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This chapter presents the findings of a Gender and Leadership study on promoting gender responsiveness and equality in Ghanaian Colleges of Education (CoEs) conducted in 2017. Specifically, this chapter explores CoEs actors’ perspectives on and experiences with using predetermined gender-responsive scorecard (GRS) as a strategy for promoting gender equality within the CoEs. Multiple-case study involving 10 CoEs selected purposively was used to explore the GRS implementation. Data collection and analysis methods included semi-structured interviews and “processual” analysis. The findings revealed a general contradiction among respondents regarding which gender actions/strategies had been implemented in the case study CoEs. Nonetheless, amid reported implementation challenges, there was general acknowledgment of the importance of the GRS in running gender-responsive CoEs in Ghana. The study concludes that the effective use and implementation of the GRS strategies appear imperative in promoting female success in CoEs, not only in Ghana but also in contexts where gender gap is an issue in teacher education.

Previous studies examining the relationship between gender and conflict-management strategies have generally reported weak or inconsistent results. This paper aims to study extends past research by examining the main and interactive effects of gender on conflict-management strategies over time. The authors propose that conflict-management strategies commonly employed in the workplace are impacted by worker gender as predicted by face negotiation theory and vary over time based on the “generation” of the worker.

To test the study hypotheses, a field study was conducted to assess main and interactive effects of gender and generation on the five strategies for conflict management: Integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising. Questionnaire data were collected over four decades (1980s-2010s) from employed students (N = 6,613). Data analysis was performed using a multivariate analysis of covariance.

The results suggest female employees consistently use more noncompeting strategies (integrating, obliging, avoiding and compromising) than male employees and male employees consistently use more competing strategy (dominating) than female employees. All the main and interaction effects were significant.

While this study involved primarily students in the USA studying management at two major public universities, there may be implications for a more global population of workers. However, the results support the notion advanced by face negotiation theory that men will generally seek to save face while women will generally avoid conflict in consideration of others.

This study demonstrates that workers employ different conflict-management strategies over time and the use of certain strategies varies by gender. An implication of this study is the need to regularly reassess selection, training and evaluation processes for managers. In addition, supervisors should encourage employees to enhance the effective use of cooperative (integrating, obliging and compromising) strategies and focus on specific situations when uncooperative strategies (dominating and avoiding) may be needed.

By using face negotiation theory as the organizing framework to examine changes in conflict-management strategies over time, this study contributes in a substantial way to the understanding of how gender and generation interact to influence the selection and use of conflict-management strategies in the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on top women managers who act as change agents in the machista culture of Mexico. Specifically, the authors centre the attention not only on the strategies performed by these change agents to reduce inequality, but also on understanding the way in which they discursively reproduce or challenge essentialist notions of gender with respect to the cultural and organizational context.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 top women managers in Mexico who are actively involved as change agents. A feminist poststructuralist methodological framework using critical discourse analysis was used to uncover competing notions of gender and related strategies developed to promote gender equality.

The analysis reveals that the 12 change agents perform strategies for inclusion, and only half of them engage in strategies for re-evaluation. The authors were unable to recognize whether these change agents are engaged in strategies of transformation. These change agents also reproduce and challenge “essentialist” notions of gender. In some instances – based on their own career experiences and gendered identities – they (un)consciously have adopted essentialism to fit into the cultural context of machista society. They also challenge the gender binary to eradicate essentialist notions of gender that created gender inequalities in the first place.

The experience of these 12 top women managers may not represent the voice of other women and their careers. Ultimately, intersections with class, organizational level, nationality, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation must be taken into account so to represent other women’s particular interests with respect to equality.

For those researchers-consultants who may be involved in an intervention strategy, it is important to focus on helping the change agents in reviewing and reflecting on their own “vision of gender equity”. During the strategic activities of mentoring and training, these change agents could potentially “leak” a particular “vision of gender” to other women and men. Thus, part of the intervention strategy should target the change agent’s self-reflection to influence her capacity to act as change agents.

The authors contribute to the literature on change agents and interventions for gender equality. Intervention strategies usually centre on essentialist notions of gender. The study offers potential explanations for this approach by paying attention to the process of how change agents, in their efforts to promote gender equality, may be unconsciously projecting their own identities onto others and/or consciously engaging in strategic essentialism to fit into the machista context of Mexico.

A threatened sense of safety in public spaces is a problem for liveable communities. For better public policies, this study investigates multi-dimensional and multi-scalar aspects of gendered perceived safety and strategies by women and men in daily public spaces.

A face-to-face survey with 40 men and 50 women in a public space (Izmir, Turkey) is deployed. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis compare participants' perceptions of and strategies for safety across the city, neighbourhood and the study site.

Their experienced-based familiarities in public places increase women's perceived safety. As safety strategies, different place-based and gendered-preconditions appear for women and men going “outside” especially “alone” (i.e. unaccompanied). Reaffirming female vulnerability in public places, gendered preconditions include individuals' attributes. Of place-based preconditions, crowd and police are significant mechanisms for safety but emphasized differently by women and men. Housewives' female companionship in the study site develops a class- and gender-based claim for a safe place away from their underserved neighbourhood.

Gendered- and place preconditions for women's safety can inform design policies about surveillance and permeability of public spaces. Lack of data about class-based differences about perceived safety is a limitation.

Among a few, it takes perceived safety as performative acts with learned strategies across (rather than momentary perceptions in) socio-spatial spaces and provides a research framework that considers such acts with individual and spatial dimensions across multiple socio-spatial scales.

While most studies concerning gender differences in small business performance have emerged from developed countries, how applicable the results are to transitional economies, where there still exist significant differences in the socialisation of men and women, is not clear. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of gender on the performance of small businesses in Ghana by exploring the impact of personal values on business owners' choice of strategies, specifically asking, do women and men pursue different business strategies, how do personal values influence their strategies and how do their strategies affect performance?

A total of 600 owner‐managers of small retail shops in the Greater Accra Region were surveyed. Results were analysed using the partial least squares approach to structural equation modelling.

The results suggest that there are gender differences in personal values, which lead to different strategies adopted by women and men, which in turn influence performance; specifically Ghanaian women owner‐managers are more risk‐averse than Ghanaian men, and this affects their pursuit of specific functional strategies and ultimately their performance in varied ways.

Further studies will need to replicate these findings with other types of businesses, in other locations.

The results suggest that closer attention should be given to developing the entrepreneurial values of women if the goal of greater economic development is to be achieved in transitional economies.

Limited research has been conducted on women and men small business owners in transitional economies such as Ghana. This empirical research provides important insights into this field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the theoretical underpinnings and practical implications of gender‐sensitizing trade strategies aimed at export‐led poverty reduction, where capitalizing on market‐oriented structures and optimizing existing resources become the drivers for making trade work efficiently and equitably.

The paper is based on an in‐depth literature review and the author's own practical experience as an international business consultant specialized in helping public institutions, corporations and non‐profit organizations to integrate a gender perspective into their planning and decision making processes, strategies, programs, and projects.

The paper concludes that the existing gender gap in trade strategy formulation indirectly hinders trade performance and that pro‐poor trade strategies require more inclusive decision making processes and the use of gender impact assessments.

Further research into the links between CSR, gender sensitivity and value chain analysis is needed to explore the potential of specific engagement between corporations and women‐led MSEs.

The paper proposes that policy and strategy makers can produce more coherent and effective programs by capitalizing on existing market structures and women's entrepreneurial drive, incipient integration into the export value chain, and MSE networks and clusters.

The paper provides a response to how export‐led poverty reduction strategies can systematically maximize market opportunities and, at the same time minimize the risks inherent to implementing counter‐mainstream actions and decisions aimed at creating gendered value‐enhanced market opportunities.

The focus in this chapter is on male strategies of coping with unemployment and how these strategies are gendered due to local contextual factors, physical and natural as well as social and cultural. The results of the study show, in the case of men's relations to the labour market and the factors affecting such relations, how the Swedish welfare model and gender contracts work in a rural setting. The interrelation among labour market, household and family is formed according to the local gender contract and is supposed to develop within the frames of national policies, but it is also formed according to hegemonic gender regimes.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss policy-relevant findings regarding strategies for mainstreaming gender in achieving sustainable post-disaster reconstruction (PDR).

An exploratory case study was used to explore the implementation of gender mainstreaming strategies and the link to sustainable PDR. The Bantul and Sleman regencies of Yogyakarta province provide a unique site for researching PDR as they are located in a region that is more strongly affected by earthquakes than nearly any other in Indonesia. Data were collected through interviews with 17 key stakeholders and 26 beneficiaries who were involved during and after the earthquake. To support the interview findings, surveys involving 50 policy makers and 150 beneficiaries were conducted. Content analysis and t-statistics were used in analyzing the data.

Gender mainstreaming strategies within sustainable reconstruction should incorporate strategies for protecting against gender vulnerabilities and for promoting gender capacities. Both are fundamental to the achievement of sustainable PDR.

The paper establishes comprehensive strategies for mainstreaming gender under three pillars (i.e. economic, social and environmental) of sustainable development. The findings benefit relevant policy makers by improving the policy performance of gender mainstreaming in the affected communities in enhancing sustainable PDR.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate an understanding of influence of gender roles in drought so as to come with relevant recommendation aimed at bettering the lives of men, women and female children.

Data have been collected via participant observation, interviews and collection of unpublished primary and secondary data generated by case studies conducted by the author. After which, content analysis was employed for its potentiality as a means of systematically identifying, classifying and analyzing information relevant to this study.

It is argued in this study that the survival of the community, in Central Tanzania, is questionable because effects of drought have reached intolerable levels and strategies adopted aren't that helpful. More specifically, socially assigned gender roles, position women and female children at the most disadvantageous position as the main victims of the disaster. Accordingly, gender roles have to be changed, if the effects of drought have to be mitigated and the community rescued from disappearance.

The research is original as data obtained cannot be easily accessed by short term researchers who have inadequate knowledge of the community and cannot observe season changes. Practitioner, social scientists and natural scientists, engineers and contractors included, can have their confidence in the findings: the findings are ready to be used.

Given the limited research on women in information technology (IT) sectors in emerging economies and the importance of understanding their experiences working in highly gendered IT firms, the purpose of this paper is to examine the specific gendered strategies used by women engineers to stay in gender-atypical IT firms in Sri Lanka using job embeddedness as a theoretical lens.

Data collection was done through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions on a sample of 14 women engineers employed in five leading IT firms in Sri Lanka.

Respondents perceived the work role expectations in the Sri Lankan IT industry as masculine. Respondents compromised their own gender identities to engage in four distinct strategies to link and fit with the prevailing work role expectations. “Using a hybrid style” and “being passive and neutral” were respondents’ link strategies, while “adopting masculine traits” and “demonstrating self-confidence” related to their fit strategies.

Men and women who aspire to enter the IT sector need to be pre-prepared and educated about the characteristics of IT cultures and prevailing gender norms along with the subject knowledge. Managers of IT firms need to create positive work environments for their women employees that aid them to fit and link with their workplaces.

The study provides a deeper understanding of how women manage gender-related issues within gender-atypical IT firms in Sri Lanka and stay in their employment.