Negotiating and Navigating Higher Education Gendered Leadership Cultures

Abstract

This chapter explores the lived experiences of women vice chancellors in terms of negotiating and navigating higher education gendered leadership cultures which we know are alive and well. Gendered leadership cultures are alive and well within higher education (Acker, 2010, Bagilhole, 2007, O’Connor, 2011). Not only that, so many people are studying the culture of higher education through a gender lens that it is surprising there is anything new to research (Morley, 2013b). Should we, once and for all, not only admit that the cultures are flawed but also work together to do something meaningful to address this damaging issue? Gendered leadership culture is the glue that holds academe together through its pores and mores (Benschop and Brouns, 2003), and it was common to find my participants talking about this:

When you are group of leaders together leading a university there’s a fair amount of banter and social stuff that’s going on and that’s severely gendered, endless football and cricket discussions, partly I’m not interested in sport but they are male sports I can’t imagine them getting excited about women’s hockey or something, there’s a lot of being comfortable with each other that’s to do with gender, that’s not leadership but it’s part of bonding as a team that maybe you have to find ways that you can interact with them on a social level, to make the leadership bit work well rather than make yourself always look slightly odd. (1)