Gender and leadership in higher education: Exploring lived experience and perspectives of Chinese academics

• In Event: Reimagining and Redesigning: Chinese education in changing contexts

Proposal

Gender and leadership are socially and culturally constructed practices. Gender equality is a complex and multi-dimensional issue which continues to challenge policies, practices, and discourses. Although more women are now advancing to leadership positions, gender imbalance in higher education leadership is still a global issue (Odhiambo, 2011). The structural and cultural barriers have not disappeared as could be expected as the academy becomes numerically feminized (Blackmore et al., 2015). The existing gender and higher education literature is characterized by the discourse of underrepresentation of women leaders spanning diverse socio-economic and political contexts (Aiston & Yang, 2017; Blackmore & Sawers, 2015; Morley, 2013). Despite a growing body of literature on gender and intersectionality, women’s leadership in the Global South is an understudied research area (Fuller et al., 2021; Oplatka, 2006; Wilkinson et al., 2021). The male domination reflects gendered power relations and hegemonic masculine leadership models within the higher education sector (Peterson, 2019).
Cultural and institutional contexts across different societies influence how leadership is understood and enacted. This study is informed by a post-colonial perspective that focuses on the situatedness of leadership and how leadership is shaped by the cultural, organizational, structural constraints of place and time (Blackmore, 2013). Feminist post-colonial perspectives of leadership argue that leadership is not only situated, but that the nature of knowledge and the ontological position of white-Western leadership are also contested (Blackmore, 2010). Feminist leadership attempts to challenge unequal distributions and exercise of power, hierarchical structures and decision-making processes and discriminatory institutional practices (Morley, 2013). Feminist scholarship has played a critical role in raising consciousness of gender issues and of reimagining and reclaiming other forms of leadership associated with collectivist and socially just forms of activism (Wilkinson et al., 2021).
Specifically, the theoretical framework of the article is critical feminist organization theory that investigates how gender continues to inform organizational processes, practice and structures (Acker, 2006; Meyerson & Kolb, 2000). The interpretative frame of ‘post equity’ (Ely & Meyerson, 2000; Meyerson & Kolb, 2000) builds from a more complex and comprehensive perspective on gender. Gender is not primarily about women nor is it localized in discrimination processes; it is about the more general process of organizing itself, and sex differences are an active, ongoing social construction (Meyerson & Kolb, 2000).
This study employed a qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interview technique to explore Chinese academics’ lived experiences and perspectives on gender and leadership. Qualitative data were collected from 28 participants (16 females and 12 males) from 16 Chinese universities via online Microsoft Teams interviews in 2022. Each interview lasted 60-90 minutes. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed following the principles of thematic analysis. The findings revealed a multitude of different ways of making sense of gender, leadership, and gender (in)equality in Chinese universities. The comparative perspective between male and female professors problematises a range of simplistic male/female binaries that characterise research around leadership and gender. The study provides contextualized understanding of how gender differences are produced and maintained by social and organizational practices.

Author

• Ting Wang, University of Canberra