Published in The Australian, 21 June 2017

Jane den Hollander knows first-hand the importance of gender equality and opportunities for women in higher education.

After migrating to Perth in the mid-1990s with her West Australian husband and young family, Deakin University’s vice-chancellor was surprised to discover how difficult it was to break into the university sector.

“I had two young children and I wanted to work part time for a year while I settled the children,” she says.  “Having worked in the UK, I thought I’d waltz into a job here in middle to senior management. But it took me about eight months and some luck.”

A chance encounter with the then deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Western Australia led to a part-time consultancy, which proved to be the foot into the sector she needed.

More than two decades on, after much debate and numerous strategies, universities are still grappling with systemic gender inequality.

Women make up 44 per cent of the academic workforce but ­account for just 25 per of professor and 36 per cent of associate professor positions, the latest figures show.

While the numbers have risen, women still hold just one in four vice-chancellor positions and one in three deputy vice-chancellor roles. And women in higher education continue to earn 15 per cent less on average than their male counterparts.

Mindful of her early experi­ences, den Hollander has taken an ardent interest in Deakin’s gender equality efforts. She monitors women’s representation on recruitment selection panels and shortlists for new appointments, and requires her executives to have gender equity targets across faculties as well as in human resources, finance and IT.

While many male leaders ­increasingly realise the “business benefits” of gender equity, den Hollander says female vice-chancellors often have been at the forefront of developing flexible arrangements that provide greater opportunity.

“This can be hard to do in big bureaucracies but people have shown it can be done and I think, if you look around, women vice-chancellors have tended to do some of that,” she says.

Kate White, an internationally recognised researcher on gender and higher education, says female vice-chancellors can be “change agents” for implementing gender equality strategies that ­improve opportunities for women.

White has detailed the positive impact of two successive ­female vice-chancellors at an Australian university in a new book looking at gender equality in ­higher education internationally.

Gendered Success in Higher Education: Global Perspectives, which White has coedited with Pat O’Connor from the University of Limerick in Ireland, examines the issue across 11 countries.

Previous research identified a common perception that having women in top roles effectively ­influenced the culture of an organisation, says White, an adjunct associate professor at Federation University Australia.

Her research concludes that the two female vice-chancellors have been effective change agents in four areas: implementing a gender equality strategy; making managers responsible for equality; ­improving opportunities for women; and personally championing the issue.

The institution is now above average for the proportion of women in associate professor and professor positions, while it has cut the gender pay gap by 1.3 per cent since 2013, bringing it below the sector average.

White says:

“However, what wasn’t clear from the case study was whether women vice-chancellors as change agents ­enabled more flexible work options particularly for senior women, and whether they can produce sustainable change.
“Under their watch, clearly the organisation culture has changed and these women have tried to build a different type of university and a more inclusive model, but the question remains: will the change continue when a new vice-chancellor is appointed?”

The female vice-chancellors made their executives responsible for the gender equality strategy by linking equity targets to performance assessment and bonuses. They also introduced annual ­reports detailing progress against the strategy.

White argues that univer­sities need to adopt multiple initiatives to change organisational culture, including “robust equity strategies” that are linked to senior managers’ key performance indicators. Organisations also need to adopt a “top-down and bottom-up” approach where equity strategies are advanced by “frontline champions” such as discrimination officers as well as the univer­sity’s executive.

“Vice-chancellors need to model gender equality and set out to actively change the culture of the organisation and they need to commit to women achieving a critical mass in higher education leadership,” White says.

At a sector level, she praises ­initiatives such as the Universities Australia Executive Women Group for developing action plans and sponsoring research.

“That national initiative has been important in focusing on the need for the sector to increase the representation of women at senior level.”
Den Hollander acknowledges that women’s representation in higher education leadership is improving but says equity efforts must be ramped up.

“The trends are in the right ­direction but the problem is we need to go faster.”

She argues that university ­administrators should “assess performance relative to opportunity”. She says:

“If you’ve taken three years out of the workforce because you’re having children, then you should be assessed relative to that.

“If ­another candidate hasn’t taken time out and appears to have more publications, that should be taken into account. That’s a fair thing to do.”

Den Hollander also urges sector leaders to tackle the persistent gender pay gap.

“We say there’s equal pay but the evidence is different. The data shows men often have the odd bonus or allowance.

“Women are happily working alongside them and suddenly realise they never got that. That’s demoralising, and we should be much more transparent about those sorts of things.

“We either have equal pay and conditions or we don’t. If we’re saying it’s equal then we should prove it. I’ve taken this on as an issue for us as we try to make sure people doing the same work get the same pay.”