Transforming academic research? Resistances to gender mainstreaming implementation in universities

Abstract

Resistance hinders the potential of gender equality strategies to modify institutional arrangements and challenge the status quo. Applying the integrationist or agenda-setting distinction of approaches to gender mainstreaming and drawing on feminist institutionalism and gender policy implementation theory, this article analyses resistances that undermine a more transformative agenda-setting approach to gender mainstreaming in university research settings. The analysis of qualitative data from a selection of three Catalan universities reveals implicit institutional resistance and individual opposition from research managers that contribute to integrationist approaches to gender mainstreaming and the ineffective implementation of actions that aim to achieve distinct gender equality in research goals. Despite the favourable policy context and rhetorical commitments in university gender equality plans and in research managers’ discourse, norms of meritocracy underlie resistance to actions that imply greater structural and cultural change, including research managers who lack knowledge of gender mainstreaming and participate minimally in implementation. Entrenched norms around research autonomy and the non-prioritization of gender inform more explicit resistance to actions that aim for a more gender-aware science, to incorporate the gender dimension into all research and to promote gender research, where progress is particularly slow.