Female Academics Within the Neoliberal Higher Education Arena: Problematizing Gender Im/Balance
The notions of quality and excellence so prevalent in higher education do not sit easily with those of equality and diversity ⊠managerialism has not demolished the masculine hegemony, and may even re-emphasize it, while inequality practices still persist, although in a less obvious way than in earlier decades. (Teelken and Deem 2013, pp. 531â532)
The present-day pace of change in higher education is unprecedented, rife with an acceleration and intensification of neoliberal praxis, spurred on by the marketization of education, a model that has now become the norm in the UK and beyond (Thwaites and Pressland 2017). As a result, several changes have taken place at both meta- and micro-levels, an example of which is a more diverse student body harbouring higher expectations of higher education due to their newly established rights as âproduct purchasersâ (authorâs emphasis). Academic staff, therefore, meet burgeoning pressures to meet these student expectations while producing âworld-class, ground-breaking researchâ, where higher education existence shifts its focus to âplaying the gameâ (ibid., p. 4), that is, surviving, rather than progressing along a âsuccessfulâ academic career. Pressures on exceptional performance across all levels of teaching, research and administration have grown, with research remaining the most prestigious area, thus leading to the âcasualizationâ of higher education (Lopes and Dewan 2014, p. 29) through short-term, hourly paid and zero-hours contracts handed out to early career academics who are expected to cover teaching and administrative duties within an unsecure and unstable status. Thus, this precariousness unfolds at the early career stage, with early career academics constituting what Standing (2014) labels as âthe precariatâ (p. 13).
Within this precarious context, gaining entry to the higher education field as an early career academic presents insurmountable ordeals for these Ph.D. graduates who have to be constantly looking out for their next role. Data reveals that a negligible percentage of female Ph.D. candidates (12%) desire staying on in academia to work as lecturers and researchers by their final year of study (Rice 2012), an indication that they are being dissuaded by a tough job market or âthe precariatâ situation within and even beyond the initial stages in the present academic world. Given the situation, how more difficult must it be for female, feminist early career academics?
Universities are aptly described as âgendered organizations nested within a gendered hierarchyâ (Britton 2017, p. 5) due to the prevalence of male dominance within the highest prestige institutions, the highest paying disciplines and the most influential positions. Despite womenâs and feminist involvements in academe over the last five decades, hegemonic masculinity in higher education is still rampant. The gender gap has reversed for undergraduate students, whereas for women as academics it remains resistant to change as male power dominates (David 2015). Men still wield more powerful positions within and beyond higher education. Congruently, in the past four decades there has been a steady increase in the number of women attending higher education as undergraduate students, so much so that they have outnumbered their male counterparts (UNESCO 2012). Notwithstanding, the feminization of the campus has not translated into many women breaking through the ivory ceiling (Macfarlane 2018). The situation worsens the higher up the university management ladder one climbs (Savigny 2014). This predicament is expressed as the âpyramid problemâ (Mason 2011) due to the evident disparity in gender equity as manifested in representation on the faculty, pay and family formation. There are far fewer women than men at the top of the academic hierarchy; they are paid less and are much less likely to have had children. The situation is somewhat reversed at the bottom of the academic hierarchy.
She Figures (European Commission 2016) illustrates how limited womenâs penetration into the senior ranks of university research and administration in European higher education institutions has beenâthe higher up the academic ladder, the wider the gender gap. Women are a minority among senior academics in many European countries and hold few positions in academic leadership. In Canada, men professors earn more than women professors on average (Canadian Association of University Teachers [CAUT] 2016), while in the United States, men out-earn women at all faculty levels (American Association of University Professors 2017). The same can be said for women on academic contracts in the UK (University and College Union 2017). Slightly more than a quarter of professors in Indian academia are women (Government of India 2017), while Japanese universities lag behind at all ranks from university teachers up to the professoriate (Government of Japan 2017). In the United States, women are less likely than men to achieve tenure (Finkelstein et al. 2016), with the under-representation of women of colour in academia (National Centre for Education Statistics 2016) while mothers in academia often face a âbaby penaltyâ. It is clear that gender equality is nowhere near being achieved in academe today anywhere in the world (UNESCO 2012). According to Bekhradnia (2009), womenâs academic careers are characterized by âstrong vertical segregationâ, with the situation appearing more favourable for the youngest generations of female academics (due to the highest proportion of women full professors being in the humanities and social sciences), but the gender gap still persists. The increase in the number of female students does not signify a more than formal equality in terms of âthe numbers gameââthis merely serves as a âmask for continuing power plays whereby the ârules of the gameâ remain misogynisticâ (David 2015, p. 23). The corporatization of higher education institutions has put gender equity under threat again, with the junior female academic facing an uphill battle in terms of career aspirations. According to Thwaites and Pressland (2017), these early career female academics provide support to universities as the foot soldiers of higher education institutions akin to the 1960s and 1970s frustrated housewives supporting the economy by providing a happy and healthy home and hearth for their salaried husbands.
One of the most notable explanations for these disparities in gender is the metaphor of the âchilly climateâ, originally coined by Hall and Sandler (1982) to describe patterns of inequitable treatment that inhibit womenâs confidence, self-esteem and accomplishment as they accrue within organizational contexts. Gender thus becomes salient in interactions, structures and culture. According to Ridgeway (2011), work environments are perceived as gender-neutral by women (and men), whereby gender exists as a background identity âthat is rarely the ostensible focus ...