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Gender and Higher Education

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions

Synonyms

Sex; University

Definition

Issues relating to constructions of gender at university-level institutions.

Research relating to gender in higher education has a wide range of foci, ranging from issues of student participation and achievement, curriculum and pedagogy, and the recruitment/promotion of academic staff to engagements with the ‘genderedness’ of academic culture/institutional life, constructions of the ‘ideal’ or typical student or academic, and the ways in which such constructions connect to wider social patterns of gendered inequality. Most research in this area is explicitly feminist in approach, and the development of the field has reflected major developments/debates in feminist social research more broadly, including the critiques of ‘second wave’ feminism by women of color, a stress on intersectionality, and the influence of the ‘postmodern turn,’ queer theory, and humanist/material approaches.

Key overarching debates in the field include the gendered impacts of...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK

    Barbara Read

Authors
  1. Barbara Read
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Barbara Read .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Jung Cheol Shin

  2. CIPES, Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Pedro Teixeira

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Read, B. (2016). Gender and Higher Education. In: Shin, J., Teixeira, P. (eds) Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_44-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_44-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9553-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9553-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education

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