Women and Higher
Education Leadership:
Absences and Aspirations
Professor Louise Morley
Centre for Higher Education and
Equity Research (CHEER)
University of Sussex, UK
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer
23 March, 2016
Snapshot Statistics: Women Vice-Chancellors
Aust
EU
HK
India
JP
Mal
Kuw
Swe
Tur
UK
18%
13%
0%
3%
2.3%
15%
2%
43%
7%
14%
23 March, 2016
Where are the Women?
• Adjunct/assistant roles
(Bagilhole and White, 2011; Davis, 1996).
• ‘Velvet ghettos’ (Guillaume & Pochic,
2009)
• ‘Glass
cliffs’ (Ryan & Haslam, 2005)
• Middle managerial positions:
quality assurance
innovation
community engagement
marketing managers
communication
human resource management
23 March, 2016
Missing Senior Women
• Are women desiring, dismissing or
being disqualified from academic
leadership?
• Who self-identifies/ is identified by
existing power elites, as having
leadership legitimacy?
• Is leader identity still constituted
through gendered power relations?
• Do cultural scripts for leaders coalesce
or collide with normative gender
performances?
• How does gender continue to escape
organisational logic/rationalities?
23 March, 2016
Consequences of Absence of
Leadership Diversity
Employment/ Opportunity Structures
 Democratic Deficit
 Distributive injustice/ Structural Prejudice.
 Depressed career opportunities.
 Misrecognition of leadership potential/
wasted talent.
Service Delivery
 Knowledge Distortions, Cognitive/ Epistemic
injustice (Fricker, 2007)
 Reproduction of Institutional Norms and
Practices.
 Margins/ Mainstream hegemonies, with
women, BME staff seen as Organisational
23 March, 2016
‘Other’.
Absences and Aspirations in the
Global Academy
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Australia (Fitzgerald, 2011)
Canada (Acker, 2012)
China (Chen, 2012)
Finland (Husu, 2000)
Ghana (Ohene, 2010)
Guyana (Austin, 2002)
Hong Kong (Cheung, 2012)
Ireland (Lynch, 2010)
Japan (Shirahase, 2013)
Kenya (Onsongo, 2004)
Nigeria (Odejide, 2007)
Norway (Benediktsdottir, 2008)
Pakistan (Rab, 2010)
Papua New Guinea (Sar & Wilkins, 2001)
South Africa (Shackleton et al., 2006)
South Korea (Kim et al., 2010)
Sri Lanka (Gunawardena et al., 2006)
Sweden (Peterson, 2011)
Tanzania (Bhalalusesa, 1998)
Turkey (Özkanli, 2009)
Uganda (Kwesiga & Ssendiwala, 2006)
UK (Deem, 2003)
23 March, 2016
USA (Bonner, 2006)
Accounting for Absences/
Expanding the Theoretical Lexicon
• Gendered Division of Labour
• Gender Bias/ Misrecognition
• Management & Masculinity
• Greedy Organisations
• Women’s Missing Agency/
Deficit Internal Conversations
(Morley, 2012, 2013)
23 March, 2016
Impeding Diversity in Senior Leadership
• Are certain groups, styles, talents and potential mis-recognised/
perceived as too risky? (Fitzgerald, 2011).
• Do dominant groups continue to appoint in own image/ clone
themselves? (Gronn & Lacey, 2006).
• Is leadership still synonymous with structural positions and
traditional types and displays of masculinity (Davies & Thomas, 2002).
• Are informal practices e.g. networks, head-hunters’ searches
reproducing privilege? (Watson, 2008).
• Does decision-making lack transparency/ accountability? (Rees,
2011).
23 March, 2016
Gendered Narratives of the ‘Ideal Leader’
• Maleness = resource
(productivity, competitiveness,
hierarchy, strategy, authority)
(Hearn, 2009).
• Femaleness = negative equity
(‘other’)/ difference /spoiled
identity (Fitzgerald, 2011).
• Practices/norms/performances
reflect the life situations/
interests of men? (Billing, 2011).
• Is austerity reinforcing
dominant masculinities and
affective economies? (Hey, 2011)
23 March, 2016
Vertical Career Success or
Incarceration in an Identity Cage?
Leadership
• Punishment/Reward
• Morality of turn-taking, sacrifice and domestic
labour
• Rotational /fixed term
Can Involve
• Multiple/ conflicting affiliations,
resignifications & unstable engagements with
hierarchy & power (Cross & Goldenberg, 2009)
• Working with resistance & recalcitrance
• Colonising colleagues’ subjectivities towards
the goals of managerially inspired discourses
• An affective load/ identity work
• Managing self-doubt, conflict, anxiety,
disappointment & occupational stress
(Acker, 2012; Watson, 2009)
• Restricting, rather than building capacity and
creativity.
23 March, 2016
Diversity in Academic
Leadership is Not…
• Treating identity simply as a
demographic variable.
• Representational space.
• About being diverse but about ‘doing
diversity’(Ahmed, 2006).
• Access to organisations monopolised
by the elite.
• Allowing women/ minorities in
• But ensuring that they continue to lack
capital (economic, political, social and
symbolic) to redefine the requirements
of the field
(Corsun & Costen, 2001).
23 March, 2016
Action for Change: Promoting Informed and
Inclusive Practices
• Accountability/ Transparency
• Data Collection/ Diversity
Monitoring
• Diversity Data in quality audits/
league tables.
• Equality Impact Assessments/
Mainstreaming
• Action on Bullying, Harassment
and Discrimination
• Developmental Opportunities Coaching, Mentoring and
Networking.
23 March, 2016
Undoing Gender/
Re-Imagining Leadership
How can
• leadership narratives,
technologies and practices be
more:
than discursive performances
involving repetitions of the
values/ beliefs of new public
governance
more generative, generous and
gender-free?
23 March, 2016
Follow Up?
• Morley, L. (2013) Women and
Higher Education Leadership:
Absences and Aspirations.
Stimulus Paper for the
Leadership Foundation for
Higher Education.
• Morley, L. (2013) "The Rules of
the Game: Women and the
Leaderist Turn in Higher
Education " Gender and
Education. 25(1):116-131.
CHEER
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer/
23 March, 2016
Afternoon Session
23 March, 2016
Identifying Actions for Change
• What are your gender equality objectives for senior leadership?
• What statistics and qualitative information would you collect?
• What would you include in an organisational gender analysis?
• What strategic points for actions are required to meet the gender
equality objectives?
• What gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation system will you
put in place, including the establishment of indicators?
• What messages would you like to share with the LFHE about
23 March, 2016
diversifying senior leadership?