Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Managing Scottish higher and further education

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14719030701425811

1471-9045

Duncan McTavish, Emily Thomson,

Mentoring and Academic Development

Abstract This article outlines the traditional gendered nature of further and higher education and how this has been challenged by long term developments. The focus on managerialism and competition provides a context for a re-invigorated ‘agentic’ (associated with masculinity) gendering. Non-executive management in further and higher education is deeply unbalanced in gender terms. Senior management in universities is male dominated but significantly more balanced in colleges. Furthermore, in universities, the career dynamic which privileges research and the gendering of this in favour of males, more than outweighs some new career spaces open to women. In colleges, the 1990s evacuation of many male managers created openings for women but in a particularly tough economic and business environment in which some have suggested that women have been used to bolster an ‘agentic’ male styled approach to management; others that a more adaptive less stereotypical approach is emerging. Key words: Further educationgenderhigher educationnew public management Notes 1 From a total workforce of 135,000, 25,000 were lost across the sector in the mid-1990s (Deem et al. Citation2000). 2 The survey includes all Scotland's universities – thirteen institutions. Excluded from the sample are two higher education institutions without university status, two specialist art schools, one specialist music and drama school, one specialist agricultural college, the University of the Highlands and Islands as yet without university status and The Open University. Institutions surveyed ranged from one with no females in any of the above categories, to the most gender balanced with around one-third of the Senior Management Group female, another with around one-third of Deans female. One institution had more female than male Deans.