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 regimesGender 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 – The impact of management on everyday work – as a technology of accountability 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 The impact of management on everyday work – a gendered regimework – 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 The impact of management on everyday work – a gendered regime– 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 The impact of management on everyday work – it eats you up!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 The impact of management on everyday work – discipline everyday work – discipline differencesdifferences

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?