Gender Equitable Interactions Online (GEiO): Supporting Gender Equity In Work-based Videoconferencing

The GEiO project investigates the role of gender in online group meetings. Research exploring the ways in which gender becomes relevant to videoconferencing at work remains in its infancy. Recent research suggests that with the exponential rise in digitally mediated working patterns and new reliance on videoconferencing platforms, organisations are currently ill-equipped to address unequal treatment online and there is a lack of understanding, training or policy around these issues. A key aim is to build new transnational evidence on the currently unexplored ways in which digital videoconferencing innovations can be used to support or resist gender inequity at work. The empirical research questions are:
1. How is gender performed and accomplished in online meetings on videoconferencing platforms?
2. How do the affordances of digital environments mediate the processes of othering in professional contexts?
3. How are gendered interactions on videoconferencing platforms understood by those using them?
4. How do people enact and resist gendered positionings in online work meetings, in particular those that are experienced as gendered harassment and violence?
5. How can technologies be used to support equitable intersectional relationships in an online meeting context?
Three different and complementary methods will be used to explore the micro (study 1), meso (study 2) and macro (study 3) gendered processes that are relevant to videoconferencing at work. This includes three different approaches to collecting data to address all aspects of the five research questions. Study 1 will collect data in the form of video recorded online work meetings, comprised of mixed gender groups. Data will be analysed using conversation analysis. The research team will work with our corporation partner (CP) as well as one private multinational organisation in each partner country which will serve as a case study. Three to five meetings from each organisation per country will be included in the data corpus. Each meeting will include a maximum of 10 participants of which at least three will be women. Study 2 will use Q methodology to explore shared understandings. It does so through the use of both statistical and thematic analytic techniques. Participants (N = 40/50 per country,) will be recruited through the same multinational organisations taking part in Study 1 for comparison and consistency. Study 3 will use the innovative method of Story Completion (SC) tasks for data collection and discursive analysis of the collected data. SC allows us to tap into social perceptions and meanings, as well as the understandings, on a given topic. Data will be collected via secure online survey platforms (e.g. Qualtrics) which has the benefit of reaching a wider, more geographically dispersed sample, and enables the social and cultural, macro- level, meanings to be captured. This macro level focus is thus reflected in the wider sampling strategy, which will recruit a minimum of 100 participants per nation - an established standard in SC studies for the generation of a data sample.
Findings from the three studies will then be brought together, reintegrated and contextualised within the existing literature by the GEiO team to produce an overall analysis of the micro, meso and macro elements of the gendered interactions and experiences of videoconferencing. By approaching the data both by study and by country, this methodological design will enable cross-national comparisons at different levels of analysis.
The research findings will provide a firm basis for knowledge exchange with private sector organisations to develop evidence-based training and policy that better respond to the needs of those who have experienced gendered discrimination in a digital work context. An accredited micro credential training course on gender equitable interactions online will be produced and translated into the languages used in each of the partner locations.