Women in Academic Leadership in the East and the West: Attaining Key Leadership Positions in a Male-Dominated World

• In Event: Fostering and promoting gender equality in higher education

Proposal

Introduction
How do women in academia in the East and the West attain their leadership positions in a highly patriarchal or male-centered society? Existing literature on women in academia addressing this critical question is scarce. Accordingly, this paper, part of a longitudinal empirical study comparing lived experiences of academic women leaders in Viet Nam, Malaysia and the United States, investigates challenges that female academics in the three countries face as they advance to mid-level leadership positions in their careers. Particularly, the paper explores the challenges they confront at their universities and how they navigate these challenges to move forward in their career in highly patriarchal societies, where many challenges remain for women to advance in leadership opportunities.

Relevance of the Topic to CIES 2024
This paper reflects the efforts of women in the three countries – Viet Nam, Malaysia and the United States – to overcome gender and sexual inequality and advance to key leadership positions in their careers. While not always a direct form of protest, the topic of this paper reflects the ongoing struggles women in academia face in advancing their careers. The paper is also connected to Sub-Theme 2 in the ways that women in academia in the three countries worked to create changes in their careers. The catalyst for change is their survival, growth, and equality to men in a male-dominated and male-centered area, leadership in higher education.

Theoretical Framework
The results of this study are primarily interpreted through the Lenses of Gender by Sandra Bem (1993). Bem asserts that there are three gender lenses embedded in the culture, namely androcentrism, gender polarization, and biological essentialism. These lenses build a foundation for a theory of mutual interaction among biology, culture, and the individual psyche in historical context to reproduce male power. Androcentrism or male-centeredness shows how society is structured since male experience is defined as a ‘standard or norm,” and female experience not as “that norm” (p. 2). Also, Bem comments that “man is treated as human and woman as ‘other’” (p. 2). Gender polarization superimposes male-female difference on every aspect of human experience, and male ways of doing something are considered correct ways. In this regard, institutions usually transform male-female differences into female disadvantages. The third lens, biological essentialism, views the other two lenses as neutral or inevitable consequences of intrinsic biological differences between men and women (p. 2).

Research Methods
A qualitative research design was suitable for this study because of the consistency between the key research question and qualitative research (Creswell, 2003). In fact, the study sought to understand the lived experiences of women leaders in higher education in two Southeast Asian countries (Viet Nam and Malaysia) and one country in North America (the United States) and how they advanced into positions of influence and power.

Data Collection
Purposeful and snowball sampling were used to select three to five female participants from each country who were holding mid-level leadership positions such as deans, vice deans, directors, deputy directors, heads or deputy heads of support departments at their institutions. In-depth, face-to-face, and one-on-one interviews through the Zoom platform were conducted with these women leaders in 2021 and early 2022. Moreover, documents related to national and institutional gender equality, institutional structures, and staff promotion in higher education were analyzed to shed more light on the participants’ professional experiences and to triangulate the trustworthiness of the interview data.

Data Analysis
Phenomenography was the most appropriate method to allow the researchers to best answer the key research question. Phenomenography enabled the researchers to study not only the subjects’ experiences of a social phenomenon but also their perception, conceptualization, and interpretation of it (Holloway, 1997; Marton, 1981; Orgill, 2012; Pherali, 2011). The research team used the different steps of phenomenographic analysis to interrogate the data (Marton, 1981, 1994; Orgill, 2012).

Research Findings
Regardless of the differences among the women leaders in the three countries in terms of distinct institutional policies, norms, and values as well as traditional and institutional cultures of Eastern and Western countries, there were similarities in their pathways to key leadership positions at their institutions. The similarities were revealed in their promotions to important positions of power, challenges at work, and factors enhancing and hindering their career advancement. Although promotions to leadership posts in the three countries focused on merit, candidates at public universities in Viet Nam needed to have good family background in that their parents and/or grandparents made significant contributions to the heroic wars for the country’s liberation, independence and freedom. Further, while women in the US higher education system could apply directly for leadership posts, this is not the case in Malaysia and Viet Nam, where competent women were nominated by their superiors or bosses, followed by interviews and appointments, without any individual applications. Last but not least, the strategies that women from each country utilized to move up the career ladder either in administrative or specialized areas, were different because of their distinct institutional and national cultures.

Implications for Practice and Future Research
The focus of this study, learning about leadership pathways for academic women in Viet Nam, Malaysia and the U.S., informs policy and decision makers as well as practitioners in higher education, of both facilitating factors and obstacles to women’s career advancement. The big question emerging from the findings and data analysis is, “What changes need to be made at the national, institutional, and individual levels to improve academic women’s leadership opportunities?”

The importance of additional research is critical. The sample size of the current study is small, with three to five participants in each country. Therefore, the generalizability or external validity of the present study is limited (Creswell, 2003; Glesne, 2006; Holloway, 1997; Leedy & Ormrod, 2005). Future empirical studies on similar topics are crucial in order to include more women leaders not only at the middle level but also top levels, as well as including additional higher education institutions from participating countries.

Keywords: women in academia, gender equality, women’s leadership, institutional cultures, East, West, Viet Nam, Malaysia, the U.S.

Authors

• Ngoc Lan Thi Dang, Vietnamese-German University

• Julie Sinclair, Michigan State University