Gender equality by mobilising actors Exploring how organisational actors could be mobilised to contribute to gender equality within the gender mainstreaming strategy. An action research within a railway sector organisation.
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2021-01-20
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en
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Gender mainstreaming is introduced by the Council of Europe (1998) as an innovative and structural strategy to improve existing gender equality policies. However, theoretical and methodological knowledge about the implementation part of how policy makers could mobilise regular actors to become engaged and to contribute to gender equality is deficient and understudied. The aim of this research is to develop insights into how organisational actors can be mobilised to become engaged in the gender equality oriented change in order to contribute to the gender mainstreaming strategy. Action research enabled the researcher to actively intervene within the change process since the emphasis of the research design is on problem solving. The data analysis shows that the role of an expert, like a diversity professional, is indispensable in the beginning phase of gender mainstreaming. The following four features are important to mobilise actors that will encourage the gender equality oriented change: to explore the organisational context in order to characterise possible problem issues, to educate the actors in their knowledge about gender equality, to create room for discussion, and to activate the actors to take further actions. In this research, the gender mainstreaming strategy resulted in several IT managers involved in the research context and in a new diversity and inclusion team that, among others, strive to achieve gender equality.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen