About #MeTooPoliSci ADVANCE and the Working Group
In summer 2019, our research team was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE Program for a project designed to address the problem of sexual harassment in the field of political science. Our work aims to improve awareness and practices among majority-identified colleagues, improve departmental microclimates, and increase department-level attention to inclusion issues.
This working group will engage the notion that sexual harassment is pervasive and impacts the interest, retention, and success of women+ (by which we mean cisgender women, transgender women, gender non-conforming, femme-identified, non-binary people, as well as other sexual and gender minorities who are statistically more likely to be impacted by harassment). The main output of our grant work will be a Climate Toolkit, which incentivizes and empowers departments to achieve the project outcomes. This involves developing:
- A Department Climate Study to increase awareness of and concern about problematic department cultures,
- An Upstanding Bystander Training to help train individuals in harassment intervention techniques,
- A Dialogues Adaptation Project to help improve department microclimates and increase department-level attention to key issues of inclusiveness, and
- A Policies and Practices Project which partners with the APSA to promote our findings and propose policies for use across the social sciences. Our work will model, facilitate, and incentivize change in the climate and culture of the discipline and establish a model for other disciplinary professional organizations internationally.
For more information about the project, please visit us at www.metoopolisci.org
About the Team:
#MeTooPoliSci ADVANCE is organized by Rebecca Gill (UNLV), Nadia Brown (Georgetown University), Stella Rouse (University of Maryland), and Libby Sharrow (UMASS Amherst). Questions or comments should be directed to Rebecca Gill.