Misogyny Posing as
Measurement: Is the Increase in
Women’s Participation in
Higher Education a Victory for
Gender Equality?
Professor Louise Morley
Centre for Higher Education and Equity
Research (CHEER)
University of Sussex, UK
(l.morley@sussex.ac.uk)
28 June, 2016
Desiring Higher Education
Student enrolment worldwide:
 13 million in 1960
 82 million in 1995
 137.8 million in 2005
 262 million by 2025?
(UNESCO, 2009).
• Aligning aspirations with
economy
(Appadurai, 2003; Morley et al. 2010;
Walkerdine, 2003, 2011).
28 June, 2016
Global Expansion
Asia
 China enrolment is now 20% (Marginson et
al., 2011)
 India (world’s third largest HE system)
plans 15% by 2012
Sub-Saharan Africa
 8.7% annual expansion
 5.1% for the world as a whole.
Major Regional Variations
 Tanzania 1% (DFID, 2008)
 Iceland 65.6%
 Austria 60.7% (UNESCO, 2009)
28 June, 2016
Closing the Gender Gap
• 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.
• Global Gender Parity
Index of 1.08 (UNESCO, 2009).
28 June, 2016
Regions and Disciplines
In many countries, women make up 6075% of graduates in:
 Health
 Welfare
 Education
In regions where enrolment rates of
women are lower than for men, men
also dominate these disciplinary areas
In 2007 there were more women than
men in:







Northern America
Australasia
Western Europe
Central and Eastern Europe
Latin America
Caribbean
Central Asia
(UNESCO, 2009).
There were more men than women in:
Globally, men predominate in STEM:
 Engineering
 Manufacturing and Construction
 Maths and Computer Science




East Asia
Pacific
South and West Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
(OECD, 2007).
28 June, 2016
Nostalgia, Frenzy, and Inertia
Higher education caught
between:
 hyper-modernisation
 archaism
28 June, 2016
‘Now’ Universities Built on
Yesterday’s Foundations
Hyper-modernisation of:
Archaism of:
• Liquified globalisation
• Constructions of the ‘ideal’ student
• Entrepreneurial, corporate,
commercialised universities
• Male dominance of leadership
• Digitisation
• Unequal participation rates for
different social groups
• Speeded up public intellectuals on
the move
• Gender inequalities and
feminisation fears.
• Turbo-charged consuming,
multitasking students.
28 June, 2016
New Times?
• Transformation driven by neoliberal/ austerity policies rather
than academic imaginaries/
social movements.
• Gender inequalities resistant to
hypermodernisation forces.
• Tensions between desire,
desiccation and distributive
justice.
(Morley, 2011)
28 June, 2016
Medical Women
UK Medical Education =
• 1977 = 35% of female applicants
• 2002 = 59% (BMA, 2004).
• Skilled manual backgrounds =
8% of applicants.
• Unskilled family backgrounds =
1% of applicants.
(Boursicot and Roberts, 2009; Grant et al., 2002)
28 June, 2016
Women as Pollutants
• In 2004, Dame Carol Black (then
President of the Royal College
of Physicians):
• Increasing numbers of women
in medicine might lead to the
profession losing status and
influence.
(Lurie, 1993; Whitcomb, 2004)
• ‘dominant position of females’
(HEPI Report, 2009:3)
28 June, 2016
Post-Feminism/ New Gender Regimes
• Narratives of crisis/ facts/figures
used to justify a return to values
perceived as being under threat
(Ahmed, 2004).
• Young women’s assemblage for
productivity/ phallic girls/ vengeful
patriarchal norms reinstated
(McRobbie, 2007).
• The duality of sexual difference is
re-confirmed.
• Gender norms are re-consolidated
and re-stabilised (Blackmore, 2010).
28 June, 2016
Crisis Discourse of Feminisation
• Reinforces gender dichotomy/
binary frame/ seesaw;
• Is about fear of the ‘Other’/
disparagement of difference;
• Underpinned by essentialism;
• Reduces gender to quantitative
change/ confusing sex and gender;
• About hyper-visibility i.e. women as
dangerous;
• Suggests a breach of social norms.
(Leathwood and Read, 2009)
28 June, 2016
Whose Academy is it Anyway?
• Male Academy = Hosts/ Victims
• Female Students = Abusive Guests
• A woman’s place is in the minority
• Newcomers not knowing their
place
• A ceiling on women’s
participation?
• Reminiscent of immigration
discourses (invasion fears).
28 June, 2016
Feminisation=
Damaging/Emasculating Men?
• Assumption that women’s
success has come about
by damaging men;
• White male injury now
read as the same as
subaltern injury.
28 June, 2016
Feminisation as Obesity Hysteria
• Semiotics/ imagery of
greedy, rapacious women
taking over (Quinn, 2003)
• Women as engulfers/
swallowing up HE,
employment.
• Gender violence (reflexive
self minimising/
effacement).
28 June, 2016
Decontextualised, Common-sense, NonAnalytical Understanding of Gender?
Failure
• to challenge wider gendered
power relations;
• to increase women’s rights in
wider civil society;
• to ensure women’s success in
labour market;
• to allow women into powerful
positions as knowledge
producers/ gatekeepers
(Macfarlane, 2011).
28 June, 2016
Women in Power?
• In Hong Kong, women:
• Make up 54% of higher education enrolments.
• Hold 14% of senior positions in higher
education.
• Do not hold a single presidency or vice
chancellorship.
• Su-Mei Thompson, chief executive officer of
the Women's Foundation of Hong Kong
asked:
• ‘But who runs Hong Kong? Not women!’
(Inside Highered, 2011).
• In UK, women are:
• 57.1% of students
• 20% of professoriate
• 13% of Vice Chancellors
(ECU, 2009).
28 June, 2016
The Higher Educated (overperforming) Woman is
Responsible for...
 societal destabilisation;
 a crisis in masculinity;
 devaluing of professions/
academic credentials/
institutions;
detraditionalisation.
28 June, 2016
Widening Participation in Higher
Education in Ghana and Tanzania
Measuring:
• Sociological variables of gender, age,
socio-economic status (SES)
In Relation to:
• Educational Outcomes: access,
retention and achievement.
In Relation to:
• 4 Programmes of Study in each HEI.
• 2 Public and 2 private HEIs.
(www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer/wphegt)
.
28 June, 2016
Equity Scorecard 1: Access to Level 200 on 4
Programmes at a Public University in Ghana
According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status
(SES)
% of Students on the Programme
Women
Low
SES
Age 30
or
over
Mature
and
Low
SES
Women
and
low
SES
Women
30
or over
Poor
Mature
Women
B.Commerce
29.92
1.66
5.82
0.00
1.11
0.28
0.00
B.
Management
Studies
47.06
2.94
6.30
0.00
1.68
3.36
0.00
B.Education
(Primary)
36.36
8.08
65.66
8.08
2.02
21.21
2.02
B.Sc.
Optometry
30.77
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Programme
28 June, 2016
Equity Scorecard 2: Access to Level 200 on 4
Programmes at a Public University in Tanzania
According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic
Status (SES)
% of Students on the Programme
Women
Low
SES
Age 30
or over
Mature
and
Low
SES
B. Commerce
32.41
8.59
1.13
0.16
0.32
0.0
0.0
LLB. Law
56.18
13.48
0.0
0.0
5.06
0.0
0.0
25.05
11.65
1.36
0.0
1.36
1.17
0.0
11.20
28.00
4.80
1.6
0.80
0.0
0.0
Programme
B.Sc.
Engineering
B. Science with
Education
Women
and low
SES
Women
30 or
over
Poor
Mature
Women
28 June, 2016
Sociology of Absences
• When gender is intersected
with:
 socio-economic status
 age
• participation rates of:
 poorer
 mature women
• are extremely low in both
African countries.
(Morley, 2012)
28 June, 2016
Steep Social Gradients
• Opportunity hording by privileged
social groups?
• Middle class capture of affirmative
action/ gender equality initiatives?
• Is HE consolidating social status and
assisting in the avoidance of downward
social mobility rather than its
extension?
• Is HE yet another object of desire or
commodity for middle-class
consumptive practices?
• Are we now educating ‘doctors'
daughters rather than doctors' sons’?
(Williams/ Eagleton 2008)
28 June, 2016
Gender is….
rarely intersected with other
structures of inequality
frequently ignored when
women suffer discrimination or
under-representation
often amplified in crisis form
when women start to be ‘overrepresented’
28 June, 2016
Undoing Gender (Butler, 2004)
Feminisation =
• Resistance to distributive justice
• Subversion of gender equality
• Individual, not collective rights
• Re-doing of gender.
How to build on the momentum of
women’s increased participation:
• to undo gender in the academy
• transform knowledge production
• imagine a different future for
higher education?
28 June, 2016
Centre for Higher Education
and Equity Research (CHEER)
ESRC Seminar Series:
‘Imagining the University of the
Future’
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrc
seminars
Special issue of Contemporary
Social Science (Volume 6:2, 2011)
entitled: ‘Challenge, Change or
Crisis in Global Higher Education?’
28 June, 2016