Gendered management in Spanish universities: functional segregation among vice-rectors

Abstract

The reorganisation of higher education according to the marketplace logic – and framed within the process of Europeanisation and globalisation – has run parallel to a significant rise in the number of women in senior management positions at Spanish universities. This would seem to be a step to more gender equality. However, the analysis of the situation used thus far, based on conventional indicators, may be harbouring a not-so-egalitarian reality. Our approach studies the gender distribution of vice-rectors according to assigned functions in all forty-eight Spanish public universities offering both graduate and postgraduate studies. It does so by creating a typology to exemplify gendered divisions of labour within those positions. The results confirm an uneven gender distribution: women, although mostly in charge of caregiving and housekeeping functions, are underrepresented across the board in areas where strategic power resides and the future of university is decided and where, eventually, gender norms could be changed.