Panel presentation to the National Higher Education Conference:
“Institutional Cultures and Higher Education leadership: 
Where are the Women?”

University of Cape Town
27 & 28 March 2008

Whispers of Change

Introduction
“Whispers of Change” is the title we have given to the third in a series of publications the Association of Commonwealth Universities has produced over the last ten years to demonstrate the progress  -  or rather, for the most part, the lack of significant progress  -  of women into positions of leadership and management in the Commonwealth higher education sector.   The two earlier reports bore titles including the telling words “Single Sex Profession”.
Drawing on data collected in the 06-07 academic year, “Whispers of Change”, which is currently being edited, will be sent to the Vice-Chancellor and Librarian of all our (nearly 500) member universities, and will be made available online, so I won’t at this point make more than a couple of comments:

• Astonishingly, in 23 of the 35 countries in the Commonwealth from which the ACU received gender disaggregated data, all the universities were led by men.

• We’re beginning at last to see whispers of change at the senior management team level.   Although, Commonwealth-wide, it is still the case that fewer than 10% of universities have women vice-chancellors, women are beginning to appear in increasing numbers as heads of administration (16.2 %) and in the senior management teams which support the chief executive and head of administration, where we find that the representation of women across the Commonwealth has risen, over the last ten years, from 15.9 % to 22.3 %.  Australia and Canada have actually managed to reach the target set by international development agencies of achieving 30 % women in senior management positions  -  and South Africa’s approaching it at 26.2 %.

So, while no-one could claim that there are winds of change blowing through  -  or even light breezes  -  it is encouraging to think that there may at last be a cohort of women who are not only in a position to influence their institutional cultures and policies but who are also beginning to position themselves to seek, and to assume, executive headships.

(In case anyone is interested in a handful more Commonwealth statistics, they are to be found on the power-point slides.)

The ACU’s response
For some 23 years, the ACU’s Gender Programme has been playing its part in the drive to increase both the quantity and capacity of women managers and leaders in higher education.  Our particular strengths and successes have lain in

• developing for women managers (and potential managers) a range of training strategies and materials that are replicable, or may be adapted for use, in the various Commonwealth regions;  and in
• providing training opportunities and support for the development of women who will be proactive at institutional, national and regional levels.

Some years ago we developed, in association with the Institute of Education in London, an MA course in Women and Management in Higher Education, on which we sponsored four students a year for four years.   I’m proud to say that at least three of the graduates of that programme were inspired to go on to achieve doctorates in areas related to gender and higher education;  and that a significant number of the graduates are now working in positions in which they are able to influence the development of gender equitable policies and practices.

What have been the levers for change?
We believe that statistical reports and other gender focused publications can be profoundly useful as benchmarking tools and as levers in the arguments for change.   In addition to the “Single Sex” publications, we count amongst our successes having commissioned and/or funded such publications as:

• June Gleeson’s survey of equal opportunity offices in 1998
• Jasbir Singh’s Good Practice Handbook for Women and Management in Higher Education, in 2002, and
• in 2004, helping the Institute of Education produce an Annotated Bibliography of “grey” literature by or about women in higher education in the Commonwealth.

Nevertheless, perhaps our most valuable, and successful, contribution to effecting transformational change has been the production of a series of user-friendly, interactive training modules which address the key problems encountered by women aspiring to positions of management and leadership  -  and with which we have run a wide range of training workshops in a similarly wide range of countries.

The topics covered by the eight modules, which have been written by women in Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India, Sri Lanka and the UK, include:  how to run a workshop for senior women, how to manage personal and professional roles, research, governance, mentoring, developing management skills, academic leadership and women’s studies as a catalyst for change.   A ninth, on gender mainstreaming in higher education, is currently being written.   

Of all these titles, we find time and again that, while there’s always lots of interest in balancing the personal and professional, and in developing management skills, the really eye-opening modules are those on research and governance.   I’m sure I don’t need to say anything to this audience about recognising the importance of developing a profile in research;  but there still seems to be a resistance on the part of many university women to participating in committees or putting themselves forward for top management positions.  This may be because they fear the problems they may face in coping with the extra work load, or in encountering the “chilly climate” that still exists in many corridors of power.   Or it may just be a lack of appreciation of the importance to their careers of involving themselves in university governance.   Either way, understanding the micro as well as the macro politics of an organisation, and being seen to be an active player in its governance is an essential element of advancement.  

While we still offer Management Development workshops, our priority is to run Training of Trainers workshops so that the participants, who are customarily nominated by their vice-chancellors, take ownership of the materials and acquire the capacity to adapt and use them in their own institutions.   Latterly, however, we have started to concentrate on developing Regional Groups of Key Women Trainers  -  taking 12 – 15 women who have already been through one of our TOTs and taking them to a higher level of confidence and competence.

What has been the impact?
Well over 300 university women have been through one or other of our training programmes and none has returned to her university without an action plan either of how she will take forward her own development or of what steps she will take to help bring about change for the women in her institution or region.   The whole idea is that the programme should cascade to reach many more women than we could otherwise reach.    But in reality, some women are much more successful than others in bringing about change.   Some, on their return to their university, are over-burdened by their already heavy schedules, some lack the key support from their institutional managers, some meet huge indifference from other women in their workplace, and some struggle to find any financial or human resources to help them.

From others, however, we receive amazing and heart-warming reports of the introduction of regular and ongoing local and regional management development workshops, of transformed university policies (in one instance across the whole of the public university system in her country), of the establishment of Gender Centres, of newly set-up mentoring programmes and of collaborative research proposals between women not only from different universities but also from different countries in different continents.   I’m thinking in particular of a current Kenyan/Pakistan proposal for DelPHE funding.   In each case, the impact and results have been directly attributed to the ACU training.

We have concentrated to date on securing project funding to allow us to run training programmes without charge with our members in LDCs and we are currently in discussion with our member universities in Botswana and Cameroon about ways in which the ACU can help to address the gender equity agenda in those countries.  
We have recently been approached, however, by the Institute of Education in London who are conscious of the need to run programmes like ours for university women in the UK.   We are now, therefore, planning with the Institute a series of week-long programmes on a pay to attend basis.

Perhaps, at this point, I could quote a couple of my favourite comments from workshop evaluations:

• “The materials were relevant and the presentations led us to come up with our own ideas and ways of improving the gender situations in our own universities”
• “The workshop has raised my self-esteem, clarified my role in higher education and empowered me to take positive action”,

If I may, I’d like to end with what I think is some interesting feed-back on the gender situation in the UK:

Despite the evidence in Whispers of Change that the UK is doing relatively well in terms of gender representation in management and leadership, perhaps we should dwell for a moment on that word “relatively”.   The UK not doing anything like as well as Australia, for instance, and, while I suspect this is partly because we have about three times as many universities, not all of which are focused on addressing gender equity issues, it may also be because university women in the UK have not been as well organised or as vociferous as, for instance, the National Colloquium for Senior Women Executives or ATN WexDev in Australia.   Yes, we have equal opportunity legislation in the UK;  and yes, most universities will have perfectly acceptable gender equity policies.   But other factors come into play.  

There are generations of women coming into academia now who appear to be blissfully unaware that gender will ever be an issue for them.   ACU has for the last couple of years provided the administration for a UK membership organisation called Through the Glass Ceiling, which is celebrating its 18th birthday later this year.   In those 18 years, it has provided advice, support, mentoring, workshop and networking opportunities which have transformed the careers of many university women in the UK.   But membership has been dwindling to such an extent that the Through the Glass Ceiling network will cease to exist as a “pay to be a member” organisation after its birthday celebration in July.   The reasons?  There are two key reasons, both equally alarming, in my view.   One is that the employing universities seem no longer to view membership of the Glass Ceiling as a development opportunity for their senior women staff and are less willing these days to allow them time to attend Glass Ceiling conferences other than as part of their leave entitlement.   And the other is that, when approached regarding the possibility of joining the membership, many women working at the senior lecturer level said the organisation would have no relevance to them.

This is what I mean by being “blissfully unaware” of the likely impact of their gender on their future career ambitions.   .

Certainly all the women in the Through the Glass Ceiling network who had risen to the highest levels in their institutions acknowledged that it had made a huge difference to have a “safe place” in which to unburden themselves, air and share problems and possible solutions, and be understood.    It is clearly not just a matter of having the skills and the confidence to assume high office but also of being able to maintain the myriad levels of energy   -  whether intellectual, physical or emotional  -  that are required to be productive in that high office;  and for that, no man or woman should be an island.

We simply must strive towards an environment in which a sustainable balance between men and women in the management and leadership of higher education is the norm and not the exception.   I am not suggesting in any way that women need to become more like men in order to succeed to the top.   On the contrary, our vision must be, I would argue, of a world in which we each bring our different, complementary, and equally valuable, strengths to the management and leadership of our institutions so that they become organisations in which everyone is able to feel comfortable and to flourish.

Thank you.

DG/20.3.08