The seminar was hosted by the Learning Lab at the Royal institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. Paricipants attended from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Poland and the UK. The purpose of the seminar was to:

• address the issues of "Women in HE" and "Institutional adaptation and innovation for equitable policy making" in order to provide a framework for gender perspectives in HE in relation to HE governance.
• Contribute to a conference paper on The position of women in HE.
• Contribute to a chapter for brief guide to policy - Internal management, gender and staff development in HE in the context of reform and EU enlargementí

The meeting began with a network management meeting followed by a reception for participants. The seminar comprised three sessions over one and a half days. Each session comprised a number of papers and presentations followed by small group discussions summarised in a plenary session.

Session 1 - Objectives of obstacles for the practical efforts towards gender

• Funding. Funding is required to understand the "hidden mechanisms" which make gender an issue in HE.
• State Policy. State policies are required to introduce the change process and to legislate for change.
• Social Environment. The social environment within HE needs to change so as to encourage the change process to be embedded within the HE system.
• Policy Structure. There is a need to understand the policy structure and how it is implemented at all levels (EC, national and institutional) in relation to gender within each country.
• Historical context. There is a need to understand better the reasons for the differences in attitudes and behaviours towards gender between the different countries.
• The role of the Universities in implementing policy on gender. There is a need to make recommendations about what Universities can do to improve their policies on gender. This includes looking at the power structures within Universities which do not seem to be changing in terms of gender. If this is the case, what can be done to cascade the intended changes throughout the institution?
• Comparative statistics. There is a need to collect comparative statistics on gender across the EC and accession countries.
• Making choices. To what extent can policies change the situation in which women are forced to make personal choices about whether they pursue a career or focus on family life while men continue to focus on their career rather than their family? To what extent is it important to introduce and to implement policies which apply to both men and women so that both have more equal opportunities to focus on both career and family life? .
• Environment. Women appear to be disadvantaged in the workplace because they have to adapt to a male culture which appears to be continually working against equal opportunities in the workplace for women. How can Universities encourage women to stay and to progress within the University system, especially but not exclusively, if the University environment is predominantly Science, Engineering and Technology oriented?
• Support Structures. Women get less support than men within the University system and they are usually paid less than men for equivalent grades and work. There is a need to collect statistics across countries to understand this phenomenon more fully and to introduce policies and mecahnisms to ensure that this situation does not persist.
• Organisational culture/habitus/micropolitics. There are issues around the ability of women to survive and to develop in a man's world. This is true for undergraduates, especially in Science and Technology. However, it is also true throughout Universities as organisations.
• Mentoring & role models. Women need mentors and role models within Universities. This suggests that there are sufficient women to take on these roles and that, when they do so, that women are in positions of power and influence to provide appropriate advice and role models. The evidence suggests that a glass ceiling still exists and that when women do get through, that the few women involved in mentoring, role modelling and representing the female part of the organisation are wrung dry because there are so few women available for these roles.
• Emotional labour. The evidence shows that junior female staff spend far more time sorting out the pastoral needs of students than their male counterparts and that female staff mentors experience a far higher emotional labour than male staff mentors.

Session 2 - Should gender sensitivity be an integral part of Leadership in HE?

No notes were produced from this session. The debate was lively and discussions centered around the need for some form of positive action. One of the key problems was deemed to be that the under-representation of women meant that either the few had to do more than their fair share of attending committees and sitting on selection panels or the committees and selection procedures remained dominated by men. It was felt that positive action might take the form of facilitative measures that balanced the extra load caused by the need to balance gender representation with a reduction, or buying-out, of other activities that were not so gender sensitive. Measures were also discussed to improve the selection and promotion procedures by ensuring that gender was an issue to be considered. It was felt that management and leadership could take the lead in bringing in positive action measures.

Session 3 - The impact of the fundamental goals for HE on the roles of women in wider society

Key points of the paper presented by Louise Morley

Financial aspects of UK White Paper on HE. UK White Paper does not mention gender yet there are gender issues arising out of it. The financial assumptions are based on a calculation that graduates will earn an average of £400K more over their lifetime if they are HE graduates.However, this does not take into account the fact that females will earn much less than this if they take time out of their careers to raise a family. In addition, it does not take into account research evidence which shows that working classes, ethnic minorities and women are more afraid of debt than the rest of the population so they may decide not to enter HE if they incur debt.

Growth in Borderless education. There has been a growth in borderless education eg. offshore and distance delivery of HE as well as in private HE provision. There is a total absence of any discussion of gender issues arising out of this area.

Access to HE. In the UK, there is currently a lot of emphasis and investment on enhanced access to HE for under-represented groups. Access tends to favour female students. A consequence of this development is that the elite institutions will become more elite. The statistics show that the more elite institutions favour white males throughout the system, from students through to senior management. The less-elite institutions will tend to favour women students, though not necessarily female staff at senior levels. The research shows that non-elite institutions have much higher drop-out rates than other institutions. The research shows that women do not get promoted through the system to higher levels. Moreover, the figures show that female staff are disadvantaged in terms of earnings for a similar work period eg.

• The average female academic gets 40% lower salary than equivalent males for the same period in work.
• Women are 55% more likely than men to get short term contract type appointments
• Women are 155% less likely than men to be promoted to Professors

Quality Audit. The UK's HE system is the most highly audited HE system in the world. Gender equality is not included in any of the audits, so we have no idea whether there are any gender issues embedded within the educational system itself which need to be addressed. The elite organisations favour white males throughout. It is the senior management within those organisations who have the influence and power base and who are producing and validating the knowledge; they are constructing the way in which the knowledge is constructed and represented. Does the entry of women into HE increase or affect their civil rights? An extreme analogy of Iran was used (in Iran, despite the majority of women in HE they can still be arrested if they wear lipstick in the street). There are parallels for women in Europe.

Key points from the paper by Baiba Rivza.

Statistics on women in HE. The statistics for women represented in the University sector in Latvia are very good. Women are represented in large numbers throughout the Latvian University system all the way up to Rectorate level.

Following tertiary education, however, women tend to go back into rural communities and do not necessarily deploy their HE education thereafter. Going into HE in itself does not necessarily lead to more equal opportunities for women either within the Universities or within society and the workplace in general.

Role of HE in Reach Out to the Community.The Universities in Latvia have carved out a very strong Reach Out into the Community role in relation to gender. Hence, the University has an educational role in helping to develop graduate women as entrepreneurs in rural areas, in facilitating the process of encouraging micro-credit systems to encourage loans for female-run businesses to underpin new business ventures, and in linking into international womenıs networks so as to find development opportunities which will support this reach-out work.

In addition, the Universities are involved at the access end of HE too, most especially in the area of educating young women in secondary schools to be more aware of human trafficking and other threats to their human rights and encouraging them instead, to go on to HE.

Key points from the paper by Malgorzata Radkiewicz

• HE's Role with respect to gender issues. Very good overall goals for HE with respect to gender.
• Statistics for Poland on attitudes & behaviours associated with gender. The paper gives good statistics on Pole's attitudes towards gender in general, which is reflected in other European countries. Changes in attitudes and behaviours tend to be very deeply rooted but these are, in general, more liberal in the Northern countries and much more traditional in Southern countries, rather than being associated with whether partner countries were part of the EC or not.
• Networking & awareness raising. Polish Universities also recognise the importance of HEıs role in reaching out to the community, but with a slightly different emphasis to Latvia. In Poland, it seems that there is more emphasis on the Universities to network and raise awareness about social issues in society which are related to gender than to provide the more direct practical help which Latvia provides to entrepreneurial female graduates in the community.

Key points from the paper by Maria Slowey.

The 3 main roles of HE were identified and the point was made that there are gender issues in each of these 3 areas:

• Research.
  • The numbers of women engaged in research are lower than men. The culture favours men and presents real issues for women at all levels in the system. Women undergraduate drop-out is especially high in Science, Engineering & Technology. The numbers of female Professors are generally lower than for men of equivalent grade and experience, but this problem is particularly acute in Science, Engineering & Technology. Salaries for same grades and experience are also lower for women than for men.
  • There is a need for research in Universities to raise awareness about gender issues in society as a whole, without criticising society of which it is part.
  • The research on gender should underpin public debate and policy development
  • Research should be ongoing in key areas to support change in society eg. gender and IT; domestic violence etc.
• Teaching & Learning.
  • Universities should look at the issue of gendering of the curriculum and take steps to avoid it
  • The HE experience and obtaining degrees may shape womenıs opportunities, but actually getting a degree does not necessarily lead to any actual change in society in itself. There is a need to build bridges between HE and employment. There is also a need to study the outcomes of HE in terms of employment for women; this requires collecting comparative statistical data across countries on a longitudinal basis.
• Reach-Out to Business & the Community.
  • The Universities also have a role in HE Reach Out to Business and the Community so that women graduates can engage in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) opportunities or be encouraged to develop entrepreneurial opportunities with underpinning educational and training support which comes from HE.
  • The Reach-Out role into the Community role is also an area whereby the University can support the public sector and not-for-profit sector.
  • The Reach-Out role to Business role is an area whereby the University can support and encourage hi-tec, hi-growth areas which contribute to economic development of the surrounding region and further afield.

Key points arising from discussion