Multiplying the Cracks at a New Zealand University

• In Event: Cracking the Glass Ceiling

Short Description

In New Zealand the figures for women professors hover at around 20% of the total. Presenters will offer critical insights into how a women’s leadership program at their university supports female academic professionals, putting cracks in the glass ceiling of academic and professional leadership. An institutional perspective and individual video cameos will be shared.

Detailed Abstract

AIM

The aim of this session is to provide critical insights into how a Women in Leadership (WIL) programme enables academic women to thrive in times of challenge.

BACKGROUND

The 21st century is proving to be a time of great challenge and higher education institutions are not immune from calls for radical change and transformation. Today, universities are operating in a global market which is worth billions of dollars; the cost of a university level education is constantly increasing and there is a demand and need for universities to be more nimble in how they use technology. It can be no surprise in these times of challenge and societal change that student expectation is higher regarding academic quality, employability and facilities. In a rapidly changing environment at local and global levels, universities must attract and retain the best talent around. In turn this requires universities and institutions of higher education to be more courageous in their conceptions of leadership, not just at the top but throughout the organisation. Leadership is not just about what goes on in the higher echelons of academia but what happens in the faculties, departments and centres across the institution.

Recent figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency in the UK (Guardian, 19 January, 2017) show that in 2015-16 women made up less than 25% of the 20,000 professors working in higher education in the UK. In Australia and New Zealand the figures for women professors are hovering at around 20% of the total. These statistics are still shocking to read at a time when we need greater diversity of leaders. The figures for women in senior academic roles are slowly improving. However it is clear that different approaches to leadership are still required to enable different voices and ideas to be heard and shared.
The reasons for the paucity of women in senior leadership roles in universities are well documented. They include the following issues:

• Fewer women in the pipeline as potential applicants
• Persistent sex discrimination, often termed more euphemistically ‘unconscious bias’
• Caregiving responsibilities
• Lack of effective networking and mentors
• Stereotypes and bias

Recent research on women in leadership in universities in East Asia (Tang, 2017), demonstrates that the prevalence of a masculinist culture still operates in these countries primarily through ‘the old boys’ network’. These formal and informal networks offer spaces for male academics to acquire more social capital in the form of inside information, collaborative opportunities, collegial mentoring – meaning that men are better informed of the ‘rules of the game’ in the neoliberal academy. Appearing to affirm the concept of ‘the rules of the game’ and the importance of ‘inside information’, Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2005) writing on the issue of intersectionality, suggests that taking up university positions and achieving promotion demands at least two sets of competencies. Firstly there are the formal expectations, the tangible measurable outputs that allow for objective judgements to be made. This would include publications, funding, awards etc. The second set of competencies is however much harder to measure but no less significant. These encompass the sociocultural categories that, as Søndergaard states, “would imply knowledge about how to ‘do academic’” (2005, p.190). ‘Doing academic’ constitutes a set of performances that are not exposed to formal assessment procedures. They emerge in the daily lives of academics and include the way in which academics interact with colleagues, form allegiances and alliances, and broadly position themselves in advantageous ways alongside others. Søndergaard expands on these competencies as involving:

“practical-social knowledge about how to behave in different situations, what to say when and in what way, how to network, how to economize information and how to handle mutual favours as well as obstructions in interactions with academic colleagues, competitors, friends, superiors and subordinates” (Søndergaard, 2005, p.190)

This academic ‘know-how’ works in the cracks, so to speak, of the more formalized sets of capabilities and competencies and, while not subject to formalised modes of assessment and judgement, are nonetheless a powerful source and contributor to academic subjective positioning (Locke, 2017).

OBJECTIVE

In a heartening counterbalance to the above points, Cathy Sandeen and colleagues (2017) write about the positive experiences and the transformative leadership approaches of women college and university presidents in the USA. Furthermore they provide a guide to the way forward for women coming up behind them in their quest to see women leaders thriving in times of challenge.

Sandeen and her colleagues tell us we need:

• To revise and rethink leadership development programmes for women
• Powerful mentors, role models and specific tactics guiding the way
• To foster an adequate talent pipeline
• To inspire women to seek top leadership positions

Taking this advice to heart we re- examined the outcomes of an extensive evaluation of the University of Auckland Women in Leadership programme.

Five of the Likert scale statements we presented to academic women participants of the WIL programme align with the issues of – increasing your ‘academic know-how’; raising your profile and expanding your networks and working across organisational boundaries. Furthermore in interviews with former WIL participants who have been promoted to significant leadership roles in the University we probed them on these and other issues critical to academic leadership in order to determine if there is a synergy between the rhetoric and the reality of a well- designed WIL programme. A key objective of the session is to provide pointers towards the development of Women in Leadership programmes which prepare participants for tough times individually and institutionally.

PRESENTATION
We will present the outcomes of the above key points of the University of Auckland Women in Leadership programme evaluation, show video cameos of the interviews we carried out and invite audience discussion.

Participants

• Lorraine Stefani, University of Auckland

• Melanie Moorcroft, University of Auckland

• Mary Ann Crick, University of Auckland