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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine two types of departmental interventions focused on creating healthier and more equitable academic departments as well as enhancing faculty members' capacity for collective dialogue, goals and work. Both interventions were informed by the "dual-agenda" approach and focused on targeted academic units over a prolonged period.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a variety of qualitative and quantitative data (including National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE indicator data) to assess the potential of dual-agenda informed interventions in reducing gendered structures and gendered dynamics.FindingsThe authors outline essential components of a dual-agenda model for maximizing success in creating more gender equitable work organizations and discuss why the authors are more optimistic about the dual-agenda approaches than many past researchers have been in terms of the potential of the dual-agenda model for promoting more equal opportunities in work organizations.Originality/valueMost previous dual-agenda projects referenced in the literature have been carried out in non-academic contexts. The projects examined here, however, were administered in the context of multiple academic departments at two medium-sized, public US universities. Although other NSF ADVANCE institutional transformation institutions have included extensive department-focused transformation efforts (e.g. Brown University, Purdue University and Syracuse University), the long-term benefits of these efforts are not yet fully understood; nor have systematic comparisons been made across institutions.

The promise of small business ownership as a route to equality has yet to be realized. The authors draw from social construction perspectives and a detailed data set to model directly the various options individuals must balance—as owners and as family members—in the course of running their businesses. The authors' findings suggest that gendered structural constraints exist not only in the labor markets in which people work before becoming owners but also "closer to home" in terms of decisions they make about whether to try to use ownership to achieve more work–family balance and how much time and effort to put into growing their businesses.

On the basis of analysis of student responses to a case study titled "Drinks and Dinner," the authors evaluate the pedagogical potential of using constructive controversy case studies to teach about inequality. "Drinks and Dinner" is designed to capture the complexity of social interactions that defy simple solutions to engage students in increasingly sophisticated discussions of subtle gender bias and the practical contingencies of power in the workplace. Having taught the case several times in two distinct institutional cultures, the authors use student reactions to this classroom exercise to consider some of the pedagogical payoffs of constructive controversy case studies. The intentional ambiguities written into "Drinks and Dinner" defy simple solutions and require students to discuss while incorporating, honoring, and addressing differences of opinion, not only among the characters in the story but also among the students in the classroom. In the authors' preliminary implementations of the case, they found that students applied course concepts, considered multiple viewpoints, and, in some cases, moved from individualized explanations to structural analysis of how inequality is reproduced. The authors conclude with ideas for how to implement similar cases in other courses that could benefit from requiring students to actively and collectively solve problems related to inequality and the routine use of power.

This paper describes two teaching strategies from our workshop, "Teaching the Sociology of Gender and Work," that can help students understand the mechanisms and consequences of workplace gender inequality at the macro- and micro-levels. Cynthia Anderson's class project uses wage and sex composition data that allows students to learn actively how data are used to study general trends and changes over time. It encourages students to explore the reality of their possible careers and fields in terms of wages, proportion of women and men, and other factors. Sharon Bird's class exercise requires students to consider the interactional dynamics of everyday work life and encourages them to see the subtle processes of marginalization and exclusion while also thinking about how to overcome gender biases. Some of this information will contribute to student angst about inequality in the workplace; thus, we conclude with suggestions for decreasing potential student distress and increasing student empowerment.

This study investigated the extent to which social trust affects consumers'food safety opinions. Additionally, it examined the determinants of social trust in governmental agencies and advocacy groups responsible for food safety. It also examined relationships between trust and
food safety opinions. The data came from a social survey administered by mail to 289 adults in the Minneapolis/Minnesota metropolitan area. The results show support for a conceptual distinction between food safety worry and concern, which, respectively, reflect emotional and cognitive
consumer risk assessments. Social trust significantly affected worry, but not concern. Environmentalism and social-demographic variables had significant total effects, but not significant direct effects, on trust, worry, and concern.

Purpose
Supporting the advancement of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in ways that help to ensure the health, prosperity, welfare and security of the nation has been central to the mission of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) since 1950, the year Congress created the agency. Preparing a highly qualified and diverse STEM workforce plays a central role in supporting this mission. The paper aims to discuss these issues.


Design/methodology/approach
Over the past several decades, many positive steps have been taken throughout the US education system to help ensure a more diverse STEM workforce. Even so, women remain underrepresented among STEM faculty in higher education, especially at the upper ranks. Contributing to women's underrepresentation are systemic obstacles to the recruitment, retention and promotion of women of different racial, ethnic, disability, sexual orientations and nationality statuses.


Findings
The NSF ADVANCE Program is designed to address these barriers. Success for ADVANCE is, therefore, best defined in terms of the changes made to the structures and climates of academic workplaces, rather than in numbers of women hired, retained or promoted in any one institution at a given point in time.


Originality/value
This introduction briefly examines the origins of ADVANCE, key transitions in the program over time, its reach nationally and internationally, and its future.

Abstract Building on previous theory and research, we propose a "structural relational" view of the sex gap in small business success. Our findings, based on analyses of data from 423 small business owners in Iowa, show support for our model and suggest that links between owners, social relational processes, business structure, and small business success operate differently depending on the industry location of the business and the owner's sex. Results also indicate that the business owner's sex has direct and indirect effects on business success. This finding suggests that social relations, organizations, and institutions are all gendered in ways that influence the sex gap in sales, but that further research is needed to more fully explain sex differences in small business success. We discuss these and other findings in terms of their theoretical and practical implications, and suggest directions for future research.

This study examines the effects of religion on preference for a patriarchal family, one in which the husband makes decisions while the wife is subservient to him. The effects of both religious fundamentalism and personal religiosity are considered using a survey of adults in a Southwestern city. The analysis reveals a strong positive direct effect of adherence to a fundamentalist doctrine on support for the patriarchal family, but no direct effect of personal religiosity. An interaction effect of these two variables, reported in some other studies of the effect of religion on other family issues, is not found. The effect of religious fundamentalism is equal in magnitude to the effect of age, and greater than the effects of education, gender, family income, head of household occupational prestige, subjective class identification, race and rural background. With the exceptions of age and gender, religious fundamentalism serves as a crucial intervening variable in the relationships between these variables and endorsement of patriarchal norms in the husband‐wife relationship.