GLOBAL: Gender, power and managerialism in universities

Our research compares higher education in Australia, South Africa and Portugal, which has to varying degrees moved from a collegial to a managerial model. Its objective is to explore the role of senior managers in consolidating and interpreting new managerialism and perceptions of potential effects on gender.

The reasons for comparing gender, power and managerialism in these three countries are that they offer different historical perspectives of higher education.

Australian and South African universities were traditionally based on the British model and have national Equal Opportunities (EO) legislative frameworks. Australia has had equal opportunity legislation since 1984 and affirmative action in the workplace legislation since 1986, and South Africa introduced EO legislation and policy after the first democratic election in 1994.

While equal treatment of men and women has been guaranteed since 1976 in the Portuguese constitution, and specific legal frameworks have been developed to promote equality in the workplace, there are no affirmative action plans in higher education.

Despite different academic structures, these countries have relatively higher levels of participation of women in senior leadership positions when compared with other developed countries, although the percentage of women at rector-vice-chancellor levels remains low.

Australia has a higher female to male ratio of economic participation and opportunity (participation, remuneration, advancement of women as technical-professional workers and in senior positions) - while Portugal and South Africa are significantly lower. All three countries have similar ratios of females to males in educational attainment, and health and survival. But there is much higher political empowerment (women in parliament) in South Africa than in Australia and Portugal.

Managerialism

The growth of managerialism has not been uniform across these three countries.

For example, in South Africa universities of technology are much more managerial with centralised power located with the vice-chancellor, and comprehensive universities (that offer both research-based degrees and practically-oriented diplomas) are also more managerial and centralised.

But older traditional universities, especially English-speaking ones, are more collegial with power devolved to deans.

Even when older universities try (usually unsuccessfully) to introduce performance management measures (a classic example of managerialism), it is for administrative or support staff, not for academics, which further entrenches the divide between staff groups.

In Portugal the move towards the managerial model is also uneven between universities.
Managerial universities value research above all other academic activities and especially value and reward academics who bring external funding to the organisation, and it has been considered that this disadvantages women academics who often have heavier teaching loads.

Managerial emphasis on sourcing external funding and winning large research grants in order to ensure career progression also impacts disproportionately on women. This is already having a negative impact on female academics in Portugal who are concentrated in the 'soft' disciplines and have difficulty getting external funding.

Our research confirms the tendency to concentrate decision-making powers in executive leaders in Australia and South Africa while in Portugal there is a preference for a more collegial model, aligned with the preference for collective decision-making. However, in both styles of decision-making, even if some prefer that women are tougher, more decisive and political, they are also still perceived as having more soft management skills, which are evaluated negatively against a male management style.

Our research also showed that the managerial focus on research has presented a barrier for women in universities, consistent with previous findings that top women are judged on their research achievements, ability to secure third party funding and research output.

Women in senior management in Australia and South Africa had difficulty keeping up with research and, more importantly, their presence in management teams had little impact on junior women who were unable to achieve high research productivity. The literature emphasises that developing research networks has always been considered important, and there are gender differences in this domain.

Our research suggested that in both the collegial and managerial models of management, women appear to have more difficulty in networking, making it harder for them to break into male networks at the top of the university system.

Conclusion

This research was interested in analysing whether or not managerialism on balance had positive or negative effects for women in university senior management. Its impact on decision-making in each country differed.

In Australia power had become more centralised with the vice-chancellor operating as a CEO reflecting in part the pressures of government policy intervention; in South Africa a strong tension between collegial and managerial models was evident with potential power struggles between vice-chancellors and faculties in older universities, as well as risk and strong political considerations; while in Portugal Rectors saw themselves as primus inter pares rather than managers.

Nevertheless, women were perceived as making a positive contribution to university decision-making in the managerial university. They could contextualise decisions, take into account less traditional factors, were more pragmatic and rational, had more sensitivity with decision-making processes, were tougher, fairer and more decisive, and ensured that male colleagues behaved in a socially just manner.

Therefore managerialism had a positive effect on women's ability to influence decision-making in senior management. But these positive traits tended to reproduce the stereotypical association with 'soft' management. As managerialism is usually identified with 'hard' management, this can represent a threat for women in the managerial model.

The increased emphasis on research productivity in managerialism was strongly evident in this research, together with the academic prestige of certain disciplines and legitimation of power.

Vice-chancellors in Australia and rectors in Portugal emphasised that a strong research background was essential to develop their roles. Not surprisingly their management teams also valued research. Male senior managers in Australia and South Africa prided themselves on maintaining research output, often by having research teams gathering the data. But it was not as easy for women senior managers in Australia to maintain a research track record.

Respondents in both Australia and South Africa saw an incongruity between the emphasis on more women being promoted to senior management and the huge workloads of early career academic women. There was also evidence that the networks and support in the managerial model were more likely to benefit men.

The major finding, however, was that while women as senior managers had an increased capacity to impact on decision-making in managerialist universities, this mainly related to 'soft' management skills which were not valued in the new dominant managerial culture that is strongly focused on research output. It therefore takes a courageous and resilient woman to decide to apply for a senior management position.

* Kate White at in the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research at Monash University, Australia; Teresa Carvalho is at the University of Aveiro and the Center for Research in Higher Education Policies (CIPES) in Portugal; and Sarah Riordan is at HERS-SA in South Africa.

* This is an edited version of an article published in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Volume 33, Number 2, April 2011. Click here for the full article, which is republished with permission.