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The Changing Role of Women in Higher Education pp 227–242Cite as

Women Academic Researchers: Still Interlopers in the UK Academy?

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Abstract

This chapter explores the gendered effects and affects of contemporary trends in higher education research policy. These trends, including a renewed focus on excellence and the utility of research outcomes, are evident globally, with universities and nations competing to assert their ‘world-class’ status. Research has become an increasingly high stakes activity, critical to institutional positioning in national and international league tables and a key signifier of material and symbolic capitals for universities, departments and individual academics. Research is also a highly gendered arena, with (white) men in the UK continuing to hold the majority of senior posts and more likely to be judged research ‘excellent’ than their women peers.

With attention to specific UK policy texts, the chapter illustrates the mechanisms through which research activities and subjectivities continue to be marked as ‘naturally’ masculine. These include the elision between ‘research’ and ‘science’, the reification of the natural sciences and technologies over and above other disciplines, a neoliberal framing of research as innovation, and a privileged and imperialist assertion of research excellence. Drawing on Ahmed’s (The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2004) work on the ‘emotionality of texts’, and on data from a qualitative study of academic researchers in Britain (Leathwood and Read, Final report: assessing the impact of developments in research policy for research on higher education: an exploratory study. Society for Research into Higher Education, London, 2012; Stud High Educ 38(8): 1162–1174, 2013), the chapter explores ways in which emotions, and gender, are invoked and in/cited through the discourses and practices of research policy. Noting that women continue to be positioned as interlopers, the chapter concludes by stressing the need for the destabilisation and disruption of the prestige economy of the academy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A ‘professor’ in the UK is a senior academic.

  2. 2.

    Though note there are distinct differences between BME groups. For example, Chinese staff are more likely to be in academic than in professional/support roles, whereas the reverse is the case for black staff.

  3. 3.

    The Russell Group is a ‘mission group’ of 24 ‘research-leading’ universities in the UK – i.e. those universities that tend to have the highest levels of prestige.

  4. 4.

    A far-right fringe political party in the UK.

  5. 5.

    The term ‘mediocrity’ has been used by a Russell Group spokesperson and a Government Minister to describe research not seen to meet the heights of research ‘excellence’ – see Corbyn, Z. (2009). V-c: focus research cash or ‘mediocrity’ awaits. Times Higher Education. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=408770, THE. 22 October. Cable, V. (2010). ‘The role of science, research and innovation in creating growth’ Speech by the Secretary of State, 8 September. London, Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

  6. 6.

    http://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/join-athena-swan/ This scheme has now been extended to other disciplines.

  7. 7.

    http://www.ref.ac.uk/equality/

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  1. London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Carole Leathwood

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  1. Carole Leathwood
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Correspondence to Carole Leathwood .

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  1. University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

    Heather Eggins

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Leathwood, C. (2017). Women Academic Researchers: Still Interlopers in the UK Academy?. In: Eggins, H. (eds) The Changing Role of Women in Higher Education. The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42436-1_12

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