Sweden is among the countries with the highest per cent of women university Vice Chancellors in Europe. In She Figures 2012 the average proportion of female Vice Chancellors in the 27 European Union countries is estimated to be 10 per cent. In Sweden the number is much higher: 43 per cent. Swedish higher education management has witnessed a demographic feminization during the last 20 years. Which factors can explain that women have been so successful in gaining access to these senior management positions in Swedish academia? This paper discusses the demographic feminization, drawing on qualitative interviews with women in senior academic positions in Swedish higher education. The paper suggests that women’s position in higher education management can be analysed using the concept “glass cliff”. This metaphor describes a phenomenon when women are more likely to be appointed to precarious leadership roles in situations of turbulence and problematic organizational circumstances. The findings illustrate that women have been allowed to enter into senior academic management at the same time as these positions decline in status, merit and prestige and become more time-consuming and harder to combine with a successful scholarly career.
The analysis in this article draws on interviews with managers and employees in the Swedish IT consultant sector, a sector characterized by widespread redundancies in the first three years of the 21 st century. The article suggests that the interviewees' distinction between and assessment of workers of value and workers without value to justify and explain these lay-offs, are permeated by stereotyped images of gendered qualities and reflect a gendered work ideal. As the interviewees argued, not everybody had the necessary and valued competence of an ideal consultant and those who failed to fulfil the requirements of an ideal consultant were subsequently laid off. Since the behaviour, qualities, technical skills and knowledge considered necessary for the effective and competent performance of an ideal IT consultant are associated with hegemonic masculinity, male qualities and men's experiences, these arguments justify the exclusion of women from this occupation.
This article reports from the first studies on voluntary childlessness in Sweden and addresses a so far neglected issue -the embodied experiences of childfree women. These childfree women reject and resist pronatalist understandings that conflate being a woman with being a mother. However, instead of explaining their childlessness by external factors, mentioned in previous research, the interviewed women created a positive feminine identity separated from motherhood with reference to their 'silent bodies', i.e. bodies without a biological urge to reproduce. Reducing voluntary childlessness to a mere result of biological determinism, the article argues, establishes a legitimate, natural position, less provocative and stigmatized in a pronatalist society. Nevertheless, paradoxically, drawing on biological determinism both challenges and reinstates pronatalism as it builds on the simultaneous acceptance of, and detachment from, the biological reproductive urge. The study hence highlights how persistent the social and cultural link between motherhood and womanhood is, but also how this relationship can be challenged.
Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, this article highlights the increasing proportion of women in senior academic management positions in Swedish higher education between 1990 and 2010. The article uncovers some of the factors that account for women's successful entrance into these positions. According to 22 interviewed female senior academic managers, the implementation of a gender mix policy was vital in explaining the decreasing male-domination. However, the women also expressed some concerns about the consequences of how the gender mix policy was applied. The article takes these concerns as a point of departure for a critical evaluation of how successful the policy is in promoting gender equality on a structural level.
IntroductionThis article draws on the results of a study about women in senior management positions in Swedish higher education during the last two decades. The study aimed to answer two questions, one quantitative and one qualitative:
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