Deliverable 6.1.1. Improving meeting culture

Improving meeting culture - in a gender context

You can improve the meeting culture in your organization for the benefit of everybody and especially women.

FESTA is presenting ways of doing so in the report: Improving meeting culture. When we talk about changing meeting culture we talk about minimizing the negative effects of gendered interactional patterns. This can be done by structuring formal and informal meetings in ways that are based on collaboration and negotiation rather than traditional academic positioning. This way, all participants will obtain a more equally distributed share of consideration and appreciation for their contribution. Especially women will benefit from this considering their relative disadvantageous present representation.

The report focuses on how to facilitate open and constructive communication and how to be aware of the subtle ways of giving and taking away voice, power and visibility. With these techniques and approaches, our experiences show that it is possible to foster meeting cultures, which provide structure and space for integrative, inclusive and respectful collaboration – and thereby powerful ways of interacting are made possible. This may serve as alternatives to otherwise typical and dominating discriminatory, competitive and excluding working environments in Academia with its major implications for gender.

6.1.1. Report Meeting Structures.pdf