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/cheer/).
28 June, 2016
Feminising the Academy?
• Number of male students
globally quadrupled from 17.7
to 75.1 million between 19702007.
• Number of female students rose
sixfold from 10.8 to 77.4 million.
• Global Gender Parity Index of
1.08 (UNESCO, 2009).
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 for investigating and
overturning this state of affairs
(EC, 2011).
• 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);
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)
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
• The dominant group ‘cloning’ themselves and
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
• Discussions rely on unproblematic
notions of polarised gender identities.
• Gender treated as a demographic
variable (noun), rather than something
that is in continual production (verb).
• Female norms reproduced and
differences in age, ethnicities,
sexualities and cultural and social class
locations overlooked.
• Women’s skills and competencies
essentialised as female advantages.
• Scant coverage of success stories of
women accessing authority.
• Limited consideration of ambivalence
or pleasures in becoming leaders, or by
making positive choices not to.
28 June, 2016
Moving Ahead
We need:
• A re-invigorated and re-textured
vocabulary
• An expanded lexicon to focus on the
leadership values and challenges that
lie ahead for HE e.g.
 sustainability
 social inclusion
 creating knowledge for a rapidly
changing world - one in which gender
relations are also in flux.
• To build on the momentum to envision
what type of sustainable and gender
sensitive leadership is required for the
university of the future
(Morley, 2011).
28 June, 2016
Changing the Gender Order
• Representation cannot be the
only goal for gender equality.
• Problem= the gendered world.
• Problem= leadership a virility
test/ extreme profession.
• How can leadership practices:
 be more attractive/sustainable
 include concerns about wellbeing as well as competitive
advantage in the global arena?
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