In reponse to point 1 above, indicating that some women academics have children - might not this observation also apply to some men?

For a scholarly view on the topic of gender balance in univesities, read:

Fotaki, M. (2013). No Woman is Like a Man (in Academia): The Masculine Symbolic Order and the Unwanted Female Body. Organization Studies.

1. Some women have babies {Yes!}

2. Some women cannot stomach the dirty politics of Higher Ed. {Believe me}

3. Matthew principle: The masculine world gets more masculine and the female world gets more female.

For further info send: glass ceiling academia to Google Scholar.

In reponse to point 1 above, indicating that some women academics have children - might not this observation also apply to some men?

For a scholarly view on the topic of gender balance in univesities, read:

Fotaki, M. (2013). No Woman is Like a Man (in Academia): The Masculine Symbolic Order and the Unwanted Female Body. Organization Studies.

1. :-)

Even though Ian's answer sounds a bit sexist (particularly because of the involved cynicism), there is a point in the first aspect - at least when considering western academic systems (the northern European countries might be an exception). However, I guess that the original question is not one that should be limited to Higher Education institutions but instead, concerns Top Management positions in general. I cannot speak for British universities but doubt that the German systems is much better. Thus, give me a chance to "burn my fingers" with an attempt of an answer ...

I guess we share one opinion when I argue that in most western industrial societies something still is basically wrong with the definition of career paths and the understanding and value of motherhood; but there seems no easy solution.

Assumed, that the interruptive career-break (baby break) does not take place at all and thus, doesn't play any role as argument: Still there remains the potential risk that a woman decides to become a mother or accidentally gets pregnant. Regarding Top Management positions, this indeed can be seen a practical problem since a Top Manager can not easily be replaced, particularly not for a limited time (the period of the baby break).

Thanks to 40 years of intensive work of emancipation initiatives, at least some things have already changed, but the past time-span still is quite short. Sure, today, there also are men who care for children (and some even support their partner's careers) but this still is the minority. And I guess these men will also never show up in Top Management positions (would be worth an investigation).

What I personally see very critically, is implementing a female quota for Top management positions (which is being discussed in many countries and implemented in some). At least I would not like to have a Top Management position because of my gender instead of my personality and my skills. So, the quota is one (temporary) solution but I doubt is a satisfying and infinite one.

What we actually need is a changed common understanding of the value of motherhood, a commonly supported will to change things, and a reasonable and manageable approach for implementation. I fear, at the moment, the first two mainly are paper-based and the last is fully missing. There still is a lot of work to be done ...

... my five cents

The gender imbalance in the academia is not unique to the West alone. In fact, it is worst in other parts, particularly in West Africa. Compared to male academics, women hardly become elected or selected to be deans of faculties. One of the major reasons is patriarchy,in spite of the gallant strides women are making all over the world.

For a start, I believe that we are still seeing the bias of socially normalised public male versus private female presence in most societies which dictates that in considerations of male and female space, they not only do not intersect, but they are too often mutually exclusive and kept that way by a "maculinism" which maintains the kind of dedicated restrictions such as "glass ceilings, and threats of violence, etc, that keep men's spaces male.

In terms of public versus private space in Western countries, women have traditionally been kept within the confines of domesticity. The development of the Industrial Revolution brought with it increased separation of men's and women's spaces as previously agrarian men and women were collected into labour populations directed to serve systems to build, maintain, operate and fuel industrial requirements, or similarly funneled into extended states of pregnancy, childbirth, child raising, food collection and preparation, home maintenance, and training of children to make them better fit the requirements of this new world.

As secondary and tertiary industries began to require a more educated and intellectual labour force, large families were no longer the rule. They became smaller, and it began to be possible for more people to have luxuries such as disposable income and leisure time. Labour unions came into existence and presented strong and functional opposition to the dominant owner/manager and subservient worker paradigms. Women were participating in the actions of these unions. There was also an increasing demand for lower paid female labour in mills and offices, partly to use as a threat to the increased male demands for higher wages and shorter work periods, and partly because more women were there to work in larger numbers as families got smaller and there were more unmarried women than before. Women were now professional.

This female labour force now had to contend with the same poisoned atmosphere of owner versus worker economics and politics which men had faced, but in the case of women there was the added friction of the presence of females in public labour relationships and spaces. New psychological strategies to control women were devised. Their femininity was questioned. Their ability to have children was used as a weapon to control them, since childbirth was, and still is, considered a legitimate weapon for men to use in professional male and female relationships, since children are anathema to the kind of work environments established by men.

Us and them oppositions are further kept up in terms of dogmatic and normalised perceptions of men's hardness, training to control, hierarchical power relations, efficiency, and intellectuality versus women's softness, compassion, communality/cooperativeness, intuition-based thinking, and inclusivity. These perceptions are generalised and support an an androcentric society.

But, as hard as Patriarchy tries to maintain the exclusivity of these spaces, it fails, as it must.

There are many places where intersections create merging of the spaces, and they are volatile. There are conflicting forces which lay bare the struggles of women forcing open the gates protecting men's privilege which is based on nothing more than having external genitalia, heavier musculature and skeletal density, and more social training in overt displays of physical violence against women.

This violence takes many forms. One effective way in which this violence is realised is in the continued existence of rape culture. Women who rebel against the passive, submissive, and controlled roles established by male dominance are forced to comply not only by the threat but also by action of having their bodies attacked, dominated, and subdued. There is a common misconception that rape is a sexual attack, also propagated for the purpose of undermining moral and legal defenses against it.

There are modes of implicit violence where women who make their ways into men's space are treated with contempt and rejection and any apparent progress is actually redirected into serving men's space. Women in scientific research still contend with being put in roles where their skills and achievements are suborned to enhance those of their male counterparts. their work is claimed by associate men in positions of power and authority. One of many examples is the overt plagiarisation of the achievements of Dr. Rosalind Franklin, whose identification of the structure of DNA won Nobel prizes for Crick and Watson, whose explicit removal of her and her work from the record nearly erased her from history.

For those who will see, History shows that social movement and change are the rule. The maintenance of static and enforced society is an illusion. Gender imbalance in academia, as in all other endeavours, is a point of volatile intersection. While there are still those, male and female, who insist that a woman's place is "barefoot, pregnant, and chained to a stove", implacable social forces render this kind of ideation as archaic and counter-productive to social progress and improvement for all members. Glass ceilings are not defensible in academia or in the world entire, of which academia is only a microcosm. The walls of Jericho fell, and there are an increasing number of non-compliant women with brass eager to keep that tradition alive.

Respectfully,

Danna Waldman. B.A.

@Sue: Danna has written high quality introductory paragraphs for your thesis at no cost to you, except for the citation. Next time she will charge you! :-)

You're welcome! LOL.

Thank you Ian for those nice words, too.

Citations...oy. I wish I still had my UVic library card and JSTOR access code. I do still have over a thousand unorganised documents in storage boxes in the garage. Then again, maybe we all do.

I have co-edited two books that have explored this topic across eight countries:

B. Bagilhole and K. White (eds.) (2011). Gender, Power and Management (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke).

B. Bagilhole and K. White (eds.) (2013). Generation and Gender in Academia (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke)

Women are under-represented in the upper academi hierarhies everywhere, as is the case in Greece as well. With regard to the Gender distribution in the Greek Academia, although women comprise over half of the student body in Greece, only about one third (27%) of the teaching staff in universities are women (2,369) as opposed to 73% men (6,367), and not only. The higher the position in the academic hierarchy, the lower the percentage of women. Clearly, there is a gradual reduction of women as they go up the academic ladder, as is the case internationally. According to a study, conducted by Professors Stella Vosniadou and Lydia Vaiou, covering all Greek universities for the academic year 2003-2004: (1) the percentage of women decreases every step up the academic ladder. This decrease is particularly sharp between the middle and the high ranks of the academic hierarchy (i.e. Professors: 14% female, 86% male; Associate Professors: 26.5% female, 73.5% male; Assistant Professors: 32% female, 68% male, and Lecturers: 61% female, 39% male.) (2) The percentage of women drops sharply in the administrative positions and power structures of the university (Faculty Presidents in the Sciences: 100% men; in the Humanities: 69% men and only 31% women; Vice-presidents in Science faculties: 93% men, 7% women and in the Humanities: 65% men, 35% women. Department Chairs in the science faculties: 96% men, 4% women and in the Humanities: 61% men, 39% women. Directors/head of Laboratories in the Sciences: 88% men, 12% women and in the Humanities: 76% men, 24% women.).

Moreover, women teach more hours and engage in less research in contrast to their male counterparts. They have limited access to male-dominated scientific networks that provide sources and funds for research, and subsequently limited opportunities for publications and advancement. Women constitute an ‘invisible minority’ in decision-making committees: Presidents/Chairs of University Research Committees are 100% Men. Research committee members are comprised of 90% men and only 10% women. Their male colleagues, over the age of 50, dominate in decision-making positions or on scientific committees that grant funds, scholarships, distinctions, and influence the orientation of scientific programs and projects.

At the University of Athens—one of the oldest state institution of higher education in Greece, founded in 1837, and among the largest universities in the European Union today with a student's body of about 92,000 undergraduate students, over 2,000 members of academic staff and 1,000 administrative, secretarial and specialised personnel— 46% of Lecturers and 40% of Assistant Professors are women. (www.uoa.gr) This percentage drops sharply to 27% in the higher university hierarchy, namely only 27% of the Associate Professors and Full Professors are women. Moreover, women are a minority in administrative power positions and if you disregard the highest positions and look only at departmental chairs and assistant chair posts, one finds only 17% occupied by women. (see Vlahoutsikou & Abatzi, 2007)

I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time and trouble to post answers to my question - there is some interesting material and food for thought here!