Harrogate academic turns 'life experiences' of gender equality into groundbreaking new book
A Harrogate woman has been praised for her new book’s fresh way of looking at sexism in the workplace and society.
Harrogate’s Karen Vollum-Dix, an academic at Leeds Beckett University, says, after a lifetime of personal experience, she prefers not to see gender inequalities - or the world - in absolute terms.
Instead her acclaimed new book entitled Gender Equality in the Professional Workplace: Pioneering Radical Action for Women’s Empowerment is written from several perspectives.
Published by Emerald in Leeds, the book’s central aim is to present the challenges facing woman and the struggle against the patriarchy, misogyny, and masculine hegemony in a wide-ranging way.
"I draw heavily on my personal experiences as a female growing up, being a student, mother and career woman, at times juggling several of those roles,” she said.
"Some people see the world in absolute terms, with binary or dichotomous thinking.
"I happen to see many choices on a spectrum with no clear or simple binary choice.
"Not all radical feminists are militant activists.”
Karen Vollum-Dix’s book shows how, despite a century of progress since the realisation of women's suffrage in the US and UK, gender inequalities persist in politics, in the workplace, and within organisations.
As recently as 2024 the Trade Union Council (TUC) reported that the gender pay gap in the UK was 14.3% and predicted it would take at least another 20 years to eliminate it.
"Some women were given the right to vote in 1918, yet women are still under-represented in positions of power,” Karen Vollum-Dix.
“The pace of change is glacially slow, and if we keep changing at the current rate, women will quite rightly be looking back in 100 years’ time and wondering why their mothers and grandmothers allowed patriarchy."
The Harrogate academic’s work has been praised for highlighting the need for everyone to learn and unlearn in response to changing workplaces and societies.
"I enjoy a good debate and I like to write from several academic perspectives,” Karen said.
"It is possible to see more than one perspective and recognise both sides of an argument.”