Preacher Woman

When people are committed to gender equality, what gets in their way of achieving it? Why do well-intentioned people reinforce sexist outcomes? Why does dissonance persist between organizational actors’ good intentions of equality and sexist outcomes? This book provides answers to these questions by applying the critical lens of gendered organizations to moderate-liberal congregations that separated from their mainline denomination in support of women’s equal leadership yet remain predominately male in positions of authority. This critical methodological study investigates congregations affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) with some dually aligned with The Alliance of Baptists. Although the CBF identifies the equal leadership of women as a core component of its collective identity and women are enrolling in Baptist seminaries at almost equal rates as men, only about 5% of CBF congregations employ women as solo senior pastors. This book provides an organizational analysis investigating gendered congregational processes on the individual, interactional, and organizational levels, including themes such as gendered hiring criteria, a perceived incongruence of women’s bodies and leadership, unconscious biases of organizational actors, and how women pastors’ experiences of discrimination influence their riskier approaches to leadership.

Gender “Neutral” Hiring Processes

Chapter 3 examines congregational hiring processes, which are most often perceived by congregants as “gender neutral.” This chapter draws on interview data to reveal hiring committees’ aversion to an “affirmative action” approach and shows that their failure to recognize the gendered hurdles faced by women prior to the job market actually results in masculinized hiring processes rather than gender-neutral ones and reinforces sexist hiring decisions. It also explores the conscious and unconscious gender biases of hiring committee members, which inevitably play a role in hiring decisions. Specifically, this chapters highlights congregants’ preferred hiring criteria, which are commonly understood as “gender neutral,” and shows how these seemingly neutral preferences actually result in unequal outcomes for women. For instance, while hiring senior pastors, congregations often preferred younger pastors who also have senior pastor or associate pastor experience. Some congregants also preferred pastors with direct and clear career trajectories. These seeming gender-neutral preferences disproportionately advantage men because women often connect with their callings and find opportunities for professional development later in life as a result of the gendered hurdles they face on their ways to the job market. This chapter further explores congregants’ unconscious gender biases, which often assumed men and women to be different but equal. However, congregants failed to understand how these assumed differences ultimately advantaged men in the pursuit of pastoral leadership.

What senior academics can do to support reproducible and open research: a short, three-step guide

Increasingly, policies are being introduced to reward and recognise open research practices, while the adoption of such practices into research routines is being facilitated by many grassroots initiatives. However, despite this widespread endorsement and support, open research is yet to be widely adopted, with early career researchers being the notable exception. For open research to become the norm, initiatives should engage academics from all career stages, particularly senior academics (namely senior lecturers, readers, professors) given their routine involvement in determining the quality of research. Senior academics, however, face unique challenges in implementing policy change and supporting grassroots initiatives. Given that - like all researchers - senior academics are in part motivated by self-interest, this paper lays out three feasible steps that senior academics can take to improve the quality and productivity of their research, that also serve to engender open research. These steps include a) change hiring criteria, b) change how scholarly outputs are credited, and c) change to funding and publishing with open research. The guidance we provide is accompanied by live, crowd-sourced material for further reading.

English Exit Test: An Analysis of the Test-Takers’ Performance in the Speaking Component

The workplace-readiness of the Malaysian graduates is unarguably an issue that the local employers and the Higher Education Providers (HEPs) have a consensus upon. It has been reported by the Malaysian Employers’ Federation that more often than not the disability or handicap lies in the poor communicative ability of the graduates who failed to impress their future employers despite their sterling academic performance. One of the hiring criteria for the future employers is that these graduates must be trained to be more verbally competent and eloquent. Hence, this study attempts to conduct a performance analysis of a group of local undergraduates in their English Exit Test (EET) that is made up of written and spoken assessments for them to be workplace-compliant. However, the result has indicated that the test-takers tend to be inhibited when it comes to expressing themselves verbally, which has resulted in a dismal performance in the speaking component. As such, it is a cause for concern to rectify the situation and figure out the solutions to tackle their weak performance. This study also analyses the different performance between the Engineering as opposed to the Hotel Management and Tourism undergraduates, in which a slight difference in their achievement of grades was found. The five dissimilar disciplines of speaking tasks also recorded a difference in their score means achieved by the test takers, which could suggest that treatments are in need to be tailored for those weak performers

A freelance-based foreign exchange programme: Tasmanian students’ professional development on WORLDREP

In the context of rapidly changing newsrooms and a constriction in entry-level positions for graduates, the Europe and Australia in the World (WORLDREP) programme seeks to prepare students by pairing freelance journalism with overseas training and exchange. However, the entrepreneurial focus of the course must be weighed against the challenges and idiosyncratic hiring criteria that graduates face on their return home. This article discusses interviews with former Tasmanian participants to compare what the students felt they acquired during the course with perceived barriers and challenges post-graduation. We find that the programme’s freelance focus cultivates a range of applied skills, an extensive publication portfolio and professional confidence. However, interviewees also reported that a lack of local newsroom contacts – traditionally provided through newsroom internships – constitutes a hurdle on their return home. This prompts a discussion about how to complement exchange programmes with local networking and professional development initiatives that can ground what students have learnt overseas in local journalism practice.

Enough Quantity: Time to Focus on Quality of Researchers in Pakistan

The education sector of Pakistan has progressed tremendously during the last 15 years,with the number of researchers and research papers increasing by 248 percent and 687percent respectively. However, the quality of Pakistani research is still of uneven quality,partly due to the inexperience, incompetence, and corruption of faculty at nationalhigher education institutions. Revising faculty hiring criteria, establishing a plagiarism-free research culture, enhancing training on research ethics, and involving morePakistani scholars trained abroad in research are key steps toward preserving highereducation in Pakistan.

Enough Quantity: Time to Focus on Quality of Researchers in Pakistan

The education sector of Pakistan has progressed tremendously during the last 15 years,with the number of researchers and research papers increasing by 248 percent and 687percent respectively. However, the quality of Pakistani research is still of uneven quality,partly due to the inexperience, incompetence, and corruption of faculty at nationalhigher education institutions. Revising faculty hiring criteria, establishing a plagiarism-free research culture, enhancing training on research ethics, and involving morePakistani scholars trained abroad in research are key steps toward preserving highereducation in Pakistan.