Women in Higher Education Management: Agents for Cultural and Structural Change?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the article is highly relevant for the journal and makes an interesting contribution to the higher education management literature internationally. It focuses on the impact of improved gender balance in the Austrian higher education top management. The gender balance in the Austrian HE rectorate has improved relatively rapidly, and the article asks what this greater presence of women in the rectorate has meant in terms of gender equality in a broader sense, and how female rectorate members perceive their situation. The article draws promisingly on both extensive statistical data, a dataset gathered by the authors on public sources on women and men in the rectorates in the Austrian HE, as well as interviews with 23 women who have held positions in the rectorates.
The empirical results are interesting from a gender perspective but the presentation of them should be more ambitious – now it remains on a rather descriptive level. I would urge the authors to apply a more analytical approach to their findings – the results suggest many patterns of gender dynamics that could be discussed in more theoretical terms than presenting them descriptively as gender differences. Applying concepts such as gendered divisions (of labour, positions) (Acker), cultural capital (age + academic status; Bourdieu), dilemmas, contradictions, resistance etc. may be fruitful.
How the interviewees embraced feminism remained to some extent unclear for the reader, lines 270-277 could be read so that all interviewees were feminists but that hardly was the case? This would be useful to clarify. The interviewees may be possible to put on a continuum according to their relation to feminism and gender equality? Quotation on lines 286-290 remains unclear to the reader when taken out of the interview context and some clarification (in brackets) would be needed to make it more understandable.
Concerning the literature, I was left wondering if there are any qualitative or quantitative studies on the Austrian HE rectorate in general and their views, attitudes and perspectives that the interview data could be contrasted with?
The methodology of the interview part needs to be described and explained shortly: Please explain how the interviewed female rectors were selected, by which criteria. Please mention who did the interviews (interviewing up and interviewing down dynamics may have an impact on what top leaders say in interviews). What issues did the interviews cover? Did the interviews include questions on women’s experience of working with male and female colleagues in the rectorates, support and non-support? Please explain also shortly how the interview data was analysed.
Only women rectors were interviewed, and the reader was left wondering, what would interviews of a sample of male rectors have added on the dynamics, e.g. on how they perceive the increase of gender balance in the rectorate, about working with more mixed rectorate teams, obstacles they see their female rector colleagues experience etc. I would strongly recommend collecting also this type of data (not for this article but for future work on this topic).
Some more detailed comments and suggestions:
When discussing the Austrian HE gender statistics in general in the beginning of the article, please put Austria in a larger context - tell shortly how Austria is similar or different to other European countries (using EU She Figures etc.).
When referring to traditional distribution of labour, it would be useful to refer more broadly to characteristics of the Austrian gender regime.
Structural change: it would be useful to state shortly what kind of cultural or structural change is referred to in the article since it is a neutral term that could refer to both more gender equal or less gender equal structures.
Please explain shortly the administrative structure in Austrian universities (role of senate, role of council), in a footnote or shortly in text. When writing about”bodies” what level of decision-making bodies are you referring to.
Working Group on equal opportunities, its status and legal background needs to be explained to the non-Austrian readers.
Detailed suggestions
Abstract, line 7: ”university bodies”, please change to ”university decision-making bodies”
Abstract, line 12: term ”define” too absolute, I would suggest you rather use ”contribute”
Abstract, line 13: end of line ”vice rectors are…”, please change ”vice rectors would be”
Line 125: ”Scandinavian”, please replace with ”Nordic”
Line 144: ”academic background”, please change ”academic career background”
Line 209: ”Strengthening staff self-awareness” – please explain what this is, unclear
Line 227: ”formally defined”, please add ”as part of their position”
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your helpful and constructive comments. I tried to include most of them in the text. I hope the argumentation and the presentation of the results is now more convincing.
Unfortunately or interestingly, there is no literature on Austrian HE rectorates available – neither for rectorates in force since 2004 (since universities became autonomous institutions) nor for the time before.
I absolutely agree with your suggestion to collect comparable date for male members of rectorate. This will be the next project.
Kind regards
Reviewer 2 Report
The issue of the article – effects of a quota regime on the representation of women in higher education management and on the gender equality policies of universities – is important. The Austrian experience with a considerable increase of women’s participation is impressive. Furthermore, the mixture of quantitative and qualitative data is appropriate for analysing the issue. The starting point of the argumentation is the tacit expectation that an increase of women in higher education management would foster structural and cultural change towards gender equality. Unfortunately, a reflection on this tacit expectation is lacking. Besides a general and vague reference to Kantner, there are no theoretical reflections which explain and frame the research question whether and to what extent the integrating of women into higher education management creates the potential for structural change. Only in the part “discussion”, the reader learns that cultural and structural changes were not an explicit goal of the quota but an expectation expressed in the parliamentary debate. Thus, the analysis is guided by a tacit expectation but not by a theoretical framing. Furthermore, references to some relevant publication on women in leadership positions in higher education are lacking (Read / Kehm 2016 in: Studies Higher Education; Röbken 2015 In: Hochschulmanagement; Lee / Doyeon 2014 In: The Social Science Journal; Peterson 2011 In: Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management; Neale / Özkanlı 2010 In: Gender and Education). These publications also deal with the question of whether and in which way women in management positions in higher education foster change towards gender equality. I suggest reflecting better on the “tacit expectation” integrating some of the reflections of the “discussion part” into the introduction and by this elaborating a better theoretical framing of the research questions. Without this framing, the reflections how to anchor cultural and structural change in the discussion part are interesting but not deduced from the empirical material. Furthermore, the very interesting database on rectorate members could be better used to detect effects of the quota regime on the gender characteristics of the rectors and vice-rectors. The participation of women in higher education management is higher than the percentage of women professors. Thus, the quota regime leads to specific hiring strategies and gender characteristics (131 ff) may be an effect of these hiring strategies. I suggest reflecting more on these effects. For example, in the discussion part (344) the author states that the fact that women come less often from a professorship may affect the acceptance within the rectorate. This assumption is not proved by the empirical material, but if proved, could be seen as an effect of the hiring strategies caused by the quota regime. Finally, it would be interesting to discuss the difference in the percentage of women rectors and vice-rectors in the light of Petersons (2011) results on the Swedish gender mix policy that women are more often asked for a vice-position when the position of the rector is filled by a man.Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your helpful and constructive comments. I tried to include most of them in the text. I hope the argumentation and the presentation of the results is now more convincing.
I agree with your assessment that the text is rather descriptive. This is probably due to the descriptive research question of the study from which the material was taken.
I didn’t take up your last point, whether women are more likely to be asked for a vice rector position when the rector is male. This first because women became rectors quite recently (till 2011 it was only one female rector but then the number increased) and secondly because to fulfill the quota 2 or 3 women have to be in rectorate. So in both cases the rector has to search for women and due to the still small number of female rectors (n=10) I’m a bit cautious not to over interpret differences.
Kind regards
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The article has improved considerably concerning the description of context and methodology, and the empirical results are clearly, although rather descriptively, presented. This Austrian case will be of high interest for and important addition to international literature on women in higher education, gender equality policies in higher education and women in higher education leadership. For future research, I would recommend the author to aim for a theoretically more ambitious level in discussing and interpreting the results. To conclude, I recommend publication.
Two minor comments:
line 165, last word: "women" - should it not be "Austria"?
line 389 "presumably encounter little acceptance within the university – especially among professors and senior.." I would suggest changing "little acceptance" to "less acceptance and/or more resistance".
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Author Response
Dear reviewer!
Thank you very much for your helpful comments and feedback.
Kind regards.
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for submitting the revised manuscript “Women in Higher
Education Management – Agents for cultural and structural change?
The paper explains now more clearly the methodology of the
interviews. Suggested publications are supplemented into the paper, but an in-depth discussion of the publications in a view to the
research questions is still lacking. Only in the part “discussion”
for example the author refers to a distinction of Childs and Krook (“descriptive and substantive representation”), but this approach is not discussed in the part “introduction” and doesn’t inform the
research questions. Thus, key terms like “cultural and structural change” or “reflexive gender equality policy” are not reflected.
In sum, a theoretical framing of the research questions and the empirical analysis is still lacking.
Author Response
Dear reviewer!
Thank you very much for your helpful comments.
Following your suggestions I reformulated the introductory section and the research questions as well as the concluding discussion to use the concept of descriptive and substantive representation more stringently. I also referred to the concept in the description of the results of the qualitative interviews.
Kind regards
