Gender equity: Overview

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.

Abstract
With increasing gender balance in specialist medical training and employment in Australia, there is a corresponding need to consider how parental leave and subsequent return to work is managed in the workplace. An electronic survey exploring the experiences of pregnancy and return to work following parental leave was distributed by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA). The return-to-work component of the survey evaluated parental leave and return-to-work patterns, lactation practices and facilities, supports and resources utilised during the return-to-work process. We report on 391 return-to-work episodes from 219 respondents. One hundred and seventy-two (79%) were specialists at the time of survey completion. Six to 11 months was the most frequent duration of parental leave, and this duration was associated with higher satisfaction levels than shorter durations of leave (odds ratio 5.44, 95% confidence interval 3.18-9.31, P < 0.001). Breastfeeding continued in 246 (63%) return-to-work episodes, and absent or inadequate lactation facilities were reported in 239 (88%). In 227 (58%) return-to-work experiences, respondents received no formal support on returning to work. One hundred and thirty-five (62%) respondents did not utilise any existing return-to-work resources, and family and friends were the main source of support for 113 (52%) respondents. Return-to-work processes should be tailored to meet individual needs. Consistent with existing recommendations, satisfactory lactation facilities must be provided. We recommend that the period of one-to-one supervision be flexible and negotiated, to suit the unique return-to-work trajectory of each worker. Existing ANZCA resources could assist departments in supporting anaesthetists who return to work following parental leave.