Transitions In Gender And Education International Conference, University Of Warwick, April 1997 BEYOND THE DEGREE: MEN AND WOMEN AT THE DECISION-MAKING LEVELS IN ACADEMIA Lalage Bown Professor Emeritus, University of Glasgow Honorary Professor, International Centre for Education in Development, University of Warwick 1. Personal Preamble Reaching the age of seventy is a transition which prompts some looking backward to take stock of failures, successes and what alternatives one could have undertaken - as an academic and as a woman. I have been in academic life (that is employed by or attached to a university) since 1948. Mostly, because I was in Adult Education, I had a great deal of autonomy. From 1962 I had opportunities to run a university department and to sit in a university senate; and from 1966 to 1992 I was a full professor and always head of a department (except for sabbatical interludes). When I was Dean of Education at the University of Lagos, I had a Faculty of 1,200 students and over 200 academics and non-academic staff, as well as responsibility for buildings and land. At the University of Glasgow, I was head of department for 11 years, with a full-time academic staff of 23, but over 300 part-timers, running a programme which involved 14,000 to 15,000 adult students a year. This personal note is introduced because it is relevant to my theme and perhaps explains my interest in the difficulties for many women of reaching decision-making levels in academia. I am 1
Transcript
Transitions In Gender And EducationInternational Conference, University Of Warwick, April 1997
BEYOND THE DEGREE: MEN AND WOMEN AT THE DECISION-MAKING LEVELS IN ACADEMIA
Lalage BownProfessor Emeritus, University of GlasgowHonorary Professor, International Centre for Education in Development, University of Warwick
1. Personal Preamble
Reaching the age of seventy is a transition which prompts some looking backward to take stock of failures, successes and what alternatives one could have undertaken - as an academic and as a woman.
I have been in academic life (that is employed by or attached to a university) since 1948. Mostly, because I was in Adult Education, I had a great deal of autonomy. From 1962 I had opportunities to run a university department and to sit in a university senate; and from 1966 to 1992 I was a full professor and always head of a department (except for sabbatical interludes). When I was Dean of Education at the University of Lagos, I had a Faculty of 1,200 students and over 200 academics and non-academic staff, as well as responsibility for buildings and land. At the University of Glasgow, I was head of department for 11 years, with a full-time academic staff of 23, but over 300 part-timers, running a programme which involved 14,000 to 15,000 adult students a year.
This personal note is introduced because it is relevant to my theme and perhaps explains my interest in the difficulties for many women of reaching decision-making levels in academia. I am aware that I have been unusually fortunate, as a woman, to have had so much responsibility over such a long period. This has of course meant that I have had to face almost all the challenges which a woman meets in these roles - the senior government official who flatly refused to meet me, demanding that the Vice-Chancellor send a man to negotiate with him instead; a secretary under great stress because she was being laughed at by her fellows for working with a woman; the numerous occasions on which there is simple disbelief that as a women one could be a professor.
Very early in this rather long (and fulfilling) career, I came to two conclusions. One was that it was desperately important to see more of oneÕs fellow-women in positions of power within the system - not for the sake of power or Ôgender tribalismÕ, but in order to facilitate decisions about teaching, curricula, research and appropriate work conditions which would help women as well as men to gain the maximum chance to realise their potential and contribute their best to their institution and to scholarship. Therefore, I have always played an active role in university
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deliberations, as well as in the academic union, have involved myself willingly in promotion procedures, encouraged womenÕs development and confidence and have aimed to work with others to increase the number of women in the decision-making bodies of all kinds.
A second conclusion was that it was valuable for women to shore up their base within academia by taking on roles in public policy agencies which intersect in some way with university work. This is because some public policy decisions have important impacts on the academic system and need a gender dimension at the formative stage. It is noticeable that nearly all the women featured in the HigherÕs publication, Beyond the Glass Ceiling (Griffiths, ed, 1996) have operated in this way and an exemplar for me has been the New Zealand academic and politician, Marilyn Waring, who shifted her discipline of Economics from its ignoring of womenÕs work by pressing for changes in national accounting in her own country and at the United Nations (see Bown in Masson and Simonton 1996).
This paper is written against that background and its preoccupation is with the transition of women from being the objects of higher education - the undergraduates, junior researchers, part-time lecturers - to becoming the subjects, people who share in the crucial resolutions and rulings which determine the experience and opportunities of undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and teachers of both genders. It is a first attempt to treat the topic in this way and is written in the hope that others (women and men) may improve, correct and clarify the work I have done.
2. From Access and Participation to Shared Control
Less than forty years ago, male academics at the University of Oxford could characterise women students and womenÕs colleges as Ôan unassimilated minority in our midstÕ (Oxford Magazine, quoted Brittain 1960). The persistence of a minority position for women was well-aired by Suzanne Lie and Lynda Malik in the 1994 World Yearbook of Education, which showed gender imbalances at most levels in universities and colleges round the world, their theme being The Gender Gap in Higher Education.
Initial concern about that gap was inevitably about access, and much writing about gender and higher education has focused on the problems of access to learning for women. First, there was the establishment of the right of women to access, the beginnings of the right to attend universities as students, follow the same courses as men and gain the same qualifications. As is well-known, the first university in the UK to offer full rights to women students was the University of London in 1877 and these rights were then automatically applied in all the colleges which later developed under LondonÕs tutelage (both in Britain and overseas). It was followed by the four ancient Scottish universities, empowered by an ordinance of 1892. The ancient English universities lagged far behind, prompting this parody of the border ballad Jock of Hazeldean:
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They sought in college and in haÕ,The ladye wadna stay.SheÕs ower the borders and awaÕTo win a Scots BA (quoted Brittain 1960)
(In fact, in Scotland the ladye would have gained an MA - the traditional Scottish first degree).
The second concern was to move from an Ôunassimilated minorityÕ position to one in which there was a fairer overall balance of access for females and males. Malik and Lie showed that in the seventeen countries which they studied in depth, only six had achieved a female access rate of 50% (or slightly above). Those six did not at that point in time include the UK, although the 1994 audit of the Scottish research and campaigning group EnÕGender showed women making up 49% of first-level higher education students in Scotland.
Currently, there is a parity of numbers between female and male students in Britain. (Incidentally, this is outside the thrust of my present discussion, but in some countries access figures need to be interpreted in the light of a tendency for families to find ways of sending sons abroad for higher education, while they are unwilling to make a similar investment in their daughters - or are reluctant to send them away from home - so that more women students attend the local universities, but this doesnÕt mean that more women than men are actually entering higher education).
The third concern, highlighted internationally by Lie and Malik and for Scotland by the EnÕGender audits, is the skewing of access as a result of subject segregation. There may appear to be parity of access if numbers are looked at in the aggregate, but when the figures are broken down, more women appear in some subjects/disciplines and more men in others. Thus in Western Europe and the USA, fewer women than men have an opportunity to qualify in engineering and technology - although in some of the countries of the former Soviet empire this was not the case.
All these concerns about gender and access have to remain live in the United Kingdom at the moment. Cuts in spending on the system and the attrition of grants for individual students are likely to tell against womenÕs access, so that rights, balance of numbers and the breakdown of subject segregation are all at risk.
Nevertheless, there has been a transition of concern to another live issue: access to a degree has enabled women to participate in the higher education process, but still (as said in the Preamble) as objects, with decisions about curriculum, organisation, the validity of knowledge and the system itself remained largely in the hands of men. A classic comment made by the politician and writer, Mary Agnes Hamilton, can be applied here:
[Women] have passed, once and for all, from being passive spectators into being active participants in a world where such participation is anything but amusing, except for those who happen to possess the form of power and the passport to independence which alone our society honours (in Strachey, 1936).
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She was referring to the relation between political access and economic power, but the comment can apply just as well to the relation in universities between students and junior academics on the one hand and on the other the people with the passport to power at the apex.
Where, then, are women as subjects, sharing in the decision-making in and about academia?
This question was implicit in Margaret SutherlandÕs pioneer study, Women Who Teach in Universities (1985), in which she interviewed women academics in five European countries. By definition, those whom she interviewed were the survivors within the system, but it was quite disheartening to read her report of how few women had either hope of or interest in joining the Ôcorridors of powerÕ, often for reasons with which one could empathise. Of West German women university teachers, she reports:
not all ... wanted the administrative responsibilities that professorial status brings. One was repelled by what she perceived as a professorÕs workload. Some, who had been involved as representatives of their department or teaching level in university committees were not attracted by the in-fighting which occurred on certain occasions. They would rather be involved in research and teaching than in these power struggles.
Other writers have followed up the problem since then. Carol Dyhouse in her excellent history of women in British universities from 1870 to 1939 moves forward in the history to note that in the 1990s, British universities were still seen as Ôbastions of male power and prestigeÕ. An interesting attempt at practical change in the the last decade was Christine KingÕs Glass Ceiling movement, in which a number of women academics trained themselves in ways of both beating and joining the system. In my observation, this was an empowering movement and it would be good to have a tracer study of the members of the group and where they now are within the academy. For a start, Christine King herself has become Vice-Chancellor of Staffordshire University.
There have been some attempts to see where women are located in UK academic hierarchies, either nationally or within individual institutions. The Association of University Teachers has done studies of the professoriate in Britain, including studies of gender. In Scotland, EnÕGender reports regularly on this as part of its annual audit of womenÕs position in various sectors of activity. I personally did an analysis for the University of Glasgow towards the end of the 1980s, at which point the most senior woman in the order of precedence ranked number 56 (although one woman professor represented the Senate on the University Court). Monitoring such data has shock value, but also serves as material for conscientisation of policy-makers and men and women seeking change and for diagnosis of where change is most needed.
The fact that these studies concentrated on the professoriate and the proportion of women within it has, however, limited their value. It is becoming more apparent that professors have much less power than in the past. Reasons include: the increase in the absolute numbers of professors (however few are still female); the custom of rotating departmental headships; and, crucially, the changes to the ways in which universities are now managed.
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I suggest that it may now be more important to look at a smaller group of key decision-makers in each institution and see if women are among them. This group usually comprises those who would conventionally have been called the university officers: the Vice-Chancellor or Principal and his/her deputies; the Registrar; the Bursar; and the Librarian. These people are almost always in evidence when major decisions of academic policy are made, whereas traditional mechanisms like university senates have declined sometimes into debating shops.
As a result of this observation, I have therefore attempted to produce a snapshot of the situation in 1996/97 - of where women are overall in the decision-making roles, including their share of the major university offices. There are limitations to this. First, there are variations in the way institutions operate, so that the picture is only an approximation. Secondly, the exercise needs repeating from time to time to see if there are trends or just lurches up and down. Thirdly, I am mindful of an article in Scottish Affairs by Prof Sally Brown of the University of Stirling: ÔResearch on gender in education - monitoring bleakness or instigating changeÕ. She pleads for researchers to pay more attention to analysing the reasons for gender gaps rather than simply describing them. Auditing and monitoring do have the uses mentioned above, but she is right in suggesting that the data should be used to illuminate problems and focus on the why and how of change.
In order to move the discussion from description to the question why? I have picked out a couple of case-studies which seem to suggest some circumstances in which and reasons why women are not more involved in academic policy and decision-making. I will also suggest that what goes on in academia is influenced by outside bodies with a policy focus, in which women are also in a small minority.
The last phase of the discussion will be to make, very briefly, some international comparisons and the conclusion will suggest some ways of instigating change.
3. The Picture of Academic Hierarchy in 1996/97
Elsewhere I have argued that history indicates that womenÕs scholarship flourishes where they have their own space and where they are operating in a collaborative, democratic system (in Masson and Simonton, eds, 1996). The traditional liberal model of a university in principle ought to have favoured and fostered women, since there were democratic features in elected faculty boards and elected senates representing all constituencies. My experience as a young academic was that there was a chance to express views and take part in major institutional decisions. In the post-liberal era this is no longer the case. Hierarchies loom larger and small clusters of people at the top of the system have power concentrated in their hands. This style of organisation is quite unpalatable to many women, but unless enough women become involved in it, they will have little hope of effecting change. The castle must be captured before it can be rebuilt as a more comfortable dwelling.
Are women at the moment anywhere near capturing the castle?
With the help of a computer programme developed at the Association of Commonwealth Universities, I tried to gauge where women were in the hierarchies. I also checked the computer
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results against published data in the ACUÕs own directory and other directories, and added material from other sources. The data relates to 146 universities and colleges; no information was available on another five. The full list of 151 institutions is given in Table 1. The 146 for which I had data include both the University of London and its constituents and associates and the University of Wales and its constituents. Some of the London components are major academic players, while others are quite small, but all were included since some of the small ones have a disproportionate significance because they promote unusual disciplines.
Five senior academic positions were then examined for each institution, to see how many women held them across the system. These were the five already referred to: Vice-Chancellor or Principal; Pro-Vice-Chancellor or Deputy Principal; Registrar (or senior academic administrator by another title); Bursar (or senior finance officer); and University Librarian. These are the key post-holders, all except the Bursar generally with academic status and, as said earlier, with the new managerialism in the post-liberal university, as a group they are at the centre of power - in spite of acknowledged variations in custom, practice and structures.
Table 2 shows that 62 of the 146 colleges and universities in Britain had no women in any of these five positions - that is in 42% of them. There were no senior women in six of the eight colleges of the University of Wales, nor in three of the four ancient universities of Scotland. More telling, there were no senior women at five of the ten universities who came top of the latest Research Assessment Exercise - the heavyweights of the system. The University of Warwick itself has no woman in the top positions as defined, despite a long track-record in womenÕs and gender studies. The absence of women decision-makers in major research universities and colleges is alarming, since research is all too often gender biased (a further comment will be made later on this).
Where are the women in the other 58% of institutions? Table 3B shows that another 14% have more than one senior woman academic officer. These are the ones where there might be a critical mass in the leadership to bring about change; and it can be seen that four out of the eleven places with a woman Vice-Chancellor have at least one other woman at the top. These facts should not be overplayed, however. Where there is a woman Pro-Vice-Chancellor, there are often two or three men Pro-Vice-Chancellors as well, with a man having seniority in the team and with the woman having a less prestigious portfolio. Further, where Registrarial jobs are divided up, individual holders may have less power and weight. It is rather a bleak scenario that only twenty out of 146 institutions have more than one woman in a leadership role.
All the same, the arrival of eleven women Vice-Chancellors (or equivalent) must be seen as a definite advance. Table 3A lists the women at present in this central role. In the past, there have been only two women university heads - Dame Lillian Penson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1948-1951 and Dame Rosemary Murray, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1975-77. The early 1990s by bringing the former polytechnics into the university system, brought in two new women Vice-Chancellors: (Baroness) Pauline Perry of South Bank University and Dr Ann Wright, University of Sunderland. Pauline Perry has since moved on, but other women have been appointed, some to former polytechnics or colleges of higher education, others to an earlier generation of universities (East Anglia and Keele). A cynic might say that women are getting to the top in institutions which are smaller,
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financially weaker or slightly unorthodox, because those institutions are no longer attractive to men. I would prefer to see the arrival of a visible minority of women VCs as a sign of hope. Perhaps the most interesting of recent appointments has been that of Dr Alexandra Burslem as Vice-Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University, whose experience matches that of many women in academia, since she started as a mature student.
The general picture of academic hierarchy in 1996/97 is then one of a leadership still very largely male dominated, but of twenty institutions with more than one woman in key posts (including four Vice-Chancellorships) and seven more women in the top academic leadership role of Vice-Chancellor or equivalent among the 64 universities and colleges which have at least one woman in a key post. All this is progress of a kind. The problem is whether in any institution there is a critical mass of women who are ready to influence change. Very often a lone woman is ineffective or helpless - a captive of an overwhelming male majority. The opportunity for manoeuvre depends on the character of that majority. Are there men colleagues sympathetic to and understanding of the value of a gender perspective in curriculum, research and working conditions? If there are, the handful of senior women can make an impact on these. If not, then it will be hard for the senior women to achieve any movement in the institution or the system.
4. Women in Other Areas of University Governance
A great deal of power is clustered around the five key academic or academic-related jobs in any university institution and this is why the number of them held by women were examined. There are other aspects of university governance which have significance and these were studied as well. Data was accessible for 121 institutions for this part of the work; the list of those for which it was not available will be found at the end of Table 4.
The governance roles identified were: Visitor, Chancellor and chair of the Court or Council (or governing body). The traditional positions of Visitor and Chancellor are largely ceremonial. Table 4A shows that 27 of the 121 institutions looked at had a woman Visitor or Patron (mostly HM the Queen) and Table 4B that 11 at the present time have women Chancellors. Although these positions are honorific, it could be argued that some mileage is to be gained by having a woman as the visible embodiment of the whole university, in providing a symbol and a role model. Furthermore, it should be remembered that the Visitor is in theory a last resort for appeals, so the position is not nugatory. There are, it seems, hints that the Dearing Committee may recommend new tasks for Visitors in monitoring quality, so it remains of concern that there should be some women involved as Visitors (and as their advisors too in the case of Royalty).
Chancellors also have some influence above their purely ritualistic functions. Anecdotally, in my experience and observation, they contribute advice and encouragement which is respected. Both men and women Chancellors are likely to be committed to the institution and to support its cause in a variety of ways. When the late Dorothy Hodgkin, FRS and Nobel prize-winner was Chancellor of the University of Bristol, I was told by a number of sources how helpful she was as a top-flight academic with very broad experience. We should perhaps question whether the women Chancellors at the present are those most suitable to carry that kind of help to their
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universities. If they do not have direct academic experience, their effectiveness as mentors to the top academics might be vitiated.
More critical in the governance of universities and colleges are the bodies composed of academics and Ôlay peopleÕ, whether called Courts, Councils, Boards of Governors, which have oversight over material and financial resources, staffing and other non-academic matters. Governing bodies may have a profound effect on working conditions for both women and men scholars and take the ultimate decisions about departmental closures or mergers or expansion which influence academic disciplinary priorities. Yet, out of 121 institutions, only four have women as sole chairs of their governing bodies and another three have women as joint chairs (Table 4C). Clearly, women have only got a toehold in this part of university governance - probably because these chairs are mainly filled by prominent local personalities, politicians or businessmen, and women are in a minority in those spheres as well.
It was recognised earlier that patterns of governance and leadership vary across the higher education sector. In the three oldest English universities, there are idiosyncratic systems and structures. In Cambridge, for example, the main locus of power has been identified as the Board of Regents by women academics and they hold half the places on it. All the three have another source of power: the headship of a college or ÔhouseÕ. Table 5 shows the gender balance among those headships for Oxford, Cambridge and Durham.
In Cambridge, there are six women college heads out of 30 - an advance on the three who were there in the past, as heads of womenÕs colleges. In Oxford there are also six houses with women heads, out of 47 colleges altogether; the number here is little changed from the days where there were five women-only colleges so that there were five headships entrenched for women. There is a new phenomenon, however, as three of the former men-only colleges now have women heads, including the two old and prestigious houses of Merton and Exeter. This is a breakthrough which some of us had not expected. When in 1994 I wrote a paper for the centenary of the arrival of women undergraduates in Aberdeen (Masson and Simonton 1996) I expressed the fear that once colleges were mixed, there would be a general tendency for all heads of houses to be male. Fortunately, I and others seem to have been unnecessarily cynical - or pessimistic.
Heads of colleges in Durham too have a special role. Only two of them out of fourteen are women at the present time - no advance on the past.
5. Analysis and Rationale
What this enquiry has shown so far is that women are still in a restricted minority when it comes to academic decision and institutional governance, but that there are modest changes towards a more equitable balance between men and women. This should give some cause for encouragement to those of us who believe that it is healthy as well as just for women to have a fair share in the decision-making processes.
At this point, I want to recapitulate and extend the argument for women taking that fair share. First, if gender is taken into account in planning, institutions should become more friendly to
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women, both as students and as academics. This encompasses not only such matters as the provision of crches and the avoidance of unsocial hours for meetings, but also monitoring the allocation of funds for travel and conferences, for example, and the even-handed distribution of workloads in departments (so that welfare and admissions roles are not all ascribed to women).
More fundamentally, research and teaching as a whole ought to become more gender-sensitive. In curricula, gender is still on the margins - and it will continue to be so unless there are women ready to advocate change and in a position to steer it through. In spite of Waring, for example, much Economics is still taught as if unwaged work does not count. In research, top malesÕ priorities are almost unchallenged and yet if womenÕs interests too are to be inserted, women have to be in positions from which they can advocate shifts in focus and resource allocation. There are particular anomalies in regard to scientific and technological research. As Patricia Haynes says in her lively book Reconstructing Babylon (1989):
Women have never lived without technology. Yet we barely have a toehold in the discourse and direction of it.
More polemically, Dale Spender says (and I make no apology for repeating a quotation I have used elsewhere):
It is men, not women, who control knowledge, and I believe that this is an understanding we should never lose sight of ... We can produce knowledge, we have been doing so for centuries, but the fact that it is not part of our traditions, that it is not visible in our culture, is because we have little or no influence over where it goes. We are not the judges of what is significant and helpful, we are not influential members in those institutions which legitimate and distribute knowledge (Spender, 1982).
The rationale, then, for wanting to see a substantially increased number of women in the positions of power and influence in the academy is ultimately about the legitimation of a gender perspective in a universityÕs work and about ensuring that curricula and research programmes across the system are not purely male constructs.
More women in the professoriate would also help to bring about this change - as we know, the current ratio is about 4 women professors to 96 men overall, but in some disciplines women are not there at all. The critical necessity, however, remains for women to be at the very top of academic decision-making, to be in the citadel.
By now, I hope it will have been noticed that I have largely avoided the word ÔmanagementÕ. Top men and women in academia are managers (often on a scale which would surprise our detractors in some other sectors, incidentally - the University of Glasgow, for example, is the third largest employer in that city). But an emphasis on a management role tends to emphasise the conservative, the maintenance of a system and existing policies, while what I am suggesting here is that new decisions are needed to change structures, processes and content.
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6. Two Case Studies
Where are the barriers to more women reaching the upper echelons of academia and maintaining a position there? Simply to talk glibly of the glass ceiling is not enough.
Some of the barriers may be illuminated by a couple of case-studies. One relates to the unevenness of disciplinary access raised in section 2 of this paper. Institutions which are heavily weighted towards certain disciplines may be assumed to have a smaller number of women academics at all levels. To test this, I looked at the staff list of Cranfield University, which is largely scientific, technical and agricultural. The major disciplines are shown in Table 6 and it will be seen that the total proportion of established staff posts held by women is less than 10%. It should, however, be noted that some of that small proportion of women are in senior positions. For instance, the Professor of Ballistics at the Defence College is a woman; she has been in the news as the expert called upon in the trial of the Oklahoma bomb suspects to appraise FBI scientific evidence.
I did not have time to analyse staff lists in medical schools where I suspect that (with some exceptions) women tend to be in a minority in the powerful specialisations; but a cursory look at LondonÕs United Medical and Dental Schools gave the indication that women were in a minority there too. Such entrenched male bastions are becoming rarer, but, as Lie and Malik describe, there are many institutions and departments with a scientific or technological emphasis where the women are bunched together in the foothills of the system.
What happens in a large mainstream university with plenty of women staff and a broad range of disciplines? My former University of Glasgow was chosen and two types of evidence were adduced: research done by a former student of mine, Gayle Morris, in 1992 and an analysis of power structures in the university in 1997. The outcomes hint at some of the conditions which may limit womenÕs progress in the system.
Gayle MorrisÕ case-study of Women in Academia has drawn wide attention. She found significant frustration and dissatisfaction among women in Glasgow at all levels and in all Faculties. Current pressures and stresses probably mean that men are dissatisfied too, but this research reflected the particular problems faced by women. Judgement of performance is, as we all know, largely based on research output (which affects promotion and financial reward), but contract appointments and job insecurity for over a third of the women hampered both research planning and the building up of a coherent research record. There was also extra pressure on women to be Ôgood citizensÕ by taking on welfare roles such as student counselling and the less prestigious committee work such as student admissions. These tasks were not resented in themselves, but women did resent the fact that men who avoided such chores gained an edge in research time and in access to the more powerful and status-bearing committees.
Higher up the ladder, because women are so much fewer than men, the burden of committee work became very heavy. If a woman wished to have an input into decisions - and most felt an obligation on behalf of other women in junior positions - she had to take on many hours of work, again to the detriment of her research and of time for reflection, not to mention womenÕs other roles in family and community.
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The large cohort of women whom Morris interviewed did not want to opt out of academic life, but they had a sense that current rules and structures placed them at a disadvantage in their attempts to make the most of it.
Analysis of current University of Glasgow structures suggested that disadvantage will be magnified in the future, and not just in Glasgow. The University Senate has become a very large and unwieldy body, with a professoriate alone of 267 people, of whom 15 or 5.6% are women. A College of Senate has been instituted, pared down to 118, still rather a large group. In it, women number 14, or 12%. In the formal order of precedence, women have moved up, but not in any number. The first woman in the professoriate is now at number 16, the next at number 18 and the third at number 38. In such conditions, women have little power.
Most decisions are in practice taken elsewhere. One mechanism is the Education Committee, a body of 33 people who include six women. The Committee reflects a shift of power away from academics, however, as 10 out of the 33 are administrators (and four of the six women are in that group). Most radical is a new insertion into the structure, following a consultancy report by Coopers and Lybrand: the grouping of disciplines into 11 Planning Units which have devolved budgeting, and whose heads meet as a group to discuss both financial and academic plans. Only one of that group is a woman - my successor as head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education. There are hints now that her unit is small in size compared to the others and should then be amalgamated with another. If that precarious foothold goes, women will have virtually gone from decision-making at Glasgow. The Principal, Vice-Principal, Clerk of Senate and all Deans are men at present and on the University Court there is just one woman - the non-academic staff union representative. The conclusion from this description is that as the new managerialism shifts power away from the traditional organisations such as Senates, with their vestigial democracy, into unrepresentative small digarchies, so women will be largely defined out.
Thus, while the broad picture in the 146 institutions shows some increase in the presence of women at the very top - shows some movement forward - at the same time micro-studies show some of the reasons why women are not at the top in larger numbers and hint that some new developments in the way institutions are run may tell against womenÕs opportunities for sharing power with men. The challenges are: disciplinary segregation; cultural problems; and a possible threat from the new managerialism.
7. Contextual Influences on Academic Agenda
So far we have looked at institutions without putting them in context. Although relatively autonomous, universities are subject to decisions of politicians and also to influences from quasi-academic agencies. To build up a complete impression, it would be desirable to look at the gender composition of the funding councils and the research councils - a task for a later date.
Most academics would think of those councils, but I wonder how many would think of the major learned societies? The Royal Society of London, the British Academy and the Royal
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Society of Edinburgh administer and distribute research grants, give publicity to research and offer advice, either pro-actively or reactively to politicians and other national policy-makers. They have serious influence, however, impalpable, and they offer a channel through which academic issues can be given a hearing. For a long time these societies were closed to women and many will know the oddity of scholarly history when the celebrated Scottish scientist, Mary Somerville, had to send her husband to read her paper at the Royal Society of London since she was barred from entry.
Because I have easiest entry to it (as a Fellow), I would here put forward the example of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1996, there were 1112 Fellows, of whom 40 (or 3.6%) were women, and 69 Honorary Fellows, of whom 6 (or 9%) were women. The figures as of March 1997 are 1146 ordinary Fellows, of which 51 (or 4.4%) are women. The longest lived woman Fellow was elected in 1949, but it was only in the late 1980s that more than a handful of women were elected and there is now a trend for more to come in. The result of elections in the last three years have been as follows:
Date Total Fellows Elected No of Women Fellows Elected % Women
1994/95 60 3 51995/96 60 6 101996/97 42 8 20
Women have very rapidly begun to take part in the running of the Society. It is governed by a Council of 25 members and 5 of these are women, which is quite remarkable. There are three women among the twelve officers. Eight of the 40 women Fellows have served or are serving on the Council. These are the visible signs of the SocietyÕs operation and the Society has also had a committee on women in the Fellowship (although this has not achieved much).
The point is that such a body influences public opinion on scientific and academic matters and its Fellows have a chance to put ideas to public enquiries of all kinds, such as the Dearing Committee. It is comfortable that women are there and in a proportion at least not far from the proportion of women professors. There is still, however, some overt negative reaction to any suggestion of increasing the role of women in RSE and womenÕs voice in the representations on policy is still quite small. But at least women are there and being given the opportunity to widen their role. My experience has been that it is fruitful for women to be involved in such bodies.
8. International Comparisons
To move the context further outwards, what happens in other countries with similar systems to our own?
The Commonwealth has since 1964 funded fellowships and scholarships to encourage the ablest scholars from one country to study or work in another. The underlying assumption is that they would be the high flyers, destined for senior positions and particularly senior positions in
12
universities. A tracer study was carried out in 1989 of what had actually happened to former Commonwealth award-holders. In practice, a large number had become senior academics, but the final report says:
A regrettable though not unexpected statistic appears ...: among the 528 university professors who responded [to the tracer study] only 58 are women, confirming the difficulty that women experience throughout the Commonwealth in being appointed to the highest educational positions. The figures among professors should be contrasted with the figures Ôothers in educationÕ (i.e. mainly school teachers), where women account for nearly one-third of the total, suggesting that they have much less difficulty in gaining employment in jobs that are stereotypically seen as appropriate for women (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1989).
There are, however, individual countries in the Commonwealth which compare very favourably with the UK situation. Table 7 shows that in Australia, out of 42 institutions, seven have women Chancellors and eight others women Pro-Chancellors. The proportion of women Vice-Chancellors is less than in Britain (only two out of 42 or 5%), but only 17% of institutions have no women in leadership positions, compared with BritainÕs 42%. Another research task for the future would be to tease out an explanation for such a contrast and also to explore what impact the comparatively noticeable presence of women has had on the character of universities in Australia.
9. Conclusion
The thrust of this paper has been that change is needed, to give women a fairer share in all the decisions taken in the academy, and with the assumption that a critical mass of women decision-makers would affect the institutions in ways which would make them more gender-sensitive.
In conclusion, I have three suggestions for moving towards a fairer share. The first is that a UK-wide audit of womenÕs locus in university leadership should be undertaken regularly. It could, without much difficulty, be done in a more sophisticated way than I have done here, including widening out to include the gender balance in funding councils and research councils. Perhaps the journal Gender and Education could undertake to publish it annually, with funding from a suitable source, such as the Equal Opportunities Commission and in co-operation with the Universities Statistical Record.
The second suggestion is that the Association of University Teachers should be enlisted to campaign for and orchestrate change in hierarchies - asking questions, for instance, about equal opportunities at the appointment of university officers and suggesting Equity portfolios for Pro-Vice-Chancellors/Deputy Principals, as in Australia.
Thirdly, however hard it may be, women academics of any level above lecturer have to grasp the responsibility of influencing, in whatever way is open to them, the public policy agencies which affect universities from outside. Earlier, I mentioned Marilyn Waring. As a woman she
13
questioned a basic tenet of traditional Economics, namely that work is a paid activity, and has fought against its application to national and United Nations public accounts systems. Her strategy for shifting the Economics agenda, as both an academic and a politician, has been to enlist an audience outside academia. Since gender-biased Economics does damage both within and beyond the academic curriculum, the pivot for change may be where the policies are made, rather than in the academy itself. Her example shows the value of working at the interface between academia and the surrounding policy world. Her concern was with curriculum. Other concerns such as research allocations and equity programmes may also be addressed in this way.
These are three practical suggestions to encourage change. I hope that other ideas will come from colleagues both male and female and that all together they will lead to an authentic partnership in decision-making between women and men.
Notes
1. I am very grateful to the Association of Commonwealth Universities for access to their data on women in universities and colleges and for permission to use the ACU Library. In particular I thank Colin Hewson and Nick Mulhern.
2. On the day this paper was given, the publishers launched a new book on Academic Women by Ann Brooks (SRHE and Open University Press). Her work not only provides rich data on womenÕs experiences and setbacks and their locus in the teaching hierarchies in Britain and New Zealand, but also puts forward an interesting framework for studies of this kind.
14
References
Brittain, Vera (1960) The Woman at OxfordLondon, Harrap
Brown, Sally (1993) ÔResearch on Gender in Education: Monitoring Bleakness or Instigating ChangeÕEdinburgh, Scottish Affairs, 5/Autumn
Commonwealth Secretariat (1989) Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan Tracy Study (Final Report)London, Commonwealth Secretariat(Author: Niven, Alastair)
Griffiths, Sian (ed) in association with the Times Higher Education Supplement (1996)
Beyond the Glass Ceiling. Forty women whose ideas shape the modern world.Manchester, Manchester University Press
Haynes, H Patricia (1989) Reconstructing BabylonLondon, Earthscan
Lie, Suzanne and Malik, Lynda (1994)
World Yearbook of Education 1994. The Gender Gap in Higher Education.London, Kogan Page
Masson, Mary and Simonton, Deborah (eds) (1996)
Women and Higher Education: Past, Present and Future.Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press
Morris, Gayle (1992) Women in Academia: A case-study of the University of GlasgowMPhil Dissertation, Department of Adult and Continuing Education, University of Glasgow
Somerville, Martha (1873) Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age of Mary SomervilleLondon
Spender, Dale (1982) Women of IdeasLondon, Routledge and Kegan Paul
Strachey, Ray (ed) (1936) Our Freedom and Its Results
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London, Hogarth Press
Sutherland, Margaret (1985) Women Who Teach in UniversitiesEuropean Institute of Education and Social Policy, Trentham Books
16
Beyond the Degree: Men and Women at the Decision-Making Levels in Academiaby Lalage Bown
TABLE 1: FULL LIST OF UK UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES SCANNED
University of AberdeenUniversity of Abertay DundeeAnglia Polytechnic UniversityAston UniversityUniversity of BathBath College of Higher EducationUniversity of BirminghamBolton Institute of Higher EducationBournemouth UniversityUniversity of BradfordUniversity of BrightonUniversity of BristolBrunel UniversityUniversity of BuckinghamBuckinghamshire CollegeUniversity of CambridgeUniversity of Central England in
BirminghamUniversity of Central LancashireCheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher
EducationCity University, LondonCoventry UniversityCranfield UniversityDe Montfort UniversityUniversity of DerbyUniversity of DundeeUniversity of DurhamUniversity of East AngliaUniversity of East LondonUniversity of EdinburghUniversity of EssexUniversity of ExeterUniversity of GlamorganUniversity of GlasgowGlasgow Caledonian UniversityUniversity of GreenwichHeriot-Watt UniversityUniversity of HertfordshireUniversity of HuddersfieldUniversity of HullKeele University
University of Kent at CanterburyKingston UniversityUniversity of LancasterUniversity of LeedsLeeds Metropolitan UniversityUniversity of LeicesterUniversity of Lincolnshire and HumbersideUniversity of LiverpoolLiverpool John Moores UniversityUniversity of London and its constituents(Colleges)
BirkbeckCharing Cross & Westminster Medical
SchoolGoldsmithsHeythropImperialInstitute of Education (ULIE)KingÕsLondon School of Economics (LSE)London School of Hygiene & Tropical
MedicineQueen Mary & WestfieldRoyal Free Hospital School of MedicineRoyal HollowayRoyal Postgraduate Medical SchoolRoyal Veterinary CollegeSt GeorgeÕs Hospital Medical SchoolSchool of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS)School of PharmacyUnited Medical & Dental Schools of
Guys and St ThomasÕsUniversity College, LondonWye College
(Institutes of Advanced Study)British Institute in ParisCentre for Defence StudiesCourtauld InstituteSchool of Slavonic and East European
Studies(Members of)
School of Advanced StudyCentre for English StudiesInstitute of Advanced Legal StudiesInstitute of Classical StudiesInstitute of Commonwealth StudiesInstitute of Germanic StudiesInstitute of Historical ResearchInstitute of Latin American StudiesInstitute of Romance StudiesInstitute of US StudiesWarburg Institute
(Associates)Institute of Cancer ResearchJewsÕ CollegeLondon Business SchoolRoyal Academy of MusicRoyal College of MusicTrinity College of Music
London Guildhall UniversityThe London InstituteLoughborough UniversityUniversity of LutonUniversity of ManchesterUniversity of Manchester Institute of
Science & Technology (UMIST)Manchester Metropolitan UniversityMiddlesex UniversityNapier UniversityUniversity of Newcastle upon TyneUniversity of North LondonUniversity of Northumbria at NewcastleUniversity of NottinghamNottingham Trent UniversityOpen UniversityUniversity of OxfordOxford Brookes UniversityUniversity of PaisleyUniversity of PlymouthUniversity of PortsmouthQueen Margaret College, EdinburghQueenÕs University of BelfastUniversity of ReadingRobert Gordon UniversityRoyal College of ArtUniversity of St AndrewsUniversity of Salford
University of SheffieldSheffield Hallam UniversitySouth Bank UniversityUniversity of SouthamptonStaffordshire UniversityUniversity of StirlingUniversity of StrathclydeUniversity of SunderlandUniversity of SurreySurrey Institute of Art and DesignUniversity of SussexUniversity of TeessideThames Valley UniversityUniversity of UlsterUniversity of Wales and its constituents
University of Wales, AberystwythUniversity of Wales, BangorUniversity of Wales, CardiffUniversity of Wales, SwanseaUniversity of Wales, LampeterUniversity of Wales College of MedicineUniversity of Wales Institute of Science
and TechnologyUniversity of Wales, Newport
University of WarwickUniversity of the West of England, BristolUniversity of WestminsterUniversity of WolverhamptonUniversity of York
Total: 146 institutionsNot included, owing to lack of data:
Canterbury Christ Church CollegeNene CollegeRoehampton Institute of Higher
EducationRoyal Agricultural CollegeRoyal Scottish Academy of Music and
Drama
Total not included: 5 institutions
TABLE 2: UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES WITH NO WOMEN OFFICERS, 1996/97
(NB full data not available on institutions marked *)
University of AberdeenUniversity of Abertay DundeeAnglia Polytechnic UniversityAston UniversityBath College of Higher EducationUniversity of Birmingham*Bolton Institute of Higher EducationUniversity of BrightonUniversity of BristolBrunel UniversityBuckinghamshire CollegeUniversity of ExeterUniversity of GlamorganUniversity of GlasgowHeriot-Watt UniversityLeeds Metropolitan UniversityUniversity of LeicesterUniversity of Lincolnshire and HumbersideUniversity of London constituents
Charing Cross & Westminster Medical School
Institute of Education (ULIE)Royal Veterinary CollegeUnited Medical & Dental Schools of
Guys and St ThomasÕsUniversity College, LondonCentre for Defence StudiesCourtauld InstituteSchool of Advanced Study- Institute of Advanced Legal Studies- Institute of Historical Research- Institute of Latin American StudiesInstitute of Cancer ResearchJewsÕ CollegeLondon Business SchoolRoyal Academy of MusicTrinity College of Music
The London InstituteLoughborough UniversityUniversity of Manchester Institute of
Science & Technology (UMIST)Middlesex University
University of Newcastle upon TyneUniversity of Northumbria at NewcastleUniversity of NottinghamUniversity of OxfordUniversity of PaisleyUniversity of PlymouthUniversity of PortsmouthRoyal College of ArtUniversity of St AndrewsUniversity of SalfordUniversity of SheffieldUniversity of SouthamptonUniversity of Surrey*Surrey Institute of Art and DesignUniversity of UlsterUniversity of Wales constituents
University of Wales, AberystwythUniversity of Wales, BangorUniversity of Wales, SwanseaUniversity of Wales, LampeterUniversity of Wales College of MedicineUniversity of Wales, Newport
University of WarwickUniversity of WolverhamptonUniversity of York
Total: 62 out of 146 or 42%
TABLE 3: INSTITUTIONS WITH WOMEN IN ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP POSITIONS, 1996/97
A. INSTITUTIONS WITH WOMEN HEADS (VICE-CHANCELLORS/PRINCIPALS)
Institution Position Name
University of Bournemouth VC Prof Gillian Slater
Cheltenham & Gloucester College of HE
Director J Trotter
University of East Anglia VC Dame Elizabeth Estve-Coll
Keele University VC Dame Janet Finch
University of London:Birkbeck CollegeInstitute of Romance StudiesRoyal College of Music
B: INSTITUTIONS WITH MORE THAN ONE SENIOR WOMAN/ACADEMIC OFFICER 1996/97
Institution Positions Held by Women
Cheltenham & Gloucester College of HE Director, *Registrar
Coventry University Prof/Dep VC (1 of 2), Registrar
Keele University VC, Registrar
Liverpool John Moores Provost, Registrar
University of London:Birkbeck CollegeGoldsmiths CollegeHeythrop CollegeLondon School of EconomicsUniversity of London School of PharmacyWye CollegeInstitute of Slavonic StudiesInstitute of Romance Studies
University of North London Dep/Pro VC (1 of 2), Registrar
Oxford Brookes University Registrar, Librarian
Queen Margaret College Principal, Vice Principal (1 of 2)
University of Reading 2 Dep/Pro VCs, Librarian
Sheffield Hallam University Dep/Pro VC, Registrar
Staffordshire University VC, Registrar
University of Sunderland VC, Pro VC
Thames Valley University 3 Registrars
Note: *Registrar is used for senior administrators
Total: 20 out of 146 institutions or 14%
Table 3 cont ...C. INSTITUTIONS WITH ONLY ONE WOMAN IN A LEADERSHIP POSITION
Institution Position Held by a Woman
University of Bath *Finance OfficerUniversity of Bournemouth VCUniversity of Bradford Dep/Pro VCUniversity of Buckingham LibrarianUniversityof Cambridge Finance OfficerUniversity of Central England in Birmingham *RegistrarUniversity of Central Lancashire RegistrarCity University, London Dep/Pro VCCranfield University RegistrarDe Montfort University RegistrarUniversity of Derby Dep/Pro VCUniversity of Dundee Dep PrincipalUniversity of Durham Finance OfficerUniversity of East Anglia VCUniversity of East London Finance OfficerUniversity of Edinburgh LibrarianUniversity of Essex Dep/Pro VC (1 of 3)Glasgow Caledonian University Librarian (professorial title)University of Greenwich Dep/Pro VC (1 of 2)University of Hertfordshire LibrarianUniversity of Huddersfield RegistrarUniversity of Hull Finance OfficerUniversity of Kent at Canterbury LibrarianKingston University RegistrarUniversity of Lancaster LibrarianUniversity of Leeds Dep/Pro VC (1 of 4)University of Liverpool LibrarianUniversity of London RegistrarUniversity of London, Imperial College Dean of City & Guilds
CollegeUniversity of London, KingÕs College LibrarianUniversity of London, School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Registrar
University of London, Queen Mary & Westfield College
Senior Vice-Principal
University of London, Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine
Librarian
University of London, Royal Holloway College Finance OfficerUniversity of London, Royal Postgraduate Medical School
Librarian
University of London, St GeorgeÕs Hospital Medical Librarian
SchoolTable 3 cont ...
Table 3(C) continued
University of London, SOAS LibrarianUniversity of London, British Institute in Paris RegistrarUniversity of London, Centre for English Studies RegistrarUniversity of London, Institute of Classical Studies RegistrarUniversity of London,Institute of Commonwealth Studies
Registrar
University of London, Institute of Germanic Studies RegistrarUniversity of London, Institute of US Studies RegistrarUniversity of London, Warburg Institute RegistrarUniversity of London, Royal College of Music DirectorLondon Guildhall University RegistrarUniversity of Luton Dep/Pro VCUniversity of Manchester Dep/Pro VC (1 of 4)Manchester Metropolitan University VCNapier University Dep Principal (Campus
Principal)Nottingham Trent University LibrarianOpen University Dep/Pro VC (1 of 5)Queens University of Belfast Dep/Pro VC (1 of 3)Robert Gordon University Finance OfficerSouth Bank University RegistrarUniversity of Stirling Dep/Pro VCUniversity of Strathclyde Dep Principal (1 of 3)University of Sussex Senior PVCUniversity of Teesside Dep/Pro VCUniversity of Wales RegistrarUniversity of Wales, Cardiff RegistrarUniversity of Wales Institute of Science & Technology RegistrarUniversity of the West of England, Bristol Dep/Pro VCUniversity of Westminster Registrar
Notes: *Finance Officer = Bursar, Director of Finance, etc*Registrar = Senior Administrative Officer
TABLE 4: WOMEN IN UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE, 1996/97(121 institutions; see below for list of institutions for which data was unavailable)
A. VISITORS
HM The Queen is Visitor to 18 universities, including London and Patron to 6 London University Colleges.
Other women Visitors or Patrons are:
University of Hertfordshire Dr Mary ArcherOpen University Rt Hon Betty BoothroydQueen Margaret College HRH The Duchess of Gloucester
Total: 27 institutions out of 121 for which data was available (or 22%) have a woman Visitor
B. CHANCELLORS
Institution Chancellor (or other title as indicated)
Bournemouth Baroness Cox of QueensburyBirmingham Baroness Thatcher of KestevenBuckingham Baroness Thatcher of KestevenGreenwich Baroness YoungLancaster HRH Princess AlexandraLondon HRH The Princess RoyalLondon Royal Free Hospital Medical School
Prof Dame Sheila Sherlock (President)
Oxford Brookes Helena KennedyUlster Rabbi Julia NeubergerWest of England, Bristol Dame Elizabeth Butler-SlossYork Dame Janet Baker
Total: 11 out of 121 institutions or 9%
Table 4 cont ...
C. WOMEN PRO-CHANCELLORS/CHAIRS OF COURTS, COUNCIL OR GOVERNORS
Institution Position Name
Birmingham Joint Vice-Chair of Council Gillian MiscambellBradford Pro-Chancellor (Joint) Baroness Lockwood of
DewsburyBristol Chair of Council Stella Clarke JPExeter Pro-Chancellor (Joint) Margaret LorenzGlasgow Caledonian Chair of Court Celia UrquhartPortsmouth Chair of Governors Caroline WilliamsQueen Margaret College Pro-Patron Rt Hon Countess of Elgin
& Kincardine
4 individual chairs, 3 joint chairs
Total: 7 out of 121 institutions or 6%
Note: Institutions for which data was not available:
Anglia PolytechnicBath College of HEBrightonCentral EnglandCentral LancashireCheltenham & Gloucester College of HEDerbyGlamorganHuddersfieldLeeds MetropolitanUniversity of London Institute of Cancer
ResearchUniversity of London JewsÕ CollegeUniversity of London Royal Academy of
Music
University of London Royal College of Music
University of London Trinity College of Music
London GuildhallLondon InstituteMiddlesexNorthumbriaNottingham TrentPaisleyPlymouthRoyal College of ArtSunderland
TABLE 5: WOMEN HEADS OF OXBRIDGE AND DURHAM COLLEGES, 1996/97
A. CAMBRIDGE
Institution Position Name
Clare Hall President Prof Gillian BeerGirton College Principal Juliet CampbellHomerton College Principal Kate PrettyLucy Cavendish College Principal Baroness PerryNew Hall Principal Anne LonsdaleNewnham College Principal Onora OÕNeill
Total: 6 colleges out of 30
B. OXFORD
Institution Position Name
Exeter College Rector Prof Marilyn ButlerKeble College Warden Dr Averil CameronMerton College Warden Dr Jessica RawsonSomerville College Principal Mrs Catherine HughesSt AnneÕs College Principal Dr Ruth DeechSt HildaÕs College Principal Mrs Elizabeth Llewellyn-Smith
Total: 6 colleges out of 47
C. DURHAM
Institution Position Name
St MaryÕs College Principal Joan KenworthyVan Mildert Principal Dr Judith Turner
Total: 2 colleges out of 14
TABLE 6: WOMEN ACADEMIC STAFF, CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY, 1996/97
* 1Professor (Aerospace Psychology)+ 1 Professor and 2 Senior Lecturers/Research Fellowsf 1 Reader (currently also Dean)# 1 Professor (Ballistics) and 3 Senior Lecturers
All others are Lecturers or Teaching Fellows (ie 31 out of 40)
TABLE 7: WOMEN IN UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE AND ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP IN AUSTRALIA, 1996/97
Total number of institutions = 42
A. GOVERNANCE
Institutions with women Chancellors 7 or 17%*Institutions with women Pro-Chancellors 8 or 19%
Note: *In 5 of these institutions there is a single position of Pro-Chancellor; in 3 others there are joint positions and in one of them (Deakin), both Pro-Chancellors are women.
B. ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP
Institutions with no women in such positions 7 or 17%Institutions with women VCs 2 or 5%*Institutions with women deputy heads or Pro VCs 20 or 48%Institutions with more than one woman in
academic leadership 14 or 33%
Note: *Women are either senior or only deputy head in 4 institutions. In another, both deputies are women. Positions include, in other cases, Deputy VC for Science and Engineering (James Cook University) and Pro VC, Equity (Griffith). Deputy VCs are senior in rank to PVCs in the Australian academic hierarchy.
