Gender and Higher Education
Women now account for more than 50% of undergraduate university enrolments in Australia and women also represent a growing proportion of academic staff. Their achievements and performance, however, are not simply a result of individual efforts, but are also shaped by the larger organisational settings in which they study and work. This group of research projects focuses on the experiences of students or staff in our rapidly changing higher education and employment environments. Among the key questions addressed are: how does gender inflect our understandings and experiences of study and of work in universities? How does gender determine career outcomes for women graduates and for women academic staff?
For further information on these projects, follow the links below or contact the Investigators listed.
- Gender, career choice and professional engagement: A pilot study Dr Helen M. G. Watt, Dr Paul W. Richardson, Assoc. Prof. Maryanne Dever, Dr Jeannie M. Paterson 2008-9
- Gender differences in early post PhD employment in Australian universities Prof. Paul Boreham, Prof. Mark Western, Assoc. Prof. Warren Laffan, Assoc. Prof. Maryanne Dever and Prof. Janeen Baxter 2007-8
- When Research Works for Women Assoc. Prof. Maryanne Dever, Dr Zoe Morrison, Ms Barbara Dalton 2005-6
- Feminist Futures: Women's Studies students and their career aspirations Assoc. Prof. Maryanne Dever 1999-2002
- Gender and senior management in Higher Education: cross cultural perspectives. Dr Kate White 2006
 Maryanne Dever |
‘Organisations act as critical places for the creation and reinforcing of gender norms and I’m interested in the gendered nature of universities as organisational cultures. Despite women now accounting for almost half of PhD graduates in this country, we still haven’t seen the anticipated changes in the gendered patterns of academic staffing. Women remain clustered at the bottom of the academic hierarchy as they have done for several decades. Researching the gendered nature of academic work enables me to find new evidence-based explanations for the continuing differential career outcomes of women and men in the Australian academy and to build theory out of women’s actual experiences of organisational life.’ |