Conference Agenda

Universities have become increasingly complex places with the growth in the number and diversity of the student body and the accompanying expansion of staff teaching and researching in universities globally (Marginson, 2016). Institutions like those in the UK, that are the starting point for the research in these four symposium papers, are increasingly characterised by the diversity of their students in terms of, for example, their class, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, nationalities, religions, first languages and (dis)abilities: although there are hierarchies, relating to different forms of access, learning experience and outcomes that also relate to their backgrounds and experiences (McLean et al, 2019) The same hierarchies exist between academic staff who do the teaching and research: those with different backgrounds, experiences and characteristics have different contracts, experiences, outcomes and relationships with universities when considered as a group (Courtois and O’Keefe, 2019). Hence, we argue that higher education research requires theoretical lenses that capture this complexity and propose that the concept of intersectionality, whilst often a hotly contested idea, is useful for consideration and further development (Museus, 2011).

The symposium begins with a short introduction and a brief discussion of the concept of intersectionality and its use in higher education research.

The first paper in this symposium by Andrea Abbas illustrates the value of 6 composite characters as ways of representing and presenting a theorised intersectional analysis of 14 diverse national and international academics in social sciences and humanities over a period of 11 years.

The second paper by Gihan Ismail reports findings from a qualitative study on the experiences of 22 Arab international doctoral students and 6 British supervisors in UK universities and highlights the importance of her intersectional analysis to the significance of managing difference (Zanoni et al., 2010) because it captures the implications of the gendered portrayals of international students with regard to how knowledges from students host countries are marginalised and epistemic injustices arise from this.

The third paper by Jie Gao examines the importance of an intersectional approach to examining how UK educated and domestic educated Chinese apply their professional knowledge in Law and IT in Chinese workplace. It brings out the issue of gender inequality and discrimination and regional differences in these. Participants from my research argue that gender representations and gender roles are not only influencing their social identities, but they intersect with national profession-related stereotypes in China which have significant influence on participants’ formation of their professional identity.

The fourth paper by Sally Hewlett analyses the experience of academics providing support for students with disabilities. It captures aspects of the global rise in the numbers of students declaring a disability and how policy decisions in the UK, confer the responsibility for inclusive practice on to individual universities. Individual lecturers who are first point of contact for students with disabilities, play a key role in their support and are central to the delivery of disability policies in higher education such as an “inclusive teaching and practice” agenda (Disabled Student Sector Leadership Group, 2017, p.3). This work falls disproportionately on women who themselves have intersecting identities.

The discussion of these papers at the end of the symposium focuses on the whether intersectionality is a valuable concept and its role in gendered, feminist and other higher education research.

DThe aim of the research was to explore whether individual academics ways of making decisions and enacting their careers was changing in the light of an increased marketisation of the system following a move to a fully-fees driven humanities and social science sector in English Universities in the UK and how this interacted with the various aspects of the intersecting identities of academics. Our participants were diverse in terms of social class of origin, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, nationality and in other characteristics; as well as in relation to biographical experience and an intersectional lens drove our conception of the project and the analysis. One of the strengths of biographical studies is that they allow for the holistic study of individuals that offer nuance and allow us to explore how the lived experience of specific intersecting identities interact across life events and experience and educational contexts to produce emergent outcomes in particular ways (Merrill, 2015). However, with the academics we studied, presenting participants in this holistic way would reveal details that would identify participants. Consequently, the decision has been made to do the analysis in such a way that it has generated 7 composite characters that aim to capture the key themes in the data and illustrate and substantiate the theorisation of the study: which engages with Margaret Archers (2008, 2012) notion of different types of reflexive and a morphogenic society and also engages with understandings derived from theories of embodiment; emotions; time, space and place. The underpinning methodological ideas and concepts for generating the characters from the data draw upon the work of Kip Jones, Gail Crimmins and others who have utilised more artistic and creative methodologies within the social sciences.

Archer, M. 2007. Making our Way Through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, M. 2012. The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Merrill, Barbara. "Determined to Stay or Determined to Leave? A Tale of Learner Identities, Biographies and Adult Students in Higher Education." Studies in Higher Education 40.10 (2015): 1859-872. Web.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of gender in studying the internationalisation of doctoral education and understand the challenges of ‘gendering’ identities which may contribute to perpetuating global epistemic inequalities. Gender here refers to the socially constructed characteristics, associated with norms, behaviours and roles, attached to a gender identity. The sheer research on the intersection between gender and the internationalisation of higher education has been focused on gender inequalities, particularly centred on the professional profile of female academics and early-career researcher (Ackers, 2004; Vabø et al., 2014; Nikunen & Lempiäinen, 2020), and the general under-representation and lack of support for productivity and collaborationin the internationalisation process of higher education (Aiston & Jung, 2015; Huang et al., 2020; Kwiek & Roszka, 2020). However, studying gender within doctoral education setting does not attract equal attention and gender studies have shown little interest in exploring the role gendered identities plays in the narratives of internationalised doctoral education, specifically those related to the pedagogical encounters between doctoral supervisors and international students, in British and European universities. There is an evident gap in this area of research.

Ackers, L. (2004). Managing relationships in peripatetic careers: Scientific mobility in the European Union. Women’s Studies International Forum, 27, 189-201. Aiston, S. J., & Jung, J. (2015). Women academics and research productivity: An international comparison. Gender and Education, 27(3), 205-220. Huang, J., Gates, A. J., Sinatra, R., & Barabási, A. L. (2020). Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(9), 4609-4616. Kwiek, M., & Roszka, W. (2020). Gender disparities in international research collaboration: A study of 25,000 university professors. Journal of Economic Surveys, 1–37. Nikunen, M., & Lempiäinen, K. (2020). Gendered strategies of mobility and academic career. Gender and Education, 32(4), 554-571. Vabø, A., Padilla-González, L., Waagene, E., & Næss, T. (2014). Gender and faculty internationalization. In F. Huang, M. Finkelstein, & M. Rostan (Eds.), The internationalization of academy. Changes, realities, and prospects. New York: Springer. Zanoni, P., Janssens, M., Benschop, Y., & Nkomo, S. (2010). Guest editorial: Unpacking diversity, grasping inequality: Rethinking difference through critical perspectives. Organization, 17(1), 9–29.

Comparatively China has one of the longest maternity leave policy: 158 days for women over the age of 24 in most areas and 188 days in areas such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. However, these maternity leaves are fully paid by employers without government aid. As the Chinese government are now promoting two-child and even three-child policies, the potential financial burden causes employers to see unmarried female employee as “ticking time bombs that will blow up twice” (Wang, 2021). Furthermore, employers believe female with children would not or could not focus on work, a subjective reason for employers to implicitly or even explicitly reject female for intensive and professional position (CCG, 2022; CCG, 2017). While women are the most direct victims of such policies and perceptions, men are not free from unjust expectations. It was not uncommon for single male participants to be called ‘unreliable’, ‘rootless’ because they do not have a family to ‘tie them down’, and participants who are employers believe that married employers are more stable and ‘have more to lose’, indications of a socially enforced sense of assumed responsibility. While stereotypical gender roles influence access and advancement, gender representations affect what is considered appropriate behaviour in a professional setting. Employers and clients associate professional characteristics with gender representations, limiting various forms and ways professional knowledge can or should be applied in different situation (Ko et al., 2020). In the case of lawyers, male lawyers are expected to express strong-will, hawkish approach whereas female lawyers are expected to be the gentle, soft-voiced character that can ‘charm’ their counterparts instead of someone who can build a comprehensive argument. Under such policies, gender representations and gender roles, professionals in China are facing complex and unique challenges when building their professional identities. This paper discusses how participants from my research encounter, perceive and attempt to tackle these challenges.

CCG, 2017. 21 shiji zhongguo liuxue renyuan zhuangkuang lanpishu [21st century Chinese overseas students status]. CCG, 2022. Chongguo liuxue fazhan baogao (2020~2021)[Chinese overseas education development annual report]. Ko, P., Leung, C. and Chan, B., 2020. Zhongguo laodongli shichang de jiekouxing wenti [structural issues in Chinese labour market]. Zixun, keji yu shehuixue, 2. Wang, Y., 2021. “Take Maternity Leave and You’ll Be Replaced”. Human Rights Watch [Online]. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/01/take-maternity-leave-and-youll-be-replaced/chinas-two-child-policy-and-workplace [Accessed 30 January 2023].

This paper explores the additional influence of intersecting gender identities on the systems of support for students with disabilities. The literature shows that the institutional responsibilities for disability that have fallen on individual academics are in the context of insecure and sometimes unsafe working conditions. In the UK an average of over fifty percent of academics were reported to be working in ‘precarious’ employment conditions, such as short term, low paid contracts with an average of twenty-five percent of teaching staff being hourly paid (UCU, 2018). As academic work, including the support of an increasing number of students with disabilities, has become more precarious it has also become feminized where women are more likely to be in teaching and administrative work rather than in more prestigious research roles (Courtois and O’Keefe, 2019) and therefore more likely to find themselves as the first point of contact for students with disabilities. As teachers, women are more likely to be designing and delivering units (Courtois and O’Keefe, 2019) and are therefore also more likely to be responsible for delivering on the inclusive teaching policy and for providing reasonable adjustments to individual students. Women teachers are also “more likely to be on a fixed-term contract, zero hours contract and/or an hourly paid contract” (UCU, 2021 p.14). This precarity means they less likely to be given allocated time for training on supporting students with disabilities or receive support from senior staff. This paper raises important questions in relation to gender in recent changes in policy and of the gendered provision of support for students with disabilities.

Courtois, A., O'Keefe, T., 2019, '‘Not one of the family’: Gender and precarious work in the neoliberal university.' Gender, Work and Organization, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 463-479. Disabled Student Sector Leadership Group, 2017. Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education as a route to Excellence. London: Department for Education. Available from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/att achment_data/file/587221/Inclusive_Teaching_and_Learning_in_Higher_Educa tion_as_a_route_to-excellence.pdf [Accessed 22 December 2021]. University and College Union, 2018. Precarious education: how much university teaching is being delivered by hourly-paid academics? [Online]. London: University and College Union. Available from: http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/9258/uni-teaching-by-hp-staff-march2018/pdf/uniteachingbyhpstaffmarch2018 [Accessed 23 January 2022]. University and College Union, 2021. Precarious work in higher education. Insecure contracts and how they have changed over time. [Online]. London: University and College Union. Available from: https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/10899/Precarious-work-in-higher-education-Oct-21/pdf/UCU_precarity-in-HE_Oct21.pdf.