Gender Equality Training for Students in Higher Education: A Scoping Review.

Abstract

Background: Despite recent improvements, gender inequality persists within the higher education sector, as evidenced by the proportionally greater number of student and academic leadership positions occupied by male students and staff. Gender equality education and training for students may help to develop awareness, knowledge, and skills among individual students, building capacity to address biases and accelerate culture change in higher education institutes (HEIs).

Objective: Our review seeks to identify and explore the existing literature on gender equality training interventions for third level students, with a particular emphasis on training content, methodology and outcome evaluation.

Methods: The Arskey & O'Malley's six-stage framework was employed to map the literature related to current best practice in gender equality training for students in higher education. Systematic database searches of peer-reviewed literature were carried out and 3140 titles, 33 abstracts, and 52 full-text articles were screened for eligibility with 14 articles selected for inclusion in this review. A theory of change lens was applied to provide a structured approach to examine their focus and relevance within the context of gender equality training in higher education.

Results: The selected studies detail a range of pedagogical approaches, including didactic lectures, participatory and co-design workshops, reflective writing, and service learning, with durations ranging from a single interaction to one year. Most articles reviewed do not explicitly state their study aims or research question, and the theoretical underpinnings are generally vaguely described. The longer-term impact of most interventions is unclear, as evaluation metrics seldom go beyond the level of adoption.

Conclusions: This scoping review shows that the literature base for gender equality training for third level students lacks coherence, highlighting the need for further work to evaluate its impact. This work provides a foundation for developing training design recommendations.

Clinicaltrial: JMIR Res Protoc 2023;12:e44584 doi: 10.2196/44584.