This book examines persistent gender inequality in higher education, and asks what is preventing change from occurring. These discourses implicitly and explicitly depict the status quo as appropriate, reasonable and fair: ultimately impeding efforts and attempts to promote gender equality.

​Section 1: Context.- 1. Introduction and Methodology; Pat O'Connor and Kate White.- Section 2: Exploring Gender and Power in Higher Education.- 2. Resistance to Gender Equality Efforts: Experiences from EU-projects aiming to implement Gender Equality Plans; Helen Peterson, Teresa Carvalho, Maria de Lourdes Machado-Taylor.- 3. Gender (in)competent Leadership and the Sex Quota; Anke Lipinsky & Angela Wroblewski.- 4. Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Excellence as a Legitimating 'Gender-Neutral' Logic and Micropolitical Practices as the Day-to Day Reality; Pat O'Connor and Sarah Barnard.- 5. Making the Right Choice: A Three-Country Study of Gendered Effects of Individualizing Neoliberal Discourses in Higher Education; Marcela Linkova, Ozlem Atay and Connie Zulu.- 6. Displacement and/or Appropriation/Emasculation of Gender Equality; Kate White and Bridgitte Bonisch-Brednich.- 7. Slow Progress towards Gender Equality in Policy and Practice: Case Studies of Higher Education Institutionsin South Asia and the Middle East Regions; Linzi Kemp and Tanuja Agarwala.- 8. 'As Sociologists We Should Know Better': Gender, Power and Harassment in Higher Education Professional Associations; Kathrin ZippelSection 3: Moving Forward.- 9. Gender and Power: Where to Now?; Pat O'Connor and Kate White.

"The volume is a must-read for anyone interested in fairness and justice around gender". Professor Patricia Yancey Martin, Florida State University, USAThis book examines persistent gender inequality in higher education, and asks what is preventing change from occurring. The editors and contributors argue that organizational resistance to gender equality is the key explanation; reflected in the endorsement of discourses such as excellence, choice, distorted intersectionality, revitalized biological essentialism and gender neutrality. These discourses implicitly and explicitly depict the status quo as appropriate, reasonable and fair: ultimately impeding attempts to promote gender equality. Drawing on research from around the world, this book explores the limits and possibilities of challenging these misleading discourses, focusing on the state and universities themselves as levers for change. It stresses the importance of institutional transformation, the vital contribution of feminist activists and the importance of women’s deceptively ‘small victories’ in the academy.Pat O’Connor is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and Visiting Professor at the Geary Institute, University College Dublin, Ireland. She is a sociologist with a focus on gender equality in higher education institutions: particularly leadership, excellence, micropolitics, gender-based violence, equality related interventions and women’s academic careers.Kate White is Adjunct Associate Professor at Federation University Australia and Director of the Women in Higher Education Management Network. Her research focuses on gender equality and leadership in higher education, women’s academic careers and women in science.

Asks why gender inequality persists in the higher education system. Outlines the manifestations of organizational resistance to gender inequality. Dismantles excellence, choice, essentialist and other misleading discourses to explore how far universities can be agents for change.

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