The under-representation of women in senior academic leadership positions in the academy is a global phenomenon. Analysis of the New Zealand 2012 Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) round shows that men graded A and B in the PBRF are three times more likely to be professor than women with the same PBRF grade (in press, Brower & Menclova). The data from the following PBRF round in 2018 are yet to be released. However, publication of 2017 data on the shape of the tertiary education sector workforce show that women comprise 50 percent of the academic cohort but only 26 percent of all professors and Deans from the eight New Zealand universities (2018, Ministry of Education). The New Zealand university sector is a relatively strong higher education sector, with several of the universities and their associated faculties historically featuring in various global metrics and rankings, but the sector is yet to embrace gender equity. Our research focuses on the lived realities of this iniquitous landscape through the stories of senior academic women. The paper draws on interviews undertaken by the authors in a comparative project on women in academic leadership and management positions in Denmark and New Zealand. The focus in this paper is on the New Zealand interviews that were conducted from 2016 and 2018 with ten women in positions of academic leadership at three of the eight universities in the North and South Islands. The interviewees comprised four Associate Professors and six professors. Of the six professors, at the time of the interviews, two were Head of School, one was a Pro-Vice Chancellor, and one was the head of a research institute. Our analysis of these interviews showed some weaknesses in solely intersectional or structural ways to explain the gendered university. Instead, we opt for the metaphor of a fugue in which structure and agency, intersectionality and structuration, individual identity and group characteristics work in polyphony in ways that both shape academic career trajectories and are ‘played’ by the women themselves. The intention of the paper is to outline our methodological approach with the fugue and to draw attention to four ‘themes’ drawn from our interviewees that we see as critical in the complex and polyphonous context of women’s academic lives as they seek to make value in a landscape laden with structural challenges and individual potentiality.

Brower, A., & Menclova, A. (in press). Does the relationship between research performance and academic rank differ by gender in New Zealand universities? New Zealand Economic Papers. Ministry of Education. (2018). Structure, age and ethnic profiles of the tertiary education workforce in 2017. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary_education_all/structure-of-the-tertiary-education-workforce-in-2017