Australian academic women and promotion since 1975: patriarchal equilibrium?

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dc.contributor.authorBarclay, K.
dc.contributor.authorMoore, V.
dc.contributor.authorPapadelos, P.
dc.contributor.authorBlack, P.
dc.date.issued2025
dc.descriptionOnlinePubl. Available online 22 July 2025
dc.description.abstractFrom the mid-twentieth century, women took up academic roles in Australian universities in growing numbers, initially concentrated at lower levels. We review the Australian literature on academic women and promotion from 1975 onwards, mapping the evolving explanations for women’s status within universities, approaches to gender equity, and wider sectoral transformations. Strong gender equity initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s were diffused, subordinated to masculine merit criteria within the increasingly corporatised and managerial university. Across these decades, we explore the experiences of promotion through oral histories with 44 retired academic women. These accounts illuminate the contradictory gains and losses of academic women as transparency of the promotion process improved while other structural changes made academic work harder. Women typically did not avoid promotion or delay applying. Frequently, women recounted not being promoted in a given round (but often being successful a year later); some presented the process as fair, but more often it was described as an emotionally difficult and unjust experience, which affected relationships with colleagues and the institution. Through promotion, women conformed to the expectations of the institution, at least on paper, but many also retained a counter-balancing sense of themselves and their scholarship as transcending shifting institutional benchmarks.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityKatie Barclay, Vivienne Moore, Pam Papadelos, Prudence Black
dc.identifier.citationWomen's History Review, 2025; 1-26
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/09612025.2025.2524990
dc.identifier.issn0961-2025
dc.identifier.issn1747-583X
dc.identifier.orcidBarclay, K. [0000-0002-5112-907X]
dc.identifier.orcidMoore, V. [0000-0001-9505-6450]
dc.identifier.orcidPapadelos, P. [0000-0002-6678-830X]
dc.identifier.orcidBlack, P. [0000-0001-8493-2830]
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2440/148059
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherTaylor and Francis Group
dc.relation.granthttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT230100207
dc.rights© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
dc.source.urihttps://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2025.2524990
dc.subjectWomen; academic identity; promotion; gender equity; emotions
dc.titleAustralian academic women and promotion since 1975: patriarchal equilibrium?
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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