This online handbook aims to present a deeper understanding of resistance to structural change to gender equality in academic institutions and the ways of dealing with it.
It is concerned with forms, directions, and aspects of resistance coming from men and women as well as the organizations, and the ways resistance operates (FESTA, 2012). For the purposes of the handbook, all resistance incidents encountered by the partner institutions during the course of FESTA project have been recorded and analyzed. We have agreed to include here 31 of these narratives summarizing what has worked well and what barriers have been experienced along the process of change towards gender equality in the member institutions of FESTA. We have also composed a list of recommendations for dealing with a variety of possible resistance incidents along the process of change. The references section is expected to be useful to the reader interested in further reading in the area.
It is expected to be useful to change agents because resistance is an inevitable part of the change process. Anyone who would like to create change in an environment needs to reduce the barriers as well as recognize the strategies to do this. Studying manifestations of resistance within institutions can answer this call by identifying both the blockages in the implementation of gender mainstreaming and the reasons for limited gender change (Cavaghan forthcoming, 2015; Lombardo and Mergaert, 2013; Mergaert and Lombardo, 2014).