Women in Academic Leadership: Professional Strategies, Personal Choices (review)

Women in Academic Leadership, the second volume in the Women in Academe series, provokes readers to think critically about the gendered nature of academic leadership. The contributing authors to this edited collection describe "formidable barriers" (p. 209) and empirically grounded explanations of hurdles to women's advancement. They identify specific contexts (i.e., faith-based colleges) that pose unique challenges and offer pragmatic tips and "advice from the field" on how women might further their careers through specific actions.

This volume illuminates the distinctive problems for women in a gendered organizational hierarchy, how women make personal choices that often involve sacrifice above and beyond those required of their male counterparts, and how through personal choices individuals have the potential to assert agency. This approach is empowering and motivating. The thoughtful, first-person reflections and advice offered in this book have the promise of being recipes for success.

For instance, Yolanda Moses, in Chapter 8, draws on her lived experiences as an African American woman leader in higher education. After summarizing the paltry numbers of women of color in, or even making progress toward, academic leadership, Moses imparts useful strategies that guided her career, including choosing the right starting point, building networks and finding mentors, knowing when to say no (advice I cannot hear often enough!), and taking calculated risks.

Others amplify her advice. Lorraine Sloma-Williams, Sharon McDade, Rosalyn Richman, and Page Morahan (Chapter 3), through their exploration of the role of self-efficacy in the development of women leaders, consider how a fellowship program for women contributes to increasing self-efficacy beliefs. Caroline Viernes Turner and Janelle Kappes (Chapter 7) also offer evidence about the potential of professional development programs (specifically, HERS and ACE), to provide career mentoring experiences in academic leadership for women, particularly for women of color. Diane Dean (Chapter 6) presents ample data from her empirical work supporting the necessity and value of mentoring for women "to overcome the gender inequities and unequal opportunities" (p. 130).

But in reading this book, we must be cautious to avoid reifying a myth of meritocracy, which can be phrased: If each woman just works hard enough, finds the right mentor, acquires the necessary professional development, and keeps her nose to the proverbial grindstone, she will get ahead. Countless have. Yet the structures that (re)produce "inequality as a result" remain resistant to change. Leadership, as Pamela Eddy describes (in Chapter 1), is typically defined in masculine terms, and organizational culture continues to view and define women as "outsiders," or what Judith McLaughlin views as analogous to "alien tissue that is rejected, like an unsuccessful graft" (quoted in Rita Bornstein, p. 215). Bornstein summarizes: Women, then, "must work harder to achieve a good fit" (p. 215), placing an exceptional burden on women to assess culture to determine that "good fit."

Women continue to be coached to change and adapt, to "graft" successfully onto "the body" of the organization. Yet the culture, the organization, and its practices remain largely unchanged. Picking up on Dean, Bracken, and Allen's use of the symphony metaphor (p. 249) in their concluding chapter, we could take a page from the music industry.

Frannie Kelley (2010) cites an NPR survey of women musicians, highlighting the challenges they faced as they sought to break into and gain recognition in a male-dominated industry. In addition to identifying individual actions the women took in the face of sexism ("to downplay my femininity"), the music industry adopted the practice of screens behind which they performed auditions (Talk of the Nation, 2010). These screens came into use in the 1970s to help address racial disparities in orchestra jobs, but they've led to a significant increase in the percentage of women getting those jobs—as high as 30% (Goldin & Rouse, 2000).

Such a strategy may seem impossible to adopt in higher education (how would one hire a provost from a blind audition?); and while...