Gender Parity within the Gender—Sustainability Paradigm: A Case Study on Management Structures of the Romanian Academia
, Bogdan Băcanu 1, Carmen Elena Anton 1, Adriana Veronica Litra 1, Steliana Busuioceanu 1 and Alexandra Doroș 2
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study is very interesting and relevant. Still, I have some comments to the authors that would certainly improve the relevance of the gathered data and its analysis:
1) it is not clear how these concepts are related - gender parity and sustainability (the literature review is relevant but from your data what to you conclude about the importance of gender equality in the academia and sustainability in general? What are you referring to when you use the word sustainability? The economic dimension? The social dimension? It is not clear how you measure this...)
Clarifying:
You conclude that “If we consider sustainability as being materialized in gender parity, which would mean optima usage of human resources, then our study shows that Romanian universities are placed in a constructive situation, marked by the existence of a female majority of staff in 26 out of 47 universities.”(lines 942 - 944) – and that is it.
So maybe your research is more about how Romanian Academia is progressing in terms of SDG 5, and not so on the relation between Gender Parity and Sustainability (this could be solved by adjusting a bit the title:
Gender Parity within the Sustainability Paradigm: Case Study on the Romanian Academia (just a suggestion)
2) It is true that in terms of staff in general things are in general balanced but in what concerns positions of power within the academia the situation is quite different – although being the majority in the academia women access to leadership positions is quite low – this reflects the typical stereotyped academia where women are in the base of the pyramid and men on the top – why? Do they not apply to leadership positions? Why do they not apply? It seems that the academic career of men and women are very different… This is not dicussed in the literature review - so that you can base your conclusions on research. You only discuss the quotas... but the quotas don’t alter female and male stereotyped roles in society that affect careers (like work life balance that is heavier for women, bias in progression, women not being the "perfect" worker availabe 24/7 as men are).
3) Check EIGE definition of Gender stereotypes: “used to justify and maintain the historical relations of power of men over women as well as sexist attitudes that hold back the advancement of women”.
And now your data:
Teaching staff – balanced (maybe you should add % to the data in table 1, like this is quite difficult to grasp the results – the reader should not have to make the calculations like I had to do) – about 49% female
Rector – 6% female (or even 8%) – what is happening in terms of female accessing top positions????? How do you explain this? You believe merit and free vote represent a nonbiased situation – still something is holding back the advancement of women….
Senators – the decision boards – 6% - 12% female (this doesn’t represent the teaching staff where about 49% are women…)
As the importance of the position within the academia decreases the % of women increases….
The most pro-female group of universities, as general structure G is that of the medical universities –(line 867, 868) a very stereotyped distribution where female are associated to care duties…
Your data suggest a very unbalanced academia in terms of gender equality...
Still you conclude (...in Romanian academia, showing a natural inclination of voting structures towards meritorious candidates, without any gender limitation or bias) (last lines)
Please check here how to analyse gender inequality in the academia:
https://eige.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2016.5791_eige_gender_equality_in_academia.pdf
Please check these projects related to gender awareness:
https://www.plotina.eu/
https://www.superaproject.eu/what/
4) The conclusion should include more reflection on the data (within a gender perspective)- and maybe raising some question for future research to understand why the gender unbalance is so high (which happens in the majority of countries....)
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your feedback, and kind advice. We are most grateful for this opportunity to improve our paper under your experienced guidance; we have tried to comply with your valuable suggestions through punctual responses and paper adjustments, as required.
As an introduction and in a strive to clarify our position, we would like to make the following overall comments regarding our initial approach and intentions:
Our research starts from the axiomatic premise that gender equality is a condition associated with the social dimension of the sustainability. We have considered this axiom to be valid in the tertiary education institutions, as well as in its segment represented by public (non-military) universities (all kind). We reflect in our research approach that gender parity is a first step towards reaching gender equality. Within this conceptual frame, gender parity is primarily analysed at the level of the organization, starting from the premise that parity means a full use of the human resource. Subsequently, the analysis is protracted to the level of its management structures, following the logic in which attaining a parity status to these structures will facilitate reaching parity at the level of the organization; furthermore, this would induce the rest of conditions related to achieving organizational gender equality. We deliberately choose the gender parity approach, which means focusing on gender shares, proportions and associated (quantifiable) direct mechanisms, in order to reduce controversial approaches as to: political opinions and issues, gender stereotypes, historical and cultural contexts, etc. This approach is inspired by the specific methodology utilized in the She figures Report, which presents facts and findings in order to depict a state of affairs at a certain point in time. In the same reports, the facts are accompanied by swift explanations, without many qualitative interpretations. We would also like to stress out that in our research we consider that women (as in teaching staff) enjoy full capacity to decide what benefits them in terms of hierarchical structures. In addition, we consider that their voting behaviour (for executive positions), as a statistical outcome, is the result of wisdom rather than result of manipulation or constraints that may affect their choice. It is why we have focused on statistical results and avoided presumptions with no statistical relevance. In the same line of thinking, our intention is to discuss the gender quotas instrument in a neutral-positive manner. This means that we avoid formulating critiques related to the fact that achieving parity objectives is to be reached by limiting the democratic vote, as in the case of Austria or Sweden, according to [54, 55 – references in text]. Also, we have avoided preconceived ideas guided by the so-called „gender paradox” [Stoet and Geary (2018) explain the gender-equality paradox in the STEM area as: „ [...]countries with a higher level of gender equalitytend to have less gender balance in fields such as STEM, than less equal countries. This research found that while, on average, girls perform better than or equal to boys on STEM measures, the relative gap between the two increases as the gender equality of the country increases..”] or specific approaches in the US [Rosenblum (2008)] in which it is stressed out that „in U.S. law and society, we are quota-phobic, vehemently resisting an idea alleged to be based on political correctness in place of merit”. Subsequently, we refer to the merit-gender relationship, guided by the axiomatic idea that women (as well as men) are in full capacity to reflect in their voting options a gender-merit balance that benefits them. In other words, we have found a statistically factual state according to which the election of members of the university hierarchy was NOT guided by gender. The cross-vote reality: male elects females and female elects males
is interpreted in our study as guided by merit and not by considerations related to gender, queen bee syndrome, glass ceiling type of barriers, or non-democratic electoral mechanisms. A final comment regarding the "cross vote": if we take a statistical population divided into two categories A and B, with the gender ratio x and y, where x is larger than y (x + y = 100%) and after the vote to elect its representatives the result presents a structure x1 and y1 (x1 + y1 = 100%), where x is higher than x1, as a percentage, then it means that those in category A voted B, in a higher proportion than the other way around.
Thanking you again for your valuable suggestions in the review report, we will now respond to each of your remarks.
Point 1: is not clear how these concepts are related – gender parity and sustainability (the literature review is relevant but from your data what to you conclude about the importance of gender equality in the academia and sustainability in general? What are you referring to when you use the word sustainability? The economic dimension? The social dimension? It is not clear how you measure this...). Clarifying: You conclude that “If we consider sustainability as being materialized in gender parity, which would mean optima usage of human resources, then our study shows that Romanian universities are placed in a constructive situation, marked by the existence of a female majority of staff in 26 out of 47 universities.”(lines 942 - 944) – and that is it. So maybe your research is more about how Romanian Academia is progressing in terms of SDG 5, and not so on the relation between Gender Parity and Sustainability (this could be solved by adjusting a bit the title: Gender Parity within the Sustainability Paradigm: Case Study on the Romanian Academia (just a suggestion)
Response 1. The relationship between gender and sustainability is explained in the introduction, with an emphasis on the social dimension. On the other hand, your suggestion in amending the title is extremely useful and we have taken it with gratitude. We have thus changed the title to put a clearer focus and to emphasize the quantitative approach associated with a state of affairs of the Romanian universities at one point in time.
Point 2: It is true that in terms of staff in general things are in general balanced but in what concerns positions of power within the academia the situation is quite different – although being the majority in the academia women access to leadership positions is quite low – this reflects the typical stereotyped academia where women are in the base of the pyramid and men on the top – why? Do they not apply to leadership positions? Why do they not apply? It seems that the academic career of men and women are very different… This is not dicussed in the literature review - so that you can base your conclusions on research. You only discuss the quotas... but the quotas don’t alter female and male stereotyped roles in society that affect careers (like work life balance that is heavier for women, bias in progression, women not being the "perfect" worker availabe 24/7 as men are).
Response 2. We discuss the gender structure of staff, with reference to the idea that a sustainable use implies a numerical equivalence between the genders. The reference figure is 49%, which is emphasized as percentage in table 1, last line (F/Total %). The figure should be correlated with the data from the rows 497-502. These figures show that there are no barriers in accessing academic careers. They also show, in conjunction with the elements associated with the Romanian legislation and those regarding the election of university management structures (heads and bodies), that there are no barriers to applications or to the voting processes. We have not identified anything of the kind during our investigation.
Point 3: Check EIGE definition of Gender stereotypes: “used to justify and maintain the historical relations of power of men over women as well as sexist attitudes that hold back the advancement of women”. And now your data:Teaching staff – balanced (maybe you should add % to the data in table 1, like this is quite difficult to grasp the results – the reader should not have to make the calculations like I had to do)– about 49% female, Rector – 6% female (or even 8%) – what is happening in terms of female accessing top positions????? How do you explain this? You believe merit and free vote represent a nonbiased situation – still something is holding back the advancement of women….Senators – the decision boards – 6% - 12% female (this doesn’t represent the teaching staff where about 49% are women…) As the importance of the position within the academia decreases the % of women increases….The most pro-female group of universities, as general structure G is that of the medical universities –(line 867, 868) a very stereotyped distribution where female are associated to care duties…Your data suggest a very unbalanced academia in terms of gender equality... Still you conclude (...in Romanian academia, showing a natural inclination of voting structures towards meritorious candidates, without any gender limitation or bias) (last lines).Please check here how to analyse gender inequality in the academia: https://eige.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2016.5791_eige_gender_equality_in_academia.pdf. Please check these projects related to gender awareness: https://www.plotina.eu/ and https://www.superaproject.eu/what/
Response 3. We have explained the voting behaviour of the teaching staff, in the sense of establishing correlations between the different structures of relevant bodies and elected positions. Our research is strictly focused on the moment of voting and exercising the option for the alternatives that are offered to the voter. Given the volume of research, which involves all the categories of management of the Romanian universities (i.e. R, VR, D, VD, S without sampling but studying the entire data) and its predominantly quantitative nature, indeed we did not consider the research of the psycho-sociological causes for which there are not enough applications for a given function. However, this is a very good idea for our next study, and we thank you very much for bringing it up. In short, to address your observation, those were the reasons why we did not scrutinize the literature related to the motivation for the applications.
As pointed out in the preamble, we believe that women know better what to choose, which involves when and where to apply. This better knowledge could be explained by the fact that women apply less for rector positions than for managerial positions, because the "Effects/ Efforts ratio" is higher in the second case than in the first. In other words, cost-benefit analysis can yield a result other than the classic top-down positioning for administrative functions. In view of these considerations, applying for D positions may be surprisingly seen as less interesting than applying for DD (please see acronyms in the text). Same with VR compared to VD.
In relation to the stereotype of the “perfect worker 24/7”, indeed discussion would worthwhile in many other activity fields, but in the in the case of the Romanian academia it simply doesn’t apply. The reason is essentially due to its characteristics regarding the specific usage of the human resource and the normative hours.
Otherwise, we did check the definition of Gender Stereotypes, thank you very much for indicating the source and we have used it in our text review.
About our data:
A) We do calculate percentages and the one referred to in your comment is to be found in the table 1(last line). B) The low number of female rectors is indeed statistically surprising especially in the context of a significant “feminization” of universities’ staff, yet even feminine majorities prefer to elect male as rectors. We were unable to find significant arguments to explain what can stop (especially) a feminine majority to issue and promote a female candidacy and elect her as rector. The only explanation we would bring up is related to the previously mentioned "Effects/ Efforts ratio" and the associated reasoning. C) About senators: here we discuss about 49% women who elect 39% senators. The difference is explained by the fact that senate is perceived as an “annex” of the rector, both in decisions as in power structure. Being more utilized in its “validating” function mode, the Senate is thus placing itself as a less interesting structure to function within. On the contrary (for example) the same 49% elect 47% women in the FC, thus better mirroring the gender structure of the total personnel. D) We did address and explained the feminine structure of the medical universities group and gave reasons for which this is not due to the mentioned stereotype (please see lines 793-799). In short, it has to do with the fact that in Romania, this activity field is one of the most competitive as in income as well as unquantifiable advantages (such as social position, or “geographical” flexibility).
Point 4: The conclusion should include more reflection on the data (within a gender perspective)- and maybe raising some question for future research to understand why the gender unbalance is so high (which happens in the majority of countries....)
Response 4. Regarding our general conclusion, please let us resume the figures about gender parity (as a first step towards gender equality):
The Romanian academia is unbalanced only when we discuss about rectors elected directly by all teaching staff, meaning 49% women. The women majority from 26 universities chooses to elect the rector by direct vote and then elects a male rector in 24 of the 26 universities with feminine majority. Romania holds the first position related to glass ceiling impact and senior academic grades (A and B) for women in EU, however these facts prove not to be relevant for the process of electing the managerial structures. Overall rounded indexes (average for all universities, meaning that the figures include” accidents” like in the case of medical universities or agronomic universities) are the following: IxG= 49% IxDD=45% IxFC=47% IxS=39% IxVR=41% IxD=41% IxVD=47%
In view of these figures, our conclusions (that we have updated) may not seem surprising.
As a final remark, we would like to stress out that we did include all your suggestions in our revised version of the text, and we will absolutely continue to study this fascinating topic in our next research.
We thank you again, for everything.
Reviewer 2 Report
Derived from the Sustainable Development “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, the article analyses the representation of women and men in leading positions and boards of Romanian universities. Calculation the proportion of women and gender indices, the authors compare the gender composition of elected and appointed positions and boards to the teaching staff and the relevant governing bodies on the basis of individual universities and groups of universities. They conclude that the Romanian universities demonstrate sustainability in regard to gender equality; thus, affirmative actions or gender quotas are not necessary.
The issue of the article – the participation of women and men in leading positions and boards in academia – is highly relevant. A detailed statistical analysis, building on data on individual universities and different positions and boards, may give important and new insights to this issue.
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t rely on a theoretical reflection on gender equality and doesn’t reflect relevant publications on this issue (Wroblewski 2019 in: Soc.Sci; White / Burkinshaw 2019 in: Soc.Sci; Read / Kehm 2016 in: Studies Higher Education; Lee / Doyeon 2014 In: The Social Science Journal; Peterson 2011 In: Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management; Neale / Özkanlı 2010 In: Gender and Education) or more generally on gender in academia. This leads to many misleading interpretations of the data:
Comparing the participation of women to elected positions or boards with the staff or relevant other bodies, the authors suppose that women should vote for women. If the proportion of women in the body is lower than in the relevant staff category, the authors even blame women for not voting in their favour (608/609; 718). But the data don’t provide any indication who votes for whom or on the preferences of the voters. Furthermore, the gender of candidates, informal exclusion mechanism, or voting preferences besides the gender of the candidates is not taken into consideration.
The relative high participation of women in appointed positions is interpreted as pro-feminine affirmative actions of the appointing persons. First, the data don’t provide any evidence on the intention of the rectors or other persons. Second, affirmative action in appointing women requires that this policy exists in Romanian universities. Thus, the authors interpret statistical data (the representation of women in leading positions and boards) as the effect of intentionally made choices, but evidence for this intention is lacking.
Notions like gender equality or discrimination are not reflected. Gender equality and the SDG goal is reduced to gender parity and to numbers. Analysing the economic and legal context (436 ff), the authors only refer to direct discrimination; indirect discrimination (f.ex. distribution of part-time work) and structural barriers are not taken into consideration.
Especially chap. 2.2, which deals with gender and gender policies in academia is unsatisfactory: The authors reduce gender equality policy to quotas. Studies point to a bundle of reasons for the underrepresentation of women in academia, not only the “male structure of selection committees”. The EC adopted quota for advisory boards and panels, not for academic scholarships. Australia is presented as an example of the use of gender quota, but the gender equality legislation in this country doesn’t have any quota. A proof for the quotation of Carlos Moedas lacks as well as proof for the statement “overall pressure for additional voluntary actions”. The chapter contains more faults and inconsistencies which can’t be listed all.
In chapter 2.1, the authors discuss the impact of quotas, but without differentiating between quotas for boards and for recruiting and between different models of quota. Their negative results are based on a limited range of publications, mainly of the same authors (Krook, Piscopo). The positive impact of quotas in Austria, France or Sweden is not taken into account.
The authors conclude “that the principle of merit prevails in all types of elections as a determinant of the voting option and excludes an additional search for discriminatory gender elements”. Through this conclusion, the authors contrast gender and merit and ignore the vast discussion on the social and gender-biased construction of merit (f.ex. van den Brink / Benschoop 2011 in: Organization; Wolffram 2018 in: GST).
Besides these basic comments, I like to point to some minor remarks:
The introduction of the topic by the literature review is quite long.
The source of staff data is not clear. What means “census approach”? Are these official data from the National Institute of Statistics?
Readers not familiar with the Romanian university system need more information about the staff. The article refers to teaching staff. Is there also “research staff”? Are there hierarchical differences inside the category “teaching staff” (professors)? The authors claim that the study separates the personnel into distinct categories and functions, but (vice-) dean and (vice-) rector is not a personnel category (like assistant professor or full professor) but a function.
The numbers of the references are displaced: No. 2 and No. 24 are parts of the previous reference, and thus the numbers in the list don’t fit the references in the text.
I propose to review the article by a native speaker: Some words are not correct / not existing. The sentences are quite too long and difficult to understand.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your feedback, and kind advice. We are most grateful for this opportunity to improve our paper under your experienced guidance; we have tried to comply with your valuable suggestions through punctual responses and paper adjustments, as required.
As an introduction and in a strive to clarify our position, we would like to make the following overall comments regarding our initial approach and intentions:
Our research starts from the axiomatic premise that gender equality is a condition associated with the social dimension of the sustainability. We have considered this axiom to be valid in the tertiary education institutions, as well as in its segment represented by public (non-military) universities (all kind). We reflect in our research approach that gender parity is a first step towards reaching gender equality. Within this conceptual frame, gender parity is primarily analysed at the level of the organization, starting from the premise that parity means a full use of the human resource. Subsequently, the analysis is protracted to the level of its management structures, following the logic in which attaining a parity status to these structures will facilitate reaching parity at the level of the organization; furthermore, this would induce the rest of conditions related to achieving organizational gender equality. We deliberately choose the gender parity approach, which means focusing on gender shares, proportions and associated (quantifiable) direct mechanisms, in order to reduce controversial approaches as to: political opinions and issues, gender stereotypes, historical and cultural contexts, etc. This approach is inspired by the specific methodology utilized in the She figures Report, which presents facts and findings in order to depict a state of affairs at a certain point in time. In the same reports, the facts are accompanied by swift explanations, without many qualitative interpretations. We would also like to stress out that in our research we consider that women (as in teaching staff) enjoy full capacity to decide what benefits them in terms of hierarchical structures. In addition, we consider that their voting behaviour (for executive positions), as a statistical outcome, is the result of wisdom rather than result of manipulation or constraints that may affect their choice. It is why we have focused on statistical results and avoided presumptions with no statistical relevance. In the same line of thinking, our intention is to discuss the gender quotas instrument in a neutral-positive manner. This means that we avoid formulating critiques related to the fact that achieving parity objectives is to be reached by limiting the democratic vote, as in the case of Austria or Sweden, according to [54, 55 – references in text]. Also, we have avoided preconceived ideas guided by the so-called „gender paradox” [Stoet and Geary (2018) explain the gender-equality paradox in the STEM area as: „ [...]countries with a higher level of gender equalitytend to have less gender balance in fields such as STEM, than less equal countries. This research found that while, on average, girls perform better than or equal to boys on STEM measures, the relative gap between the two increases as the gender equality of the country increases..”] or specific approaches in the US [Rosenblum (2008)] in which it is stressed out that „in U.S. law and society, we are quota-phobic, vehemently resisting an idea alleged to be based on political correctness in place of merit”. Subsequently, we refer to the merit-gender relationship, guided by the axiomatic idea that women (as well as men) are in full capacity to reflect in their voting options a gender-merit balance that benefits them. In other words, we have found a statistically factual state according to which the election of members of the university hierarchy was NOT guided by gender. The cross-vote reality: male elects females and female elects males
is interpreted in our study as guided by merit and not by considerations related to gender, queen bee syndrome, glass ceiling type of barriers, or non-democratic electoral mechanisms. A final comment regarding the "cross vote": if we take a statistical population divided into two categories A and B, with the gender ratio x and y, where x is larger than y (x + y = 100%) and after the vote to elect its representatives the result presents a structure x1 and y1 (x1 + y1 = 100%), where x is higher than x1, as a percentage, then it means that those in category A voted B, in a higher proportion than the other way around.
Thanking you again for your valuable suggestions in the review report, we will now respond to each of your remarks.
Point 1: Unfortunately, the article doesn’t rely on a theoretical reflection on gender equality and doesn’t reflect relevant publications on this issue (Wroblewski 2019 in: Soc.Sci; White / Burkinshaw 2019 in: Soc.Sci; Read / Kehm 2016 in: Studies Higher Education; Lee / Doyeon 2014 In: The Social Science Journal; Peterson 2011 In: Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management; Neale / Özkanlı 2010 In: Gender and Education) or more generally on gender in academia. This leads to many misleading interpretations of the data.
Response 1: We have integrated in the text the references you indicate. Kindly note that Peterson (2011) was already included. We have also added to discussion (please see point 5 in the omtroduction), the cases of Sweden and Austria as successful examples for the gender equality approach. Please see the modified text.
Point 2: Comparing the participation of women to elected positions or boards with the staff or relevant other bodies, the authors suppose that women should vote for women. If the proportion of women in the body is lower than in the relevant staff category, the authors even blame women for not voting in their favour (608/609; 718). But the data don’t provide any indication who votes for whom or on the preferences of the voters. Furthermore, the gender of candidates, informal exclusion mechanism, or voting preferences besides the gender of the candidates is not taken into consideration.
Response 2: We maintain that if gender is considered an important criterion in order to bring advantage (generally speaking) for one given category of voters, logic calls for their support in voting for their own category. The authors do not blame the women for their vote; however, when electing representatives, we note the results showing votes “migrating” from one gender to the other; when an initial proportion in a population is not found in its representatives, the votes lost by one category are due to the fact that that category voted in reverse, according to the reasoning previously explained at point 7. Data provides this kind of indication and these are very clear in the case of rectors, for example. The same is to be said in the case of the department directors (DD) – and for the same reason: direct and undisclosed voting process.
We would respectfully disagree as to the other enumerated elements (informal exclusion, etc); they are not statistically relevant for the discussion, although we reiterate that there is no possibility of an exclusion mechanism in the voting preferences or for candidacies in the given data context.
Point 3: The relative high participation of women in appointed positions is interpreted as pro-feminine affirmative actions of the appointing persons. First, the data don’t provide any evidence on the intention of the rectors or other persons. Second, affirmative action in appointing women requires that this policy exists in Romanian universities. Thus, the authors interpret statistical data (the representation of women in leading positions and boards) as the effect of intentionally made choices, but evidence for this intention is lacking.
Response 3: High participation of women in appointed position, as VR and VD, is the result of a discretionary decision of the rector (elected by universal vote), respectively of the dean. We maintain that these are voluntary compliant decisions to the organization's signals, statistically proven. There is no real means of limiting the decision, which explains the cases of universities with zero VR female or 100% VR female. We note that there is no formal policy in place either to attain certain gender figures in a university as part of a national gender program.
Point 4: Notions like gender equality or discrimination are not reflected. Gender equality and the SDG goal is reduced to gender parity and to numbers. Analysing the economic and legal context (436 ff), the authors only refer to direct discrimination; indirect discrimination (f.ex. distribution of part-time work) and structural barriers are not taken into consideration.
Response 4: We did not reflect more deeply notions like gender equality and discrimination, because we have focused on gender parity, as explained at point no.2, above. In relation to the two elements (indirect discrimination and structural barriers) of the paragraph in question: firstly, part-time work for the teaching staff does not exist as a practice in the Romanian academia, although it is provided for in the Labour Code; however, it is not to be found in this sector of activity due to its characteristics regarding the specific usage of the human resource and the normative hours. We would be happy to elaborate more on this subject if needed, but for now we prefer to simply state this reality; secondly, reference to the structural barriers is made in lines 569-572. Thus, we have considered the respective elements not to be relevant in explaining gender parity.
Point 5: Especially chap. 2.2, which deals with gender and gender policies in academia is unsatisfactory: The authors reduce gender equality policy to quotas. Studies point to a bundle of reasons for the underrepresentation of women in academia, not only the “male structure of selection committees”. The EC adopted quota for advisory boards and panels, not for academic scholarships. Australia is presented as an example of the use of gender quota, but the gender equality legislation in this country doesn’t have any quota. A proof for the quotation of Carlos Moedas lacks as well as proof for the statement “overall pressure for additional voluntary actions”. The chapter contains more faults and inconsistencies which can’t be listed all.
Response 5: We respectfully do not share your point of view regarding the authors reducing the gender equality to quotas. Although we do not focus our study on gender equality at large, we do refer to gender quotas as a decisive tool to quickly achieve gender parity. However, as you have justly pointed out, we have corrected the references linked to Australia and Commissioner Moedas.
Point 6: In chapter 2.1, the authors discuss the impact of quotas, but without differentiating between quotas for boards and for recruiting and between different models of quota. Their negative results are based on a limited range of publications, mainly of the same authors (Krook, Piscopo). The positive impact of quotas in Austria, France or Sweden is not taken into account.
Response 6: We would like to point out that it was not our intention to reveal a negative impact of the gender quota utilization but have simply discussed the usage of this tool. However, as you have correctly suggested, we have added in the text the cases of gender quotas utilization in Austria and Sweden. We did not intend to conduct a discussion about different quota models, as these models do not fall in the applicability area of our case study.
Point 7: The authors conclude “that the principle of merit prevails in all types of elections as a determinant of the voting option and excludes an additional search for discriminatory gender elements”. Through this conclusion, the authors contrast gender and merit and ignore the vast discussion on the social and gender-biased construction of merit (f.ex. van den Brink / Benschoop 2011 in: Organization; Wolffram 2018 in: GST).
Response 7: In our paper, the reference to discriminatory elements and merit was associated with the elections only. In view of the previous points 4, 6 and 7 (in the preamble), the discussion about gender-biased construction of merit becomes complex as this should justify the fact that a person is chosen by different gender voters considering different criteria, however reaching a convergent result.
Minor remarks:
Point 8: The introduction of the topic by the literature review is quite long.
Response 8: The introduction connects gender and sustainability, laying out a conceptual support for the SDG5 axiom. However, as suggested, we have proceeded in shortening and clarifying some paragraphs.
Point 9: The source of staff data is not clear. What means “census approach”? Are these official data from the National Institute of Statistics?
Response 9: We explain the census concept in the text (397-400). What we would like to emphasize is that the entire population of staff involved in education and research from Romanian universities is counted and analysed. Data is collected by the authors themselves, please see clarification on 391-394.
Point 10: Readers not familiar with the Romanian university system need more information about the staff. The article refers to teaching staff. Is there also “research staff”? Are there hierarchical differences inside the category “teaching staff” (professors)? The authors claim that the study separates the personnel into distinct categories and functions, but (vice-) dean and (vice-) rector is not a personnel category (like assistant professor or full professor) but a function.
Response 10: The teaching staff in the Romanian universities has research tasks as part of the job description and by the law (Law no 1/2011), so the “pure” research staff is under 2%. We have four grades (full professor, associate professor, lecturer and assistant), that we refer to in lines 497-502. As to the personnel categories (grade) being different form functions, we would like to mention that
our main focus is on the functions, while the academic grades (i.e. A and B) were invoked in relation to She report 2018 and to Romania’s positioning regarding senior grades accession. The main idea we wanted to transmit was that holding an academic grade is not a condition for candidacy in the Romanian electoral processes in universities.
Point 11: The numbers of the references are displaced: No. 2 and No. 24 are parts of the previous reference, and thus the numbers in the list don’t fit the references in the text.
Response 11: We have corrected the error, thank you for pointing it out.
Point 12: I propose to review the article by a native speaker: Some words are not correct / not existing. The sentences are quite too long and difficult to understand.
Response 12: We have had our paper reviewed by a native speaker; we would like to point out that the usage of long sentences is made in order to exclude misunderstandings due to phrase cuts. On the other hand, we have considered your just observation and reviewed the text for its clarity.
We thank you again, for everything.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Compared to the first version, the paper has been improved, mainly in:
• Limiting the scope to gender parity and explaining this limitation
• Discussion of gender parity and gender politics (255-353)
• Explaining the sources of the data (381-396)
• Discussing the limits of the paper
Nevertheless, some axioms and conclusions are still problematic to me:
“cross vote”: This axiom concludes from the statistical result (gender ratio in a body) to the electoral behavior of male and female voters. Supposing we have 50% of the categories A and B in the electing population and the elected body, this proportion may also result from 100% voters A vote for B and 100% voters B for A.
I don’t agree with the conclusion “The final power structure is the result of the female option” or “we conclude that the current management configuration is the result of a process in which women played a decisive role”. First, the election results from decisions and voting of both women and men. What is more: We need information and analysis on candidates to draw the cited conclusions. Did the voters have a choice between different candidates? Were there male and female candidates? If there are no female candidates, the female voters even don’t have a chance to vote for a female rector if they want so.
Furthermore, an analysis of the grades (full professors, assistant professors, lecturer, assistants) may give insights into informal barriers. The authors explain that Romania has the highest proportion of women in academic staff for grades A/B (relying on She Figures), but the authors don’t differentiate their own data, although the database is much higher than the data used for the She Figures (930). The authors analyze the legal access to the bodies (no conditionality, 505), but effective access might be different (f.ex. only full professors).
The authors conclude “the absence of informal exclusion mechanism” (573) and “we have not identified any gender-discriminatory aspects”. First, I propose to limit these conclusions more explicit to their methodological approach, the statistical analysis. Furthermore, I’m wondering which kind of results the authors may have interpreted as “informal barriers” or “gender discriminatory aspects”. Given the prerequisite “free vote”, every gender distribution among functions and bodies in universities seems to be interpreted as “not discriminatory” (the distinction between indirect and direct discrimination, see EIGE or CEDAW convention).
The authors conclude “our findings show general support for pro-feminine affirmative actions” (972) and “the situation of the vice-deans replicates gender actions at the university level” (984). Affirmative action and gender actions are measures that are explicitly related to the objective “gender equality”; an explicit gender policy is a prerequisite to speak about “affirmative action” (see EIGE’s definition of “affirmative/positive actions”, https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/overview?lang=en). The authors use the notion in this way, when they claim that “taking affirmative actions in the Romanian universities must be thought of very carefully” (1012).
To sum up, I recommend revising the paper again.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We thank you for your comments, which have helped us to obtain a clearer focus of our study on its announced objectives and to avoid insufficiently documented conclusions. We very much appreciate your experienced assessment and are grateful for the opportunity given to shape our paper accordingly.
In essence, we have altered the text in reference to informal barriers and affirmative actions, as you have rightfully pointed out.
Please see below our responses to each of your comments.
Point 1: “cross vote”: This axiom concludes from the statistical result (gender ratio in a body) to the electoral behavior of male and female voters. Supposing we have 50% of the categories A and B in the electing population and the elected body, this proportion may also result from 100% voters A vote for B and 100% voters B for A.
Response 1: Please note that the “cross vote” is an ad-hoc label for a reasoning rather than an axiom and it has been used as such by the authors. The reasoning results from the modern electoral systems focused on a group affiliation (based on political or other criteria). The basic principle that we retain is the voting migration from one group to the other, in order to explain why the election score of a group is worse/better than the share represented by this group in the given statistical population. For the extreme voting proportion that you are mentioning (100% voters A vote for B and vice versa) our comment is that any result combining A and B voting preferences show that the affiliation criterion has been overshadowed by other criteria during the election. Otherwise, inversed or perfectly aligned proportions of voting preferences show rare cases in which the affiliation criteria was the only one taken into consideration when voting.
As an example, we would like to refer to a real and recent case that occurred in the Romanian academia on the occasion of the new mandate elections for the rector held on Jan 2020 at the Med Iasi (pls see ref in Appendix A), for which 2 candidates were presented: 1M and 1F. The electorate, constituted of 660 voters, equally distributed M/F, gave the following result: for the male candidate 440 votes, and the female candidate 220 votes. The number of women who elected the M candidate was higher than the number of men who elected the F candidate, our insight being that the vote was (also) guided by other criteria than those linked to their respective gender group.
Point 2: I don’t agree with the conclusion “The final power structure is the result of the female option” or “we conclude that the current management configuration is the result of a process in which women played a decisive role”. First, the election results from decisions and voting of both women and men. What is more: We need information and analysis on candidates to draw the cited conclusions. Did the voters have a choice between different candidates? Were there male and female candidates? If there are no female candidates, the female voters even don’t have a chance to vote for a female rector if they want so.
Response 2: Point taken. We agree that information on candidacies would be required to fully support the mentioned conclusions. We do not hold this information in regard to our data in its entirety, thus, we have altered our conclusions accordingly (please see 990-991 and 1006). However, we maintain that since in 26 out of 47 universities the women hold majorities, their role in establishing the current management configuration is significant.
Point 3: Furthermore, an analysis of the grades (full professors, assistant professors, lecturer, assistants) may give insights into informal barriers. The authors explain that Romania has the highest proportion of women in academic staff for grades A/B (relying on She Figures), but the authors don’t differentiate their own data, although the database is much higher than the data used for the She Figures (930). The authors analyze the legal access to the bodies (no conditionality, 505), but effective access might be different (f.ex. only full professors).
Response 3: In our paper, we did not consider the academic grade-based approach because the Education Law (as unique legal framework) does not mention grade-based restrictions in relation to a candidate’s capacity to be elected in collective bodies and/or executive positions. In practice we reckon that in the general perception there is a positive correlation between management experience and senior academic grades. As a result, at the rectors’ level there is a quasi-totality of grades A and B, but there is also the case of the rector Poli Bucharest (the fourth largest university in Romania) who does not hold an academic grade, as defined (A, B, C or D). In the case of the senates there is a majority of grades A and B, but, for example in the case of U ClujN (listed as the No. 1 among the Romanian universities, please see Table 10 and 886-891) there are senators with grades C or D (in rather small proportions though). Grade analysis to be added as vertical variable is a valuable idea for a future study in which we will study possible correlations between academic grades and informal barriers to access management structures in academia. Obviously, this should be preceded by an analysis of the gender distribution as for current study, while taking into consideration the additional variable given by the academic position of the teaching staff. In conclusion, although the grade was not observed in our study, we reiterate that there is no legal grade threshold to access the management structures. Otherwise, the reference to the She figures was contextual, in an aim to show that there is a significant probability of electing women holding grades A and B in executive positions.
Point 4: The authors conclude “the absence of informal exclusion mechanism
” (573) and “we have not identified any gender-discriminatory aspects” (1007-1009). First, I propose to limit these conclusions more explicit to their methodological approach, the statistical analysis. Furthermore, I’m wondering which kind of results the authors may have interpreted as “informal barriers” or “gender discriminatory aspects”. Given the prerequisite “free vote”, every gender distribution among functions and bodies in universities seems to be interpreted as “not discriminatory” (the distinction between indirect and direct discrimination, see EIGE or CEDAW convention).
Response 4: Point taken. As suggested, we have limited our conclusions to the quantitative methodological approach and altered them as it can be seen in lines 572-575 and 1009-1011. We have also added the CEDAW reference in relation to the direct and indirect discrimination definitions.
However, we maintain that:
a. glass ceiling figures for Romania are favourable as per She Figures [72].
b. grades and seniority do not constitute formal (legal) barriers in accessing the management structures.
c. in studying the electoral regulations of all Universities, no direct discrimination can be detected (as per definition CEDAW) in regard to gender.
d. regarding the indirect discrimination (ref to the same definition), we agree that a further qualitative study could provide a clearer light on this aspect and at the same time may constitute a new research hypothesis that we will consider for our next project.
Point 5: The authors conclude “our findings show general support for pro-feminine affirmative actions” (972) and “the situation of the vice-deans replicates gender actions at the university level” (984). Affirmative action and gender actions are measures that are explicitly related to the objective “gender equality”; an explicit gender policy is a prerequisite to speak about “affirmative action” (see EIGE’s definition of “affirmative/positive actions”, https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/overview?lang=en). The authors use the notion in this way, when they claim that “taking affirmative actions in the Romanian universities must be thought of very carefully” (1012).
Response 5: Point taken. We have modified our conclusions according to your comments (please see 973 and 985-986). Indeed, there is no explicit gender policy in place; however, the actions of the rectors in appointing the vice-rectors and of the deans in appointing the vice-deans, while IxDD and IxFC are in the immediate vicinity of IxG illustrate a satisfactory gender situation overall: the differences between the indexes are very small. Regarding the statement on 1015-1016, its meaning is that, outside the rectors' structure, the values of all the other indexes suggest that the transition from the current situation where the teaching staff has the free vote in electing its representatives to a situation in which a certain composition of the management structures is imposed, involves a complex analysis.
We thank you for everything.
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
I'm not really convinced from the "cross-vote reasoning". But the authors improved the paper considerably during the review process. Considering that the reviews will be published, let the scientific community discuss this paper. Thus, I agree to the publication of the paper.
