Gendered success in higher education: Global perspectives
- Authors: White, Kate , O'Connor, Pat
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Edited book
- Full Text: false
- Description: This book examines higher education institutions that exemplify gendered success whether in terms of the presence of women in senior positions or attempts to change a gendered organisational culture. It reflects a global perspective, drawing on case studies from eleven countries: Australia, Austria, Ireland, India, New Zealand , Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. In each country an organisation has been selected that demonstrate best practice in terms of gendered outcomes or processes. Gendered Success in Higher Education highlights both the importance and the limitations of indicators such as the proportion of women in senior positions. It proposes a new gender agenda, identifies the factors that need to be included in a model of gendered change, and provides important insights into the nature of gendered change globally and how it can be achieved.
Similarities and differences in collegiality/managerialism in Irish and Australian universities
- Authors: O'Connor, Pat , White, Kate
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Gender and Education Vol. 23, no. 7 (2011), p. 903-919
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: In the collegial model the basis for appointment to senior management in the collegial model is nomination by a community of scholars, whereas it is by line management in the managerial one. This article focuses on the basis of appointments in universities and the gendering of such structures. Data are drawn from qualitative interviews with both men and women senior manager-academics at Dean level and above in Ireland and Australia (N = 44). In both countries the power of the President/Vice-Chancellor (VC) was very much as a Chief Executive Officer in the managerialist model, rather than the 'primus inter pares' of the collegial model. Moreover, Presidents/VCs controlled the appointments of Vice-Presidents/Deputy VCs and Deans and were seen as being able to affect the gender profile of senior management. However, in the Australian system (in contrast to the Irish one) there was no ambivalence about the VC actively rectifying gender inequalities in management. In a context where hybrid forms of management are emerging, this article questions the relevance of collegial/managerialist models in understanding the gendering of universities. © 2011 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
The experiences of senior positional leaders in Australian, Irish and Portuguese universities: Universal or contingent?
- Authors: O'Connor, Pat , Carvalho, Teresa , White, Kate
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Higher Education Research and Development Vol. 33, no. 1 (2014), p. 5-18
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This article is concerned with the extent to which the leadership of higher education is a universally positive or contingent experience. It draws on comparative data from semi-structured interviews with those in senior leadership positions in public universities in Australia, Ireland and Portugal, countries which are differently located on the collegial/managerial continuum. It looks at their perceptions of the advantages/disadvantages of these positions. Universal trends emerge, arising from difficulties created by the shortage of resources consequent on neo-liberalist pressures; from the non-viability of a managerialist discourse as a source of meaning; from the positive character of the university as a knowledge-generating organisation; and from the gendered satisfactions derived by men and women from occupying these senior leadership positions. Contingent trends include the tension between academic and managerial roles, which is strongest in the Portuguese collegial structures; while the negative impact on personal well-being is most apparent among the Australian respondents in the most managerialist structure. The paper concludes that assumptions that senior leadership positions are universally positive is not supported. It suggests that the attractiveness of these positions - contested in a collegial structure - may be further reduced in increasingly managerialist contexts, with the challenge of diversity, so important to innovation and economic growth, being particularly acute.