Understanding and Addressing Everyday Sexisms in Australian Universities

This presentation reports on findings from a large-scale survey that is part of an Australian government funded project entitled, Understanding and Addressing Everyday Sexisms in Australian Universities. The project is situated within the context of the negative impact of gender-based discrimination upon the higher education sector in Australia and internationally. Although sexual harassment and overt discriminatory practices receive a great deal of attention within university policy and staff training, this research also shows that significant career damage occurs through an accumulation of ‘everyday sexisms’. Preliminary survey results from academics highlight differential awareness of everyday sexism within the academy.

The speaker:

Dr Emily Gray is Senior Lecturer Education Studies and Higher Degrees by Research Delegated Authority at RMIT’s School of Education. As a researcher, Emily is interested in questions of gender and sexuality and with how these identity categories are lived and experienced within social institutions. Her key research interests therefore lie with questions related to gender, social justice, student and teacher identity and with wider social justice issues within educational discourse and practice. She also writes on popular culture, public pedagogies and audience studies, online fandom and media and popular culture as pedagogical tools. She is co-founder of #FEAS Feminist Educators Against Sexism, an international feminist collective committed to developing creative interventions into sexism in the academy and other places.