Project Summary
Project leader/s: Professor Lesley Diack
This project aims to explore and report on HEIs’ mechanisms to support current and aspiring women leaders including, how they are working with Aurora alumnae and current Aurora participants, how institutions support women in other forms, prior to or complementary to Aurora, and what support is available outside of involvement with Aurora.
Using survey methodology the research will firstly investigate perceptions of current and aspiring women leaders’ views of the support mechanisms available to them, and secondly survey a sample of HEIs to understand the institutional perspective. The sample will represent a range of disciplinary and institutional contexts, balancing STEM and non-STEM disciplines, academic and administrative posts, and between current and aspiring women leaders working in pre- and post-1992 universities. The qualitative data collected will be analysed inductively using the constant comparison method, and will involve comparing the datum several times through coding and recoding to identify common themes.
The project objectives are designed to benefit the higher education sector and Advance HE (Leadership Foundation) members through the generation of data and findings that can inform policy and highlight best practice to address the support mechanisms needed to develop current and aspirational women leaders within HEIs.
Research theme/s: Changing culture and organisational practice in support of women’s careers, Positive cultural and behavioural change.
