This is the set of web pages
I used for teaching this course online, before my retirement as of July 1,
2015. You may be using these pages with another
professor.
-- Louise
Ripley
Welcome to Gender Issues in Management,
Online
We use a
Moodle
Discussion Group
(not active until the first of classes)
To
reach me and privately email me at
lripley@yorku.ca,
rather than through the
Discussion Board or mail system
This syllabus is not
official until the first day of classes |
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Course/Professor Information
Calendar Description
Uses feminist principles and pedagogy to examine gender issues relevant to managing career and life, including for example pay equity, harassment, stereotyping, power and assertiveness, diversity, mentoring, self-care and balance, with the goal of understanding issues and effecting change.
Course credit exclusions: None. PRIOR TO FALL 2009: Course
credit exclusions: AP/ADMS 3120 3.00, AP/ADMS 3130G 3.00 (prior
to Summer 1993).
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Prerequisites
No courses, but you must be willing
to participate in an online Discussion Group and your
Team project which serves as a Final Exam Substitute, and you
must know how to and be able to write an essay. |
Course
Director: Professor M
Louise Ripley, MBA, PhD
Office: Atkinson College 268C
EMail:
lripley@yorku.ca
(no telephone)
Course Time
and Location:
Internet course. Note that while the course does not require any
synchronized time meetings, you will need to complete units by
some dates in order to complete the Assignment
Course Consultation Hours:
Always available by email; email to set a time in person
Catalogue Number: A07H01
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Organization of the Course |
Course Structure
This
course is an Internet course, taught entirely
online, with many students truly at a distance. We
do not meet in person until the in-class test, with
arrangements for those who live more than three
hours away. This puts much more of the onus for
learning on the student, where it rightfully belongs
anyway. This does not mean that you are on your own:
in this course, your professor takes an active role. The course requires teamwork, but all group work is done
electronically; hence you cannot require physical
attendance at group meetings to work on the final
project.
There are no "streamed
lectures" or audio tapes for this course; you
instead will work your way through
Learning Units
developed by Professor M Louise Ripley, utilizing
Moodle for
online discussion. These, along with the required
text Leaning In form the basis of
assignments. |
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Course Kit
The
Course Kit for this course is entirely online,
including this Course Syllabus and anything linked from it, and
the Learning Units. The web pages are colour coded, each course
with its own
colour. In addition
to the ground rules and information about communicating, grades,
and tests, there is page of frequently asked questions in courses, and a warranty page that tells you that after completing a course with me you have a life-long invitation to return,
either to ask for help or to give it, or just to chat.
At the top of this syllabus page
are links to pages that tell you about my teaching,
research, and service, some more about me, a page of important
other links, and a general alphabetical
index to my website. When you enrol, you are automatically added
to the Moodle platform for this course and you should
see your course when you type in
http://moodle.yorku.ca.
See the
Students' Guide to Moodle. This Course
Kit/Syllabus is designed as an on-line facility, not
to be printed in its entirety. |
 Waving
Hand Exercises: Posting to the Discussion Group
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There are roughly15
Waving Hand Exercises in each of the first four
Learning Units. You
should plan to spend about two-three weeks on each of
the four units. The last Unit has only one
webpage in it, and only three Waving Hand Exercises. It
is mainly a wrapping-up summary unit, which you
should plan to do in the last weeks while you are
studying for the test and finishing up your Final
Exam Substitute Group Project.
Recognize a Waving Hand Exercise
by the picture of a hand waving, waiting to be
called on.
Please don't be afraid of
the Waving Hand! Several people have told me it
scares them, a guy in Germany wrote to say the
dismembered hand
spooked him, and a student told me he had dropped
the course the year before because of the Waving
Hand. It is simply a picture to mark that "here is a
question about the material to answer on the Moodle Discussion Group".
It represents someone waving a hand as in a
classroom, saying, "I know! I know!". It doesn't mean anything else and it doesn't do
anything else. Just read the question beside it,
think about your answer, and click on the blue link
to Moodle to
post your answer to the Discussion Group.
If
someone already has answered this particular Waving
Hand Exercise, add your comments below theirs as a
reply. This keeps the strings of postings in some
order and will make it easier when you come to your
assignment.
You are strongly advised to start posting
your responses to the Waving Hand Exercises early,
and to keep posting regularly and keep responding to
the postings of other students. It is not possible to stress too
strongly how important participation in the
Discussion Group is for this course. This is where
the majority of your learning will take place. You
also will need exchanges of postings to write about
for your assignment.
There is no posting date
due for the WHEs, and there is no deadline. You may
post right up to the end of the course. You should
try to finish them all by the end of the course in
order to get the most learning out of the course.
Students frequently ask, "How much
should I write?" A good rule of thumb from
academic articles written about online courses suggests a minimum of
one short paragraph and a maximum of two.
Avoid postings that are limited to "I agree"
or "Great idea!". If you write to say you agree,
then tell us why you agree or disagree, and support your
statement with concepts from the website or the
book, or from
readings you are doing for your final exam
substitute project or from your own work experience.
To start working with the Waving Hand
Exercises
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Go to the first
Learning Unit 1
(Socialization). Click on the blue link
titled
"Early Women in Business", and
read it.
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After reading the
Exercise (your first one is subtitled "dian
marino") and deciding on your answer, to
post your answer to Moodle, click on the
link to Moodle in the Exercise (each
Exercise has this link) and log in. From
your Moodle home page, click on the link to
this course. If it is not showing up, and
you have just registered, know that it takes
24 hours or so for you to be connected to
Moodle. In Moodle, scroll down the page to
find "Topic 1", "Early Women in Business".
Click on this. In the place that comes up, click on
either "Add a new discussion topic",
giving it the name "dian marino", or, if
someone has posted something similar you
should click on "reply" under their message
and reply to it. This
keeps the strings of postings in some
order and will make it easier when you come to do
your Assignment.
When you are finished, post
your contribution. Note that you can either
mark it to send right away, or not click
that box and you will have up to half an
hour to reword it or call it back.
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This course requires group work
for completion of the Final Exam Substitute Project.
You must do your group work online because group members vary widely in geographical location.
This is how much of the work is done today in the "real world" of business.
If you have had a bad experience with teams in
coursework in the past, put it behind you and
resolve to have a good experience this time. Part of
the curriculum of Business education is learning to
work in teams; you cannot do the Final Exam
Substitute Group Project alone Take a look now at
the project and be sure that you are willing and
able to commit to it the time and cooperation it
requires. It is a term-long project, and is not to
be left until the last week. Read more
About Teamwork.
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The course is mainly geared toward women
looking for ways to succeed in the still largely
male-dominated field of management, from a feminist and interdisciplinary perspective, in a North
American context. While men are welcome and have
appeared to feel comfortable in the past, the course
is woman-centered. Let's not allow discussion of
women’s issues to be diverted into a moan about how
tragic it is for a white man who now can't get a job
because even though he holds a Ph.D. in business they
gave the job to an unqualified black lesbian one-armed
woman in a wheelchair with a minority surname who
never finished high school. The statistics
just don't support this myth, and it's not what
Affirmative Action is about. |
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Feminist pedagogy means we
employ methods of research and teaching that may be
new to you, particularly if you are a Business major.
A York professor dian marino, in the Faculty of
Environmental Studies, and one of my mentors (who so
detested hierarchies that she refused to capitalize
her own name) insisted that although we still need to
read what experts have written, our own experience and
what we believe and feel are just as important and as
educational. The academic practice of proving our point
by lining up behind us all the published, (usually)
dead, (usually white), (usually) male authors who wrote
material that supports what we want to say, dian
referred to as "the epistemological showdown".
Our own experience and beliefs show up in the "I"
statements. Both
are important. Be sure to read at these links for more
detailed descriptions of these two important elements,
both of which should appear in all your course work.
In Feminist teaching, we also make an effort to
combat the very real problem, documented in the
pedagogical literature, that men generally talk more
than women in classrooms and are called on more. This
problem rarely occurs in Internet courses, but it is
up to you to ensure you participate fully. |
Important Dates and
Other Information
Start
Date January
6, 2014
Last
Day to Announce
Grade
Components January
19, 2014
Last Day To Enrol Without Permission of the Professor
January 19, 2014
Read here why no
permission is given to enrol after this date or in a class
that is full
Groups are
assigned right after the Last Day To Enrol Without
Permission of the Professor
First Assignment Due
Dates, and In-Class Test Date
Click Here
Reading Week: February 15-21, 2014
Last Day to Drop Without a Grade
March
7, 2014
Last Day of Classes
April
4, 2014
Deferred Exam/Test/Work
May
2014
Student Financial Services
Academic Fees
Dates for
Withdrawal and Return of Fees
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Course Readings and Materials
Web Page materials, linked from this syllabus
Sandberg, Sheryl (2013) Lean In:
Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
New York: Alfred A.
Knopf.
(You can purchase this from the York
Bookstore, Amazon, or Kindle) |
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Supplementary Reading
Regular reading of a good daily newspaper and some of the
popular business magazines
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Learning Units (Read about
Getting
Started) |
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Unit 3 Discrimination
and Fighting Back
Readings
Web Site Learning Units
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Unit 4 Finishing up: Balance
Readings
Web Site Learning Units
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Getting Started and Completing This Course,
| You
Need To be
Registered and have regular access to:
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| Computer |
| Moodle Discussion Group - this comes with your
enrolment |
| Your yorku.ca student email account (or a
substitute - let me know) |
| The
Web Page Learning Units |
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Course Purpose/Learning
Objectives
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In addition to the basic
Learning Objectives that are common to all courses
taught by Professor Ripley, this course aims to develop an
awareness of the gender discrimination that still exists
in most jobs and professions, an understanding of what
the underlying issues are (e.g.: sexual harassment is
not about sex but about power), and a sense of what needs to be
done, what is being done, and what could further be done
to improve
conditions for women who work outside the home. We will
do this by examining, with an insistence on equality in
gender, race, class, and sexual orientation, both
alternative ways of managing and ways that women can
confront established systemic bias, including new ways
of structuring organizations to accommodate and profit
from women's different ways of knowing and of
leadership.
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Expanded Course Description
This course asks you to keep your eyes
and ears open and examine how women are treated in the world of
business. There are still problems with gender bias in organizations. For
each dollar that man earns, a woman can expect to earn
72 cents. For women of colour, that differential drops
to 64 cents to a man's dollar. Not only do fewer than 3% of jobs in upper
management go to women, but when they do, the wage
disparity in the upper levels is even greater than at
lower levels. Feminism has
helped ensure that at least today a
woman can sit in something approaching equality in a
classroom with men, but there is a long way to go and
the journey is not helped by those who would stick their
heads in the sand and pretend everything is okay because
they know a nice man. Men are nice, yes, sometimes they
are even wonderful, and they have
difficult work issues too, but it has been tougher on
women for thousands of years, and still generally
is. Male or female, in taking this course, be prepared to look at difficult
issues of gender in management with woman's perspective as a priority.
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Evaluation Summary and Assignment Descriptions
Effective writing is one of
the most important skills you can acquire in a
university course, and one that you will use in your
education, your career and your life; so too is the
skill of following instructions. All work in this
course requires you to write well and to submit
work properly. Read carefully the full instructions on
this web site on Writing
Well for a Better Grade, on
References,
and on Format For Submitting
Work Properly, and check out the
Writing
Department. Do not assume that because you have
written papers before you have mastered the art; writing
is something we continually work on to improve. Note that you may be asked to make
reference in tests to any assignments and final
projects. Read too about two important elements of
writing that should appear in all your course work, the
academic practice of proving our point by lining up
behind us all the published, (usually) dead, (usually)
white, (usually) male authors who wrote what supports
what we want to say, what my mentor dian marino referred
to as "the
epistemological showdown" and the statement of our
own beliefs and feelings that dian called "i
statements."
Assignment
Type
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%
of Grade |
Due Date |
Description |
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Individual
Work |
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Assignment
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40% |
Tuesday, February 18, 12:00 noon
Upload to
eServices Office
Website
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Assignment for
Contribution to Discussion Group
Marks for Assignment
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Test
For Offsite Test
Requests |
40% |
Sunday
March 16, 2:00 pm to 4:00
(Saturday March 15 for religious
reasons, by specific
request only, far ahead of time)
Place: TEL 0006
THIS TEST IS NOT
THE FINAL EXAM |
Open Book
In-Class Essay
Test on all course materials
Test Examples
(See all previous tests)
Marks for Test |
| Group Participation |
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At various times
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Your share of the
group mark may be lowered if you are not pulling
your weight in your group project |
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Group
Work |
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You will be placed
in groups after the Last Day to Enrol Without
Permission date |
See Group Lists |
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Proposal |
5 marks off final
grade if not submitted |
Monday, February
3, 12:00 Noon
(one submission per group)
Send to my email:
lripley@yorku.ca
Send peer
evaluations; if all is okay you don't need to
write anything but if there are problems, let me
know privately. |
Project Proposal |
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Final Exam
Substitute |
20% |
Monday, March 31, 12:00
Noon
Upload to
eServices Office
Website
(choose
one person from the group to upload it only once,
or hand deliver to 2120 TEL)
THIS PROJECT IS THE
FINAL EXAM SUBSTITUTE; EVERYONE DOES THE TEST AND THE
PROJECT |
Final Exam Substitute Group Project
Term-long
assignment - do not leave till the end |
NOTE: A student's final course
grade is not necessarily confined to a compilation of
marks earned on individual course components. Final
course grades may be adjusted to conform to Programme or
Faculty grades distribution profiles. The average mark
in this course is usually C+.
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Grading, Assignment Submission, Lateness Penalties,
and Missed Tests
Grading
The grading scheme for the course conforms to the
9-point grading system used in undergraduate programmes
at York. For a full
description of York grading system see the
York
University Undergraduate Calendar.
Students may take a limited number of courses for degree
credit on an ungraded (pass/fail) basis. For full
information on this option see
Alternative Grading
Option and scroll down to "Grading."
Assignment
Submission
To be submitted through the
Upload Site of
the Office of Computing Technology and e-Learning
Services, or Email, as described in the course
syllabus.
Lateness
Penalty/Missed Tests:
Proper academic
performance depends on students doing their work not
only well, but on time. Accordingly assignments for
this course must be received on the due date specified
for the assignment. With the exception of the Final
Exam Substitute, you may submit any assignment up to
one week late for a grade of not more than the lowest
mark earned by anyone who handed it in on time. For the Final Exam Substitute, you may hand
it in up to one DAY late with the same arrangement. In
either case, you do not have to request the extension,
just send the late paper to my personal email. Due to large class
sizes, we can no longer make informal arrangements for
exceptions to the lateness penalty or for missing a
test. If you must defer work or miss a test for any
reason, and wish to obtain full credit for it, you
must do it by petitioning for a
Deferred
Standing Agreement. Check for this term's
Deferred
Dates.The one exception to this is if
you are registered with the Office for Persons with
Disabilities or a York Counseling Centre, in which case, please contact me directly
as early in the course as possible either in person or
by email.
About Your Professor
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Photograph by Timothy Hudson |
I'm your
professor, Louise Ripley. My office is 268C Atkinson.
I am in the office at various times so my office hours
will be by appointment (email me). But always try email first; most questions can
be answered most easily by email (lripley@yorku.ca)
or the Discussion Group. Reach me there at any time. Email
me; I don't use my phone but I'm always on the
email. Call me "Louise" or address me as "Dr. Ripley"
if you have to. The name Ripley belonged to my
labour-union-organizer father and I carry it proudly.
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I am a great believer in multi-disciplinary
studies. I once had three papers accepted in a two-week
period, one in Philosophy, one in Women's Studies, and one
in Cybernetics! I am a Professor of Marketing and in
Women's Studies.
For many
years I supervised students in the Masters in Environmental
Studies programme at York but am now restricting my
cross-appointment to only two schools. I have earned
a PhD in
Management Studies (major in Marketing, minor in Finance) from
University
of Toronto, an MBA in Finance from
Loyola University of
Chicago, and a Bachelor's degree from
Shimer,
one of the world's finest (and smallest) liberal arts
undergraduate schools. I worked in Finance and Marketing Research in
Chicago and have taught at York for more than thirty years.
Click here to read more about me
professionally and personally.
I love teaching
on the Internet but I haven't always done it or even wanted
to do it. I had my "first time" too. For a number of years I
said I wouldn't do it because I thought I wouldn't get to
know my students as I do in on-campus courses and it
wouldn't be any fun, but I found that this is not the case.
A while ago I
published a paper
on Internet Teaching which, although written for fellow professors,
may give you insight into my teaching philosophy in this
medium.
I am a feminist.
My definition of
feminism is simple: A belief that women's ways of knowing
and doing are just as valuable as men's and that women are
to be valued just as highly as men. My feminism does NOT
mean hating men. I am happily married to one, have three
treasured sons, good male friends and have had more male
mentors than female in my career. Like many women's
studies professors of a certain age, I don't have formal
qualifications in the field because there were no
programmes in Women's Studies when I was going to school.
I earned my Women's Studies degrees in the School of Hard
Knocks. I have taught this course for more than twenty years (the
first ten under the title "Women and Business") and it is
one of my favourite courses to teach. A while ago, we decided
to change the title and the emphasis slightly to "Gender
Issues in Management", and especially to welcome nurses,
who do not work in "business".
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Important York Policies (the fine print) |
Academic Honesty and Integrity
York students are required to
maintain high standards of academic integrity and are
subject to the
Senate
Policy on Academic Honesty.
By staying in this course, you agree to abide by these
rules. Students should also review materials on the
Academic Integrity Website.
All work submitted by
individuals or groups will be the work of only that
individual or group, for only this course, not having
been done for any other course in any way, by the
current members or any one else. You are welcome to talk
with anyone you like while preparing for any part of
this course, but what you put together and hand in must
be your own work and original to this course. Violation
of these premises is grounds for prosecution under the
rules of the Faculty and the University.
Read here York's new
booklet, "Beware! Says
Who? Avoiding Plagiarism"
Accommodation Procedures:
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Deferred Standing: If
you feel you must defer work, you must petition.
See
School Policy on Deferred Exams. |
Students with Special Needs
York University is committed to making reasonable
accommodations and adaptations in order to make
equitable the educational experience of students with
special needs and to promote their full integration into
the campus community. If you require special
accommodations, alert the Course
Director as soon as possible. Failure to notify the course director of
your needs in a timely manner may jeopardize the
opportunity to arrange for academic accommodation. Visit the Counselling Centre
and Disabilities Services
for more information.
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Ethics Review Process
York students are subject to the York
University Policy for the Ethics Review Process for
Research Involving Human Participants. In particular,
students proposing to undertake research which involves
human subjects such as interviewing the director of a
company or government agency or having people complete a
questionnaire, are required to submit an Application
for Ethical Approval of Research Involving Human
Participants at least one month before you plan to begin
the research. If you are in doubt as to whether this
requirement applies to you, contact your Course Director
immediately.
Grade Component Deadline
The course assignment structure and grading scheme (i.e.
kinds and weights of assignments, essays, exams, etc.)
must be announced and be available in writing to
students within the first two weeks of classes. Please see
Evaluation Summary.
Graded Feedback Rule
Under normal circumstances, students should receive some graded feedback worth at
least 15% per cent of the final grade for Fall, Winter or
Summer term, and 30% for full-year courses in the
Fall/Winter term prior to the final date for withdrawal
from a course without receiving a grade, with the following exceptions:
-
graduate or upper level undergraduate
courses where course work typically, or at the
instructor's discretion, consists of a single piece of
work and/or is based predominantly or solely on
student presentations;
-
practicum courses;
-
ungraded courses;
-
courses in Faculties where the drop
date occurs within the first three weeks of classes;
-
courses which run on a compressed
schedule, e.g.: a course which accomplishes its academic
credits of work at a rate of one credit hour per two
calendar weeks or faster.
Note: Under unusual and/or
unforeseeable circumstances which disrupt the academic
norm, instructors are expected to provide grading schemes
and academic feedback in the spirit of these regulations
as soon as possible.
For more information, see the
Graded Feedback Rule.
Reappraisals
For reappraisal procedures and information, see
Reappraisal Policies
Religious Observance Days York University is committed to
respecting the religious beliefs and practices of all
members of the community and making accommodations for
observances of special significance to adherents. Should any
of the dates specified in this syllabus for in-class test or
examination, or for any scheduled lab, practicum, workshop
or other assignment pose a conflict for you, contact the Course
Director within the first three weeks of class and obviously
before the date that is a problem; you cannot do this
after-the-fact. To arrange an
alternative date or time for an examination scheduled in the
formal examination periods (December and April/May),
students must complete an
Online Examination Accommodation Form or pick one up
from the Student Client Services in the Student Services
Centre.
Student Conduct
Students and instructors are expected
to maintain a professional relationship characterized by
courtesy and mutual respect and to refrain from actions
disruptive to such a relationship. It is the responsibility of
the instructor to maintain an appropriate academic
atmosphere in the classroom, and the responsibility of the
student to cooperate in that endeavour. The
instructor is the best person to decide, in the first
instance, whether such an atmosphere is present in the
class. Read the full
Policy on Disruptive and/or Harassing Behaviour.
Twenty Percent (20%) Rule
No examination or test worth more than 20% of the final
grade will be given during the last two weeks of classes
in a term, with the exception of classes which regularly
meet Friday evenings or any time on Saturday or Sunday.
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