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There is a common presumption, both within and outside the higher education community, that as bastions of innovation and consideration of ideas and people on their merits, colleges and universities must be at the leading edge of efforts to implement equitable employment practices in their own organizations. Unfortunately the data on gender equity in academic employment do not support this presumption. In the context of a broader discussion about equity, this report provides the most recent data on women’s employment status as faculty members and academic leaders. It reviews various explanations for the inequities that persist, and argues for a renewed commitment to change. 

The reality on campuses all around the country is clear: women make up a majority of the students in American colleges and universities. In fall 2009, women comprised 57 percent of undergraduate enrollment and 59 percent of graduate enrollment (Knapp, et al., 2011). And as figure 1 indicates, it is projected that this year women will earn the majority of degrees at U.S. institutions, at each level of award. The increase in the proportion of degrees earned by women has been especially dramatic for first professional degrees such as those in law and medicine, rising from only 3 percent in 1960-61 to a projected 51 percent this year. The shift to a predominantly female student body has been dramatic enough that the American Council on Education’s report Gender Equity in Higher Education: 2006 echoed most reports on higher education with its focus on students and the implicit question “Where are the men?” (King, 2006)1

What should be a corollary question has received less attention, however: when these high- achieving women students look around campus for faculty mentors and role models, what do they find? The answer by and large is that progress for women into the most prestigious (and well-paid) positions in academia has lagged far behind the advances experienced by women students. This section documents trends in academic employment gender equity, for faculty members, graduate student employees, and college presidents. 

Mentoring schemes in higher education tend to share common goals including the socialisation of employees into the organisational culture and provision of support for career development.

Common in higher education, peer mentoring schemes are used to support new employees in the development of task and relationship effectiveness. Shapiro et al (1978) define a peer mentor as a mentor at the same level as the mentee with whom to share information and strategy, and provide mutual support for mutual benefit (Woodd, 1997). The lack of hierarchy in peer mentoring facilitates the communication and collaboration that is necessary for effective learning, enabling the information sharing, emotional support and friendship that may be critical for a new member of staff when settling into a new role (Kram and Isabella, 1985; Smith, 1990).

Most mentoring for the purpose of career development in higher education takes place informally. Historically the most common type of mentoring occurs when a senior colleague selects a junior member of staff to sponsor or coach, and enables exposure to various work opportunities and influential individuals. In informal mentoring, relationships emerge largely through mutual initiation and ongoing connections between mentee and mentor (Ragins and Cotton, 1991), with mentor and mentee spontaneously forming a relationship with the purpose of assisting the mentee in developing career-relevant skills (Kram, 1985). Uniquely to informal mentoring, relationships occur over time without external intervention, planning or management by an institution (Egan and Song, 2008).

Formal mentoring is often instigated and led by internal organisational facilitators. As noted by Ehrich et al (2004) some formal mentoring schemes may require participation in introductory sessions and ongoing training whereas others do not; mentors are assigned to mentees in some programmes yet in other programmes the mentee selects the mentor; some programmes designate the location, duration and frequency of meetings between mentor and mentee, whereas others leave it to the participants. Although there has been an increase in the use of formal mentoring programmes, the facilitation of such programmes can vary greatly in nature, focus, goals, structure and outcomes. Single and Muller (2001) highlight varying levels of facilitation in formal mentoring schemes, from low-level- facilitated mentoring programmes that do not provide support for the mentoring pair beyond matching them and providing introductory information, to high-level-facilitated programmes involving ongoing support throughout the programme to strengthen the mentoring relationship and accomplish specific goals. 

Mentoring – when a more experienced individual (not necessarily more senior) supports a colleague to enhance their learning and development – has been shown to benefit mentees, mentors and institutions, and can be widely used to address
the underrepresentation of women in senior positions in higher education.

The historical model of informal mentoring, most predominantly used by men, is being adapted and complemented by formal mentoring programmes to provide equal career advancement opportunities and support for women. Evaluation of existing programmes in higher education shows that among academic mentees, mentoring has contributed to career development in areas of research, publications and promotion, and provides a range of psychosocial benefits from the increased level of professional support.

This review highlights key factors for successful mentoring schemes including organisational support and resources, the need for clear goals and expectations (particularly in relation
to career advancement and frequency of contact), and the selection and matching of participants. It also highlights the importance of periodic monitoring and evaluation to take into account the longitudinal nature of mentoring, and enable greater understanding of the benefits for both mentors and mentees, as well as the positive impact such a scheme can have on the institution as a whole.

The majority of existing studies in higher education focus on mentoring for academics, however the findings will, in most cases, be transferable to professional and support staff. 

This paper discusses and comprehensively evaluates a mentoring scheme for junior female academ- ics. The program aimed to address the under-representation of women in senior positions by increasing participation in networks and improving women’s research performance. A multifaceted, longitudinal design, including a control group, was used to evaluate the success of mentoring in terms of the benefits for the women and for the university. The results indicate mentoring was very beneficial, showing that mentees were more likely to stay in the university, received more grant income and higher level of promotion, and had better perceptions of themselves as academics compared with non-mentored female academics. This indicates that not only do women themselves benefit from mentoring but that universities can confidently implement well-designed initiatives, knowing that they will receive a significant return on investment. 

Mentoring was introduced in 1998 to address the issue of gender inequality in senior academic positions in a university context. Mentoring was selected as a strategy to enhance the networking and research performance of women. Despite many mentoring schemes and evaluations reporting positive perceptions of mentoring, very few have conducted rigorous evaluations of the outcomes for participants. Hence, we aimed to provide a comprehensive, evidence-based study of the objective and subjective career outcomes of mentoring for a population of academic women. To achieve this, we utilised a control group consisting of those junior academic women not receiving mentoring, both pre- and post-test measures, and a longitudinal design spanning 7 years.

An analysis of the objective career outcomes revealed that the mentees were more likely to stay at the university than the controls. Given the high costs of recruiting university staff, this is a significant benefit for the university. However, we are unsure of the reasons for controls leaving and, indeed, they may have left to further their careers. Mentees also had a higher rate of promotion; 68% of mentees had been promoted at least once since the commencement of the scheme compared with 43% of the controls. This is in line with previous research, which found a correlation between mentoring and promotion. This finding is also possibly reflected in data produced by DEST regarding the representation of women in senior positions across all Australian universities; our university is ranked third out of 42 universities in the change in representation of academic women in senior levels, with an increase of approximately 15% in the period 1996 to 2003. This high rate of change may, in part, be due to the high rate of promotion to senior levels achieved by the mentees. In summary, the evidence suggests that mentoring, when implemented in a format such as we have used, is an effective means of improving gender equality in academic positions within universities. 

In December 2008, the Equality and Human Rights Commission commissioned the Institute for Women’s Policy Research to examine the impact of the UK ‘Right to Request, and Duty to Consider, Flexible Working’ on gender equality and the access to quality flexible working for both men and women. It was asked specifically to compare this with the impact of flexible working statutes in other countries. Of particular interest are the experiences of countries such as Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands where flexible working rights are open to all employees and are not, as in the UK, targeted at employees with childcare or care-giving responsibilities. The review further assesses employers’ experience with flexible working laws and reviews policies and best practice initiatives aimed at encouraging the transformation of work.

KEY FINDINGS

Statutory approaches to workplace flexibility

The large majority of industrialised countries have some statutory regulations which make it easier for individual employees to change their working hours. Laws facilitating working time adjustments to attend education or training, or to retire gradually, are also common, but are not covered in detail in this report.

In the majority of countries, as in the UK, laws are specific to employees caring for their children or dependent adults. In many countries, this takes the form of part-time work during parental leave, an option not available to UK parents. Many countries also have a right to reduced hours for parents after parental leave.

Four countries provide a right to alternative work arrangements for all employees, irrespective of their reasons for seeking change. However, with the exception of the Netherlands, such universal rights are additional to flexible working rights for parents and carers.

A separate legal model has been used in Australia, where carers are a protected category under Human Rights Discrimination Law. In two states, New South Wales and Victoria, laws specify that employers have reasonably to accommodate requests from carers for alternative work arrangements. This principle has similarly been established through European and UK sex discrimination case law. 

Statutes elsewhere focus on the full-time/part-time dimension; the UK Right to Request includes how many hours an employee works and when and where they do so. Unlike in the UK, most statutes explicitly include rights to request an increase in working hours.

In all countries, employers may refuse flexible working requests on business grounds, but the UK 'soft' approach to flexible working, which does not allow a substantive challenge in court of employer business reasons for a refusal, is unique.

Access to flexible working in other countries is more likely to be governed by collective bargaining and workplace agreements than in the UK.

Access to flexible working in practice

Policy objectives for flexible working statutes differ

As in the UK, in many countries, flexible working statutes were introduced to increase labour force participation, particularly for mothers, and to address short-term and long- term labour shortages. Yet in many countries, such as Germany and France, laws were part of active labour market and work sharing measures and were introduced within a context of high unemployment.

Gender equality has not been the primary motivation for flexible working laws, with the exception of the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Denmark and Sweden have used tax and benefit policies, combined with extensive childcare provision, to encourage women’s return to full-time work; part-time work among mothers has fallen significantly.

Change to the availability of flexible working

The UK benefits from extensive trend data on flexible working. This is much less the case in other countries and makes cross country comparisons of the impact of different laws difficult. The latest available German data on the part-time law were collected while the German economy was still in recession.

Various UK surveys show that the availability of flexible work options has increased since the introduction of the Right to Request; that it has been successful in opening access to flexible working options which do not lead to a reduction in salary, such as flexitime; and that both men and women are requesting flexible working, although 

women are much more likely to make requests for childcare reasons. Part-timers have been particularly likely to (successfully) request flexible working.

Countries with universal rights to part-time work have not seen a higher take-up of flexible working from men than the UK. Where reduced hours work is available as part of parental or Sabbatical leave (as in Belgium), men are highly likely to choose a 20 per cent reduction; fathers who reduce hours for childcare reasons are also more likely to share other domestic work.

Gaps in knowledge

Despite the wealth of trend data on flexible working in the UK, there are several gaps: survey data are lacking on the nature or success rate of requests for flexible working from carers or from disabled people. No data are collected on requests for increased hours from part-timers, unlike in Germany and the Netherlands. Data suggest that men are less likely to make successful requests than women, but are too limited to indicate the reasons for this.

There are no data on the consequences of refused requests for flexible working, either for men or women. A Dutch survey found that following a refusal, three-quarters of employees left their job, and a fifth of those who stayed, performed worse. Likewise, there are little data on the consequences of a successful request (or indeed an unsuccessful one) in terms of level of seniority, career advancement, job content or pay.

Available research is ambivalent on the impact on the full-time/part-time pay gap, with some sources suggesting no change and others a slight narrowing. It is also not clear whether the Right to Request has been successful in reducing the need for those who want to cut their work hours to change jobs. At least one survey suggests that the large majority of returning mothers still change jobs when they want to move from full-time to part-time work.

Slow progress in managerial jobs

Employees in managerial jobs in all countries reviewed are less likely to request reduced hours, and when they do, they are less likely to succeed. Flexible working statutes are playing a role in changing this, but need to be supported by broader policy measures to challenge working time norms in senior positions.