Professor Sylvia Walby OBE

PhD Supervision Interests

Research students are welcome in all areas of my research interests including: gender violence and security; gendered political economy; policies towards equalities; sociology of the EU; and complexity theory.

Research Interests

UNESCO Chair in Gender Research

Sylvia Walby was appointed the founding Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Gender Research in 2008.  Its objectives are to:

• facilitate the development of policy-relevant research on gender equality and women's human rights around the world;
• support and develop international networking to facilitate the exchange of ideas, research and policy developments, especially between the North and South;
• support research and build capacity on policy-relevant gender equality issues; curriculum development, student training at graduate level; staff exchanges;
• facilitate exchanges between researchers and policy makers, in the context of UN instruments for promoting women's human rights and the Millennium Development Goals;
• collaborate with UNESCO in its Gender Equality policy and strategy.

Research Interests

My current research is focused on ?gender, violence and security' and on ?gender and the crisis'; moving between theory and measurement and policy impact.  Funded research projects are organised within the UNESCO Chair in Gender Research Group.  Research activities are clustered into four groups:

• Social theory;
• Gender, violence and security;
• Gender mainstreaming and intersectionality (policy and politics);
• Gendered political economy

 Social Theory

The conclusions to my research over the previous decade can be found in Globalization and Inequalities, which shows the implications of including gender at the centre of social theory.  Globalization restructures inequalities; but there is a challenge to theorise the intersection of multiple inequalities beyond class.  The book draws on complexity theory to offer a new solution to these dilemmas of intersectionality.  It shows the importance of gendering political economy and of including violence as a fourth institutional domain. It develops the conceptualisation of the gender regime, identifying its variety of forms, especially the distinction between social democratic and neoliberal gender regimes.

Gender Mainstreaming and Intersectionality (policy and politics)

Gender mainstreaming addresses the tension between mainstream governmental policy and the feminist interventions that seek to decrease gender inequalities.

It was the theme of an ESRC funded seminar series, 2003-4, that led to a special issue of Social Politics and of International Feminist Journal of Politics. 

The comparative quality of gender equality policy in all EU Member States was the subject of Quing, an EU Framework 6 programme, led by Verloo in Vienna, with a team of 50 researchers, of which Walby was PI for Lancaster and led the strand on intersectionality.  This led to the book The Future of Feminism about the robust character of contemporary feminism, to a special issue of Social Politics on the implications of multiple intersecting inequalities for the reform to the architecture of equality policy, and to further articles on intersectionality (e.g. in Sociology).

The conceptualisation and measurement of equality is necessary for the translation of the democratic will into policy: a further series of seminars funded by the ESRC (2005-8) on ?what is gender equality in a global era' and projects funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission led to publications that address this issue.

Gendered political economy

I have a long standing research interest in changes in gendered employment and their interconnections to wider systems of political economy and society.  This includes: International Sociological Association RC02 Economy and Society (President 2006-2010); ESRC and EOC projects on gendered pay, gendered productivity and gendered economic growth; GLOW on the knowledge economy; European Parliament work on quotas on Boards of Directors; and, most recently, the financial crisis. GLOW is an international network on Gender Globalization and Work Transformation (GLOW) in US (Gottfried), Japan (Osawa), Germany (Gottschall, Shire) and UK (Walby), on the changes in the regulation of non-standard forms of working, the nature of the knowledge economy, and the theorisation of varieties of capitalism and gender regime, leading to a book and a special issue of Gender Work and Organization. 

Current Teaching

Undergraduate BA module ?Violence and society'

MA module ?Gender and violence'

Professional and public activities

REF 2014, Sociology sub-panel

UK National Commission for UNESCO, non-executive Director, 2011-

OBE for services to equal opportunities and diversity, 2008

UNESCO Chair in Gender Research, 2008-

Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, 2008-

International Sociological Association, President Research Committee 02 Economy and Society, 2006-2010 and continuing Board member

European Sociological Association, founding President, 1995-7.

• Is the Rate of Domestic Violence Decreasing or Increasing? A Re-Analysis of the British Crime Survey

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• Overview of the worldwide best practices for rape prevention & assisting women victims of rape

  01/11/2012 →
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• Current Sociology

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• Social Politics

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