Women make up 65 per cent of the staff in Australian universities who do not perform academic work. While there is a growing body of research on women in senior management and the experiences of female academics in Australian universities, there is less literature on women working in the administrative stream, especially those in middle management. Using a national sample of 172 university female middle managers, the paper reports on issues for this under-researched cohort. Despite a prevailing Australian paradigm of equal opportunity and anti-discrimination, women commented on many instances of discrimination, masculine culture, inflexibility regarding their carer responsibilities, lack of recognition and opportunity and an academic/administrative divide that was gender inflected. A number of women also queried whether female managers should adopt masculine management styles. Despite indications from this research and the literature that gender issues are worse in other sectors, the numerous comments in this research paint a picture of continued male hegemony that devalues and marginalises administrative women's contribution in the management of Australian universities.

Gender implications of nationally competitive teaching awards were examined to determine whether women receive sufficient accolades, given their dominant position in university teaching. Quantitative methods and secondary data provided objective analysis of teaching awards for Australian universities, for an 18-year data set with 2046 units of analysis. Results indicate that women were over-represented in lower-level citations and under-represented in higher-level awards. Women did not dominate, particularly the highly prestigious Prime Minister’s award, where men constituted 65%. Policy and management implications include that universities could review the gender balance in their teaching award processes and set goals as internal support is a springboard to national awards. Groups of the same gender could be encouraged to work together at the highest levels to overcome individualistic, competitive barriers. National teaching award applications could be gender blind, at least for the higher levels. There are no clear trends towards a better gender balance, possibly because there has been a very limited gender spotlight on the awards at any level of policy and management.