Gendered Excellence in the Social Sciences

Gendered innovation in political science

This workshop explores gendered innovation in political science. The aim is to identify specific areas in which gendered research has enriched the discipline and sharpened its focus.

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Restructuring gender inequality in the crisis

How is the crisis restructuring gender inequality? The complex inequalities on which the financial crisis draws, and which the development of global finance exacerbates, intersect in diverse ways.

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Marilyn Waring and the United Nations System of National Accounts

How can economics aid our understanding of how gender works in society and of the relationship between market and non-market activity?

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Relational autonomy and epistemic injustice

Philosophy is a striking outlier among the humanities for its gender disparities and for the resistance in some quarters of the discipline to feminist concerns.

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Women’s absence from positions of decision-making power: feminist conundrums in defining the problem of representation

This lecture considers the best way to tackle the problem of women’s absence from positions of power using a feminist approach.

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About the project

Gender equity has still not been realised, despite decades of activism, policy and research. In some of the social sciences women make up less than 15 per cent of the professoriate. Yet these are the disciplines that should most aid our understanding of how gender works in society. This project asks what impact women’s limited influence and status in these key fields of research has upon our capacity to grapple with the social and political changes necessary for progress toward gender equality. In doing so, it builds persuasive arguments about how and why gender matters in the social sciences.

The project takes a new approach to advancing gender equity within Australian society by asking how well we can understand the problems if we do not first address patterns of gender bias within the social sciences. The project provides a complex picture of why social science disciplines differ so markedly in this respect and the costs for disciplinary innovation and social change. It also provides case-studies of gender innovation in the social sciences and its benefits.