Gender statistics and studies on gendering mechanisms have been developing over recent years on two parallel tracks. This research reveals the need to rethink the standard indicators used in European ...comparative analyses to identify (1) gender-related mechanisms responsible for the production and reproduction processes of gender asymmetries, (2) their specificities in different local contexts, and (3) the profound transformations that have characterized the academies and the research system in Europe in recent years. The paper analyses the data on the composition of Italian academia provided by the Italian Ministry of Education, universities and research from a gender perspective. The introduction of the glass door index, specifically designed to measure gendering processes taking place in the recruitment stages in Italian academia, discloses new forms of gender segregation in Italian universities after the last academic reform (Law 240/2010), despite the emphasis placed on the neutral and meritocratic criteria of the new recruitment and career progression rules.
The paper presents an analysis of the impact of Law 240/2010, known as Gelmini reform, on academic recruitment in the Italian system, in terms of gender equality. In analogy with the Glass Ceiling ...Index, that gives a measure of difficulties for women in moving into highest positions, The Glass Door Index is defined to quantify gender asymmetry in the access to tenured positions in academia. Subverting the received view, according to which equal opportunity in access to academic and research career is no more an issue, the analysis of data provided by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research (MIUR) reveals significant differences between the careers of women and men at the earliest career stage, and shows the strengthening of a gendered selection in the access to the academic profession to the disadvantage of women, after the implementation of the reform.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, universities worldwide have provided continuity to research and teaching through mandatory work from home. Taking into account the specificities of the Italian academic ...environment and using the Job Demand-Resource-Recovery model, the present study provides, through an online survey, for the first time a description of the experiences of a large sample of academics (N = 2365) and technical and administrative staff (N = 4086) working in Italian universities. The study analyzes the main differences between genders, roles or work areas, in terms of some job demands, recovery experiences, and outcomes, all important dimensions to achieve goals 3, 4, and 5 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The results support the reflections on gender equality measures in universities and provide a general framework useful for further in-depth analysis and development of measures in order to improve well-being (SDG 3), quality of education (SDG 4), and gender equality (SDG 5).
For some decades, science communication has been at the center of the academic reflection articulating the debate on the role of science in contemporary society and its renewing need for legitimacy. ...Today different strategies coexist in communication activities promoted by scientific institutions and researchers to communicate the results of their work. Such communication models seem to be overtaken by disintermediation processes and by new forms of mediation implemented by digital platforms. This paper reflects on the recent debate on pseudoscience. It analyses the phenomenon in connection to the more general transformation of technoscientific governance. Through complex mediation and negotiation activities, changes in scientific governance transform both scientific knowledge and practices and the processes through which policy is looking for technoscientific legitimation, while science itself is being continuously constrained to look for its own legitimacy in the public arena (through fund raising and trust seeking). The intersection between pseudoscience and tensions inside the governance of technoscience identifies three main issues: the role of scientific expertise in society, trust in technoscience, and the relationship between technoscience and democracy. These concerns define the main current challenges of technoscience communication.
For some decades, science communication has been at the center of the academic reflection articulating the debate on the role of science in contemporary society and its renewing need for legitimacy. ...Today different strategies coexist in communication activities promoted by scientific institutions and researchers to communicate the results of their work. Such communication models seem to be overtaken by disintermediation processes and by new forms of mediation implemented by digital platforms. This paper reflects on the recent debate on pseudoscience. It analyses the phenomenon in connection to the more general transformation of technoscientific governance. Through complex mediation and negotiation activities, changes in scientific governance transform both scientific knowledge and practices and the processes through which policy is looking for technoscientific legitimation, while science itself is being continuously constrained to look for its own legitimacy in the public arena (through fund raising and trust seeking). The intersection between pseudoscience and tensions inside the governance of technoscience identifies three main issues: the role of scientific expertise in society, trust in technoscience, and the relationship between technoscience and democracy. These concerns define the main current challenges of technoscience communication.
In recent decades, deep transformations have been reshaping academia and the research environment. Reforms in funding structures, research assessment, and accountability procedures are still ...redesigning the practices in academic work, redefining research schedules, and determining relevant effects on scientific career paths. Despite European policies efforts towards the development of more responsible and inclusive research, the processes emerging from these transformations of academic contexts are producing new inequalities and strengthening old ones. New rules in the recruitment and career progression of researchers reduce, in some instances, and intensify, in others the pre-existing gender gaps, with varying impact on researchers, according to their belonging to different cohorts, gender or minority groups, and on universities, according to size and regional contexts. Adopting an intersectional perspective, contributions in this volume focus on gendering processes in Italian academia. Altogether, they succeed in accomplishing a double result: to unveil the gendered character of academic and research practices and to trace emergent paths towards their reshaping into more equitable and inclusive ones.
Since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic concerned groups of people have produced knowledge refused by institutional science of how to manage public health and individual well-being in ...everyday pandemic life. Research in science and technology studies seeks to understand the social and cultural conditions under which contestation over scientific knowledge claims occurs. In the Italian case, 'refused' knowledge claims emerging outside institutionalised science play a performative role in questioning the current models for managing individual and public health. Such refused claims ascribe novel meanings to the COVID-19 pandemic and orient the ways in which people manage their own health and well-being during their everyday life. Two interrelated dimensions are at stake in the production and enactment of refused knowledge: (1) how experiential expertise is mobilised to reframe one's body in a process of self-care, thus validating a corpus of refused knowledge through personal experience, and (2) how narratives demarcate between a body of refused knowledge and the prevalent biomedical paradigms as a way of gaining experiential epistemic autonomy.
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