Robbins Report 50 years on: Feminist
Responses
University of Sussex
December 2nd, 2013
HE & SHE: Gender & Equality in Higher Education
Miriam E. David,
Professor Emerita of Education,
Institute of Education, University of London
Visiting Professor, CHEER, University of Sussex
Miriam.David@ioe.ac.uk
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HE & SHE: Gender and equality in higher education:
summary
Passionate moral commitment as feminist academic activist to
social or women’s equality and gender justice
• Feminist theories, reflexive methodologies, gender & equality
• Reflect on the Robbins report on HE (1963) and its contexts
• Undergraduate in expansionary times to feminist academic:
• University pioneers or passionate pedagogues?
• Gender equality neo-liberal students numbers game
• SHE Figures (EU) and ECU (UK) show how limited for academics
• Need to transform the rules of the game of HE
• A feminist manifesto for university and education?
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My Feminist Reflections on being a student
in HE (1)
• 1963 – year I went to university as an undergraduate
• Feminism not on my (or others) radar so reconstruction and
as both a witness and participant in the changes
• Developments in the social sciences and studied sociology
• Changing discourses about equality and women and gender
• Contrast Minister for Universities & Science David Willetts’
(2013) Robbins Revisited Bigger and Better Higher Education
Social Market Foundation – describes changing gender
balance of students – a conservative gloss
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Changing socio-economic contexts
• UK Conservative government in 1961 appointed Robbins – an
eminent economist and professor at LSE - to chair committee
• Bipartisan political consensus of social democracy around
social welfare/welfare state and family and women in it
• Importance of economic growth for UK economy and
education and higher education seen to contribute
• Importance of educational and employment opportunities
for social mobility but limited participation of women
• Only 25% of students female – circa 68,000 out of 216,000 –
at all higher education institutions (Willetts, p.26)
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Robbins’s recommendations (1): HE &
economic growth
• UGC had created new universities in 1961-2 eg Sussex, Essex
• Report published October 2013, & immediately accepted
• Robbins principle for economic growth: university places
‘should be available to all.. qualified by ability &
attainment’.
• Eligibility defined as 2 examination passes at GCE A level.
• Commitment of public funds to expand into a ‘system’ –
technical and training colleges in LEAs and universities
• Transform colleges of advanced technology (CATS) to
universities eg Aston, Bath, Strathclyde
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Robbins’s recommendations:
Robbins & ME
• Recommendations accepted - CATS to become universities...
• In October 1963, I went up to Glasgow College of Advanced
Technology (to study social sciences) – few women teachers
• By May 1964, it had become Strathclyde University
• A fellow student Sandy Macmillan (son of Maurice and
grandson of Harold who had recently been Prime Minister)
• Quintin Hogg (Lord Hailsham) came to open the renamed
university in May (had become SofS for Education 1 April
1964 and met him through Sandy!)
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Women and HE – figures from Robbins (1)
• So I was one of a rare breed…had a means tested grant from
LEA (West Riding of Yorkshire) • Many of my school-friends went to Teacher Training College
which were not always counted as HE and one to Oxford
• Neither were social work or nursing and para-medical
professions such as physiotherapy but neither was Law...
• Undergraduate students in HE (full-time and part-time) in the
UK (thousands) in 1962-3 (year before I went up) 216,000
Robbins Report. 1963, p.16. Table 5, “Percentage of the age group entering
higher education, Great Britain, 1962”.
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Women & HE from Robbins (& Willetts’
reconstruction) (2)
• From Table 3.1 full-time university students by sex
(male:female) and faculty/subjects 1961-2 and 2011-2
• In 1961-2 - All faculties 75:25
• Humanities 58:42 and 32% of all
• Social Studies 77:23 and 11% of all
• In 2011-2 - All faculties 46:54
• Humanities 38:62 and 10% of all
• Social Studies 43:57 and 32% of all
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Robbins report’s recommendations (3):
HE & SHE or HE
• ‘In particular, where women are concerned, the effect
might well be either that British parents would be
strengthened in their age-long disinclination to consider
their daughters to be as deserving of higher education as
their sons, or that the eligibility for marriage of the more
educated would be diminished by the addition to their
charms of what would be in effect a negative dowry. (my
emphasis) (Robbins report, 1963, Cmnd 2154, paragraph
646).
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How to finance the system: grants or loans
• On balance we do not recommend immediate recourse to a
system of financing students by loans. At a time when many
parents are only just beginning to acquire the habit of
contemplating higher education for such of their children,
especially girls, as are capable of benefiting by it, we think it
probable that it would have undesirable disincentive effects.
But if, as time goes on, the habit is more firmly established,
the arguments of justice in distribution and of the advantage
of increasing individual responsibility may come to weigh
more heavily and lead to some experiment in this direction
(my emphasis) (ibid, chapter 14).
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Robbins report’s recommendations (2):
HE & SHE (women)
• Parents were expected to support their daughters on
marriage, and women were still expected to withdraw from
the labour market on either marriage or motherhood.
• Robbins argued against implementing of student loans as to
the potential impact that they would have on parental
decision-making about their daughters.
• Willetts argues ‘eventually after over 40 years, we have
ended up with a financing model very close to the one
Robbins really preferred – loans repayable as a percentage
of future earnings’ (2013, p.70)
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Women as undergraduates 50 years later
21st century...massive growth?
• Undergraduate students in higher education (full-time and part-time), by
gender, in the UK (thousands)
• Academic year
Men
Women
Total
• 1962-1963*
148
68
216 (quarter million)
• 1970-1971
241
173
414
• 1980-1981
277
196
473
• 1990-1991
345
319
664
• 2000-2001
510
602
1,112
• 2010-2011
820
1,092
1,912 (2 million)
• Sources: Department for Education (DfE) and Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). 2011.
Statistical First Release, “Higher Education Initial Participation Rate (HEIPR)” and *Robbins
Report. 1963, p.16. Table 5, “Percentage of the age group entering higher education, Great
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Britain, 1962”
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Internationally women now a majority of
students?
Similarly EU She figures show that the proportion of female
(55%) and graduates (59%) exceeds that of male students.
• The Chronicle of Higher Education, the magazine for
academe in the USA in a special issue on ‘Diversity in
Academe: The Gender Issue’ (November 2, 2012). …It’s
well known, for example, that female undergraduates
outnumber their male counterparts…the undergraduate
gender gap is especially striking among black
students…women are advancing in the professoriate as
well…(Carolyn Mooney, senior editor, special sections, B3,
2012).
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The Contested Evidence or Research on Global
Equalities in Education
• Has gender equality as a concept been taken over and
incorporated into global and neo-liberal politics?
• Gender equality is now firmly on the international agenda: a
result of feminist or women’s campaigning for educational
change or neo-liberal take-over?
• In March 2012, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation) published its World
Atlas of Gender Equality in Education for the first time ever.
(http://tinyurl.com/crqys2y).
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Overall pattern is clear: increasing educational
enrolments..
‘…enormous growth in educational opportunities and
literacy levels throughout the world over the last four
decades… the capacity of the world’s educational
systems more than doubled – from 647 million students in
1970 to 1,397 million in 2009.
Enrolments increased from 418 to 702 million pupils at
the primary level, from 196 to 531 million at the
secondary level, and
from 33 to 164 million in higher education… 1970-2009
(Atlas, 2012, p9) – A fivefold increase in global higher
education
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Expansion of HE worldwide: women the
principal beneficiaries in all regions?
Opportunities & Obstacles
• Female enrolment at the tertiary level has grown almost
twice as fast as that of men over last four decades for
reasons that include social mobility, enhanced income
potential, international pressure to narrow the gender gap.
• Access to higher education by women has not always
translated into enhanced career opportunities, including
the opportunity to use their doctorates in the field of
research.’ (2012, p. 75)
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Transformations in the language of
feminism, gender, equality and the law
The mission statement of UK Equality Challenge Unit (2013):
‘ECU works to further and support equality and diversity for
staff and students in HE and seeks to ensure that staff and
students are not unfairly excluded, marginalised or
disadvantaged because of age, disability, gender identity,
marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity
status, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or
through any combination of these characteristics or other
unfair treatment.’
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Transformations in the language of
feminism, gender and equality (2)
This report presents an equality-focused analysis of … staff and
students during the 2009/10 academic year, plus a year-onyear comparison showing the progress of equality across the
sector over the last five years. For the first time the report
looks at the interplay of multiple identities (e.g. female black
staff, male disabled students)…the report provides a useful
benchmark for institutions to compare their local statistics.
New legal requirements across England, Scotland and Wales
mean that HE institutions need to set equality objectives or
outcomes. The figures in this report…will provide an evidence
base that will inform these objectives.’
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Rampant gender inequalities in UK academe
• ECU’s picture for students is that gender is a minor issue for
student attainment and progression, across a range of
subjects and disciplines.
• The ECU’s report Equality in higher education part 1: staff
(December 2011) paints a picture of rampant gender
inequalities. The cover has the caption: 16.3% median
gender pay gap and 20.3% mean gender pay gap.
• ‘The statistic on the front cover shows the median and
mean pay gaps between male and female staff working in
higher education across the UK (figure 1.28)’.
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Rampant gender inequalities in HE: The UK
academic labour market
• It is fascinating that two reports on Equality in HE by the
ECU in the UK can be written and published together
without any overarching comment about the dissonance
between the two in terms of gender equity.
• It is abundantly clear that despite the huge increases in
educational opportunities up to postgraduate research
where women have been sufficiently ambitious to attain as
much if not more than men, that they remain subordinate
across all sectors of academic employment.
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ECU’s headlines for Staff in HE
• Overall in 2009/10, 53.8% of all staff were women.
• Female staff made up 46.8% of full-time staff and 67.1% of
part- time staff.
• A higher proportion of staff in professorial roles were male
(80.9%) than female (19.1%)…
• The mean salary of female staff was £31,116 compared with
£39,021 for male staff, an overall mean pay gap of 20.3%.
• 76.1% of UK national staff in professorial roles and 67.4% of
non-UK national staff in professorial roles were white
males. (my emphases)
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Gender equality now part of the neo-liberal
project?
European policies are strongly in favour of gender equality for
economic competition and business innovation.
At a recent gender summit about research in Europe Mr
Robert-Jan Smits, EC Director General for Research and
Innovation:
‘The promotion of gender equality is part of the European
Commission's strategic approach in the field of research and
innovation. It contributes to the enhancement of European
competitiveness and the full realisation of European
innovation potential.’ (2011, p.?)(my emphasis)
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She Figures in Academia?
• She Figures 2009 published by the EC: in the preface Janez
Potočnik, a Slovenian politician who serves as European
Commissioner for Science and Research, stated
• ‘while there are equivalent numbers of women and men
working in the field of Humanities, only 27% of researchers
in Engineering and Technology are female. And what about
researchers’ career progression?
• Women account for 59% of graduates, whereas men
account for 82% of full professors. Do you find that hard to
believe? Check out chapter 3.’ (my emphasis)
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A feminist manifesto for university and
education
Prospects for gender equity in education/academe uncertain
• Need to break the vicious cycle of male dominance in politics
and leadership of global academe (Morley, 2013) & society
• Passionate commitment to feminist networking as form of
resilience and resistance to austerity culture and
encroachment of academic capitalism and market forces
• Gender equality is more than misogynistic numbers game
• Create fairer education for all boys & girls to deal with
misogyny, everyday sexism, sexual abuse and harassment
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