[Jobs] PhD Vacancy - VUB (Brussels) - Gendering Ethnicity and Ethnicizing Gender in Policy and Politics

[Leora Lawton]

*Vacancy notice for a PhD researcher*



*RHEA Centre of Expertise Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality*

*Vrije Universiteit Brussel*





RHEA is a multi-disciplinary and interfaculty research group devoted to
fundamental and applied research about gender and especially gender
inequality and its interactions with other sources of inequality. RHEA
affiliates around 30 researchers, including professors,post-docs, pre-docs
and freelance researchers from the research teams of POLI (Political
Sciences), FILO (Philosophy), JURI (Law), TALK (Language and Literature),
MOSI (Mathematics, Operational research, Statistics and Information
Systems, applied in human sciences), SCRI (Criminology), the Centre for
Ethics and Humanism, SOCI (Sociology) and CLIC (Cultural Studies). RHEA’s
present core expertise is in gender equality/diversity policy and
politics;women’s (legal) history; and gender, migration and cultural
practices.



For more information see: http://www.vub.ac.be/en/centre-of-excellence/rhea
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*PhD researcher (1 + 3 years 100%)*



*Job outline*

You conduct a doctoral research within the scope of the Strategic Research
Programme, and more precisely within one of the Programme’s work packages.
For a description of the theme, objectives and outline of the work
packages: see below.

You also participate in national and international conferences and publish
on your research topic.



*Your profile*

• You have a master in Social Sciences and Humanities

• Having research experience in politics or policy science research on
gender,

diversity, equality, intersectionality is a plus

• You are a dynamic person that is highly motivated to pursue an academic

carreer

• You are fluent in written and spoken English; Dutch language skills are a
plus



*We offer*

• A full time position as a pre-doctoral researcher for one year with three
additional years after a positive evaluation, starting on 1 May 2016

• Financial means for methodological training

• Scientific and financial support for participating with research papers in

various national and international conferences

• A three-member doctoral committee that provides feedback and advice

• Being part of a young and eager interdisciplinary research team that is
well

embedded in national and international networks



*Procedure*



By the *15h of February* you send to Karen Celis (Karen.celis at vub.ac.be):

• a letter of motivation

• your CV

• a 1-page summary of your master thesis

• in case you have publications (not obligatory), a copy of what you
consider to be your most important publication

• a 3-page outline of your research project including

o the general theme, research question, methodology

o a short discussion of how it fits the Strategic Research Programme and,

more precisely, one of the work packages.



By the *15th of March* you are informed about the outcome of the first
selection based on the information and documents you provided. When
positive, you are invited for an interview. The interviews take place
according to the availabilities of you and the selection committee in the
second half of March/beginning of April.



By the *beginning of April* you are informed about final outcome of the
selection procedure.





For moreinformation please contact Karen Celis (Karen.celis at vub.ac.be).


*Strategic Research Programme (SRP)*



*Gendering Ethnicity & Ethnicizing Gender in Politics & Policy*





*Research theme and objectives*



Gender and race/ethnicity[1] <#1691814246__ftn1> are too often conceived of
as operating in isolation from each other; this means ignoring the fact
that members of ethnic minorities always have a gender and, vice versa,
that men and women always have an ethnic background (i.e. they are
considered as ‘native’ or as ‘other’ thanks to a history of migration). In
general, politics and policies depart from an assumption that the subject
of policy is ‘male’. If the subject of policy should happen to be female
the assumption is that she is ‘native’. On the other hand the assumption in
policies about ethnic minorities is frequently that they are male. Often
within-group inequalities are (re)produced and (re)inforced in and through
politics and policies that are the net result of this ‘ethnic blindness’ in
the case of gender and of ‘gender blindness’ in the case of ethnic
minorities. For instance, equality policy tools such as gender quotas tend
to favour nativewomen, while reserved seats for ethnic minority often
favour ethnic minority men. *Migrant and integration politics and policy*
risk missing the societal reality that migrant populations are increasingly
female with implications for both masculinities and femininities.  The
motivations, tracks and endpoints of migration and integration are
gendered. Equally, *gender equality politics and policy *are in danger of
misconceiving what is at stake for ethnic minority women and men and
misunderstanding the key sources and dynamics of gender inequality
thataffect them. As European societies become more heterogeneous, the need
to understand these interactions and unintended policy consequences is both
societally and scientifically important. Today’s newly mixed societies,
both in terms of the position of women and in terms of the ethnic groups
involved, offer unprecedented possibilities for better theoretical
understanding of conflicts and inequalities.

This research programme is concerned with the interrelatedness and
intersection of two central discrimination mechanisms, gender and
ethnicity. It critically investigates the ethnic dimension of gender
politics and policies, and the gender dimension of ethnic minority politics
and policies. The overall scientific objective is to establish how and why
the interaction between gender and ethnicity affects the democratic
quality, inclusiveness and effectiveness of politics and policy and its
ability to reach such social goals as ‘equality’. As a means to enhance
theory building in the study of the interrelation between gender and
ethnicity in European politics and policy,comparative analyses inquiring
how differences between national settings, policy levels or sub-groups can
be explained will be undertaken. More concretely, it has two main
objectives each of them underpinned by several empirical research questions:



1. Furthering our empirical knowledge and theories about participation,
political representation and decision-making at the intersection of gender
and ethnicity. Research questions:

   - If any, what is the interaction between descriptive representation
   (i.e. presence in political institutions and civil society) of women and
   ethnic minorities: do they go hand in hand, or are there trade-offs?
   - Does descriptive representation of women and/or ethnic minorities
   increase the substantive representation of migrant women (i.e. the
   representation of their interests)? Does the intersection of ethnicity
   and gender vary depending on migration history or ethnic identity?
   - Do ethnic minority organisations and/or women’s organisations lobby
   the state in the interest of ethnic minority women? And do they do so in a
   different and/or complementary manner? What is the role of organizations
   that combine gender and ethnicity (ethnic women’s organizations)?



2. Furthering our empirical knowledge and theories about the gendered
implications of ethnic minority (integration, migration) policies and the
implication ofgender policies for ethnic minorities, and their mutual
interactions. Research questions:

   - What is the impact of policies aiming at furthering the position of
   women and gender equality on ethnic minority women (in comparison to ethnic
   majority women) and ethnic minority men?
   - What is the impact of policies for ethnic minorities on ethnic
   minority women (in comparison to ethnic minority men)?
   - What are the dominant frames underpinning both type of policies, and
   to which extent, why and how do they include or exclude ethnic minority
   women’s concerns and interests?
   - What differences do differences between ethnic groups make in these
   interactions (in terms of different histories of migration and colonialism,
   sizes, socio-economic positions and cultures)?





*Work Packages*



The SRP is organized around two interrelated work packages focussing on
politics and policy. The SRP aims to conduct comparative research in these
two work packages. The comparisons will be cross country, cross groups,
cross time and cross policy domains/levels.



   - *Work package 1: Gendering Ethnicity & Ethnicizing Gender in Politics *

Governments all over Europe have paid considerable attention to issues
relating to the political underrepresentation of historically disadvantaged
groups. Claims for descriptive representation were initially directed
towards the integration of women in political institutions and the
introduction of gender quotas is one of the most widespread electoral
reforms around the world. But democratic polities face increasing demands
for diversification of their personnel, especially regarding ethnic
minorities. As claims are launched by ethnic minorities, questions arise
about how the demand for descriptive representation of women and ethnic
minorities interact and result in representation at the intersection of
gender and ethnicity. Although it may be the case that the interaction
between gender and ethnicity sometimes works in the advantage of ethnic
minority women, the institutionalist hypothesis seems to gain the greatest
support, contending that institutions tend to maintain the power position
of the dominant group (majority/native men).

This work package focuses on gender and ethnic minorities in politics and
civil society and sets out to investigate the extent to which ethnic
minority men and women are represented, the conditions for it and the
patterns that can be discerned. It is moreover our objective to explain
differences observed along nationallines, policy levels and sub-groups of
ethnicity and enhance theory building on participation and representation.
There is also a need for methodological innovation in classifying different
ethnic and gender trajectories and their intersections. A wide variety of
state and civil society actors are included: elected representatives,
political parties, but also ethnic minorities’ and women’s and men’s civil
society organizations (religious, cultural, economic).



   - *Work package 2: Gendering Ethnicity & Ethnicizing Gender in Policy *

From the 1970s onwards, second-wave feminism led to the gradual development
of gender-equality policies in Europe. About a decade later, several
European immigration countries set up their first immigrant integration
policies, realizing that immigrants were there to stay and that their
better inclusion would be beneficial to all. However, it is only from the
1990s onwards thatgender equality policies started to consider the specific
issue of migrant woman, and that immigrant integration policies
specifically began to address women.

This work package focuses on policy concerning gender and migrant
minorities. It investigates both migrant/integration policies and
women/gender equality policies from the perspective of migrant women and
men to uncover the gendered dimension of the first and the ethnic dimension
of the latter. The aim is not only to describe these, but also to explain
their causes and effects thereby furthering theory building.




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<#1691814246__ftnref1>  Ethnicity more precisely refers to the
differentiating mechanism of national origin distinguishing between
‘natives’ and ‘others’ such as ethnic minorities that have a migrant
history). Ethnic minorities are people who migrated to Belgium themselves,
or of whom at least one of their parents or grandparents did so. Visibility
(constructed as ‘race’) is an important element in this, but in this short
proposal we call the divider ‘ethnicity’. We consider these individuals in
a different light than historical ethnic groups or minorities that were
residing on the territory during state-formation (e.g. the Flemish people
in Belgium or the Basque people in Spain).



-- 
Leora Lawton PhD
Executive Director
Berkeley Population Center
350K Barrows Hall
(of) 510-643-1270
(m) 510-928-7572
www.popcenter.berkeley.edu
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