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Vol. 19 No. 1 (2022)

Published: 1 January 2022

Articles

  • Editorial: Women and leadership in higher education learning and teaching

    Kerryn Butler-Henderson, Angela Carbone, Marcia Devlin, Rosalind Bull, Jo Coldwell-Neilson, Susan H Fenton, Tanya Fitzgerald, Catherine Lang

    In this Special Issue Harvey and Jones state “It is time for women academics to accept the challenge – to rightfully claim their leadership”. We recognise the many women who have challenged the system, and those whose efforts have been thwarted. We encourage women and men to work together to break down the barriers of gender, race, culture, and religion, so that our current and next generation of female academics can rightfully claim their leadership. This Special Issue is an important step to bringing to light these challenges for women and the changes required to grow and support women in leadership in higher education teaching and learning.

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  • Baked beans on toast and beating the gender odds

    Marcia Devlin

    This invited Commentary examines responses to the book, Beating the Odds: A practical guide to navigating sexism in Australian universities. The book is relevant to the theme of the Special Issue, as women leading teaching and learning are doing so in a sexist environment that limits their opportunities to lead and that under-values their contributions when they do manage to achieve leadership roles. The editors invited me to write this Commentary, explaining that they were seeking “… a contemporary, thought-provoking piece by a leader in the topic of the Special Issue”. They suggested the Commentary might be “…an examination of the impact of the book and the emotive response it has generated in higher education”. Reactions to the book are discussed in terms of: resonance with the book’s contents; value for young/early career women; value for men; mixed emotions and value in taking action. The Commentary ends with a call to action related to baked beans on toast.

    Read article: Baked beans on toast and beating the gender odds

  • Supporting leadership development: Women academics in the Hong Kong academy

    Sarah Aiston

    This quantitative and qualitative study explores the leadership challenges for women academics in the Hong Kong academy. It is informed by the theoretical lens of intersectionality and Mohanty’s feminism, which seeks to give a voice to women in different nations and regions. Findings show that the majority of women did not feel supported to enter a leadership role and that the perceived barriers to doing so differed between women academics and senior male leaders. Academic women are negotiating several identities, the most pertinent of which relates to being Chinese or non-Chinese, in addition to age, length of time in the profession, and rank. Power and patriarchy were identified as the most influential factors limiting women’s potential. Practice-based interventions that developmentally start with what women want are discussed. Key messages from the research are the need for a level of consciousness-raising, and the education of men, in relation to the barriers academic women face, along with widespread support for the development of a sector-wide women academics’ leadership programme.

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  • The “first woman in finance”: Emeritus Professor H. Y. Izan as role model in a male-dominated discipline

    Larelle Chapple

    In University life, the first women to achieve status or leadership positions inevitably are perceived as role models to their colleagues, peers and students. Role model theory suggests that although we generally understand the meaning of terms such as “role model” or “mentor", the position of role model has several dimensions and is distinct from mentor. This case study on Professor H.Y. Izan, the first woman professor of finance in Australia and New Zealand, adopts the role model theoretical lens to examine Izan as trailblazer in the context of the eighteen women professors appointed after her during the period 1990-2021.

    Read article: The “first woman in finance”: Emeritus Professor H. Y. Izan as role model in a male-dominated discipline

  • Challenge accepted: Women claiming leadership in higher education learning and teaching

    Marina Harvey, Sandra Jones

    A recognised challenge for women in higher education learning and teaching is of rightfully claiming leadership. Higher education processes for recruitment, promotion, awards, grants and fellowship are founded on an ability to document and convincingly present one’s leadership contribution. The focus is on evidencing from a traditional, formal positional role view of leadership. However, the leadership contribution of women to learning and teaching often accords with a more distributed leadership approach. This may lead to women, unguided in how to evidence their leadership contribution and impact, being unable to self-acknowledge and claim their leadership contribution. The challenge for women is in claiming their leadership contribution and impact so as not to be disadvantaged in academic career progression and recognition. Drawing on a database of 15 years of research into a distributed leadership in learning and teaching, a Linguistics Inquiry approach is employed to explore reflections of female academics to their leadership contributions in learning and teaching. This reveals evidence-based strategies that have successfully supported a positive transition, by women, to self-acknowledge their leadership contributions. Many of these are resource intensive and difficult to sustain in the current higher education sector context of diminishing and reduced resources. To present a low-resource alternative, the six tenets of a Distributed Leadership approach structure a low-resource framework alternative that provides key conceptual prompts for presenting a leadership case. Vignettes of applying the framework in practice are provided to illustrate its transferability across a range of scenarios for women to rightfully claim their leadership contribution.

    Read article: Challenge accepted: Women claiming leadership in higher education learning and teaching

  • Women’s work: Women leading women in a teaching-focussed first year college

    Loretta Konjarski, Julie Fletcher, Maja Husaric, Kate Kelly, Natalie KonYu, Kathy Tangalakis

    In 2018, a community of practice initiative was introduced to enhance the career opportunities for the 53 women academics in the First Year College (FYC) at Victoria University. The FYC is a teaching-oriented college and thus the traditional career advancement through research is largely not applicable to women in the college – many of whom are teaching-focussed academics. The Women in First Year (WiFY) executive developed and implemented workshops with the aim of aiding women on their career trajectory and in getting more women to senior levels and into leadership positions. In this article we will argue that the WiFY initiative has resulted in greater career achievements for women in the FYC. Using data collected from semi-structured interviews as well as relevant research and FYC statistics on career progression, we will argue that WiFY has had a positive effect on the career trajectory of women in the FYC who have participated in their workshops.

    Read article: Women’s work: Women leading women in a teaching-focussed first year college

  • Are women nursing academics represented in university leadership positions?

    Karen Livesay, Ruby Walter, Sacha Petersen, Lin Zhao

    The nursing workforce constitutes the largest professional health workforce in Australia. Nursing is traditionally a female dominated profession. This study reviewed Australian universities that provide entry to practice nursing education. The study identified the distribution of females and males in leadership in nursing education, the positioning of the discipline in the university, and where nurses occupy leadership roles above the nursing discipline (faculty/college). Of the 37 universities that offered entry to practice nursing, more females were evident. However, more men were evident in academia than the proportion of men in nursing outside of the academic setting. Leadership nomenclature varied within each nursing discipline group reviewed. This study demonstrated that the number of nursing academics has decreased since the late 1990’s. The nursing workforce is still a significant contributor to the academic workforce and yet numbers of nurse academics working in roles senior to their discipline were few. This paper discusses how the nursing workforce as predominantly female, has implications to both females and males, and may impact opportunities for leadership and promotion to senior roles.

    Read article: Are women nursing academics represented in university leadership positions?

  • University leadership as engaged pedagogy: A call for governance reform

    Juliana Ryan, Sophie Goldingay

    Responses to COVID-19 impacts have shown how quickly universities can change, given the impetus. However, global disruptions to university learning and teaching have not yet been matched by any significant change to university leadership. Taking gender equity as our focus, we argue that pedagogical disruption should extend beyond the classroom to reshape academic leadership. In this commentary we critically reflect on the question ‘How can university leaders share power to nurture caring and ethical academic leadership’? Taking some cues from disruptions to university learning and teaching, we call on the work of bell hooks to propose a holistic vision of university leadership as a form of critical pedagogy — ‘engaged pedagogy’. We draw on combined experience in professional and academic roles at six universities in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to share composite vignettes of holistic leadership practices grounded in integrity, collaboration and personal wellbeing. Our commentary concludes with practical suggestions for changing university governance in a time of disruption so that leadership as engaged pedagogy can be practised more widely.

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  • Leadership challenges and opportunities experienced by international women academics: A case study in Australia

    Jasvir Kaur Nachatar Singh

    Scholarly articles on international academics have been weighted towards understanding their broad personal and professional challenges related to teaching. Limited research is conducted with international women academics in Australia in, especially, exploring their leadership-related challenges and opportunities. Using an intersectionality lens, this paper addresses this gap by exploring key related challenges and opportunities for international women academics in gaining leadership positions at Australian universities. It draws on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with seven international women academics. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge in exploring two major challenges faced by international women academics in Australia: 1) administrative-related interruption impacting their research performance; and 2) lack of understanding of university policies and processes. International women academics also cited the opportunities provided to them or gained by them for their overall professional growth at Australian universities. The practical implications of these findings for international women academics and higher education institutions are also considered.

    Read article: Leadership challenges and opportunities experienced by international women academics: A case study in Australia

  • The impact of teaching from home during the covid-19 pandemic on the student evaluations of female academics

    Kathy Tangalakis, Kate Kelly, Natalie KonYu, Dianne Hall

    Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) results play an important role in academic staff performance evaluation, but also in promotion processes. However, there is much evidence to suggest that the SET used in most universities across the Anglosphere has traditionally penalised female academics. As universities manage the recovery phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, they will also need to take into account the effect of remote teaching on the validity of student evaluation data. Given SET are critical to promotion success, it is important to then understand the gendered effect of remote teaching on student evaluations. We aimed to evaluate how intrusions of family life, academics’ home environment and competence with remote teaching technology of female academics were viewed by students and if there were noticeable differences in SET data. We analysed 22,485 SET data over 2019 (pre-COVID, face-to-face teaching) and 2020 (COVID-lockdowns, remote teaching) for female and male academics, matched with student gender, in the multidisciplinary First Year College at Victoria University, Melbourne Australia. Our results showed that there were no differences in the score ratings for teacher gender. However, the qualitative data showed that whilst overall there were overwhelmingly positive comments for both male and female teachers, there was an increase in the negative comments on teaching style by male students toward their female teachers during remote teaching and overall more comments relating to attitude. We speculate that this would have a negative impact on the confidence of teaching-intensive female academics hindering their leadership aspirations and career progression in academia.

    Read article: The impact of teaching from home during the covid-19 pandemic on the student evaluations of female academics

  • Experiences of female academics in Australia during COVID-19: Opportunities and challenges

    Rashmi Watson, Upasana G Singh, Chenicheri Sid Nair

    An online survey collected data on a range of female academic experiences globally gaining 260 responses with 144 Australian specific academics’ responses (55% of total responses). The pandemic has highlighted positive opportunities such as online teaching and skill development, flexibility, time efficiency, increased collaboration, and time for research. In terms of challenges identified responses indicate an increased workload, less motivation for career progression, and perceptions of greater and obvious gender disparity and bias against female academics. Australia is often referred to as a ‘lucky country’ which can further be enriched though fostering its rich and diverse female academic community into the future. Rapid measures to support women immediately and with longer-term solutions that address gender equity is critical for female academics to ensure future engagement of female academics for positive economic and social growth as a nation.

    Read article: Experiences of female academics in Australia during COVID-19: Opportunities and challenges