The summary of the dissertation proposal

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Johanna Lätti
Doctoral Researcher
Faculty of Education
University of Tampere, Finland
I currently work as a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Tampere, writing an article-based dissertation
in the doctoral programme “Education and Society”. This study is a part of the research group, whose
activities focus on the questions of equality and justice in adult, vocational and higher education.
My dissertation concerns the issues of gender and higher education in the context of the latest university
reform in Finland. It observes the institutional measures targeted at reducing gendered (and other)
inequalities in transforming academic regime.
At present, I come to conclude the first part of my study and moving on to the second one. The first part
involved the documentary analysis of equality promoted in universities, which I discuss in the first two
research papers. In the second part, I will concentrate on interview material collected from four Finnish
universities in order to analyze key actors’ perceptions on equality promotion and inequalities.
Dissertation summary
Starting points
Expectations towards higher education in promoting gender equality are high. In Finland, as in many
countries, the number of female students has passed the number of men in various academic fields during
few last decades. The development inside academic work has been much slower. Global concern on
universities’ enduring gendered segregations has placed gender equality as a critical issue in higher
education worldwide.
In Finnish universities, equality promotion has been institutionalized through the legislation (mainly Equality
Act on gender and Non-discrimination Act), which materializes as administrative equality planning and
equality boards. Requirements to measure, report and follow equality situation have even tightened as a
result of amendments to legislation. At the same time, it has even been argued, that higher education policies
increasingly follow the “ethos of excellence”, the incentives of efficiency and profitability at the expense of
equality. In the study, I aim to clarify these contradictions by analysing the implementation of sex equality
politics in transforming Finnish academia. What kind of institutional position is reserved for equality issues?
What is aimed for who? How different actors perceive the conditions for equality promotion and what kind
of injustices arise from the personnel?
This approach is supported by two reasons. Firstly, the Universities Act of 2009, and the consequent
organizational reforms, transformed the juridical status of universities with each becoming either a public
corporation or foundation. With the change of the management system and the position of personnel from the
holders of offices to employees, the university reform appears as a confirmation of the marketization and m
management by results, a globally recognised process commenced in Finnish academia since the 1990s.
Productization and the economic pressure on universities have altered the management of human resources
which the equality work is closely attached to and dependent on.
Secondly, national and organizational equality politics are increasingly transnational. Gender mainstreaming,
as the latest equality strategy promoted by transnational organizations, targets mainstream a ‘gender
perspective’ into all levels and fields of education and work. Since the 1990s, it has been on the agendas of
ILO, UNESCO and the European Union and defined as ‘The (re)organisation, improvement, development
and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all
levels and at all stages, by the actors normally involved in policy-making’ (Council of Europe, 1998). In
Finland, the Equality Act obliges universities to promote sex equality, which materialises as administrative
equality planning. Echoing mainstreaming definitions quite literally, equality plans suggest taking ‘equality

questions into account as a penetrating and central principle’ at all levels, fields and actions, while ‘The
practices and structures of the administration ought to be developed in a way that the target of sex equality
is included in all decision making’. Nevertheless, during the Finnish university reform, questions regarding
sex equality were rather marginal in both public debates as well as in the pursuit of structural and
administrative duties.
Objectives and approach
From these starting points, I study the institutional ways Finnish academia promotes equality. I ask how
equality is defined and understood in universities’ equality agenda, and how different actors implement its
aims into practice. Institutional interpretations are related to perceptions of personnel on equality work and
inequalities. Due to the legal requirements that oblige universities’ equality promotion, the focus is in
sex/gender equality. Its promotion, however, increasingly merges into demands of all kind non-
discrimination (esp. concerning disabilities and foreign workers), challenging equality work both
conceptually and practically.
Firstly, the findings are reflected against the conceptual shifts in equality. In Finnish education policies of the
1960–1980s, equality was seen as “equality for all” attached to societal, regional and educational equality.
The membership of the European Union in 1995 and increasing transnational influences have emphasised
gender equality and individual rights in particular. At the same time, the focus of the “Nordic equality
model” has moved from the collective ideal towards anti-discrimination measures. The conceptual
background also problematizes the assumptions of gender mainstreaming and its key concepts. Finnish, for
instance, does not have an equivalent for the word gender.
Secondly, the equality politics are studied from the perspective of ethics of justice, especially the theorizing
of Nancy Fraser. She has analysed justice in the dimensions of economic redistribution, cultural recognition
and political representation. In my dissertation, I reflect how useful division could be in the evaluation of
equality policies and understanding of experiences of inequality. Although Fraser approaches justice
socially, from the perspective of citizenship, I aim to apply the ideas inside the organization. The comparison
of the equality aims and the experiences from the perspective of ethics of justice might reveal contradictions
between the policy rhetoric and the reality: do policies focus on appropriate issues? The different dimensions
of justice help to understand experiences of (in)equality in a specific cultural and institutional context.
The study operates at three levels: transnational (gender mainstreaming), university level equality agenda
and its implementation in practice from the actor perspective. The approach is multi-methodical, utilizing
policy documents, interviews with key equality actors in selected Finnish universities. The data is analysed
by the means of both quantitative and qualitative content analysis, utilising computational text analysis tools
and thematic content analysis. Firstly, by documentary data, I analyse the appearance of equality in the
equality agendas guiding Finnish academia. I focus on the conceptions and aims of equality expressed in the
policy documents and relate them to other higher education policies and to the principals of gender
mainstreaming. Secondly, utilizing documents and key actor interviews, I analyse the implementation
practices of the equality politics. Interviews (17) were collected from four universities. These interviewees
are actors involved in equality work at different levels. Thirdly, I analyze the views of the personnel on
equality politics, gendered practices and their perceptions of inequality.
Significance
Despite various equality agendas, sex-based segregations in Finnish universities remain persistent. In
addition, even though the impacts of the Finnish university reform require more research, emerging issues
are seen due to the casualization and disintegration of employment. With the example from Finland, I wish to
question some basic assumptions and the appropriateness of current transnationally influenced equality aims
in the transforming academic context. The study suggests an evaluation of key concepts and sheds light on
the conditions for institutional equality promotion to recognise the nature of reshaping gendering in
academic work.