Centre for Higher Education
and Equity Research (CHEER)
International Trends in
Women’s Leadership in
Higher Education
Professor Louise Morley
University of Sussex, UK
(http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer/)
28 June, 2016
Feminising the Academy?
• Number of male students globally
quadrupled from 17.7 to 75.1 million
between 1970-2007.
• Number of female students rose sixfold
from 10.8 to 77.4 million.
• Women outnumber male
undergraduates in Kuwait.
• Global Gender Parity Index of 1.08
(UNESCO, 2009).
• Why are women desiring/ entering/
aspiring to higher education as
students, but not as leaders?
28 June, 2016
Absent Leaders
European Union
• 13% higher education institutions
led by women
• 9% that award PhD degrees
• 18% of professorial staff.
(She-Figures, 2009)
Commonwealth
• 70% of countries, all universities
were led by men in 2007
• 14% of professorial staff
(Garland, 2008; Singh, 2008).
28 June, 2016
Sociology of Absences
• Business case e.g. skills wastage.
• Social justice case e.g. removing
exclusionary structures, processes and
practices.
• Cognitive errors case e.g. gender bias
in knowledge, technology and
innovation + the classifying gaze in
identifying leadership potential.
• Women under-represented across alldecision making fora:
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committees
boards
recruitment panels
the executive.
28 June, 2016
Velvet Ghettos
Women are entering
• Adjunct/assistant roles.
In Australia, women are:
 40% of pro-vice-chancellors
 18 % of vice-chancellors
(Bagilhole and White, 2011).
• Middle managerial positions:
 quality assurance
 innovation
 community engagement
 marketing managers
 communication
 finance
 human resource management
(Deem, 2003; Fitzgerald and Wilkinson, 2010;
Guillaume and Pochic, 2009; Morley, 2003; Noble and
Moore, 2006).
28 June, 2016
Global Evidence
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Australia (Currie et al., 2002; Fitzgerald, 2011);
China (Chen, 2012)
Finland (Husu, 2000)
Ghana (Ohene, 2010; Prah, 2002)
Guyana (Austin, 2002)
Ireland (Devine et al., 2011; Lynch, 2010)
Kenya (Kanake, 1997; Onsongo, 2004)
Nigeria (Odejide, 2007; Pereira, 2007);
Norway (Benediktsdottir, 2008)
Pakistan (Rab, 2010; Shah, 2001);
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 and Ssendiwala, 2006).
UK (Deem, 2003)
USA (Bailyn, 2003; Bonner, 2006)
28 June, 2016
What Impedes Women’s Entry in
Higher Education Leadership?
• Gendered Division of Labour
• Gender Bias/ Misrecognition
• Management and Masculinity
• Greedy Organisations
28 June, 2016
The Gendered Division of Labour
The academy:
constructed as a ‘carefree zone’
assumes that the senior manager
is a zero load worker, devoid of
familial and care responsibilities
(Grummell et al., 2009: Lynch, 2010).
It is women who invariably
‘navigate between parental and
employee roles, it is therefore
women who pay the ‘toll’ for
crossing the boundary between
work and family’
(Runte and Mills, 2004:240).
28 June, 2016
Gender Bias and Misrecognition
• Misrecognition = demeaning, confining or
inaccurate readings of the value of particular
groups or individuals (Lovell, 2007).
• The dominant group ‘cloning’ themselves/
appointing in their own image in order to
minimise risk (Gronn and Lacey, 2006).
Calls for:
 Transparency in the appointment process
(Rees, 2010).
 Accountability
 Statutory requirement for public universities
in Sweden to provide gender statistics on
students, doctoral students, teachers and
professors, deans and heads of departments.
 Sweden had 43% of women vice chancellors
in 2010 (Peterson, 2011).
28 June, 2016
Management and Masculinity
• Maleness = resource
(productivity, competitiveness,
hierarchy, strategy, authority).
• Femaleness = a form of
negative equity (‘other’)
(Fitzgerald, 2011).
• In what sense do work
practices and norms still reflect
the life situations and interests
of men?
(Billing, 2011).
28 June, 2016
Greedy Organisations
• HE leaders under increasing pressure
to succeed in competitive, performative
audit and austerity cultures
(Lynch, 2006; Morley, 2003).
• Leadership = all-consuming 24/7
activity, involving multiple, complex
tasks.
• Leaders require ‘an elastic self’.
• Working goals are without boundaries
in time, space energy or emotion.
(Devine et al. , 2011)
• Stress, well-being, work/life balance
and sustainability are concerns in
academic life
(Barrett and Barrett, 2007; Edwards et al.,
2009; Kinman et al., 2006, 2008). 28 June, 2016
Sounds and Silences in the Literature
• Unproblematic notions of polarised
gender identities.
• Gender = demographic variable (noun),
rather than in continual production
(verb).
• Differences in age, ethnicities,
sexualities, cultural and social class
locations overlooked.
• Women’s skills and competencies
essentialised as female advantages.
• Scant coverage of success stories.
• Limited consideration of ambivalence/
pleasures or positive choices not to
become leaders.
28 June, 2016
Interventions for Change
• Excellentia, Austria
(Leitner and Wroblewski, 2008)
• Gender Programme, Association of
Commonwealth Universities
(Morley et al., 2006)
• HERS-SA, South Africa
(Shackelton, 2007)
• Norwegian University of Science
and Technology (NTNU)
(Benediktsdotir, 2008)
• Athena Swan
(http://www.athenaswan.org.uk/html/athenaswan/)
28 June, 2016
Moving Ahead
We need:
• A re-invigorated/ re-textured vocabulary
• An expanded lexicon for future
leadership values and challenges e.g.
 sustainability
 social inclusion
 the affective domain
 austerity
 knowledge creation
• To undertake a sociology of absences.
• What makes leadership unattractive to
so many women?
• What makes women unattractive to
28 June, 2016
current leaders?
Changing the Gender Order
• Representation cannot be the
only goal for gender equality.
• Problem= the gendered world.
• Problem= leadership a virility
test/ extreme profession.
• What type of gender
sensitive/free leadership is
required for the university of
the future (Morley, 2011).
28 June, 2016
CHEER
ESRC Seminar Series:
‘Imagining the University of the
Future’
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrcseminars
Special issue of Contemporary Social
Science (Volume 6:2, 2011) entitled:
‘Challenge, Change or Crisis in Global
Higher Education?’
28 June, 2016