This article uses three frames of analysis, each with gendered implications, to interpret the author's narrative of experience as a department chair (head of department) in a Canadian university from 1999 to 2002. The narrative is based not only on memory but on transcripts of interviews conducted with the author at various points during her term as chair. The three frames are: (1) learning leadership; (2) surviving organisations; and (3) performing leadership. The methodology is an unusual one, a mix of personal narrative with theory and literature, an approach that demonstrates the relative merits of different theoretical perspectives when applied to an account of experience as well as the difficulty of settling on one ‘true’ analysis. Throughout the discussion, a ‘critical incident’ is repeated several times in slightly varied ways, in order to illustrate how different analytical frames can lead to different interpretations. The conclusion considers the implications of the analysis for understanding the gendered experience of academic leadership.

A considerable scholarship now describes the increasing neoliberalization of universities and the accompanying impacts on academic research and researchers. However, less attention has been devoted to issues of research project leadership, especially for academics with feminist commitments. This article reports results of a qualitative study of 12 senior academic women from 6 countries who are known for feminist research and explores how they pursue their projects in the context of contemporary changes and challenges. Rather than positioning faculty as passive participants, this study acknowledges their agency within institutional structures, albeit somewhat constrained. The results reveal the range of strategies employed by feminist researchers in various national contexts that enable them to maintain their critical focus despite increasing pressures to conform to neoliberal agendas.

This article reflects an interest in exposing links between women's academic work and the gender codes which organize and shape working life in the university context, both now and in the recent past, as a contribution to the sociology of women's work. Our specific focus is the gendered division of labour in teacher education in universities in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on a theoretical framework based on Bourdieu and McNay, and through an analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 19 women who worked in faculties of education between the 1960s and 1990s, we examine how the gendered division of labour has influenced the careers and working lives of women university teacher educators during those decades. Our data are organized under three themes: public and private lives; women's work/place; and talking back. We identify continuities and changes as well as qualifiers, ironies and paradoxes.

While Canada lacks explicit central directives towards research productivity, academics experience frequent and intense reviews of their research, teaching and service through mechanisms such as elaborate tenure and promotion procedures and annual performance reviews. Given that newer academics are sometimes thought to be especially susceptible to contemporary performativity pressures, this article considers seven early career academics (ECAs), interviewed as part of a larger qualitative study, and the nuances of their reactions to evaluative processes, especially the tenure review. On the whole, the ECAs create and deploy strategies to ensure that they meet ever-rising standards, because they love their work and believe they are ‘lucky’ to be on track to secure a permanent position. They hope for more freedom in ‘life after tenure’. However, all have trenchant criticisms of the corporatized university and the ways in which evaluation proceeds.

This article looks at a small group of women in Canadian faculties of education who hold what I call ‘lower-middle management’ positions and considers whether they are on the ladder to recognized academic leadership or are in a revolving-door situation that will take them back to the ranks from whence they came. These nine women are associate chairs, associate deans or coordinators. After a review of selected literature on women and academic leadership and a discussion of method, I analyze aspects of the participants' entry into the position, their experience while doing it and (where relevant) their exit. For most, the positions were stressful and did not attract them to leadership careers. The universities are losing out, too, by not preparing, helping or mentoring these dedicated and hard-working individuals.

This article looks at women’s efforts to construct an academic leadership career. It is not a study of women’s leadership in general but one that takes place in what Bourdieu calls the academic field. Drawing from an in‐depth interview study of 31 women from faculties of education who occupy managerial positions in universities in Canada, Australia or Britain, I focus on four contrasting case studies. For some women it is possible to build a satisfying academic leadership career, while for others, the surrounding contradictions encourage a more or less graceful end to leadership ambitions. I question the circumstances under which women attempting to construct academic leadership careers will be ‘fish in water’ or show a ‘feel for the game’, as well as the potential and problems of the game metaphor itself in this context.