This symposium unites scholars from Europe, Australia and Latin America to discuss what constitutes challenges and possibilities for leadership in the academy from diverging gender and feminist perspectives. It is the point of entry that leadership can make a positive difference in terms of the academic communities we build, the forms of practices that are nurtured and the degrees of social and epistemic diversity. Research suggests that gender equality in academia and academic leadership have not yet been achieved, despite countless investments in women’s career development and equity programs (e.g. Blackmore & Sawers 2015). This speaks, on the one hand, to the socio-cultural and deeply institutionalized gendered contracts that make change difficult. It speaks, on the other hand, to women not liking what they are being asked to lead. More particularly, it has been suggested that women do not like the neoliberalised academy and the managerial scripts they are forced to perform when entering leadership positions (e.g. Morley & Crossouard 2016). Simultaneously, the agendas for furthering gender equality in academic leadership tend to be problematic, in that they place too much emphasis on body counts and too little emphasis on values, and the policy architecture. Quantitative change is no guarantee of gender-sensitive leadership practices that counter neoliberalism or further diversity and equality.

This symposium brings together global scholars to consider what contributes to the reproduction of gender and intersecting forms of inequality in leadership, and how we might imagine alternative futures. This involves discussing what feminist leadership is or could be. Challenging neoliberalism and rethinking leadership are central for ensuring a more inclusive and diverse academia in terms of people and ways-of-knowing.

The first of the four papers presented here foregrounds why it is so difficult to make change. Julie Rowlands and Jill Blackmore draw on the theory and concepts of Pierre Bourdieu together with critical and feminist organisational analysis to explore resistance to change within higher education and the shifts that need to occur to move towards gender equality in academia and academic leadership.

The second paper, by Kirsten Locke and Sue Wright, explores the interplay of agency and structure, intersectionality and structuration, individual identity and group characteristics, through the musical metaphor of the ‘four part fugue.’ The authors unpack the polyphony of women’s leadership experiences, and seek to identify how women’s leadership is, on the one hand shaped within powerful institutions and structures, and on the other hand, how these are being ‘picked up’ and ‘played’ by the women.

The third paper, by Ana Luisa Munoz, focuses on women’s position in terms of research leadership and the value ascribed to their knowledge production and commitments. The paper addresses how policies of knowledge and gender become discursively negotiated by policy makers and research unit managers. Munoz engages critically with the ways in which these discourses construct a homogenous image of women’s experience and problems, as well as establish hierarchies and divisions between the subject and object of knowledge.

Finally, the fourth paper, by Louise Morley and Rebecca Lund, seeks to move beyond impediments to equity and diversity, to find out how women (re)imagine another university and leadership in it.  They argue that while some women are flourishing as leaders in the global academy, many are  misrecognised and rejected. However, women are also rejecting what they consider an unattractive career option. Morley and Lund suggest that rather than focusing on counting more women into existing highly masculinised and patriarchal systems and structures, there is an urgent need to fashion a new political imaginary and re-vision leadership to create and sustain gender-free universities.

Blackmore, J. & Sawers, N. (2015) 'Executive power and scaled-up gender subtexts in Australian entrepreneurial universities' Gender & Education 27(3), 320-337. Morley, L. & Crossouard, B. (2016) 'Gender in the neoliberalised global academy: the affective economy of women and leadership in South Asia' British Journal of Sociology of Education 37(1), 149-168.