All are equal, but some are more equal than others: managerialism and gender equality in higher education in comparative perspective

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate what impact new regimes of management and governance, including new managerialism, have had on perceptions of gender equality at universities in three Western European countries. While in accordance with national laws and EU directives, contemporary current management approaches in universities should, in theory, stimulate equality of opportunities and diminish regimes of inequality, our findings from qualitative interviews across the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK provide a very different picture. Our data show that these new governance approaches actually re-emphasise the existing status quo in various ways and enable more subtle forms of discrimination despite the existence of a veneer of equality. Consequently, some women find themselves sidelined by the gap between formal procedures designed to deal with inequalities and the institutional cultures and practices towards selection and promotion.