Gender Equitable Interactions Online: Supporting Gender Equity in Work-based Videoconferencing, 2022-2025

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The GEiO project builds on and extends previous work that has demonstrated the negative consequences of gender inequalities in working life, as well as the growing demand for organisations to operate within socially and legally acceptable frameworks concerning human rights. The project expands this research base by focusing on the rapid increase in virtual work during the Covid-19 pandemic, a trend that is likely to persist in the future for many organisations. A key objective was to generate new transnational evidence on the, until now, underexplored ways in which digital videoconferencing innovations can serve both to reinforce and to challenge gender inequity at work. Three studies were conducted across four nations (Germany, Iceland, Spain and UK) to explore how gender is relevant to videoconferencing at work. Three different and complementary methods were used. The first study employed conversational analysis to make sense of video-recordings of online work meetings held in international corporations in each of the participating countries. The second study used Q methodology to explore shared understandings of digital working. Participants were recruited from the international corporations used in study one and other organisations known to use videconferencing. The third study used a Story Completion Task to capture social perceptions of videoconference meetings. Participants for this study were recruited from the personal and professional networks of each of the national research teams. Broadly, our findings reveal that gender continues to infuence how people speak, listen, lead, and respond in digital spaces. Stereoptypical expectations about how men and women should communicate persist. However, as well as reinforcing traditional power imbalances, online meetings can also become spaces for more equitable collaboration especially if training and awareness building is provided.

The GEiO project investigates the role of gender in online work meetings across four nations (Germany, Iceland, Spain and the UK). Research exploring how gender becomes relevant to videoconferencing at work remains in its infancy. Existing investigations suggest that with the exponential rise in digitally mediated working patterns and new reliance on videoconferencing platforms, organisations are unready to address gender inequality online. A key aim of this project is to build new transnational evidence on the currently unexplored ways in which digital videoconferencing innovations maintain or can be used to resist gender inequity at work. We will be working with international corporations in each of the partner countries. Participating corporations will support data collection and provide feedback on the research process and findings. Three different and complementary methods will be used to explore gendered processes in this context. The first study will use video-recordings of online work meetings to analyse conversational patterns. The second study will explore shared understandings of digital working through rank orderings of relevant statements by participants that will be both statistically and thematically analysed. A Story Completion task will be used in the third study. This method can be used to capture social perceptions of videoconference meetings through storytelling. 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 on digital gender equity. An accredited micro credential training course on gender equitable interactions online will be produced. It will be translated into the languages used in each of the partner locations to support good organisational practice.