Being female doing gender. Narratives of women in education management

Abstract

The paper explores gender relations in academia and discusses how gender is constructed within academic institutions. It is based upon the study of a business school, part of a British university. The construction of gender relations within this institution was of special interest because the majority of managerial roles were occupied by women. All female academic managers (dean, associate deans and heads of department) and a random selection of female and male academics were interviewed. The process of construction of gender relations is investigated through the analysis of the discrepancy between the ‘masculine culture’ of high education institutions and the dominance of women managers within this organization. It is suggested that the numerical dominance of women managers may create tensions between their individual identities as women and their managerial identities, due to the predominance of masculine practices and values within the organization. Additionally, it emerged that the maintenance of masculine ideals and practices is also associated with downplaying women’s achievements.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the women academic managers and all academic staff who participated to this research. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their rigorous and helpful comments on an earlier version of this work.

Notes

1. The term new university refers to a post‐1992 university, an institution which, before 1992 was a polytechnic and was reclassified as university following The Further and Higher Education Act.

2. The process of feminization refers to the spread to organizational practices of values, meanings and behaviours culturally associated to females (e.g., nurturing and caring, interpersonal sensitivity and preference for open and collaborative relationships) (Fondas, 1997; Kanter, 1989). By using the generic term ‘feminization’, I do not wish to imply that it refers to one femininity and to one mode of being feminine. Femininities (and masculinities) are regarded as contingent, fragmented and socially constructed gendered identities and practices.

3. In the 1990s in Australia, as in many western countries such as the UK and the US, academic work has moved toward what Slaughter and Leslie (1997) define ‘academic capitalism’.

4. Since this research was conducted in 2002 the two female associate deans left and were replaced by men. Also, one of the female heads of department left and was replaced by another woman.

5. To preserve confidentiality the names of the participants are pseudonyms.

6. Vinnicombe and Singh (2003) suggest that women who have a mentor do better, as they gain reflected power, feedback, and access to resources and senior managers through their mentors. When women have been successful, one of the contributory factors that they report is the access to mentoring (Headlam‐Wells, 2004). Furthermore, mentoring success breeds commitment to broadening mentoring opportunities.

7. Vinnicombe and Colwill (1995) discussed three types of women’s network: professional and occupational networks (e.g., women in management), in‐company networks (could be formal or informal groupings within a particular organization and are open to women from a particular level) and training networks (grew out of women’s training). Some women’s networks provide workshops and training programmes and support their members with directories of members, role models and mentoring initiatives. A report into more than 20 women’s networks was carried out by the think‐tank Demos (McCarthy, 2004), and found that more structured networks were particularly beneficial to women, particularly those that operated during working time with the endorsement of employing organizations. The potential for women‐only networks to make a real difference to women’s access to managerial jobs is also evidenced by the results of a network initiative in General Electric (Stern, 2004). When the network began in 1998, only 6% of middle management posts in the company were held by women. In 2004, it had reached over 12%.