Academic literature on the topic 'Gender-organisations-systems'

Gender Focal Persons (GFPs) are commonly recruited by organisations as part of institutional efforts to mainstream gender. Despite their wide usage, these structures often struggle to achieve the intended goals. The underlying factors that explain their limited success are not well understood; yet, this would inform strategies for institutionalising gender in research institutions. This paper traces the genesis and operationalisation of the gender focal person structures in Rwanda and Uganda national agricultural research organisations, to unearth factors influencing their performance. Results presented are based on document reviews and qualitative interviews with scientists, managers, and GFPs in the two organisations. We found that the GFPs hinged on individuals and donors, and operated in an ad hoc manner without streamlined procedures. The structures were not embedded in institutional frameworks, hence their low visibility within the organisations. They were characterized by informality, voluntarism, unclear terms of reference, and accountability frameworks. We conclude that the ineffective performance of the GFPs in both organisations is explained by the informal approach used to establish, operationalise, and nurture them. Institutionalising the structure would require that the pioneering champions and donors successfully negotiate the embedding of GFPs into the mainstream; eventually, guaranteeing allocation of adequate human and financial resources from national budgets, as well as the establishment of accountability systems.

Background:Over the past decade gender mainstreaming has gained visibility at global health organisations. The World Bank, one of the largest funders of global health activities, released twoWorld Development Reportsshowcasing its gender policies, and recently announced a $1 billion initiative for women’s entrepreneurship. However, the development of the Bank’s gender policies and its financing for gender programmes have never been systematically analysed by external researchers in the context of global health. We use the Bank as a case study of how global health organisations frame their gender policies and measure their success.Methods:We constructed a timeline of the Bank’s governance of gender, through a review of published articles, grey literature, and Bank documents and reports. Additionally, we performed the first health-focused analysis of two publicly available Bank gender project databases, and tracked the Bank's financing of gender projects in the health sector from 1985-2017.Results:The Bank’s gender policy developed through four major phases from 1972-2017: ‘women in development’ (WID), institutionalisation of WID, gender mainstreaming, and gender equality through ‘smart economics’. In the more inclusive of the two Bank project databases, gender projects comprised between 1.3% (1985-1989) and 6.2% (2010-2016) of all Bank commitments, which is significantly less than the Bank’s claim that 98% of its lending is gender informed. Most funding targeted middle-income countries and particular themes, including communicable diseases and health systems. Major gender-related trust funds were absent from both databases.Conclusion:The Bank focused most of its health sector gender projects on women’s and girls’ issues. It is increasingly embracing private sector financing of its gender activities, which may impact its poverty alleviation agenda. Measuring the success of gender mainstreaming in global health will require the Bank and global health organisations to reconsider their use of gender indicators.

This paper aims to attend the under-theorisation of gender within the Information Systems (IS) literature by adopting a critical and feminist approach to the organisational context of IS development and use. The IS are conceived of as innovations with theoretical concepts and observations for comprehending the innovation process advanced within Social Studies of Technology being described and applied to IS. Consequently, a conceptual framework for studying gender and IS is constructed by combining insights derived from: (1) gender and computing, concerning the differences and inequalities of development and use of IS; (2) gender and society concerning the existence of gendered spheres; (3) studies of gender and organisations concerning the social division of labour; and (4) gender and technology, concerning the masculinity of technology culture. The developed framework is tabulated, areas for future research suggested and potential research questions outlined. The latter employ examples from the field of nursing to illustrate their tangible application. The framework constitutes a contribution to IS research by providing access to additional explanations for organisational phenomena (such as user rejection); by deepening our understanding of the innovation process; by improving IS practice through increased awareness of social issues (especially gender); and by promoting further potential topics for IS researchers.

This study sought to establish the impact of leadership development on creating more socially just systems in which women’s rights and gender justice are realised – first by practicing the knowledge acquired as individuals and within their organisations, including movements for change within communities Specifically, the objective of the study was to explore or examine and document the extent which AWLI participants acquired new knowledge and skills and how the same manifested in the implementation of the post training activities including their community action plans, from an impact lens. The study is an exercise in feminist epistemology and ontology – analysis by doing – tracing and mapping the contributions of AWLI’s feminist movement in Uganda. The analysis comes from the ground up, reflecting the feminist commitments to self-awareness and reflexivity, generating new knowledge, building organisations and movements, and transforming society. The study conceptual framework borrows from Kirkpatrick Model (1996) four steps for evaluating learning. A mixed approach to the study was adopted where 21 AWLI participants were purposively targeted using an online self-administering survey with follow up interviews via skype calls. On knowledge acquisition, 97.0% interviewees reported that the training had imparted them with new knowledge and skills in feminist leadership. All interviewees reported that the training was useful and relevant in advancing their personal feminist development agenda while 90.9% found the training to be useful and relevant in advancing their organisation agenda. Additionally, all the interviewees reported to have implemented the training to advance their personal and organisational development agendas. Indeed, the participants acquired new knowledge and skills on transformational and feminist leadership, based on the feedback received. Evidence suggests that the AWLI participants have changed how they look at every occurrence in their life which has generally changed their perception hence becoming more optimistic in life. For young feminists, they have become more emphatic and more aware of the patriarchal social norms that exist in their societies. Additionally, there is demonstrable evidence that the participants have taken up leadership roles in championing women issues in their communities including building capacity of other women and appreciating other women. For young upcoming feminists this will go a long way in building a movement of young feminists who understand women’s human right issues, and a cadre of young feminist who can influence other young women hence building a strong movement at the community level. Evidence also suggest that some participants have gained confidence to publish feminist knowledge products. Self-awareness and instilled transformational and feminist leadership have had a direct impact in the organisations that the participants represent. Gender-focused programming has also been strengthened where gender-focused issues are integrated in programmes. For marginalised populations such as sex workers organisations, the training helped in building their capacity, especially on their rights. The mainstreaming of gender in recruitment and remuneration processes within organisations will ensure that organisations remain inclusive and gender conscious in their human resources packages. The AWLI also had an impact within the feminist ecosystem in Uganda where 8,885 were influenced.

This article analyses a spectacle, a wrestling match, that brings out the problem of violence against women and the role of activist organisations such as the Centro de Información y Desarrollo de la Mujer (CIDEM) to raise awareness among people and to influence the Bolivian state to change the gender of the law. In effect, it considers CIDEM’s vigilant role, by visualising cases of femicides in partnership with the press, is translated in wrestling matches. The article considers one such wrestling match I witnessed in El Alto, Bolivia, and argues that CIDEM’s vigilant role extends to overlooking and complementing the vigilant roles of the state and customary legal systems in El Alto that are unable to prevent femicides: women being killed by men because of their gender.

AbstractThe shift towards legally plural multicultural and pluri-national citizenship regimes in the Andes formally recognised indigenous peoples’ community-based governance systems. These tend to emphasise participation, deliberation and service to the collective, but are often criticised for discriminating against women. We argue that recent constitutional reforms and legislation combining recognition of collective rights claims with institutional guarantees for gender equality have in fact amplified indigenous women's different strategies of ‘negotiating with patriarchy’, allowing them to further the transformation of their organisations and ‘custom’. Such strategies are necessary because of the intersections of race, class and gendered exclusions that indigenous women experience, and possible because of the diverse and dynamic nature of community governance systems. Despite systemic and structural constraints on the guarantee of indigenous peoples’ rights, the actions of organised indigenous women over the last two decades point to new ways of imagining more plural, less patriarchal forms of citizenship.

Despite the enormous literature on federalism in constitutional design, and the growing attention to gender equality in constitutional design, there has been remarkably little attention paid to the interaction between the two. This article seeks to provide a summary of the existing literature on this intersection, to apply the insights of that literature to the case of Myanmar, and to offer a contribution concerning the theoretical connections between federalism and gender equality. The analysis generates four primary conclusions. First, federalism is inherently neither good nor bad for gender equality: it all depends on the details of the federal system and the context in which they are applied. Second, there are, nonetheless, some guidelines that can be gleaned from the experiences of countries around the world about the design elements that can make federalism more or less useful for promoting gender equality under different conditions. Third, applying these elements in the case of Myanmar suggests that women's organisations might make common cause with the ethnic minority groups that are negotiating with the government and the army over federalism issues because the women share with these groups certain goals with respect to federal systems. And fourth, there is a connection between gender and federalism, not at the pragmatic or design level, but at the theoretical level. This connection concerns the type of (ideal) orientation that is required of citizens in a federal system and the ways in which that orientation might be valuable for gender equality. It is, then, the character of federal citizens, rather than the federal system itself, that could be inherently beneficial to gender equality.

Summary The approach elaborated here is derived from feminist analyses which take seriously the notion that gender relations are social constructions. Using the metaphor of theatre, the article proposes an analysis which takes meaning systems as well as practices seriously. From this point of view, both the mode of regulation and the societal paradigm depend upon actors' strategies in creating their representational systems and thereby constructing their collective identities. Besides, contrary to studies that reduce regulation to the wage relation, this analysis points to the importance of many different political organisations and identities. In so doing, the argument provides a way of understanding why it is that some historical times are more open to recognising marginalised actors' demands for greater power while other moments ignore their claims by silencing their voices.

Background:Over the past decade gender mainstreaming has gained visibility at global health organisations. The World Bank, one of the largest funders of global health activities, released twoWorld Development Reportsshowcasing its gender policies, and recently announced a $1 billion initiative for women’s entrepreneurship. We summarise the development of the Bank’s gender policies and analyse its financing of gender projects in the health sector. This article is intended to provide background for future research on the Bank’s gender and global health portfolio.Methods:First, we constructed a timeline of the Bank’s gender policy development, through a review of published articles, grey literature, and Bank documents and reports. Second, we performed a health-focused analysis of publicly available Bank gender project databases, to track its financing of health sector projects with a gender ‘theme’ from 1985-2017.Results:The Bank’s gender policy developed through four major phases from 1972-2017: ‘women in development’ (WID), institutionalisation of WID, gender mainstreaming, and gender equality through ‘smart economics’. In the more inclusive Bank project database, projects with a gender theme comprised between 1.3% (1985-1989) and 6.2% (2010-2016) of all Bank commitments. Most funding targeted middle-income countries and particular health themes, including communicable diseases and health systems. Major gender-related trust funds were absent from both databases. The Bank reports that 98% of its lending is ‘gender informed’, which indicates that the gender theme used in its publicly available project databases is poorly aligned with its criteria for gender informed projects.Conclusion:The Bank focused most of its health sector gender projects on women’s and girls’ issues. It is increasingly embracing private sector financing of its gender activities, which may impact its poverty alleviation agenda. Measuring the success of gender mainstreaming in global health will require the Bank to release more information about its gender indicators and projects.

This article highlights a number of themes useful in the gendered analysis of democratic consolidation in Latin America by means of a comparative analysis of Argentina and Chile. It starts from the assumption that much of the work on democratisation in Latin America – both orthodox and the literature concentrating on women and transitions – produced up until now, has been too voluntaristic in its approach. It argues that what is needed, particularly in the study of democratic consolidation, is an analysis not only of the impact of women and women's organisations on institutions and structures but also of how these institutions and structures can shape and change gender relations and different women's activities. Any gendered analysis of democratic consolidation must begin by examining the terms of transition which, while they can be subject to some renegotiation later, affect the nature of the subsequent system and the space available to different actors. It is argued that a number of characteristics of the post-transition system are significant: first the impact of more arbitrary populist or presidential systems, second the importance of women's organising both inside and outside the state and party systems and third the existence of an institutionalised party system.

In recent years, government organisations are expressing a growing interest in the uptake of eProcurement systems in order to achieve many of the benefits that their counterparts in the private sector have reported. These systems represent a specific instance of internet-based inter-organisational initiatives that streamline organisational purchasing processes and facilitate electronic exchange of transactions and other procurement related documents between organisations and their suppliers. Although some literature exists on the adoption of e-procurement systems within the government sector, relatively little has been focused on the outcomes of these systems particularly within the Australian local government context. Furthermore, much of the attention of the existing eProcurement literature is on understanding adoption decisions of these systems from the perspective of senior management, and few research efforts have been made to examine how employees who actually use these systems perceive the benefits arising from these systems. In addition, although the role of demographic characteristics of users is recognised in the innovation adoption and broader IS/IT adoption literatures, it is not clearly known how the demographic characteristics of employees (who interact with such systems) may influence their perceptions about eProcurement benefits. To address this gap in the literature, we analyse the views captured from sixty employees working in three large city councils located in the state of Victoria, Australia. The findings indicate that the outcomes of eProcurement systems adoption were largely seen in a positive light as the employees reported favourably about the attainment of benefits from their use of these systems. More specifically, efficiency improvement and establishing control were perceived as the two most important benefits. However, except user type, popular demographic characteristics of employees (e.g. gender, job role, working experience at councils) were not related to their perceptions of eProcurement benefits. These findings offer limited support for the views expressed in the existing innovations and IS/IT adoption literatures. The implications of these findings are discussed, and future directions of research are proposed.

The UK labour market is dramatically changing, with rapid technological innovations alongside globalisation where organisations are required to place a premium on human and intellectual capital. The demand for labour is outstripping supply, and businesses are increasingly dependent on their ability to attract, invest in and develop their workforce (Kingsmill, 2003). However, a recent comparative report of the information technology (IT) workforce in Holland, Germany and the UK indicates that women are haemorrhaging out of the IT sector (Platman & Taylor, 2004). Given that presently there is an IT specialist’s skills shortage of 18.4% (IER/IFF, 2003), and female IT managers represent a mere 15% of ICT managers, 30% of IT operations technicians and 11% of IT strategy planning professionals (EOC, 2004a), this suggests that the ICT industry is not equipped for equality and diversity at work. Despite many years of egalitarian rhetoric and 3 decades after the UK Equal Pay Act (1970) was introduced, women still receive on average 18% less than that of their male counterparts working full-time and 41% less than men when working part-time hours. The ESF-funded DEPICT project seeks to identify pay discrimination experienced by women in ICT at a national level throughout England. An important aim is to highlight the impact of pay and reward discrimination has on the underrepresentation of women in the ICT labour market. From this study, we hope to more clearly understand the reasons for the gender pay gap, particularly in the ICT sector; and the impact this has on women’s entry and retention to occupations where they are already severely underrepresented. Equal pay is an issue for all; it’s unjust, unlawful and impacts on social justice, equality and economic performance (EOC, 2001b). Pay is a major factor affecting relationships at work; distribution and levels of pay and benefits affect efficiency of organisations, workforce morale and productivity. It is vital for organisations to develop pay systems that reward workers fairly for the work they perform (ACAS, 2005).

We stand at the dawn of the greatest evolutionary disruption in the potential for large-scale human learning and development through the rapid convergence of truly transformational communication, cooperation and collaboration technologies and capabilities. The knowledge force is increasingly made up of very diverse employee profiles with differences in not only age and gender, but changing cultural norms and values, pervasive belief systems and large disparities in educational backgrounds. Highly individualised learning styles and behavioural characteristics and a host of other potential societal learning dividers, also magnify the challenge of building truly reflexive and responsive high-impact learning organisations. This chapter introduces the pressing need for a significant step-change in the way we approach company and community learning on a large scale and attempts to offer research-based insights and empirical evidence into media-enriching solutions such as mobile knowledge mentoring which will change the nature and experience of learning forever.

The emergence of coronavirus led to evident consequences for the global economy. During the previous financial crisis, organisations have already determined the elements of crisis management so they could met the new corona crisis readily. Global changes, like the current pandemic situation, provide a different view toward the future expectations. The pandemic has caused new way of functioning under special circumstances such as various restrictions in many European countries, restrictions on people’s mobility and other novelties that have encountered for the first time. Characteristics of this crisis include novelty and pressure in a business environment, which can reveal various vulnerabilities in organisations. Managers were affected by major business changes, and there appeared a need for rapid reorganisation of the current way of functioning. Management had to introduce new control systems that refer to their strategies for exchanging information and decision-making. In general, each crisis is a new opportunity for seeking modern and appropriate models and tools for business improvement. When business situations are challenging, managers are more oriented toward controlling. Therefore, organisations that focus on traditional management models are not very successful in normal circumstances, and even less so in a crisis. This study aims to examine the extent of the structure and function of management control systems in pandemic conditions in Croatian organisations. An overview of current systems in organizations was given, as well as management challenges of the pandemic situations. This study includes the analysis of management control system during the pandemic times. The research was conducted using survey method what referred to analyses of strategic plans, performance evaluation systems, and management controls for performance evaluation in Croatian organisations. The factor analysis of the main components was conducted in order to examine the contribution of predictor variables in explaining the broad-scope management control system. In order to examine the contribution of gender, age, work experience, education, company size, aggregation, timeliness, and integration for explaining of broad-scope the management control system hierarchical regression analysis was conducted. The results confirm that integration is significant predictor in the crisis controlling model, but at the same time, when the integration and timeliness should have positive connection, greater timeliness does not increase to the greater availability. This withdraws the conclusion that uncertainty of environment extents the speed of business processes. Despite of the equal integration during pandemic crises the remote working conditions caused the decrease of the promptness of reporting collected information, which requires new models of controlling in unpredictable situations.

Living in the 21st century does not necessarily mean that men and women are treated fairly and respectfully regarding their respective needs and thus in a gender equitable way. On the one hand, women still do three times the amount of unpaid care work, earn 18% less for the same work, make up the minority of C-Suite Level leaders with only 22% compared to 78% of men (which has become even worse due to the Covid-19 Pandemic) and have to deal with issues such as the glass ceiling or glass cliff which prevent their careers from flourishing, to name a few issues. On the other hand, studies by experts conducted in the field of gender equity have shown that women were rated as more effective leaders during and before a crisis, that female participation in the workforce could add between 12-18 trillion dollars to global GDP and increase profits of companies whilst reducing turnover rates and improving productivity as well as employee satisfaction, therefore potentially benefitting society as a whole. To understand why the world has not become gender equitable yet despite the many benefits it would provide, the research conducted in this paper includes academic primary and secondary research, an international literature review, 13 individual interviews with top level managers and/or diversity, equity and inclusion experts (DEI) as well as a global survey with 66 respondents. The results led to the conclusion that there is a need for a shift away from the patriarchal system towards a gender equitable society, which can be achieved with the help of the Global Gender Equity Model (GGEM). The GGEM is a new conceptual model for understanding and describing the implementation of the factors that create gender equitable nations. It is based on four socioeconomic pillars (People, Economy, Education, Governance) aligned with ESG (Environment, Social Governance) criteria adopted by private and public organizations. The four pillars of the GGEM model blend the traditional corporate and government systems of global nations with the current need for individual and collective accountability, collaboration as well as transparency and free flow of information. These pillars were found to be associated with equitable environments and can be seen as both interdependent and positively reinforcing of each other. This means the relative strength of any one pillar has the potential to either positively or negatively influence national gender equity. The GGEM uses the principles behind these pillars to develop and deliver an assessment tool and guidelines that are holistic in their approach to help transform nations from their current inequitable state. The model has been developed to benefit any organization by enacting some or all of these principles no matter their location or the path selected to achieving true gender equity. The integration of the GGEM model with the ESG index has been designed to incentivise the adaptation of the model towards achieving faster and higher organizational ESG scoring. The paper also presents the limitations of the model at its current stage and areas of further research which can support it with technologies and processes that can give adaptation efficiency and implementation consistency.