian Women and Sport that states: “Compared to four years ago, women as a proportion of coaches in post-secondary institutions showed no significant improvement.”

“As public institutions, universities should be leading the way in this endeavor,” says Kidd. “They have both research capacity and policy experience with regard to implementing gender equity in every department of their institutions, including sport. That capacity and experience is crucial, not only to achieving gender equity in the inter-university sport sector, but in Canadian society, as well.”

The study makes the following recommendation to improve athletic participation opportunities:

U Sports, the four regional athletics conferences and all Canadian university departments of athletics should honour, develop, monitor and enforce their gender equity policies
Gender equity policies should be re-written to include proportionality. A target of 50 per cent participation opportunities for women athletes would represent a move towards equity, but still advantage men in proportional terms since women students constitute some 56 per cent of the full-time student body as of 2016–17.
Establish a working group that will include experts in achieving equity in areas other than sport to examine proportionality and resources available to athletes by gender, and establish the steps, goals and processes for monitoring progress towards greater equality.

As for coaching and leadership positions, the study recommends that U Sports, the four regional athletics conferences and all Canadian university departments of athletics:

Work closely with university HR departments and university equity committees to evaluate and determine how employment and leadership opportunities may be made more available for women in coaching and administration in both women’s and men’s sports.
Establish a gender equity working group that is separate from the recommended proportionality working group and includes equity experts from areas other than sport to set realistic targets for leadership and participation, monitor progress and implement consequences for failing to achieve those targets. This working group should be chaired by a woman and comprise at least 50 per cent women members.

“Together, these recommendations will initiate a process of change towards more equitable participation opportunities for women student-athletes and representation of women in coaching and leadership roles within Canadian interuniversity sport,” says Norman. “Importantly, they will also help establish requirements for monitoring progress and consequences for failing to meet gender equity targets. These are important steps if U Sports and its member universities are to realize the gender equity goals that they have set.”

New research hub, based at U of T, to study gender equity in Canadian sport

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 27 May 2020 13:43:49 +0000

New research hub, based at U of T, to study gender equity in Canadian sport

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/27/2020 - 09:43

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The proposed research hub, which will bring together researchers and sport organizations across the country and internationally, will seek to advance gender equity in sport with a special emphasis on participation and leadership (photo by Seyran Mammadov)

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Rotman School of Management

Sport

Gretchen Kerr wants to close the gender equity gap in sport.

The professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, says sport has not kept pace with the advances in gender equity seen in other domains in Canada. Girls and women in sport have lower participation rates, report significantly higher experiences of violence than their male counterparts and the number of women in coaching positions is on the decline, according to Kerr.

Now Kerr and her colleagues – Professors Guylaine Demers of Laval University and Ann Pegoraro from the University of Guelph – will have the opportunity to develop an internationally recognized research and innovation centre that will collect, generate and disseminate research on gender equity in sport. The researchers were awarded the national Gender Equity in Sport Research Hub by the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Sport Canada branch.

“Extensive survey data and qualitative analyses demonstrate that gender inequities in sport remain persistent and pervasive,” says Kerr. “The establishment of a research hub on gender equity in sport is a unique opportunity for the Canadian scientific community, along with key partners in the sport sector, to advance an egalitarian and equitable Canadian sport system.”

The proposed research hub will comprise a unique network of researchers from the academic community, representatives from the sport community, government and NGO bodies, as well as gender equity experts from outside sport and universities. Together, they will seek to advance gender equity in sport with a special emphasis on participation and leadership.

“With respect to participation, we are referring to the engagement of girls and women as participants in all levels of sport – from recreational or local club levels, to provincial and national level sport,” says Kerr. “Leadership refers to women in positions such as coaching, officiating and sport administration at local, provincial and national levels of Canadian sport.”

The research hub will build databases of research associated with the two main themes of participation and leadership, and commission, deliver and support research projects that attempt to answer questions associated with these themes. Two other priorities – inadequate media coverage and gender-based violence – will be examined as barriers under the two main themes.

“We have unparalleled support for this proposed hub, as evidenced by the expressed interest from researchers from 10 universities across Canada, as well as letters of support from six key organizations in the sport sector at national and international levels,” says Kerr. “We also have unmatched research support and infrastructure at the University of Toronto, Canada’s top research intensive university.”

Luc Tremblay, an associate professor and associate dean of research at KPE, says he is thrilled for KPE to lead such an important research endeavour.

“Given KPE’s long history of fighting for the rights of participants in physical activity and sport, this hub will advance the faculty’s mission and research strengths.”

'A mindset that needs to change': U of T researcher promotes gender equality on the global stage

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 19:47:45 +0000

'A mindset that needs to change': U of T researcher promotes gender equality on the global stage

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 03/04/2020 - 14:47

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U of T's Grace De Souza is the vice-president of the Women in Science Network, a subgroup of the International Association of Dental Research (IADR), a global academic research association with over 10,000 members worldwide (photo by Jeff Comber)

Topic

Grace De Souza, an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry, wants to raise awareness about the impact of gender-based discrimination on the careers of female scientists, which she says is ubiquitous.

Even the language used in reference letters can lead to bias against women, says De Souza, who adds that her eyes were opened when she attended a U of T workshop on anti-discrimination and unconscious bias in grant reviews.

That led De Souza to get involved with the Women in Science Network, a subgroup of the International Association of Dental Research (IADR), a global academic research association with over 10,000 members worldwide.

“There is a mindset that needs to change. The least we can do is open up a conversation,” says De Souza, who was elected vice-president of the network in January and is now holding those conversations on a world stage.

The Women in Science Network formed in 2011 after a review conducted by the IADR showed that, despite gains, women in science continue to face barriers to equal pay, tenure, and grant success. They also receive significantly fewer major recognitions. Now boasting over 300 active members from institutions across North America and internationally, the network organizes events throughout the year that bring greater awareness to gender barriers and propose strategies to dismantle them.

Leadership is one such barrier. “Historically, we may have seen an increase of women in dentistry, in academia, but not in leadership roles,” says De Souza, who adds that the situation may be starting to change in part due to network members’ efforts to improve equal gender representation.

Current and past presidents of the IADR are women, for instance, marking an important new trend in the organization’s 100-year history. Only 10 women have ever been elected to its leadership, with the first taking office in 1981 and the second being elected in 1999. At the upcoming centennial meeting of the IADR in March, the network will host a mentorship event, with the goal of helping more women step into leadership positions.

A large part of the network’s mandate is to organize events that prompt dialogue on issues of gender. They run a successful symposia series, for example, that deals with topics ranging from harassment in academic institutions to the importance of scientific rigour, and published a special issue of the IADR’s Advances in Dental Research this past November.

Recognition platforms are another means to improve gender equality, according to De Souza. Awards are handed out by the Women in Science Network at the IADR’s annual meetings, and they have developed a program to fund research projects that promote better representation of female scientists.

But while these interventions are important for dentistry’s largest academic research organization, they shouldn’t stop there, says De Souza. “We are always looking for initiatives to improve the conversation,” she says, and those conversations should continue at the members’ home institutions, as well.

At the end of her tenure as vice president in 2021, De Souza will step into the role of president of the Women in Science Network.

Gender-diverse corporate boards reduce financial misconduct: U of T study

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 16:32:43 +0000

Gender-diverse corporate boards reduce financial misconduct: U of T study

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/12/2020 - 11:32

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Aida Sijamic Wahid, an associate professor of accounting at U of T Mississauga and the Rotman School of Management, wanted to study the original issue that sparked the push for more women on boards (photo courtesy of Rotman School of Management)

Topic

U of T Mississauga

Women

Putting women on the board of an organization is not only the fair thing to do, it leads to better financial reporting, research from the University of Toronto shows.

A new study of more than 6,000 U.S.-listed companies found that firms with a mix of women and men on their boards outperformed those where boards had no women or only one, with fewer financial reporting restatements and a lower incidence of fraud.

Diversity was key. The improvements levelled out once boards approached gender parity. That suggests the difference may come from a broadening of perspectives around the board table and not because women brought superior skills or other characteristics, said the study.

“If women are better at something than men, then we should see that, as we add more women to the board, each additional woman should produce more value. But that’s not the case,” said study author Aida Sijamic Wahid, an associate professor of accounting at U of T Mississauga and the Rotman School of Management.

Increasing the number of women on corporate boards was floated by regulators to reduce conformist board-thinking after the 2001 collapse of energy giant Enron in an accounting fraud scandal. It’s the reason why Wahid chose to focus on financial reporting as an indicator of board performance.

“I wanted to go back to the original issue behind why we even began thinking whether boards needed to be more diverse,” Wahid said.

She dug into data for 6,132 firms from 2000 to 2010, including information on board directors, financial restatements and restatement irregularities.

The benefits of more women continued to increase up to about three female directors before starting to diminish, with an average total board size of about nine directors.

Only about 20 companies, mostly in apparel or cosmetics, had boards with a majority of female directors at any time during the decade, according to the research. The percentage of firms with at least one female director dropped during the period, from 56 per cent to 54 per cent. The percentage of women on boards that had any women increased from 7.6 per cent to 9.1 per cent.

The results held for the periods before and after the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act tightened rules on corporate governance in the United States.

Although it’s been nearly two decades since gender diversity on boards was raised post-Enron, boards have been slow to change and research has been inconclusive. The state of California, in a controversial move, is requiring all publicly traded companies to have at least one woman on their boards by the end of this year and between one and three female directors by 2021.

“We’re still not there when it comes to diversity and gender diversity,” said Wahid. “The issue has created certain pressures from investors – they’re the ones moving the needle. But many firms are very slow to respond to it.”

The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics.

New interventions could help children accept gender-diverse peers, U of T study finds

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 05:00:00 +0000

New interventions could help children accept gender-diverse peers, U of T study finds

noreen.rasbach Fri, 11/15/2019 - 00:00

Cutline

Doug VanderLaan, assistant professor of psychology at U of T Mississauga, is an author of the study in the journal Child Development

Topic

Institute for Gender and the Economy

U of T Mississauga

New intervention techniques could help reduce bullying against children who don’t conform to gender stereotypes, a new study involving University of Toronto researchers suggests.

Initial findings show intervention could help reduce children’s bias towards their gender-diverse peers, leading to improved peer relations and better psychological outcomes for children who don’t conform to gender norms.

There are several areas where boys and girls may not follow gender norms, including what items they choose to play with (cars or dolls), their clothing and hairstyle preferences and what activities they engage in, be it rough-and-tumble play generally associated with boys or sociodramatic play, like playing kitchen, often attached to girls.

According to Doug VanderLaan, assistant professor of psychology at U of T Mississauga and a corresponding author of the recent study, research shows that children who don’t conform to gender stereotypes are more likely to be bullied or ostracized by their peers and are at greater risk of anxiety, depression and social withdrawal.

Gender nonconforming children, he says, are also more likely to have some history of self-harm.

“In thinking about how we might best ameliorate this issue, how might we best support the healthy psychological development of children of varying gender expressions, it occurred to me that maybe we could nip the problem in the bud by focusing on promoting better peer relations,” VanderLaan says.

He and fellow researchers in Hong Kong devised two studies. The first study confirmed that children exhibited a bias towards peers who don’t conform to gender stereotypes. It also found that gender-diverse boys were judged more harshly by boys, and older children seemed to be harsher in their judgment than younger children.

The second study challenged children’s thinking by showing positive characteristics of hypothetical children. These made-up children did well in school, were popular and were good at gender-neutral activities like catching caterpillars.

VanderLaan explains researchers were creating intervention techniques to help break down categories and perceived differences and demonstrate that children can vary in their interests.

“Maybe a boy might like dolls, but he might also like to play tackle football,” he says.

Researchers found that children in the intervention group wanted to do the same activities as their gender-diverse peers, were less likely to say what they were doing was wrong and were more likely to share with them.

“Generally speaking, the intervention was effective at promoting positive appraisals,” VanderLaan says. “I was happy to see it was effective, and it wasn’t just one variable or one outcome measure that was affected, it was actually several. That gave us more confidence in the results.”

The new findings could lead to ways to help promote and foster social inclusivity.

“If we want an equitable society where everyone has equal opportunities, that means getting rid of systematic disadvantages, and I think being systematically ostracized as a result of your behavioural preferences or the way you express yourself would be something we would want to address,” VanderLaan says.

Calling it a potential solution to a modern-day issue, VanderLaan cautions that more research is needed.

The study, published in the journal Child Development, was conducted by researchers at the University of Hong Kong, U of T Mississauga and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Hong Kong Research Grants Council Early Career Scheme, the U of T Connaught New Researcher Award and the University of Hong Kong.

Mansplaining: U of T expert on new solutions to a tiresome old problem

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 13:50:36 +0000

Mansplaining: U of T expert on new solutions to a tiresome old problem

noreen.rasbach Wed, 07/17/2019 - 09:50

Cutline

Most women have been mansplained at work. Rather than women figuring out ways to handle it, men should stop doing it and organizations should step in (photo by Shutterstock)

Sarah Kaplan

Topic

City & Culture

Rotman School of Management

The Conversation

Subheadline

The Conversation with Rotman's Sarah Kaplan

In 2008, author Rebecca Solnit’s now famous essay, Men Explain Things to Me, set off a firestorm.

Though Solnit didn’t use the term “mansplaining,” the essay is credited with birthing the term that’s now part of regular parlance. Women (and other underrepresented groups such as people of colour and non-binary people) had finally found a way to articulate that phenomenon they routinely experienced, particularly at work.

Men feel the need to explain something to a woman, even if the woman hasn’t asked for an explanation and often pertaining to something that’s directly in the woman’s area of expertise and not at all in the man’s. Or when the topic is about a woman’s own experience and the man wants to explain her experience to her.

Even women who are famous for their mastery of a domain find themselves being mansplained.

Sallie Krawcheck is seen in November of 2011 speaking at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association annual meeting (photo by Mark Lennihan/Associated Press)

Sallie Krawcheck, a former CEO of wealth management at Citibank and before that the CEO of Smith Barney investment advisers, says that venture capitalists interested in her new financial investment venture Ellevest mansplained financial advising to her.

We all have our own stories. Most women I know just roll their eyes knowingly when asked about mansplaining. Most of us experience it so often that we aren’t always even conscious it is happening.

‘Cluelessness’

Note, as Solnit does, that “mansplaining is not a universal flaw of the male gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck.”

But the mansplaining term has stuck. And research demonstrates that the feeling of being mansplained is, in fact, not just a feeling.

Studies show that in meetings, men speak more, and more powerful men speak even more. Men interrupt more, and are less likely than women to cede the floor when they are interrupted. Women worry (correctly) that if they fight to get their voices heard, they will experience backlash.

The blogosphere is filled with recommendations for how women should handle mansplaining when it happens: “7 Ways to Handle Mansplaining,” “How To Deal with a Mansplainer” and “How to Handle Mansplaining at Work.”

The recommendations are good – ignore the mansplainer, stand your ground, ask the mansplainer questions about their expertise and what they hope to accomplish by “explaining” the topic, explain mansplaining to the mansplainers, use other women as allies to stand up for you, and use as much humour as you can.

As with #MeToo and other efforts to point out the inequalities that women experience, many men feel attacked, even when women try to respond with humour, as feminist blogger Elle Armageddon did with her 2015 flow chart “Should You Explain Thing to a Lady?”

“Not all men” is the regular refrain. But, honestly, such protestations smack of an unwillingness to listen to the legitimate experiences of women in the workplace. And it’s unfair that while mansplaining is done by men to women, the solutions all seem to be about how women can address it – rather than how and why men should stop doing it.

It’s a further demand placed on women to solve the problems imposed on them by others. I’d like to take another tack.

Mansplaining eradication tactics

A mansplaining hotline would be great, but apparently it’s only available in Sweden (photo by Shutterstock)

In Sweden, a major union has set up a mansplainer hotline you can call to report offenders and receive advice and commiseration. But that’s not a resource available to all of us.

So what can potential mansplainers do? Armageddon’s advice is pretty good: If you aren’t an expert on a topic, maybe you don’t need to talk.

For those of you who fear you might be mansplainers, keep in mind – even if you are an expert, but the woman is an expert too and hasn’t asked for your advice – maybe you still just stay silent. What’s the harm in listening? You might learn something. Even if you speak a lot less than you do now, the research I cited above suggests that you still might be speaking more than the women in the room.

The point is, you can dial it back a lot and still speak your fair share about issues on which you are an expert and have something unique to contribute.

But mansplainers almost by definition can’t help themselves. The advice on self-restraint is bound to be ignored. So maybe we need to think about more structural solutions. In other words, what can organizations do to even the playing field?

‘High-testosterone settings’

As a professor of strategic management, I’ve thought about this a lot in my own teaching to MBA students. MBA programs have historically been pretty high-testosterone settings. I have an explicit practice to call on those students who are quiet, find out who the true experts are and shut down interrupters.

I also evaluate students on their contributions to the classroom learning experience, and those evaluations reward listening and building on the ideas of others (not just rehearsing their own lines in their minds while they are waiting to talk).

Organizations could replicate these practices. They could develop guidelines for meetings that require each person to share their point of view or instructions to the meeting leader to shut down mansplaining and support women who are speaking.

It is not enough, by the way, to simply extend the amount of time for questions or discussion with the hopes that women will speak up more or men will run out of things to say. Research experiments show that doesn’t work.

Further, performance evaluations could be adapted to sanction mansplaining and to reward listening and building on the ideas of other team members.

In short, we need to stop giving women advice on how to fix the inequalities and discrimination they face and instead look to the perpetrators to change their behaviour and to organizations to change workplace dynamics.

“Fixing the women” is a costly solution for women, and could result in companies losing valuable female employees. It will ultimately be ineffective without organizational change. Women shouldn’t be asked to “handle” mansplaining. Organizations should handle it for them.

Sarah Kaplan is a professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and the director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Breaking up the Old Boys club by elevating female coaches

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 17:45:22 +0000

Breaking up the Old Boys club by elevating female coaches

noreen.rasbach Thu, 03/07/2019 - 12:45

Cutline

Antonio Spurs head coach Greg Popovich has advocated for women in coaching. He’s pictured here with assistant coach Becky Hammon at a game against the Los Angeles Lakers in San Antonio, Feb. 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Darren Abate)

Jenessa Banwell

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education