Gendered management in Spanish universities: functional segregation among vice-rectors

ABSTRACT

The reorganisation of higher education according to the marketplace logic – and framed within the process of Europeanisation and globalisation – has run parallel to a significant rise in the number of women in senior management positions at Spanish universities. This would seem to be a step to more gender equality. However, the analysis of the situation used thus far, based on conventional indicators, may be harbouring a not-so-egalitarian reality. Our approach studies the gender distribution of vice-rectors according to assigned functions in all forty-eight Spanish public universities offering both graduate and postgraduate studies. It does so by creating a typology to exemplify gendered divisions of labour within those positions. The results confirm an uneven gender distribution: women, although mostly in charge of caregiving and housekeeping functions, are underrepresented across the board in areas where strategic power resides and the future of university is decided and where, eventually, gender norms could be changed.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• management
• vice-rectors
• segregation
• Spain

Acknowledgments

We thank the academics that gave us access to their valuable time and reflections. We also express gratitude to our colleagues Juan Martín, Olga Suárez and Milagros Sáinz for their collaboration. José Luis Martínez-Cantos has contributed to this work with the support of a UOC postdoctoral fellowship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Cecilia Castaño is Professor of Economics and co-director of a Masters Program on Gender Studies (Complutense University of Madrid). Visiting Research Fellow at MIT, Harvard University and UC Berkeley. Creator and director (2006–2012) of Gender & ICT research program (Open University of Catalonia).

Susana Vázquez-Cupeiro is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education of the Complutense University of Madrid. Her research focuses on the sociology of gender and the sociology of education. Recent publications include ‘Online feminist practice, participatory activism and public policies against gender-based violence in Spain’, with Sonia Núñez and Diana Fernández, in Feminist Theory (August 2017).

José Luis Martínez-Cantos is Postdoctoral researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Open University of Catalonia. Graduated in Economics and Social Anthropology, MSc in Gender Equality and PhD in Sociology. His main research interests are related to gender, Information Society, Science and labour market.

ORCID

Cecilia Castaño http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0238-2113

Susana Vázquez-Cupeiro http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2707-1031

José Luis Martínez-Cantos http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8935-3993

Notes

1 Consequently, gender distribution among heads of universities and assimilated institutions in Spain is relatively low compared with the European Union average, where it was estimated to be 10% in 2010 and 15% in 2014 (European Commission 2013, 116, 2016, 142).

2 The position of ‘Vice-Rector’ in Spanish universities corresponds to the positions of ‘Pro-Vice Chancellor’ in Anglophone countries and ‘Vice President’ in France and Germany.

3 The NPM aims to modernise the public sector and make it more efficient by introducing the three ‘Ms’: market, managers and measurement. More details can be found in Hood (1991).

4 Further information about the list of items and the resulting codification is available upon request.

5 The functions that make up each combination do not necessarily come alone; they can also be associated with other responsibilities/missions assigned to the same vice-rector.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant number FEM2013-48225-C3-2-R].