This volume of essays was developed from a seminar held at Lingnan University , Hong Kong, on October 2016. The contributors were representatives from a higher education policy organization named the Asia Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP) . The modality of this group has been to develop two âseminarsâ per year, convened somewhere in Asia, organized by a common thematic which in turn is âtriggeredâ by a brief concept paper to which participants are encouraged to frame their contributions including contesting any of its presumptions. The relative success of this methodology has been demonstrated over a number of years and served to organize the development of the 2016 meeting focused on gender issues. The primary substance of that so-called concept paper appears in a somewhat revised version as Chapter 2 of this volume. In addition, those contributing to this effort are also encouraged, if they are so moved, to develop their own independent contributions to the seminar and its subsequent publication. For this volume, this has been the case for the additional chapters provided by Neubauer, Deng and Cuthbert. The overall organization of the book in general follows the major themes introduced within Chapter 2.
In the following chapter, Neubauer examines a range of empirical studies conducted throughout the region over the past several years and in doing so seeks to illustrate with these studies a range of issues introduced in the previous chapter. Additionally, he looks at several empirical studies that go beyond the mere reporting of the data to suggest methodologies and pathways that HEIs and ministries within the region could pursue to further meet patterns of inequality frames in and around gender issues. In seeking out such studies, he has located several that go beyond the manner in which gender is framed within specific institutional contexts, even as they are distributed over broad organizing categories such as gender distributional issues across academic fields and endeavors. In one such study, he cites a broad range of factors that the authors offer as âenabling practicesâ that HEIs of widely varying hues could pursue to promote greater gender equity. In yet another, he cites an intense study of good practices that may be promoted to address a wide range of gender discriminators within Agriculture , Education and Training programs to render them both more available to women as well as also more effective in their successful pursuit of degrees and placement. In a final study cited, he reviews recent research on the relative success rate by gender of both publication and grant submissions when submission processes are both open and blind, studies that document the extent to which gender distinctions can and do affect the relative academic success rates of candidates and participants in all aspects of such structures.
Hei-hang, Hays Teng follows the more generalized chapters with the first of others that focus on gender issues within a national or regional setting, in this case focusing on better-know âworld classâ universities including: National Taiwan University , the National University of Singapore , Peking University , Seoul National University , the University of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo . In this review, he underlines a major issue that is to be repeated throughout subsequent chapters, namely the relatively constant phenomenon of a significant gender imbalance in higher leadership positions, and he explores the range of factors that lead female academics at all levels to experience greater relative burdens within the academy than that of their male counterparts, of which family and household responsibilities continue to loom large.
In Chapter 5, Denise Cuthbert and Leul Tadessi focus on a theme that is constant through the whole of the volume, namely the role of women within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. While the relative imbalance of women in such fields appears to stretch across countries and their various levels of HEIS, in this particular instance the authors focus on the specific needs Australia has had over the last several decades in building out its innovation sector to remain an internationally competitive economy. Whereas historically, the country has focused actively and significantly on in-migration to fill its growing needs for such talent, over more recent years in a climate in which an âideas economy â is viewed as a necessary alternative to its âhistorical dependence on extractive industriesâ specific governmental policy has sought both to underscore the importance of STEM fields within graduate education and to emphasize increasing both the recruitment and success of women in such fields. The authors provide an extensive review of the âreframingâ of such issues within Australian HE.
In the following chapter, Manasi Thapliyal Navani provides an extensive overview of the HE system in India , which like China , finds itself in the midst of a significant and continuing increase in the number HEIs and the postsecondary sector itself, fueled by a continuing increase in the number of students engaged in both tertiary and postsecondary institutions . This transition has been further complicated by Indiaâs aggressive embrace of economic liberalization since the 1990s, resulting in a society that continues to be further challenged by continued demographic expansion. Despite the countryâs overall renewed attention to gender education spurred by the reality of the large number of illiterate women in the country at its âneo-liberalâ turn, two daunting challenges remain: The continued disparity between genders within higher education and especially at higher levels, and that affecting women from the most disadvantaged sections of communities to reach higher education who at that attainment âwill find fewer public institutions to sustain and support them through their educational journeys.â These themes are played out in a detailed analysis of contemporary higher education in India, replete with abundant supporting empirical data.
Chapter 7 provided by Weiling Deng complements many of the critical perspectives introduced in the preceding chapter and allows them to become a defining framework for the reach across the many decades since the late Qing Dynasty . This becomes the location point for the emergence of âthe womenâs problemâ in modern China which continues to play out in its current manifestations within the society as a whole and in this case, specifically within higher education environments. As the dynamic of the creation and articulation of sexual differences and gender continues through the extraordinary interactive complexities of modern China, fueled by the forces of intense economic development and a continued process of emergent political definition and institutional change, difference, gender and education become a complex vortex for the realization of new and changing notions of all three. Deng provides both a historical and critical setting for her analysis that seeks to provide the reader with useful perspectives and tools for comprehending both the reach and significance of such changes as well as emphasizing both the importance of recognizing gender as a social construction that in many cultural settings (echoed in other Asia settings as well) is contested with its historical conflation of a sexual differentiation.
The subsequent chapter by Kam and Li provides another window on gender and society , examining the relationship of earnings, HE and gender within the case study of Hong Kong . They point out that in the past several decades the enrollment of female students enrolled in Hong Kong HE has come to exceed that for males. However, in a pattern that, again, is observable throughout the rest of Asia and Australia, they fare less well in both employment opportunities and placement, and in employment earnings. In reviewing these data for the past several decades for Hong Kong, they focus on both the trends that have emerged and seek to explore the kinds gaps that exist in employment earnings for women as well as identify other factors that also affect employment.
In Chapter 9, Surinderpal Kaur reprises a theme that has occurred previously in multiple chapters, namely the gender imbalance prevalent in HE leadership roles, in this instance those within Malaysian HE. In line with data reported previously in other chapters, women are âfar from being underpresentedâ in those structures. Indeed, in line with data reported in previous chapters in many respects Malaysia is a leader among Asian countries in the numerical representation of women across a variety of fields, most especially social sciences, linguistics and business . This trend includes the nationâs leading universities. However, this is not the case in both the upper professorial ranks or within top university leadership positions. In this chapter, Kaur seeks to provide both a broad but inquiring frame for the complex relationships between leadership and gender .
Issues of the gender transformations current in Malaysian HE are continued in the following chapter in which Jamil Hazri, Ahmad Firdaus Ahmad Shabudin, Santhiram Raman and Ooi Poh Ling examine the overall pattern of gender relations throughout the whole of the HE system. Their analysis points to the close intersect between social and economic transformations in general and their manifestations within HE systems. Thus, while pointing to similar data to those cited by Kaur in the previous chapter, they highlight the emergence of a quite different situation from its historical predecessor in the emergent shortage of men following an earlier period of overall social development and progress into an extended engagement with HE. They point to several recent studies that underline this trend and seek to Illuminate some of the factors that account for it, and to related concerns about the social and economic consequences that may result from it. One take away from the pairing of these two chapters is a clear demonstration of the volatility and structural complexities of the factors that make up HE environments in the rapidly changing societies of Asia and indeed the world as a whole, and to remind us that within all of our efforts to supply generalizations about these processes, the intersect between broader (often global) forces and those present in discrete environments is complex in both kind and manifestation.
Chapter 11 moves to Japan where Shangbo Li has placed the gender discussion within the particular context of the role that Junior Colleges played in facilitating the social transformation of the role of women within Japanese society in its sequential transformations from the onset of the Meiji Period (1868â1912) into the present. As the social framing for women evolved from that of âgood wife, wise motherâ dominant during that period into its more contemporary manifestations, the role of education for women shifted from that of essentially preparing women for a good marriage into more socially diverse and economically related roles, the particular role of the junior college, which had largely been the site of postsecondary female education, itself shifted. The result has been a significant decline in the social role and rationalization for such institutions and the subsequent withdrawal of national governmental support as the proportion of female enrollment continued to erode. Li uses these data to suggest a significant dimension of the female contribution to overall economic and social productivity.
Minho Yeom moves the site of analysis once again in Chapter 12 in his analysis of the role of women in Korean higher education. Here in a manner that echoes those of other national societies in the region that we have observed in previous chapters, even as the demographic participation of women has risen dramatically over the past three decades, the distribution of âgender equity â within such institutions continues to lag. His analysis points to three major trends in the relevant research: One set of studies examines the current status of gender equity in Korean higher education and suggests alternative modes of realization for this continually changing environment; a second set of studies focuses on the role women have come to play within such institutions and again we find a familiar pattern of a âwinnowingâ of participation at the higher levels of academic involvement; and third, he examines yet another set of studies that focus on issues of sexual violence and harassment at both student and faculty levels.
In Chapter 13, Ya-Hsuan Wang illustrates a rather different pattern of gender manifestion within Taiwan given that at the participation level women are very well represented. She points out that largely because of an open and welcoming climate for women within science and technology fields, enrollment in these fields has continued to increase. However, she pointedly emphasizes, the entailment of such a gender distribution has within Taiwan not had the effect so commonly supposed for such a development. Rather than âliberalizingâ the society by rendering it more open and susceptible to egalitarian norms of performance, âgender inequality is still pervasive in impl...