Visiting researcher - Dr Helena Radke (The University of Edinburgh) to present on barriers to women engaging in collective action to overcome sexism

Start date and time

Wednesday 30 October 2019

Location

Edinburgh Napier University (Sighthill Campus)

In this talk, organised by Dr Mirona Gheorghiu, Dr Helena Radke will discuss how over the last few centuries women have fought hard to obtain increasing gender equality. Yet despite these successes gender equality remains an elusive goal. One response to ongoing gender inequality is participation in feminist collective action. Since women are numerically strong, one might imagine that they would be particularly well equipped to engage in this behaviour. Helena will argue, however, that women face barriers to engaging in collective action when seeking to overcome sexism and will outline these barriers, describing research conducted, as well as future research directions, which seek to establish, extend and overcome these barriers.

Helena completed her Bachelor of Psychological Science (Hons I; University Medal) in 2011 and her PhD in 2016 at the University of Queensland, Australia. She then worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Osnabruck in Germany from 2017 to mid-2019 before starting as a Lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include understanding prejudice and how social change occurs through collective action. Specifically, she’s interested in understanding and overcoming the barriers women face when engaging in collective action to overcome sexism, and the benefits and backlashes associated with involving allies in political movements.