What are the academic career options for women in various European countries? What has changed? Does the glass ceiling still exist? In a comparative perspective, contributors from different countries provide answers to these questions. By investigating the interrelationship between strategy and structure, the articles in this study focus on the interconnectedness between the institutional environment of systems of higher education and the strategic behavior, aspirations, hopes, and desires of female academics. The book examines how such systems impact those women looking back on their career path, those just starting to think about a career in academia, or those on their way to applying for a leadership position at a university.

The first cross-cultural analysis of the differences in career trajectories and experiences between a senior group of women academics and a younger group who are at early and mid-career stages. Major themes in the autobiographical stories of these women were national context; organisational context; family, class and location; and agency.

This book sets out to examine the changing role of women in higher education with an emphasis on academic and leadership issues. The scope of the book is international, with a wide range of contributors, whose expertise spans sociology, social science, economics, politics, public policy and linguistic studies, all of whom have a major interest in global education. The volume examines the ways in which the leadership role and academic roles of women in higher education are changing in the twenty first century, offering an up-to-date policy discussion of this area. It is in some sense a sequel to the earlier volume by the same Editor, Women as Leaders and Managers in Higher Education, but with very different emphases. The pressures now are to respond to the demands of the technological age and to those of the global economy. Today there are more highly qualified and experienced female academics, and more expectation of their gaining the highest posts. Challenges still remain, particularly in terms of the top posts, and in equal pay. The discussion of global policy issues affecting the role of women in higher education is combined with country case studies, several of which are comparative. Together they examine and unpack the particular situations of women in a wide range of higher education systems, from Brazil to the US to Europe to Africa and the Far East, noting the shift towards more flexibility, more personal choice and a greater acceptance by society of their abilities. This volume is a useful and influential addition to published work in this area, and is aimed at the intelligent general reader as well as the scholar interested in this topic.

A notable feature of higher education in many countries over the last few decades has been the dramatic rise in the proportion of female students. Women now outnumber men as undergraduate students in the majority of OECD countries, fuelling concerns that men are deserting degree-level study as women overtake them both numerically and in terms of levels of achievement. The assertion is that higher education is becoming increasingly 'feminized' - reflecting similar claims in relation to schooling and the labour market. At the same time, there are persistent concerns about degree standards, with allegations of 'dumbing down'. This raises questions about whether the higher education system to which more women have gained access is now of less value, both intrinsically and in terms of labour market outcomes, than previously. This ground-breaking book examines these issues in relation to higher education in the UK and globally. It provides a thorough analysis of debates about 'feminization', asking: To what extent do patterns of participation continue to reflect and (re)construct wider social inequalities of gender, social class and ethnicity? How far has a numerical increase in women students challenged the cultures, curriculum and practices of the university? What are the implications for women, men and the future of higher education? Drawing on international and national data, theory and research, Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education provides an accessible but nuanced discussion of the 'feminization' of higher education for postgraduates, policy-makers and academics working in the field.

The literature on gender and science shows that scientific careers continue to be characterised – albeit with important differences among countries – by strong gender discriminations, especially in more prestigious positions. Much less investigated is the issue of which stage in the career such differences begin to show up. Gender and Precarious Research Careers aims to advance the debate on the process of precarisation in higher education and its gendered effects, and springs from a three-year research project across institutions in seven European countries: Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland, Switzerland, Slovenia and Austria. Examining gender asymmetries in academic and research organisations, this insightful volume focuses particularly on early careers. It centres both on STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and SSH (Social Science and Humanities) fields. Offering recommendations to design innovative organisational policies and self-tailored ‘Gender Equality Plans’ to be implemented in universities and research centres, this volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Gender Studies, Sociology of Work and Industry, Sociology of Knowledge, Business Studies and Higher Education.

Drawing on data from Australia, England and New Zealand, this book addresses how neo liberal policies of successive governments have decreased autonomy of academics and increased regimes of surveillance, radically altering how academics think about and engage in their intellectual work.

[Italiano]: Negli ultimi decenni, profonde trasformazioni hanno ridisegnato il mondo accademico e l’ambiente della ricerca. Le riforme delle strutture di finanziamento, della valutazione della ricerca e delle procedure di responsabilità stanno ancora ridisegnando le pratiche del lavoro accademico, ridefinendo i programmi di ricerca e determinando effetti rilevanti sui percorsi di carriera scientifica. Nonostante gli sforzi delle politiche europee verso lo sviluppo di una ricerca più responsabile ed inclusiva, i processi che emergono da queste trasformazioni dei contesti accademici stanno producendo nuove disuguaglianze e rafforzando quelle vecchie. Le nuove regole nel reclutamento e nella progressione di carriera dei ricercatori riducono, in alcuni casi, e intensificano, in altri, i divari di genere preesistenti, con un impatto variabile sui ricercatori, a seconda della loro appartenenza a diverse coorti, al genere o a gruppi minoritari, e sulle università, a seconda delle dimensioni e dei contesti regionali. Adottando una prospettiva intersezionale, i contributi di questo volume si concentrano sui processi di gendering nel mondo accademico italiano. Complessivamente, essi riescono a conseguire un duplice risultato: svelare il carattere di genere delle pratiche accademiche e di ricerca e tracciare i percorsi emergenti verso la loro rimodellazione in senso più equo e inclusivo./[English]: • In recent decades, deep transformations have been reshaping academia and the research environment. Reforms in funding structures, research assessment, and accountability procedures are still redesigning the practices in academic work, redefining research schedules, and determining relevant effects on scientific career paths. Despite European policies efforts towards the development of more responsible and inclusive research, the processes emerging from these transformations of academic contexts are producing new inequalities and strengthening old ones. New rules in the recruitment and career progression of researchers reduce, in some instances, and intensify, in others the pre-existing gender gaps, with varying impact on researchers, according to their belonging to different cohorts, gender or minority groups, and on universities, according to size and regional contexts. Adopting an intersectional perspective, contributions in this volume focus on gendering processes in Italian academia. Altogether, they succeed in accomplishing a double result: to unveil the gendered character of academic and research practices and to trace emergent paths towards their reshaping into more equitable and inclusive ones.