It has long been established that neoliberal reforms and restructuring of higher education and higher educational organisations - in order to cater for the global knowledge economy - have reshaped the ways in which women negotiate the dilemmas they face in leadership and managerial roles in universities (e.g. Blackmore & Sachs 2007; Blackmore 2010). While these studies are very valuable, we still need to understand the diverging forms that gendered social relations take in different contexts - hence, the complex dynamics between local, national and transnational historical, social and political processes. For that purpose, ethnographic explorations of the situated experiences of everyday life, constitute a valuable approach. This paper draws on theories of feminist intersectionality (Søndergaard 2005a; Søndergaard 2005b; Staunæs 2003; Staunæs & Søndergaard 2011; Davies 2008; Collins 1998 ) to ask what constitutes the nature of gendered and intersecting social relations of academic leadership within two rather different socio-political contexts.  The study is based on in-depth ethnographic interviews with female academic leaders within faculties of Science and faculties of Humanities in a number of regional and metropolitan universities in New Zealand and Denmark. We explore how they negotiate their managerial practice with discourses, subject positions and forms of power related to gender, disciplinary position/particularities, class, age/generation, sexuality, ethnicity and English language proficiency.  

At the forefront of the paper will be reflexive engagement with the complex dynamics of producing ethnographic data and interviews on gender and intersectionality ( e.g. Okely 1992; Okely & Callaway 1992; England 1994; Davies 1999). We reflect upon how the diverging subject positions of the authors, leads to the production of particular types of knowledge. We also reflect on how the differences in the dynamics between researchers and research participant, as well as the particularities of working culture,  allow for different degrees of reflexive awareness of and openness about the struggles of negotiating gender and intersectionality, as well as working life and private life within contemporary academia.

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