Confronting gender inequality in a business school

ABSTRACT

This study, set in a New Zealand Business School, takes an integrative view of the university as an ‘inequality regime’ Acker, J. (2006b). Inequality regimes: Gender, class and race in organizations. Gender and Society, 20(4), 441–464 including all types of women staff: academic women in permanent positions, academics on casual contracts and administrative staff. This approach contrasts with most studies of gender in higher education, which focus on academics, and often on the most senior academic roles. The business school, too, is under-researched in the literature of gender and higher education and we argue that these institutions constitute a particularly ‘chilly climate’ for women. The project discussed here was designed as participatory action research, but we found both participation and action difficult to accomplish. We reflect on how these difficulties resonate with the wider problem of confronting gender inequality in a ‘chilly climate’, and ask why further change is hard. We collected primary data from focus group interviews and a survey, and critically reflected on the process of data collection. Secondary data, including university reports and policies and national legislation, were also collected as part of the context of the School inequality regime. We analysed our data using Acker's categories: the ‘visibility of inequality’, the ‘legitimacy of inequality’ and ‘mechanisms of control and compliance’. We found barriers to change both within and beyond the Business School itself. These included the low organisational priority given to gender equality, which in turn reflected a weak external regulatory environment. At the same time we found a lack of solidarity between women within the School, which we attributed partly to class-based differences. Organisational activism is difficult in this context, where gender inequality is both invisible and legitimated, reflecting a post-feminist mood of ‘gender fatigue’.

KEYWORDS:

• Business schools
• gender
• gender regime
• inequality
• universities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Amanda Reilly http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3270-1170

Jayne Krisjanous http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7881-419X

Notes

1. The Human Rights Act 1994 prohibits discrimination against women in the workplace as does the Employment Relations Act 2000. The obligation to be a good employer and to operate an EEO policy which takes account of the needs of women is in the State Sector Act 1988. The Equal Pay Act 1972 provides for equal pay for women for the same or similar work. New Zealand has also ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women which commits it to taking all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of employment.

2. Accordingly, we cite dates and titles of organisational documents to illustrate the policies current at the time, but do not give other details.

3. Exact figures of women in casual academic roles were not available. Nor were numbers of administrative staff.