Generation and Gender in Academia

B. Bagilhole, K. White, B. Bagilhole, K. White

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137269164
• eBook ISBN: 9781137269171
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Financial Services
• Index: Social Sciences

The first cross-cultural analysis of the differences in career trajectories and experiences between a senior group of women academics and a younger group who are at early and mid-career stages. Major themes in the autobiographical stories of these women were national context; organisational context; family, class and location; and agency.

Part I

Introduction

1

The Context

Barbara Bagilhole and Kate White

1.1 Introduction

The careers of women academics remain a focus of gender research because women often have different career paths from male colleagues and continue to be under-represented at senior levels. While the percentage of women enrolling in undergraduate courses has increased steadily in recent decades, including in medicine and the life sciences which were traditionally male-dominated, women are over-represented at the lower levels of academia. Higher levels of women in undergraduate courses have not translated into a change in the gender composition of those in more influential academic positions that include responsibilities such as supervising postgraduate students and conducting research. In fact, women are far from achieving parity with men in professorial positions (Goransson 2011).

There are many reasons for the under-representation of women in senior academic positions. These include women’s limited opportunities for promotion and professional development (Knights & Richards 2003; Morley et al. 2006; White 2005), different treatment (Bagilhole & White 2011b) and a difficult organisational culture, stemming from gendered organisational practices within universities (Hearn 2001; O’Connor & White 2011). As the generation of women who entered academia from the early 1970s onwards have reached or are approaching the age of 60, an opportunity presents itself to reflect on their experience of gender and higher education (HE) and to explore the challenges for the next generation of women who are now attempting to consolidate their academic careers.

The international feminist research consortium – the Women in Higher Education Management (WHEM) Network – provides a case study in this book of generation and gender in academia focusing on these issues. As described in its first book, Gender, Power and Management, edited by Barbara Bagilhole and Kate White and published by Palgrave in 2011, the network gradually developed over the period from 2007 to 2008. That book was published at the end of April 2011, and most of the members of the network celebrated the achievement at the Women’s Worlds Conference in Ottawa in July 2011, where we also presented a well-attended round table on our research. We spent a good deal of time in both formal and informal conversation, reflecting on the achievements of the network and looking forward. The concept for this book had its germination in these often lively and energised discussions.

1.2 Structure

The aim of the book is to explore the differences in career trajectories and experiences between a senior group of women academics and a younger group who are between early and mid-career stages. In career stage development, the older group are in late-career stage, where they face a number of adjustments such as ‘the ability to integrate the efforts of others, adopting a broader perspective of the organisation [and] being able to select and mentor the next generation’ (Riordan 2011, p. 116). For those in the early career period the main career challenges are establishing a career and then providing evidence of achievement or success, while for those in mid-career there tends to be more reflection and reappraisal (Riordan 2011, pp. 112–13). Interestingly, women appear to formulate their long-term career goals much later than men (Kittrell 1998 quoted in Riordan 2011). The more mature group of academics in this book are often described as baby boomers, and following them are several younger generations of academics, sometimes referred to as Gen X and Gen Y. Each generation can learn from the ‘experience, knowledge and cultural familiarity’ of the other (Shah 2011, p.1).

As outlined in more detail below, the book is organised in four parts. Part I is the overview of the case study of generation and gender in academia, followed by Part II of five chapters which are the reflections of the more mature women in the WHEM Network, most of whom have reached 60 and are in the later stage of their careers. Part III comprises a single chapter, in which the four younger women in the network comment on the reflective chapters and outline the challenges that early and mid-career women academics in a variety of countries currently face. Part IV examines the different issues for women in different generations in HE and highlights future challenges for academic women in the more corporatised university.

Part I – Introduction

Chapter 1 provides the country context for this study and a broad overview of recent developments in HE in the eight countries represented in the WHEM Network, including the corporatisation of management and its impact on university faculties and departments. It then examines the literature on how women build academic careers and analyses whether gender is a factor in the particular challenges that they experience.

Part II – Reflections of women in academia

The career paths of the five more mature women in the network – Professor Barbara Bagilhole, Dr Jenny Neale, Dr Maria Machado-Taylor, Professor Pat O’Connor and Dr Kate White – are explored in Chapters 2–6. Each chapter in this part explores a range of themes that include

• influence of family of origin

• first generation to study at university

• outsiders/insiders

• geographical mobility

• becoming gender-aware

• balancing family and other responsibilities

• power, influence and organisational cultures

• patriarchy

• micro-politics of universities

• dealing with the ‘emotional housework’ of the department/university

• challenging the culture, pushing out the boundaries

• risk-taking and deciding which battles are worth fighting

• strategies for achieving profile/being heard

• strategic career planning

• male and female mentors and sponsors, administrative and secretarial support

• knowing the rules of the ‘game’.

Each chapter concludes with reflections on the key lessons based on their experience and career journeys as academics.

Part III – The next generation

Chapter 7 explores the career experiences of the next generation of women in the network, who are currently in their early and mid-careers. Have they experienced similar challenges, or have they been beneficiaries of support networks and mentoring that were often denied to older academic women, but which these women have tried to provide to younger women academics? Assistant Professor Teresa Carvalho, Professor Özlem Özkanli, Dr Heidi Prozesky and Associate Professor Helen Peterson comment on the reflections of the more senior academic women, as detailed in Chapters 2–6, and then as early to mid-career women tell their own stories of building careers in a changing HE landscape, focusing on themes that include:

• the conflict involved in being a woman academic and caring for children; organising childcare; and the value of children as an anchor in a career

• becoming gender-aware

• survival strategies, while finding a voice and being noticed

• using a profile outside the university to improve one’s career inside academia.

Part IV – Exploring generational change

Chapter 8 explores generational issues in academia as women in their sixties hand over the baton to younger women. It acknowledges the legacy that these women provide to early and mid-career women academics. It also considers how the changing internal and external pressures in HE will both open up more opportunities for women and also make more demands on their time and energy. It concludes with an overview of the challenges facing early and mid-career academic women in the managerial university.

1.3 Country context

In our previous book Gender, Power and Management we provided the broad context for the present study by examining the gender profiles of each country in the WHEM Network and the influence of the European Union (EU) on the legislative framework for labour-force participation of women, given that four of the eight countries in the study – Ireland, Portugal, Sweden and the UK – are member states. These countries had more comprehensive Equal Opportunity (EO) frameworks than those that were not in the EU. The role of the EU as a catalyst for national legislation has been to ensure that member countries focus on reconciling the competing demands of paid work and family life. Some have been more successful than others. For example, Sweden stands out in its development – prior to joining the EU – of a concept of reconciling paid employment and private life that is based on equal parenthood and the dual-breadwinner family. In contrast, the Irish government still considers childcare as a family responsibility and has traditionally had ‘one of the most poorly-developed systems of non-stigmatising, State subsidised, child care in the EU’ (White 2011, p. 42), and the UK’s policies concentrate on women’s predominant responsibility in the caring role.

In the non-EU countries, especially Australia and New Zealand, development of EO frameworks has been much more overtly influenced by national politics. For example, generally, when Labour governments have been in power, commitment to EO has been stronger. In contrast, South Africa has a much broader EO framework to address discrimination in the workplace, which is dominated by the agenda to redress racial inequality. After the first democratic election in 1994 gender equity was addressed in several pieces of legislation. Despite the legislative framework developed, gender equity remains a ‘significant challenge’ (Riordan 2011, p. 40) because the ‘need to redress gender equity imbalances is frequently limited to an indication of intent’ (Shackleton et al. 2006, p. 573). Turkey remains the least developed in terms of EO policies and legislation (White 2011).

Goransson (2011, pp. 72–3) concluded that the most efficient mechanism for getting more women into leadership was pressure from public opinion and political forces, ‘which may induce colleagues as well as top management to take action to include women in decision-making positions’. We will now turn to these organisational models.

1.4 The higher education context

HE in the countries within the WHEM Network – Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the UK – has been characterised by a move to centralised managerial power, replacing the previous collegial managerial model (Bagilhole & White 2011a). Although the transition to managerialism has been more rapid in countries such as Australia and the UK, as discussed later, it has nevertheless had an impact in all eight countries.

There has been an increasing movement towards managerialism in universities internationally in the light of state pressure (Acker & Armenti 2004; Deem 1998; Meek 2002; Morley 2009). Deem sees ‘new managerialism’ as characterised by ‘the adoption by public sector organisations of organisational forms, technologies, management practices and values more commonly found in the private business sector’ (1998, p. 47). Deem, Hilliard and Reed also suggest that new managerialism, whatever its form, ‘gnaws away at professional autonomy and control’ and more particularly at ‘the power, status and role of academics in university governance and management’ (2008, pp. 22, 27). It assumes that senior management can solve almost any problem if it has strong executive leadership and adopts private-sector business techniques (Winter et al. 2000).

Ongoing debate about the impact of managerialism on academic autonomy and on university management structures has questioned its benefits for academic staff (Blackmore & Sachs 2001; Carvalho & Santiago 2010a, 2010b; Kekale 2003; Marginson & Considine 2001; Meek 2002; Morley 2009; Winter et al. 2000). As Bolden et al. observe, a corporate approach to management and leadership in HE has implications for academic identity and self-determining of careers, and ‘tends to bring with it a focus on the accomplishment of institutional goals and objectives through processes of alignment and a narrowing of what is regarded as high-quality academic work through the application of metrics and performance targets’ (2012, p. 37).

There has also been a good deal of discussion about the extent to which collegial or managerial models are more helpful for women. While at first glance managerialism may appear attractive to women – not least because the collegial model involving rather ‘gentlemanly’ governance practices was based on stereotyped gender roles with ‘women in “caring” and servicing jobs and men in what are seen as high status roles’ (Deem 1998, pp. 48, 50). Thus managerialism can make explicit the low-profile administrative and caring roles that have typically been carried out by women in collegial structures (Brooks 1997). But Deem also suggests that new managerialism is ‘infused with notions of masculinities’ – and that, in particular, ‘it is incompatible with concerns about equity and feminist values’ (1998, p. 66). A similar conclusion was reached by Ozga and Walker who highlighted the ways in which a managerial culture was imbued with ‘the characteristics of heterosexual masculinity [ . . . ] competitive, ritualistic, unreflective’, its practices being characterised by ‘overly rational, disembodied and instrumental pursuits’ (1999, p. 107), so that management structures and practices were ‘particularly important sites for the reproduction of masculine discourses and practices’ (Kerfoot & Knights 1996, p. 97). Feminisation debates are another aspect of managerialism that is unhelpful to academic women. Morley (2011) notes that while women are participating in HE in ever increasing numbers, ‘women’s academic identities are often forged in otherness, as strangers in opposition to (privileged) men’s belonging and entitlement’. She also notes that quantitative targets to let more women into HE can ‘fail, or be meaningless, while femaleness continues to be socially constructed as second class citizenship’ (Morley 2011, p. 230; see also Currie & Thiele 2001).

In the countries represented in the WHEM Network, managerialism has been most pronounced in Australia and the UK. This has implications not only for the careers of academic women but also for women moving into university senior management. Neale and White (2012) found that the way in which universities ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Reflections of Women in Academia
• Part III: The Next Generation
• Part IV: Exploring Generational Change
• Index