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		Gender Equity in Australian Universities
		97/18 Dr Clare Burton with the editorial assistance of Linda Cooke and Susan Wilson December 1997
		Evaluations and Investigations Program Higher Education Division Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs

©Commonwealth of Australia 1997

ISBN 0 642 23716 6

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the Australian Government Publishing Service. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the manager, Commonwealth Information Services, Australian Government Publishing Service, GPO Box 84, Canberra ACT 2601.

Executive Summary

The aim of this project was to identify the cultural and structural barriers to the achievement of equitable employment outcomes for academic and general staff women and the implications of these barriers for staffing policies and management practices in Australian universities.

A range of source material was used to complete the research project: 22 universities made available equity review and survey documents; all 36 publicly-funded universities responded in writing to a questionnaire requesting information and material relating to their equal employment opportunity or affirmative action programs and methods used to evaluate their effectiveness; and universities’ 1995 annual reports to the Affirmative Action Agency were examined for further relevant quantitative and qualitative data. DEETYA 1996 statistics on university staffing were also examined and analysed, as was the relevant literature.

Over recent years serious discussion about women in universities has shifted from a concern with institutions’ formal compliance with equal employment opportunity laws to a concern with the degree to which the underlying spirit of the legislation has taken hold institutionally. There has also been a change in focus from women’s personal attributes and job choices to the barriers to their progress generated by organisational dynamics.

These shifts reflect the altered demographic composition of the contemporary university. Academic and general staff women are increasing in number and in their distribution across disciplinary and occupational areas. In universities, as in the Australian work-force generally, the most significant trend has been the participation of women with dependants, often with different career trajectories from what has been considered the norm.

Men and women tend, overall, to attribute different causes to the ‘problem’ of women. Women’s experiences of organisational reality suggest to them that the fundamental issue which needs to be addressed is the pervasiveness of the masculinity of organisational cultures. Women are more likely than men to argue that prevailing interpretations of merit, the processes by which staff are appointed and promoted, and the relative value placed on staff contributions to the attainment of universities’ mission goals are not gender neutral, and disadvantage women overall. In the view of many women, the universities where they work have made only marginal adjustments to women’s increased presence.

Tradition is a powerful mobiliser of personal investments, interests and sentiments. Women are expected to accommodate to ‘the way things are’—ways which, in important respects, reflect a more homogeneous population than currently exists. Shifts in demographic composition require organisational responses, in particular to ensure the validity and appropriateness of staffing and other policies and practices in the context of greater diversity in background experiences, expectations, priorities and values.

Women manifest strong commitment to their university, are good ‘campus citizens’ and articulate a set of values and priorities which are consistent with those espoused in university mission statements. Yet institutional arrangements and reward structures are skewed in favour of characteristics which are accumulated through opportunities more often offered to (and shared among) men than women.

Time will not remove the structural and institutional impediments to women’s access to employment and advancement opportunities as some suppose. Reliance on time and the ‘pipeline effect’ in the current environment of structural change and funding cuts is more likely to delay progress than accelerate it, since women are disproportionately represented in the positions more vulnerable to funding cuts.

In numerical terms, women constitute a significant internal stakeholder group whose views and interests ought to be brought into the mainstream of university life. The contribution women make to the university’s mission goals through their qualifications and experiences equips them to take their place alongside more powerful position-holders within universities’ decision-making fora.

The continued poor representation of women on key decision-making committees is identified as a major impediment. Altering the composition of policy, advisory and decision-making committees to ensure women’s full participation is essential. Mechanisms to achieve this need to be developed immediately in most universities.

In this area, as in others of crucial importance to women, the efforts universities are making to effect change vary. Some universities rely on general objective-setting, which has tended to achieve little. There is a cautiousness manifest about imposing administrative rules and procedures on autonomous academic groupings. Yet in other universities a strong commitment to the collegial form of governance has not precluded the setting of specific employment equity goals and mechanisms to achieve them within broader planning frameworks.

There exists a positive relationship between stronger EEO programs as discussed in this report and women’s employment profiles.

Stronger EEO programs are those where universities have developed specific goals and mechanisms to achieve them; have achieved reasonable gender balance on staffing and key decision-making committees; have made real progress in integrating equal employment opportunities into strategic planning exercises; formally consult with women; and communicate EEO policy and activity to the university community regularly and through several avenues.

Disciplinary mix, geographic location, and the status of universities (pre-1987 and post-1987) are clearly factors contributing to the overall profile of academic women. The latter factor—university status—is likely to bear on the profile of women more through ‘ethos’ factors than through women’s relative capacity to contribute to university mission goals. Geographic isolation appears correlated with less robust EEO programs. Whether geographic isolation leads to this result through pessimistic assessments of what is possible, or whether geographically isolated universities are less likely, as a function of their social milieu, to develop strong EEO programs, is impossible to say from the available data. Disciplinary mix is a clear contributing factor to the different profiles of women but is an insufficient explanation in itself, even when coupled with status as pre- or post-1987 university and geographic location.

This leaves the relative strength of EEO programs as a significant contributing factor to women’s employment profile within universities.

Further and more rapid progress in achieving equitable employment outcomes will depend upon altering those traditions and habits of thought which make it easy for gender-based inequities to be generated and to accumulate. To be effective, steps aimed at retaining, developing and progressing existing women staff and attracting more in areas where they are under-represented will involve shifts in the distribution of resources, including shifts in the distribution of the time available to different segments of the work-force to devote to their own professional development.

Planning for continuous and long-lasting improvements in women’s position within universities requires the immediate introduction of steps to halt, and where possible reverse, the disproportionate impact on women of budgetary constraints and institutional restructuring. It also requires the introduction of employment terms and conditions which distribute more equitably the unavoidable costs of institutional change.

An integrated and coherent plan of action aimed at the provision of equal employment opportunities for women requires careful orchestration by senior members of the university. It also requires the direct engagement of women through consultative processes and through mechanisms by which women can express their views and offer advice to university executive staff on matters that affect them.

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