Abstract
The aims of this book are twofold: to explore the changing managerial context of higher education in light of neo-liberalism and to highlight the gendered nature of management in Irish universities. The central problem addressed is to explain why universities in Ireland are still managed largely by men. This is in the context of wider societal changes in women’s employment and educational opportunities promoted by national and international governance, such as the EU. The book uses qualitative data drawn from semi-structured interviews with senior management in Irish universities. It is organized thematically and begins with a contextual chapter that examines the policy environment of higher education (HE) in Ireland. The book then goes on to address the power structures characterized as a Gentleman’s Club and Medieval Court – which reflect managerial and collegial governance structures. It is within these narratives of power that the book explores gendered management through women’s under-representation in management. The final two chapters illustrate the stereotypes associated with gendered management styles and experiences of being in senior management.
The book includes a prologue that describes the author’s personal journey into senior management, which is later methodologically conceptualized. This was an intriguing starting point that was not followed through into the empirical chapters. However, there were few autobiographical notes on how the author had negotiated the various challenges described in the book to become a senior academic and manager. There was also a lack of research data that exposed and examined discrimination within Irish HE; instead, the book concentrates too heavily on the presence of gendered narratives to explain the dearth of women at senior management level. The main conceptual problem with this approach is that it focuses too heavily on stereotypes and not on actual experience. More autobiographical content may have helped highlight how women in the workplace negotiate stereotypes.
Although the chapters have snappy titles, such as ‘Gentleman’s Club or Medieval Court?’, they don’t deliver the empirics to illustrate that this exists beyond people’s stereotypes of management styles. In this way the book comes close to reinforcing the gendering of management and academic disciplines as opposed to illustrating it as arbitrary. It views the prioritization of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in HE as a result of male-centric organizational culture, which is then explained as the main agent of women’s exclusion. Therefore, the book essentializes women to stereotypically feminine subjects, and science is essentialized to representations of masculinity. This reinforces stereotypical gendered disciplinary boundaries rather than identifying the nature of discrimination against women in the pursuit of science. The tone of the book suggests that it is stereotypically feminine subjects that are excluded, not that women are excluded from participation in all aspects of academia.
There is, however, a good discussion of homosociality in the selection of the university president and senior managers, but it remains unclear how this will develop over time with more women present at junior levels rising through the ranks. Chapter five attempts to explore this issue by looking at the narratives that individualize women’s exclusion and see women as the problem – this is perhaps the strongest chapter. However, it does not conceptualize the role that age plays in organizational cultures and hierarchy – and gives little agency to younger women and male academics in actively challenging a gendered status quo – although there is mention of this in the final chapter. The research data stop short of providing explanations as to why women’s work within HE is not valued by senior management and why women remain under-promoted. This is because the conceptual focus on organizational culture is too rigid. Positive discrimination is not explicitly considered, especially in terms of agents of change and especially in terms of women in science.
This is a shame because the book is premised around an exceptional defence of using a gendered frame of reference. This is argued well throughout the book in conceptual, normative and pragmatic terms. The book makes an excellent case for students and researchers to draw upon when constructing research questions to explore gender in a management context; notably, how gender is removed from instrumental managerial goals and how gender colludes with the wider policy environment. Despite its over-reliance on organizational culture as an explanation, it makes a good case to illustrate how it is gendered to the effect of women’s exclusion in management. It is also a very good example of nationally based research that explores the impact of wider international changes in society, the economy and university management. Therefore, this is a book about gender in management and not solely about HE in Ireland.