Gender Equality in Higher Education: The Slow Pace of Change

Abstract

This chapter introduces the topic of gender equality and inequality in higher education, using feminist institutionalism as the underlying theoretical perspective. Drawing on a range of methodologies and focusing on key topical themes it identifies the discourses which have inhibited change, as well as what can be done to facilitate transformation. Thus, it focuses on institutional resistance; and the legitimating discourses of excellence, choice, displacement, biological essentialism and gender neutrality. In highlighting the importance of gender-competent leadership and empowering equality structures as ways of creating change, it explores the situation in 14 countries—Australia, Austria, Germany, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, the Czech Republic, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States and Turkey. The chapter examines the relationship between their ranking on global gender gap indices and key indicators of gender equality in universities, and suggests that without organisational transformation the effect of any intervention will be continuously undermined by the ‘normalised’ gender inequality perpetuating processes in higher education.