Women's advancement in universities

Citation

Doherty, L. and Manfredi, S. (2006), "Women's advancement in universities", Employee Relations, Vol. 28 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/er.2006.01928faa.001

Women's advancement in universities

About the Guest Editors

Liz Doherty Principal Lecturer and Subject Leader for HR/OB at Sheffield Hallam University. She has been interested in women in management for nearly all of her working life – both as an equality practitioner and as a researcher. Her work on women, and equality more generally, has been funded recently by the DTI, the HCIMA (the professional body of the hospitality industry), the ESF and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. She has published widely, in both academic and professional journals, about equality and diversity management, women in organisations and human resource management in different country contexts. From 1998-2002 she was chair of the HCIMA’s Diversity Management Working Group and she is currently an Independent Expert for equal pay cases referred to Employment Tribunals.

Simonetta Manfredi is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and the Director of the Centre for Diversity Policy Research at Oxford Brookes University. Her research interests focus on equality and diversity issues in employment. Her research activities in this area have been funded by the European Commission, the ESF, the DTI and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. She has published book chapters and journal articles on this subject. From 1995-2000 she was awarded a European Jean Monnet Scholarhip to develop a module on Women Employment in Europe and between 1998-2000 she was seconded to the post of Head of Equal Opportunities at Oxford Brookes University. Morev recently she was part of an advisory group convened by the CIPD to advise on the preparation of a Good Practice Guide on Flexible Employment.

Women's advancement in universities

The articles for this special issue were all selected from papers presented at the Fourth European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education (HE) which was held in Oxford in the summer of 2005. Previous conferences were held in Helsinki, Zurich and Genova. The conferences are supported by the European Network on Gender Equality in HE which provides a forum to debate and exchange experiences and to keep up-to-date on research and policy development. The conferences and the Network are aimed at academics and practitioners who share an interest in understanding the processes that disadvantage women in universities and in evaluating measures intended to promote gender equality. They attract participants from all over Europe and beyond, with particularly active interest from Australia. The papers which have been selected for the special edition address issues concerned with women’s career advancement in universities.

The first three articles all explore formal mechanisms for progression, they all draw upon national data sets as backdrops to their studies and they all seek to show, and to explain, how women fare in advancement processes. The countries covered are Australia, The Netherlands and England – all countries where there is an established tradition of gender studies for exploring and addressing equality issues in HE. The work presented here contains detailed analyses of academic selection processes as well as issues around career progression for non academic staff, from which some general observations can be made.

Winchester, Lorenzo, Browning and Chesterman’s article, based on content analysis of documents from 34 universities and interviews in 17 universities, demonstrates the considerable progress that has been made in Australian universities in establishing policies and procedures which support gender equality. The research was sponsored by the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee which is, in itself, an indicator of the strong sector-level support for equality interventions. The authors’ careful analysis of national promotions data suggests that the good equality practice in Australian universities has been successful in improving women’s application and success rates at middle and higher levels. The findings show how exceptional arrangements such as “out of round” promotions merit careful scrutiny as they appear to favour men. They also show the importance of judging performance “relative to opportunity” in the case of part-time academics and those with non-traditional career paths. The study reinforces the case for setting clear targets for women’s share of senior positions.

Van den Brink, Brouns and Waslander’s research is based on an analysis of 682 reports of professorial selection committees from six Dutch universities. The research also utilises national data in order to relate women’s relative success to the “pool” of women available in different subject disciplines. This meticulous piece of research reveals an overall picture where women are not being shortlisted or selected for professorships in proportion to the available pool, but where there are considerable differences between disciplines in women’s success rates at different points in the selection process. The evidence from the research is not conclusive about the relationship between the type of procedure adopted (how open or closed) and women’s relative success, although it does show a significant relationship between the existence of a gender balance on the selection committee and women’s incidence of success. The researchers suggest that this latter finding merits further investigation as it is possible that this relationship may be explained by the culture of different academic disciplines, rather than the gender of the committee members.

Doherty and Manfredi’s study draws on content analysis of documentation, equality monitoring data and 26 interviews in order to explore the operation of advancement processes in four English universities. Even though the universities in this study had well developed equality policies, the quality of their monitoring data was patchy and inadequate for setting clear targets and monitoring progress towards them. The findings show that women tend to progress better when clear selection criteria are used in open selection processes and when equal value is given to research, teaching and management. The weight given to research viable for the Research Assessment Exercise works against women achieving professorial status and there are some indications that women’s more transformational management style may be out of tune with the style adopted at a very senior level. As in the Australian case, the article argues in favour of judging performance relative to opportunity.

These three articles demonstrate the importance of basing equality interventions and their evaluation on good quality data – at both a national and an institutional level. The Dutch article, in particular, shows the care that needs to be taken in measuring women’s performance relative to men’s, especially in accounting for discipline differences. All three articles support, to different degrees, the broad proposition that recognised good equality practice (setting targets, use of criteria, open selection processes, gender balanced selection committees etc) makes a positive contribution to women’s advancement and they put forward recommendations for further developing this practice. The next three articles are less concerned with the formal mechanisms of advancement and instead use mainly qualitative research methods to explore some of the cultural barriers to women’s progression. The first two are again based on the Australian experience and they evaluate some of the methods which have been used to change culture and make universities more comfortable places for women to thrive.

Chesterman and Ross-Smith’s article is based on 81 interviews with senior men and women in five new (former institutes of technology) Australian universities. The research is set in the context of relative success where at least 30 per cent of senior positions are held by women, and where the universities are already committed to best equality practice and fund a network to support women’s development. The findings reinforce the need to have a critical mass of women at senior levels in order to transform organisational culture and the key role of networking, encouragement from university leaders and collegial behaviour in creating the kind of environment where women are likely to progress. The article sounds a warning bell about the fragility of these new environments in the face of tough institutional challenges.

Much has been written about the potential of mentoring to support women’s progression and De Vries, Webb and Eveline’s article provides a helpful evaluation of the effectiveness of a well established (for ten years) women’s mentoring programme, both for supporting women’s advancement and for transforming organisational culture, partly through the insights into gendered experience gained by male mentors. The research is based on a survey of 128 mentees and 15 interviews with mentors. The article provides a convincing case for using mentoring as part of an organisational change process, it challenges the “deficit” model of the mentee and it provides new insights into the impact of the mentoring relationship on the mentor.

Our final article by Vázquez-Cupeiro and Elston provides an insight into the experiences of women academics in Spain. The research discussed in this article is a valuable addition to this special edition as there are very few studies on women working in academia in Southern European countries published in English. Their article opens with a discussion of the North-South paradox whereby women can be seen in greater proportions at senior levels in universities in many Southern European countries than they are found in many Northern European countries, despite the absence of formal gender equality programmes in some Southern European countries. This research is set in Spain and it draws upon interviews with 33 male and female academics in two discipline areas. Unlike the mobility often required for progression to the most senior levels in Northern Europe, academic careers in Spain are made in one institution. Attempts have been made to reform the selection processes in Spanish universities to make them more meritocratic, but the findings of this research show that these are resisted and an “inbreeding” system persists. Far from this working in women’s favour, the findings show that powerful processes of male patronage, male networks and informal exclusionary behaviour all operate to impede women’s progression and reinforce a gendered academic hierarchy. The religious metaphor used in this article provides a vivid picture of women’s struggle within this intensely patriarchal system.

These articles provide a representative flavour of the extent and maturity of the research which is explored through the European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education and the supporting Network. The research has practical relevance and in many cases has been used to inform policy development in universities.

The production of this special issue was only possible because of the huge amount of work carried out by the Conference Organising Committee in making the conference itself a reality and by the large number of women academics from many different universities who reviewed the papers for the special edition in such a rigorous and constructive way. All the people involved are too numerous to name individually, but our thanks go to all of them.

Members of the European Network on Gender Equality in Higher Education, together with other academics and equality practitioners, will come together again at the Fifth Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education that will be held in Berlin on 28-31 August 2007. Once again the forthcoming conference will provide an opportunity to compare and contrast the effectiveness of national and institutional policies on gender equality in HE and to evaluate research and interventions for change across Europe and beyond.

Liz Doherty, Simonetta ManfrediGuest Editors