EMPLOYMENT
one-third and one-half of positions available respectively. Less than 5 per cent of universities worldwide are run by women. Based on the data from North America, Australia, New Zealand and Poland it can be concluded that women are particularly affected by casualisation trends. Women are far more likely to hold part-time positions, and when they do hold a full time position they are more likely to be off the tenure tracks. The gender pay-gap in the EU, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand ranges between 13 and 25 per cent and notable differences are apparent between different fields of science, where the widest gender gap exists in engineering and the applied sciences, but is also closely followed by social sciences.
Women in the union movement The way in which women or female issues are included in collective bargaining procedures varies greatly between unions in different countries. The variations depend on trade union structures, as well as national regulations on collective bargaining. Most unions describe gender issues as a high priority within their trade union, noting issues around the gender pay-gap, employment status, working conditions and promotion criteria in particular. A number of unions also identified bullying, harassment and chauvinist cultures as important issues already being tackled by them or as emerging areas that need further attention. Most unions collect, monitor or publish gender-sensitive data. However they also indicate that the data is collected on a very limited scale. Gender-sensitive impact assessment is only used by a few unions. Disturbingly, the report found some unions seemed not to have any procedures or measures by which female issues and women
are involved in collective bargaining in a formal or informal way. Within other unions, in most cases, women are members in committees involved in collective bargaining, whether by means of a formal or informal procedure.
Assessing higher education issues through the prism of gender Numerous trends affecting higher education globally have been identified in various research exercises. Some have also been prioritised over others by different international governmental and non-governmental organisations (e.g. the trend in decreasing public funding for higher education and research). Nonetheless, not many of these trends are discussed or analysed through the prism of gender. Recent analyses of some higher education issues (e.g. brain drain) show that women may be affected in different ways to men, therefore a further development of gender-sensitive impact assessments would prove useful.
Conclusion The study found that while progress has been made in tracking enrolment of female students, much remains to be done in terms of data collection on women in teaching and research in higher education. In this respect, the report recommends that efforts in this area be increased, and that frameworks be developed to collect comparable, gender-segregated data on the status of academic staff, in particular with reference to tenure, pay and progression through the hierarchical rank of the academia. ď š Photo: Women@QM Project, www.womenatqm.qmul.ac.uk vol.18, September 2010
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