Transcript Slide 1

Women and success - professors in
the UK academy
Management and academic identity
Structure of the presentation
1.Introduction
2.Methods, methodology
3.Theoretical approach to research
4.Career success?
5.Discussion
Aims of my doctoral research
My doctoral research is about the perceptions of twenty women
professors who were educated and entered the academy during
a period of radical change. The majority of these pioneers feel
they have paid a high price for their career success and this
price is linked to their gender and social class background. I can
empathize with this. Although I was educated a generation later,
many of the issues they raise have impacted on my professional
life, suggesting that there are lingering inequalities casting a
shadow over the ivory towers; for example, the ambivalence the
respondents feel about their career success, the struggles of
balancing family life with a demanding career, the doubts
created by class background and the persistence and impact of
gender regimes in their daily working lives.
Introduction – the changing context of
being an academic in the UK
Neoliberalism
New public management
Audit culture
Methodology and methods
Qualitative methodology
Semi-structured, life history interviews with 20
professors
Theoretically constructed sample - to take account
class background, gender and ethnicity.
Academic discipline, type of university (old and new)
as well as age also considered
Data subjected to content analysis
Analytical framework
The analytical framework draws Bourdieu’s
(1977) concept of habitus.
Concept of gender regimes
Gender viewed as socially constructed.
Sample details:
Respondent
pseudonym
Brief vignette including: current post, employment background and academic discipline
Dee
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “Lower working class manual background”.
Grace
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “I am clearly from the working class!”
Heather
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “Working class and Irish”.
Julia
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “Aspiring working class”.
Michelle
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “Respectable working class”.
Nancy
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher and teacher educator. Social science discipline. “Squarely working class
background”.
Rebecca
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “Both of my parents were working class”.
Ruth
Professor. Social science discipline. “My family was working class”.
Angela
Professor. Teacher educator. Social science discipline. “Lower middle class background”.
Camilla
Professor. Law discipline. “Middle class”.
Claire
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “Extremely middle class background”.
Dianna
Professor. Social science discipline. “My father was very much working class in background. For my mother however it is a little
bit more complicated. My mother came from what would have been an upper middle-class [minority ethnic] background”.
Emily
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “Middle class, minority ethnic background”.
Gabrielle
Professor. Natural science discipline. “Solid middle class-ish”.
Isabel
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. “I would say that we would be middle class by the time
we were growing up”.
Jenny
Professor. Natural science discipline. “Well, I guess middle class really”.
Laura
Professor. Social science discipline. “I have always seen myself as middle class”.
Lucy
Professor. Practitioner background as a teacher. Social science discipline. Middle Class: “although the middle class actually is far
more complex and contradictory and un-united than is sometimes supposed”.
Mia
Professor. Social science discipline. “I am very, very middle class”.
Sarah
Professor. Natural science discipline. “Middle class family but with working class roots”.
Data examples
In what follows, I give some examples of
the stresses and strains my respondents
reported as a result of management
processes and the demands on them.
The impact of management on everyday work –
as a technology of accountability
Kate: Is there anything you don’t enjoy about the job?
Heather: Yeah, yeah. All the paperwork, all the
administration, all the surveillance, you know, the constant
auditing, the constant surveillance. For example this
department has had six different reviews of different
aspects in the department, since the beginning of 2008.
So we’ve had two Ofsteds, we have had an MA review,
we’ve got a major review of the management of it, we’ve
got a review of how we audit students’ work, and there’s
another one, and it’s just constant. And you know, whilst I
know accountability is sort of important, I think sometimes
it’s lost sight of what it replaces… and it isn’t that effective.
The impact of management on everyday
work – a gendered regime
I left the last post because I’d had enough of the macho bullying
male management and I.. I got to the point.. and I’m quite
stubborn and I wont put up with things so I wasn’t going to
buckle down and put up with a job which I thought was.. well
not justifiable.. I mean I think that they’ve got systems in place
at my last institution.. I mean they were sacking people anyway,
which was awful and I disagreed with.. but they’d got an
appraisal system that was sexist and racist and.. they were..
male management were going to bring in this performance
related pay scheme which was also appalling and I disagreed
with them in principle and I didn’t want to talk to the Vice
Chancellor and I thought you know, on the basis of my
principles, I can’t stay in this place.. so.. I left (Dee).
The impact of management on everyday work – a
gendered regime
Kate: Are there elements of the job that you weren’t
as keen on?
Jenny: Yes. Quite a lot and increasingly so which is
why I am retiring. Aspects of the academic job that,
more and more sort of admin and management and
sort of well, how I saw it people interfering in what
you are doing really and telling you - ‘you shouldn't be
doing it like that you should be doing it like this’ which
I found difficult.
The impact of management on everyday
work – it eats you up!
And I honestly think that if you are somebody who A, stays
awake in meetings, B, asks the odd sensible or piercing
question, and C, does what they say they would do, you
end up being, you know, running the show. Because either
people are deeply bored by it, or, even if they are
interested they don’t say much, and they certainly don’t do
what they say they will do, or if they do they are often
incompetent. Or, very sensibly, they resist those
leadership positions, management positions, because it
eats you up.
The impact of management on
everyday work – discipline differences
Kate: how has your discipline influenced your
career experiences?
Michelle: Well, nobody listens to sociologists! If I
was in management or leadership it would
probably be different!
The changing academic identity
The technology of management impacts on
individual academics in different ways.
Identity differences between academics
accounts for some of the different ways
they experience and encounter management
technologies.
Further research is needed on this.
Some points for discussion:
What are the alternatives to neoliberal
management technologies?
What is the role of the professor in the
neoliberal university?
What are you experiences with neoliberal
management?