Abstract

The lack of women in senior academic and management positions in universities is a problem that persists in most countries despite repeated strategies, equality programmes and admonitions. How do women who achieve or aspire to leadership positions in universities navigate the multiple issues of gender, ethnicity, class background and age? The aim of the symposium responds to this question by bringing together current theoretical and ethnographic research on women in university leadership in Europe and Australasia.

Questions to address are:

• How do women negotiate and reshape gendered forms of leadership in universities?
• As a way of theorising the interlaced inequalities of gender, ethnicity, class and age, what are the potentials and future directions of ‘intersectionality’ (or alternative theories) for capturing the nuances and complexities of power relations in universities?
• Given that management reforms inspired by a neoliberal logic have been translated into different national and institutional contexts, how can comparisons be made between the ways women negotiate different systems of university management and governance?
• What is to be done? Why have previous equality strategies and programmes failed or not been sustained, and what lessons can be drawn from current theoretical and ethnographic studies of women in university leadership for the future?