Introduction to special issue on gender and leadership and a future research agenda

Despite the feminisation of universities in terms of their student intake [1,2], formal positions of academic leadership in higher education remain concentrated in male hands. Thus, for example, in the EU, 79 per cent of those in (Grade A) professorial positions in higher educational institutions (HEIs) are men, as are 79 per cent of those in the most senior leadership position of Rector/President/Vice Chancellor [3]. Little attention is paid by HEIs to the masculinisation of leadership in higher education, although this lack of diversity is seen as inhibiting research innovation [4]; limiting economic growth [5]; while research on business contexts [6] suggests that it is unhelpful in terms of governance, sustainability and the utilization of talents, however defined. It is also of course a social justice issue since in open competitive educational systems women are typically the high educational achievers, although they are under-represented in formal leadership positions globally. Since horizontal segregation continues to exist at academic staff level in HEIs in Western Society, women’s under-representation in leadership positions has implications for the normalisation of gendered constructions of valued knowledge.