Women Professors as Intellectual Leaders

Executive summary

Background

The study sought to analyse how women see their role as full professors at UK universities through autobiographical accounts of their intellectual and career histories. Whilst work has emerged in recent years on professors as leaders, there has been comparatively little research on how women professors define and practice their role as intellectual leaders. Women constitute just under 22 per cent of full professors in the UK and it is important to consider why this underrepresentation persists together with how those who have attained a professorial title define and practice their roles.

Aims and objectives

1. To analyse the ways in which women professors define and exercise their role as intellectual leaders locally, nationally and internationally

2. Build on conceptual understandings of the role of professors as intellectual leaders with particular reference to the work and identity of women academics

3. Support the Leadership Foundation's strategy entitled 'Catalysing Change' by generating materials and practical recommendations for action or implications for workforce development in universities

4.Influence development programmes and policies at the institutional level and wider debate at the national and international level concerning the role of women professors

5.Disseminate findings through publications and presentations at academic and professional forums

Research methods

Interviews were conducted with 30 (full) professors, including five men as a small comparison group. Professors participating in the project were drawn from nine universities including both research-intensive members of the Russell Group and more teaching-focused higher education institutions created since 1992. They further represented a balance of professors from both science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (ie STEM subjects) and non-STEM subjects.

Key findings

Women professors identified a series of personal qualities - resilience, confidence, negotiation and assertiveness – that are needed for both becoming and being a professor. They conceive the role of professor as reflecting a balance between a series of freedoms and responsibilities. Important freedoms include credibility, intellectual independence and the scope to define a personal research agenda whilst key balancing responsibilities included attracting funding, disseminating intellectual ideas widely in the public sphere and engaging in academic citizenship.

All professors, whether male or female, mainly define their main role in terms of academic knowledge production. However, women professors are more likely than male counterparts to additionally identify the academic citizenship role. Women professors working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subject areas, where females are most under-represented, felt a particular obligation to fulfil service roles. While these findings are indicative of the continuing effect of so-called ‘academic housework’ beyond lower ranked academic positions, the more rounded view of the professorial role supported by women should be seen as a positive and indicator of what all professors should do.

Resources and tools

The study includes five case studies designed to support the LFHE’s Catalysing Change strategy that focus on the activities of support groups for women academics. (see appendix 3 and the project website).

Recommendations

Universities need to pay more attention to defining the role of a professor beyond the criteria for becoming a professor. Understanding the professorial role in more comprehensive terms is critical in ensuring that women are not disadvantaged and professorial pay scales should transparently recognise and reward academic citizenship both internal and external to the university. If universities are serious about tackling the historic under-representation of women at the highest levels within the academy there is a need to ensure that reward and recognition criteria applied at professorial level is transparent, less dependent on tacit knowledge, and adequately reflects the importance of the academic citizenship role.