The right stuff?

The number of women in senior positions is back on the agenda. Why? Just have a look around. Julie Hare reports. For one fleeting moment back in 2004, 11 of the country’s 39 vice-chancellors were female. That nearly one third of the country’s university heads were women was hailed as a triumph of progressive equal opportunity policies, a deep pool of talent and enlightened thinking. Then one by one, they disappeared. Six years later, there are seven female vice-chancellors, with two on the cusp of retirement. Of the 22 universities that have appointed vice-chancellors since 2004, only four have been women – and two of those were internal appointments. So what’s happening? Is it just a recalibration to more “normal” and expected ratios? Is it a cause for alarm? “It’s very concerning,” says Liz Harman, vice-chancellor of Victoria University, and one of the two about to pack her bags and head into retirement (the other is Deakin University’s Sally Walker). Sandra Harding, vice-chancellor of James Cook University, agrees. “There has been ground made, but it is slower than any of us would have liked. There is no resiling from the fact of the matter, which is that we still need to work really hard on this.” It’s certainly an issue that has been gathering dust for a few year’s now. But now a group of concerned senior women, led by Harman, have approached Universities Australia to help put it back on the agenda. They are looking to coordinate a forum to discuss the issue in an honest and open fashion. Integral to the forum will be the university chancellors (nine of whom are women) and the search firms, which Harman describes as the two fundamentally important groups – search firms source and short-list the candidates for senior positions, while the chancellors chair the selection panels. The initial impetus for renewed vigour surrounding the debate was a presentation of key data at the UA plenary last November. It revealed that while progress had been made, most categories of senior women would fall well short of the 2006-2010 UA action plan for women. Critical targets included rises in level E from 16 per cent in 2004 to 25 per cent by 2010, level D from 24 per to 35 per cent and administrative women in HEW level 10 and above to 50 per cent. No target was set on women PhDs other than to increase the number. Chair of the UA senior women’s group and PVC (quality enhancement) at La Trobe University, Julie Jackson, says while the target for administrative women is likely to be met (although there is a clustering of women in “relational” positions, with HR almost exclusively female and student services heading the same way), their data shows worrying trends – or at least lack of momentum – in the professoriate. Women slightly outnumber men at academic level A, are neck and neck at level B, drop down to 39 per cent at level C, 28 per cent at D and 22 per cent at level E. Surprisingly, giving the downward trend, women currently comprise 32 per cent of DVCs - but only 18 per cent of VCs. What’s going wrong? First, as Harding is eager to point out, given the small number of universities in Australia, there is always going to volatility in the proportion of female VCs. The difference of one or two can make a big difference in overall proportions. Then, Sharon Bell, an honorary fellow at the LH Martin Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Management, says there are several well-entrenched assumptions that may have been historically accurate but no longer hold true, among which are that women are not selected or promoted as readily as men. “The evidence is that this pattern is changing – but it does not mean there are not entrenched pockets of resistance,” says Bell. “However, women are more likely to have ‘non-traditional’ career paths. They start careers at lower levels (and often later) than men; begin their careers without a PhD and are less likely to go on to complete one; pursue their careers less aggressively; have higher undergraduate teaching loads and lower postgraduate teaching loads and apply for promotion less frequently than men. “Women also spend more time on student welfare and pastoral care (including mentoring), and time for research appears to impact on women who are juggling carer responsibilities throughout their careers (infants, teenagers, spouses and ageing parents).” It’s a point that was explored in Belinda Probert’s 2002 study of gender equity at UNSW. Probert found that not only was there a distinct group of women living without a partner, and with sole responsibility for the care of children (and ageing parents), it was in fact teenage children who were causing a great deal of tension between work and domestic life. “The UNSW study showed that people at level C and about to make that career transition into the professoriate – their children are older. Kids in their teens need you, not a minder. That’s where the tensions mount,” says Probert, who is DVC at La Trobe University. Those tensions are being played out in women’s research careers. The fact that when something has to give, it’s the research that is the first to go. Jeanette Hacket, vice-chancellor at Curtin University and whose senior executive comprises 50 per cent women, says even at her own university, women are not as successful as men in gaining ARC grants. “It’s got to do with how many years you have been active in the research forum. If you haven’t been able to rack up the years due to child-rearing, it can be quite challenging. Ultimately, it’s just a numbers game,” says Hacket. Hacket says she is extremely frustrated by the political argy bargy over paid childcare, pointing to the words of sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, who says the minimum we should do for women is provide the social infrastructure to give them access to participation. “To get women to participate is about paid parental leave, accessible and affordable childcare and after-school care,” says Hacket, who made a clear-headed decision as a young mother to change career paths from lawyer to academic because universities had “the best and most family-friendly childcare facilities”. How big is too big? Another hotly debated theory is that women are just choosing not to apply for the top jobs – that they are getting too big, too complex, too corporatised. “Is it that women can’t hack it, or can’t do it, or simply choose not to?” asks Harman. “I’m sceptical – sure there are women who don’t want to hold those jobs, but why aren’t men saying the same thing?” Hacket agrees. “I don’t think these jobs are un-doable. Women are extremely capable of multitasking. It’s a matter of promoting and encouraging women.” Harding too says the jobs are big, but not beyond the realms of possibility, pointing out she still manages to have a social life and play sport. However, there is a highly talented pool of women – currently DVCs – who would appear ripe for promotion but who, anecdotally at least, are choosing not to take that step. The reason? The nature of the VCs job has changed from one of CEO, to a much more externally focused role: one that is about dealing with government, fostering partnerships both here and overseas; working on philanthropy. As Probert points out, increasingly universities are appointing provosts as the day-to-day managers while the VC spends less and less time on the university campus. Hacket, whose PhD was in strategic management, says her advice to any woman considering a managerial role in higher education is to develop competencies and capabilities around business skills, such as being financially literate. “It’s one thing to have a research track, but given the extent to which universities are now challenged in terms of contestable markets and being run in a business-like manner in delivering community outcomes, then women need to develop hard management skills – and that might mean getting an MBA.” So how do women VCs cope? “By having a new age husband,” laughs Harman. Ingrid Moses, chancellor of the University of Canberra and formerly vice-chancellor of UNE, agrees. “In my generation, the women VCs either had no husband or a retired one. If they had children – and several didn’t – they were adults,” says Moses. “My husband was extremely supportive. He was an academic himself, so he knew I had to work long hours, attend conferences, conduct research on weekends. I only finished my PhD when I was 45 – and often said if the children hadn’t played cricket, I never would have finished it because cricket bought me some time.” Harding also says that having a husband who could cook (but couldn’t plait hair) was the key to her success. Curiously, a study conducted in 2004 by researchers from UNSW found that for every additional degree a woman has, the number of children she will bear falls by half a child. So 90 per cent of women without a post-school qualification have children, compared with 78 per cent with a bachelor degree and 66 per cent with a higher degree. The researchers, Dr James Franklin and Sarah Chee Tueno, also found that the marrying up phenomenon leads to a large excess of unpartnered educated women. By their 40s, the ratio of unpartnered women graduates to men is three to two. Certainly, the research is borne out in Probert’s UNSW study, which found a significant group of women academics who were living without a partner, yet had sole responsibility for their children. “This group is concentrated in the age group when we might expect them to be aiming for level D. Alongside them is a large group of women who live with partners, but who still have primary responsibility for childcare. May of these women simultaneously have responsibilities for aged parents,” the report says. Affirmative action, anyone? Everyone – well nearly everyone – is adamant that no women should appointed because of her gender, but because she is the most meritorious candidate for the job. “We are certainly not calling for affirmative action. We believe in merit-based promotions – but maybe we need to think about what constitutes merit,” says Jackson. Harding agrees. “These appointments are made at particular times with particular strategies in mind. One would like to think that gender is no longer a weighty issue for selection committees to think about. I’m sure each decision is made on the most meritorious candidate of the day, based on the particular requirements of particular universities at a particular time.” But Harman has another take on it. She is among several women, including Bell, who point to this year’s Young Researcher of the Year awards, of which all five category winners were men and only four of the 15 finalists were women (see comment, page 10). Harman and Bell say the awards, held at the UA conference dinner at Parliament House in March, unleashed strong feelings about the implicit disadvantage women were labouring under to keep their careers on an even keel with men – a theme more fully articulated in Bell’s FASTS report. Basically, to define a “young researcher” at 40 or under strongly disadvantages women, many of whom would be in the middle of their primary child rearing years. What if there were different criteria for men and women: 40 for men, 45 for women? But, hang on, isn’t that affirmative action? Well, yes, but maybe its time for a change, says Harman. “For baby boomers, the idea of affirmative action was out of the question. Maybe younger people, with different life choices and different value systems, are not making the same choices that I did,” says Harman. “I’m not sure they would make the same choices. Maybe they would like an affirmative action policy, because it might recognise the choices they are trying to make. “The whole higher education system is predicated on an aged workforce where those in management and who are setting the criteria, were brought up under different value systems. “We need to go back and look at what policies may be appropriate for the generation we are seeking to address these issues for. We need to know the criteria and the conditions are set right for their circumstances.” It’s a view backed up by Bell. In her FASTS report she writes: “We can and should act to remove barriers and equalise opportunity, but it’s difficult to make the analytical shift from regretting choices people make (in this case about subjects and careers) to promoting “informed choice”. Young women may be making rational choices in the world as it exists, and reluctant to change these choices until the world itself changes.” The bigger picture Only four women currently chair ASX 200 companies. Women account for only 8.7 per cent of the ASX 200 board memberships and represent only 10 per cent of executive managers – despite the fact 10 per cent of executive managers – despite the fact that 45 per cent of all professional and managerial jobs are held by women. Just as affirmative action in higher education is a no-no, quotas for women on boards send grey-suited businessmen running for the whisky bottle. As columnist Adele Horin recently wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald. “Given Australia’s appalling record of promoting women to company boards or senior executive positions, the word quota is now being raised like the sword of Damocles over the grey balding head of our esteemed business leaders. Shaking at the knees, the blokes are promising to do better.” This, says Hacket, is the bigger picture in which senior women in higher education are placed. A World Ecomomic Forum paper on global gender gaps released last October shows to what extent Australia is falling behind. While Australia is ranked number one in terms of educational attainment, it has dropped from 40th to 50th in terms of women’s labour participation. “Australia is going backwards. We are behind the US, UK, Canada and South Africa in terms of women’s participation rates,” says Hacket. But doesn’t that mean higher education is performing well by comparison? Shouldn’t we be giving ourselves a pat on the back? Heck no, says Hacket. “It’s still inadequate. Currently 18 per cent of VCs are women and when Sally [Walker] and Liz [Harman] go, we will be down to 12 per cent. “The momentum for employing women in senior positions in higher education has dropped away. It is an issue that is symptomatic of Australia more generally,” she says. Hacket says there are some fairly obvious keys to turning around the situation: social infrastructure (child care, etc); legislation; hard management skills; mentors; diverse experience (volunteering can help) and, lastly, giving women a sense of entitlement. “That’s what we are doing wrongly – we have a prejudiced view in our perceptions of women.” So why should we care? Ultimately, if the best person for the job is actually being appointed, why should we care whether it is a he or a she? Women are being lost to the management track way too far down the career ladder – resulting in a dreadful waste of potential and productivity. “On a national scale, increasing women’s participation in the workplace is probably one of the best returns on investment imaginable because you are going to get an enormous difference in the productive resources of the nation,” says Hacket. Equally, this plays out in the microcosm of a university. The true picture of gender equality in Australian higher education is the subject of a current ARC Linkage project being led by Griffith University’s Glenda Strahan, with UniSuper and NTEU as partners. Whitehouse says the researchers will conduct a detailed analysis of the university sector, with particular focus on contrasting pressures from entrepreneurial developments and advances in equity policies. It will also provide new evidence on the way gender inequities are reproduced and inform strategies to promote gender equity. It’s expected to be complete by 2013. And maybe, just maybe, things will have started to turn around by then. The accidental career One of the factors identified by Belinda Probert in her 2002 UNSW study and which will be addressed in the new UA strategy is the lack of planning behind most women’s careers. Almost without exception, every senior woman Campus Review spoke to simply said they took the opportunities as they presented themselves. “I never thought I’d have an academic career, never mind a senior executive position,” says Moses. “One thing led to another. I was always interested in policy development and at every level you have different responsibilities and opportunities. I took the opportunities when they presented themselves – I was always encouraged to apply by my male sponsors or male mentors who believed in me.” “I was a late starter,” says Jackson, who has two children and five degrees. “I’m an econometrician and I only finished my PhD in 1997. It took a lot of determination, but there was a sense of being in the right place at the right time.” Jackson says career planning will figure in the new UA strategy for women. “Given the labyrinthine nature of most women’s career paths, the new strategy for women is looking to interventions,” says Jackson. “A possible intervention, for example, might be to introduce career planning for PhD students and for women new to the academy to look at their options and into their future.” Women on top Australia’s 17 female vice-chancellors to date are: Di Yerbury, Macquarie, 1987-2006 Fay Gale, UWA, 1990-1997, Mary O’Kane, Adelaide, 1996-2001 Denise Bradley, UniSA, 1997-2006 Helen Garnett, CSU, 2003-2008 Ingrid Moses, UNE, 1997-2006 Liz Harman, VU, 2003- Millicent Poole, ECU, 1997-2005 Jan Reid, UWS, 1998- Sally Walker, Deakin, 2003- Anne Edwards, Flinders, 2001-2007 Glenice Hancock, CQU, 2001-2004 Ruth Duncan, RMIT, 2000-2004 Margaret Gardner, RMIT, 2005- Jeanette Hacket, Curtin, 2006- Sandra Harding, JCU 2007- Celia Hammond, Notre Dame, 2008-