In this book the intertwined processes of change in general higher education and gender equality developments are analysed. The collection of articles focuses on gender equality and higher education reform policies, their translation into practice and their impact on gender relations at universities. In particular, it is examined how reform and gender equality measures affect the careers of female academic staff compared to those of their male competitors; these measures in turn being responses of higher education institutions to context factors of the political, economic and social realm.
In the individual articles these issues are addressed in that they examine policy dynamics, organisational practices and gender equality outcomes within the national contexts of Austria, Finland, Germany, the UK and the USA as well as within the supranational EU context. A variety of context factors are considered, ranging from attitudes towards female participation in the labour market to the gender division of labour within families, to market pressures and neo‐liberal government agendas. The array of context factors is an expression both of a case‐sensitive approach and of the scholarship and expertise demonstrated in each article. The broad extent of factors, however, also poses challenges for the cohesiveness of the book to the extent that the national case studies do not deal with a fixed set of key context factors but with varying selections of factors. The potential of the cross‐national collection of case studies for comparative analysis could have been even bigger with a slightly more systematic discussion of context factors. But in most contributions the impact of the introduction of market structures and new public management in higher education on equality policies and structures of inequality between women and men are considered. It is the analysis of these dynamics that is especially insightful and makes the book a highly relevant and timely contribution to studies both in higher education and work organisations.
The authors of the book focus on gender equality as a dimension of organisational adaptation to context factors at two levels. At the nation‐state level and the EU level, respectively, gender equality and higher education policies are analysed as mainly influenced by political and economic agendas, market pressures and in relationship to more or less diverse national higher education structures and cultures. At the university level, gender equality and general reform measures and practice and their impact on the situation of women are analysed, especially in relation to strategies associated with leadership, management and financing. Each country is represented by a nation‐level chapter and a succeeding higher education chapter whereby the reader is given an encompassing picture of developments across five nations at the macro‐ and the meso‐level. The case studies employ a variety of social science methods including policy analysis, expert interviews with key informants in higher education administration, qualitative interviews with academic staff, and statistical analysis of segregation patterns of female and male staff.
In this way, 11 case studies provide an overview of previous policy approaches and practices to achieve gender equality and evaluate the outcome of these efforts. They evidence an incremental change towards less discriminatory structures and policies supporting female staff and students. But they also reveal an alarming regression in emancipatory politics in those two countries where an increased market orientation and neo‐liberal ideology have gained the strongest foothold in higher education. In the UK, allegedly gender‐neutral audits and a neo‐liberal belief system of gender‐neutral agency and individual choice have had a silencing effect on women in academe (Morley). In the USA, challenges to affirmative action measures have reversed anti‐bias and affirmative action regulations in higher education. In addition, the redirection of the notion of equal rights to the concept of diversity management waters down programmes previously aimed at improving gender equality (Glazer‐Raymo, Sagaria and Van Horn). Not by chance, it is in these two countries where the gender pay gap in academe is a key challenge.
The case studies also demonstrate that patterns of women's representation in higher education across the five countries are strikingly similar. In universities, qualified women scientists fall out of the academic career system in disproportionate numbers at every stage of the academic hierarchy, especially at the level of professorship in every subject, in every country, irrespective of the equality policies of the country and whether or not women constitute a majority of the undergraduates in a subject; Germany being the country with the lowest (8 per cent) and Finland with the highest ratio of women in full professorships (22 per cent).
In their attempt to explain these inequalities, the cross‐national university‐level studies reveal the persistence of similar structural and cultural barriers to gender equality. Discriminatory structures and practices persist in all universities under consideration despite equality measures. Informal practices based on anti‐feminist attitudes counteract formal commitment to gender mainstreaming. Gendered notions of “meritocracy” and “scientific methods” appear to be gender‐neutral to the extent that norms, belief systems and university cultures as well as informal networks are dominated by men.
Therefore, efforts to put gender equality policies into practice together with academic reform programmes to implement entrepreneurial management models and the Bologna Process do not necessarily put an end to women's disadvantages. Even if gender equality criteria are incorporated into reform instruments, informal practices adhering to the above‐mentioned belief systems undermine anti‐discriminatory regulations. But the case studies also report instances in which gender equality has been promoted more or less effectively within remodelled university structures (David, Rice et al., Roloff, Sagaria and Van Horn, Sporn).
Together, the authors identify forces that account for an increase in women's representation and progress towards gender equality as expressed in formal and informal structures and practices. In the five university case studies, institutional leadership proves to have played a crucial role in promoting gender equality. Not very surprisingly, these dynamics have often been started by women activists in the positions of rector, president, chancellor or dean. Supportive structures and financial resources to stimulate and reinforce gender equality practices have been other determinants. Procedures as simple as open competition have enabled an increase in female staff. Auditing can be a powerful instrument to the extent that it incorporates anti‐discrimination and gender equality criteria. Finally, the authors remind us of the impact that knowledge production in the field of women's studies has had.
The array of analyses of the complex interrelationships involved in the transformation of higher education and developments in gender equality make up a book that is of great interest to students and scholars in the field of organisation studies, higher education and gender studies. It is an indispensable source of information for academia, students, administrators, and policymakers who devote themselves to the question of how to effectively promote gender equality in higher education.
