Using a Feminist Institutional perspective, and drawing on a wide range of evidence in different institutions and countries, this article identifies the specific aspects of the structure and culture of male-dominated higher educational organizations that perpetuate gender inequality. Gender inequality refers to the differential evaluation of women and men, and of areas of predominantly female and predominantly male employment. It is reflected at a structural level in the under-representation of women in senior positions and at a cultural level in the legitimacy of a wide range of practices to value men and to facilitate their access to such positions and to undervalue women and to inhibit their access. It shows that even potentially transformative institutional interventions such as Athena SWAN have had little success in reducing gender inequality. It highlights the need to recognize the part played by the ‘normal’ structures and culture in perpetuating gender inequality.

This article is concerned with the macro-cultural ideal or institutional myth of excellence as defined and used in the evaluation of academic staff as part of an institutional logic. Such logics ‘prescribe what constitutes legitimate behaviour and provide taken-for-granted conceptions of what goals are appropriate and what means are legitimate to achieve these goals’ as stated by Pache and Santos Insead. In the case study university, this logic is reflected in the identification of ostensibly objective, gender-neutral key performance indicators of excellence. Lamont suggests that evaluation is necessarily subjective. Drawing on 23 qualitative interviews with those involved in such evaluation, this article looks at variation in the definition of excellence and in the evaluative practices in decision-making fora. It raises questions about the implications of this for gender inequality and for the myth of excellence and ultimately for the legitimacy of the organisation.

The very close relationships (VCRs) of a sample of married women living in London are described using a new instrument (SESS) measuring self evaluation and social support. Only a third of the women had a `true' relationship (i.e., one characterized by a high level of interaction and intimate confiding) with someone identified as `very close' yet living outside the home. It is argued that recent research has failed to differentiate between those qualities of relationships which are actively supportive and those which simply reflect `a search for attachment' and that this is the source of the failure to find an association between social support and psychiatric state. In the current survey there is an association between- the type of VCR and both the respondents' positive evaluation of themselves and their psychiatric state. Such associations do not emerge when we look at the strength of the respondents' felt attachment. There is some suggestion that early loss of a father is associated with chronic anxiety and an inability to form a true VCR.

Global scholarship has documented gender discrepancies in power in higher education institutions (HEIs) for several decades. That research is now supported by wider gender equality movements such as those concerned with unequal pay and sexual harassment. Underlying these is the under-representation of women in senior management and full professorial positions. Thus, for example, in the US and the EU men make up the overwhelming majority of those in senior management (Rectors/Presidents/Vice Chancellors) and in full professorial positions. Variation within and across countries and types of institutions suggests that it is necessary to go beyond explanations for this at the individual level. Drawing on research in the sociology of education; higher education studies; management and leadership studies; gender studies; science and policy studies, and using quantitative data, experimental studies, individual case studies and comparative qualitative studies of HEIs, this article focuses on three discourses which legitimate the under-representation women in senior positions namely excellence, fit and national relevance. It evaluates interventions to deal with this including unconscious bias training, mentoring, gender mainstreaming interventions such as Athena SWAN and ADVANCE and ‘nudging’ leaders to end gender inequality. It concludes that a fundamental transformation of HEIs is required and suggests ways forward.

Gender-based violence and sexual harassment (GBVH) by and towards academics and students has been under-theorised at an organisational level in higher education institutions (HEIs). The methodology involves a critical review of the literature on GBVH and organizational responses to it, locating it in the context of an analysis of organizational power. The theoretical perspective involves a focus on power and workplace bullying. It identifies three power-related characteristics of academic environments which it is suggested facilitate GBVH: their male-dominant hierarchical character; their neoliberal managerialist ethos and gender/intersectional incompetent leadership which perpetuates male entitlement and toxic masculinities. These characteristics also inhibit tackling GBVH by depicting it as an individual problem, encouraging informal coping and militating against the prosecution of perpetrators. Initiating a discussion and action at organizational and state levels about GBVH as a power-related phenomenon, challenging the dominant neo-liberal ethos and the hierarchical character of HEIs, as well as reducing their male dominance and increasing the gender competence of those in positions of power are seen as initial steps in tackling the problem.

Excellence has become a ‘hoorah’ word which is widely used in higher education institutions to legitimate practices related to the recruitment/progression of staff. It can be seen as reflecting an institutionalised belief that such evaluative processes are unaffected by the social characteristics of those who work in them or their relationships with each other. Such views have been challenged by gender theorists and by those researching informal power in state structures. The purpose of this article is to raise the possibility that excellence is an ‘idealised cultural construct’ and a ‘rationalising myth’. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews with 67 men and women, who were candidates or evaluators in recruitment/progression processes in five higher educational institutions (in Ireland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Germany and Italy), it conceptualises and illustrates masculinist, relational and ‘local fit’ micro-political practices that are seen to affect such recruitment/progression. Variation exists by gender and by contextual positioning in the process (i.e. as evaluator/candidate). These practices illustrate the perceived importance of the enactment of informal power. The article suggests that the construct of excellence is used to obscure these practices and to maintain organisational legitimacy in the context of multiple stakeholders with conflicting expectations.