At the recent annual conference of the American Sociological Association Clayman Institute Research Director Bethany Nichols and Executive Director Alison Dahl Crossley shared findings from Institute research projects on workplace nondisclosure agreements digital anti-feminism and threats to the persistence of online feminist communities.

In the session Sexual Violence as a Structural Problem Nichols presented results from the Institutes paper Silence and Stalled How Non-Disclosure Agreements Shape the Careers of Sexual Harassment Survivors Nichols and her coauthors find that NDAs create lasting financial and emotional harm limit career advancement and protect toxic workplace cultures Session participants expressed their excitement about the Institutes interview data their anticipation for the manuscript to be published and inquired about how the team accessed such sensitive data The paper was coauthored with Graduate Research Assistant Ariel Lam Chan Director Adrian Daub and Crossley.

This ASA session was one of the most fruitful experiences I have ever had at the conference Nichols said I exchanged theoretical and methodological ideas with other panelists and we plan to stay in touch to support each others projects Most importantly it is significant that ASA centered sexual violence in its very own session this year it tells the world that sexual violence is a topic that is not only of social importance but also worthy of meaningful study.

Nichols and Crossley copresented a second research project coauthored with Daub titled Learning Digital Anti-Feminism Depp v Heard YouTube and How Platforms Shape What counts as Evidence On this panel Nichols and Crossley presented results that showed the life of the Depp v Heard trial on YouTube and the ways antifeminism manifested across the platform In the QA session participants asked Nichols and Crossley about why such severe backlash existed against Amber Heard and Nichols and Crossley were able to share with the audience broader societal beliefs that often discredit and devalue the experiences of survivors of gender-based violence.

Crossley presented her paper Online Abeyance Structures and the Persistence of US Feminism at a special session on Enduring Social Movements at ASA In the presentation she used the framework of social movement abeyance to extend arguments about the significance of social movement communities Because feminist community is such a central feature of feminism online feminist communities largely on social media are critical to the feminist movement today In the last few years however media landscapes and social media corporations themselves have dramatically changed Drawing on feminist social movement and feminist media scholarship Crossley argued that online social movement community is dynamic and vulnerable in a way that offline social movement community is not This suggests avenues for future research about the relationships between social media and abeyance and the dynamics of movement longevity overall.

Also at the conference former Clayman Institute Director Shelley J Correll began her term as president of the ASA Correll is faculty director and principal investigator of the Stanford VMWare Womens Leadership Innovation Lab She is the Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden Family Professor of Womens Leadership and a professor of sociology.

Source: https://gender.stanford.edu/news/institute-leaders-present-research-findings-asa-annual-conference-chicago