The silence/ing of academic women

ABSTRACT

The underrepresentation of women in the most senior ranks, and senior leadership positions in the academy, is a global phenomenon. How and why women academics experience the higher education profession differently to their male colleagues has been the subject of extensive research. This paper brings a new, original conceptual dimension to our understanding of this complex and enduring issue. Based on the rigorous analysis of 35 interviews with women academics from three world leading research-intensive universities, the paper introduces the concept of the silence, and silencing of, academic women. The theoretical frame of ‘micro-inequities’ – that is ‘small events’ which are hard to prove and covert – is used to analyse why academic women remain silent and how academic women are silenced.

KEYWORDS:

• Equality
• leadership
• women
• qualitative interviews
• higher education

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the following poeple for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this paper: Dr Barbara Crossouard, Professor Karen Guldberg, Professor Darrell Rowbottom and the journal's peer reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sarah Jane Aiston is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, University of Birmingham. She has a long-standing research interest in the position, status and experience of women in higher education, as staff and students, and from both a historical and contemporary perspective. Prior to her current position, Sarah worked at the University of Hong Kong, where she developed her research interests in relation to women in higher education in East Asia.

Chee Kent Fo is currently an independent scholar, researching the position, status, and experience of women as academic leaders in higher education. Prior to this, he worked at The Women's Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls in Hong Kong. Before that, he worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Hong Kong for Sarah Jane Aiston.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [17605015].