Tag: sides

  • To accelerate action on gender equality, we must consider both sides of the coin. #IWD2025

    To accelerate action on gender equality, we must consider both sides of the coin. #IWD2025

    It’s International Women’s Day. Today on the site, Professor Lisa-Dionne Morris explores the critical role of Black women in academia and industry leadership, particularly in Engineering and STEM, highlighting their groundbreaking contributions and the systemic barriers that persist. Read that piece here.

    Below, HEPI’s own Rose Stephenson challenges us to look at ‘the other side of the coin’ in the fight for gender equality – you can read that piece below.

    Firstly, Happy International Women’s Day 2025.

    The theme this year is ‘Accelerate Action.’ It’s a great theme, and to accelerate action in terms of gender equality, we have got to focus more on ‘the other side of the coin’. Let me explain three examples:

    1. We should do more to ensure that parenting is supportive and inclusive of fathers.

    Joeli Brearly, outgoing CEO of Pregnant then Screwed, recently gave evidence on Shared Parental Leave in parliament. She stated:

    ‘It’s time we asked ourselves a fundamental question about what sort of society we want this to be. Do we want to continue to perpetuate outdated and harmful gender stereotypes that tell us it is women who do the nurturing and the caring and the childrearing and are the homemakers and that men just need to pull their socks up and get back to work? They are strong, stoic breadwinners and don’t need this time [parental leave] to nurture and care for their family. The mental health of men in this country is in crisis. Boys are saying they feel lost and disconnected, and it’s no wonder when our laws are literally telling them: “you don’t need time to nurture and connect with your family.”’

    Inclusive parenting is good for dads, it’s great for kids, and it benefits Mums, too. My mantra is, ‘We will never have equality in the workplace until we have equality in the home’. Until we reach a point where an equal number of dads leave work in time for the school run, take time off for holiday care, or work part-time and flexibly, we will never reach parity in the workplace. And why would we want to? If women collectively reach equal pay, equal status and the resulting equal responsibility at work yet continue to shoulder most domestic and childcare duties, we have significantly undermined progress towards equality.

    The HEPI report I published last year, Show Me the Money, an exploration of the gender pay gap in higher education, demonstrated the importance of increasing paid paternity leave as a lever for narrowing the gender pay gap. If your institution is monitoring the uptake of senior or professorial roles by gender, are they also monitoring the uptake of post-birth parental leave, shared parental leave and statutory parental leave by the same measure? Is there monitoring and reporting on the genderisation of part-time work applications, flexible working requests and the granting of these requests? That is ‘the other side of the coin’ and we should not underestimate the hurdles fathers may have to overcome to ask – or be granted – the flexibility we more commonly expect for mothers.

    2. We should encourage boys and young men to work in teaching and social care roles to the same extent that we encourage women to work in engineering and tech.

    When working as a secondary and sixth-form science teacher, I undertook a project at my school that challenged pupils to critically think about the subject choices they were making at GCSE and A-Level and how this might be affected by gender stereotyping. There was plenty of support and encouragement for female pupils in science and maths subjects (as there should be). However, there was a notable vacuum in the equivalent campaigns to open up opportunities for boys.

    I witnessed first-hand how the gendering of subjects and occupations suppressed the potential of young men. One boy in my tutor group desperately wanted to complete his work experience at a hair salon. This pupil would have benefitted from a ‘hook’ that could have driven his interest in education and the future world of work. Unfortunately, his family disapproved of his choice, and he spent his work experience on a building site. This did nothing to enhance his motivation towards education or work. This was a valuable opportunity for a disengaged young man to pursue something that genuinely sparked his interest, and I have no doubt he would have excelled at. However, this opportunity was lost because it was not deemed ‘masculine’ enough. This was one example, but the boys I taught were quite open about feeling they couldn’t choose the subjects they wanted. There was an element of ‘acceptable’ choices.

    It is tragic that in 2025, UK society is still limiting the possibilities for young men to follow their real interests. As a sector, we should push hard against the narratives perpetuating this. Again, if your institution is monitoring and encouraging the uptake of subjects such as engineering or coding for female students, are they also monitoring the update of nursing courses by male students? Are there considerations of male uptake and completion of courses in your Access and Participation Plans?

    3. We should consider developing ‘Men’s Leadership’ courses.

    I’ve been lucky enough to partake in various forms of ‘Women’s Leadership training’ run by Advance HE and the Women’s Higher Education Network (WHEN), among others. Of course, non-gender-specific leadership training is available. However, women’s leadership courses have existed due to the historic and ongoing underrepresentation of women in leadership positions. Further, they provide a female-only space for women to develop their leadership skills.

    I vividly remember being told by a presenter on the Advance HE Aurora programme to ‘have heft’ and ‘take up space’. (I replay this memory regularly in all the privileged but occasionally intimidating speaking and media events I undertake in my current role.)

    But as we move closer towards gender parity – and I know there is more work to do – should we be thinking about the other side of the coin? Women’s leadership courses can often focus on developing traits deemed to be held by traditional, therefore male, leaders. Having more confidence, making your voice heard, etc. Now that most of society accepts that women can also make great leaders – and there are many stand-out examples in the higher education sector – where is the equivalent training for men?

    Where are the male leadership courses that teach men the skills of making space for others, speaking inclusively, building relationships, the importance of being a mentor, and using coaching techniques to build confidence in their colleagues? Surely, some male colleagues who wish to become leaders can learn skills that may be (stereotypically) more prevalent in female colleagues, and developing these skills would benefit everyone.

    And sure, some men will already possess these skills, just like some women have a natural ability to take up space. My question is, if we accept that women are socialised in a particular way to be missing some leadership or workplace skills, then can we accept that for men? Do we value stereotypically ‘female’ leadership skills enough to offer a platform for developing these skills in male colleagues? Further, should leadership courses for men include panels discussing how to balance leadership roles with childcare responsibilities? (And yes, those panels exist in women-in-leadership courses) Perhaps when we get to this point, we really will be considering the other side of the coin.

    If you found this blog interesting, you may wish to look back at some of our previous International Women’s Day blogs:

    HEPI has also published the report:

    HEPI will soon publish an updated report on educational achievement by boys and young men, a significant and long-standing issue that has been largely ignored by policymakers. The report considers the consequences for individuals and societies and proposes several levers that could be used to drive change. This report will be published this month – March 2025. If you haven’t already, sign up for our blog below to get this report hot off the press.

    If you wish to write a blog for International Men’s Day on November 19th, submissions are very welcome.

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  • When universities take sides, we all lose

    When universities take sides, we all lose

    For many students and faculty, it’s an exhausting time to be on campus. The long–polarized climate has been supercharged by everything from the flurry of executive orders to lingering tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to proposed cuts to government spending on higher ed. All while administrators come under intense pressure from groups on all sides to issue public statements, invest or divest, and cancel speakers — as federal and state government actors stoke the flames.

    Some have argued universities have a duty to cast aside neutrality and, for example, declare certain politicians fascists. But this kind of political grandstanding undermines the central purpose of the university: the pursuit of truth, a process that requires debate and discussion. This process can’t happen when a university’s leaders put a proverbial thumb on the scale. Instead, it’s in the most fraught times that university leaders most need to draw a line in the sand against censorship and intimidation.

    While the current climate feels unprecedented, history tells a different story. In the late 1960s, America was on fire — literally and figuratively. Protests erupted, generational divides widened, and a divisive president presided over a deeply unpopular war in Vietnam that claimed tens of thousands of lives. Amidst the chaos, the president of the University of Chicago convened a faculty committee to determine how the institution should respond to burning political and social upheaval.

    Their answer was simple yet compelling: the university, as an institution, must remain neutral.

    Enshrined in the committee’s Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action (commonly called the Kalven Report, after its lead author, First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven, Jr.), the report warned that universities “cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives.”

    In other words, the mere act of taking an official position on an issue stifles dissent — and, again, undermines the primary reason for the university’s existence.

    Critics have argued that neutrality is impossible because everything is political, from school calendars to core curricula. By that logic, even declining to make political statements is a political act. But this merely serves as a rhetorical trap designed to justify disposing of neutrality altogether.

    America already has plenty of division and distrust. Institutional neutrality is a critical tool for fostering academia’s only peaceful path through the storm: honest debate.

    The Kalven Report’s authors made clear that the university must take a position when its mission is at stake. For example, they must defend academic freedom when governments attempt to silence professors. But that’s entirely different from taking a stand on which side was “right” in Vietnam, or is “right” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There may be close cases in which people will disagree on where that line should be drawn. But denying that intelligent distinctions can be made is like arguing that one cannot differentiate red from blue because they are both on a visual spectrum that lacks clear demarcations. 

    Neutrality does not mean that universities will play no part in grappling with social and political questions. The Kalven Report affirms that “[t]he university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic,” and notes that universities play a vital role “in fostering the development of social and political values in a society.” This is a long-term role “defined by the distinctive mission of the university and defined too by the distinctive characteristics of the university as a community.” But rather than acting as an advocacy organization, the university is a community of learned advocates with the freedom to agree or disagree with one another. Administrators must intentionally avoid becoming the former so they can function as the latter.

    The Kalven Report recognized taking sides in the day’s debates would kneecap the university’s ability to serve as a forum for the pursuit of truth among individual scholars. “There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position,” the committee explained, “without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives.”

    Most faculty understand this. Two-thirds of faculty members agree that colleges and universities should remain neutral on political and social issues, according to FIRE’s 2024 Faculty Survey Report. The issue of neutrality is especially salient for adjunct instructors, who lack the tenure protections of their full-time peers. As FIRE notes in its Scholars Under Fire report of attempts to sanction professors for speaking their minds, adjuncts — who account for 70 percent of all faculty — are particularly prone to speech-related terminations. An astounding 54 percent of attempts to sanction adjuncts result in termination, compared to 21 percent for all scholars. The most vulnerable faculty have the most to lose when universities take sides.

    FIRE has taken a proactive stance on institutional neutrality, discouraging universities from taking up ill-advised “collective positions” on divisive issues. The University of North Carolina System, Vanderbilt, Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth — and, of course, the University of Chicago — have all adopted official positions on institutional neutrality, and we’re leading the fight to get more colleges on board.

    Institutional neutrality is key, but it is not the be-all and end-all. It’s an important slice of a well-diversified portfolio of pro-free speech policies — but just one slice. Universities must also refrain from punishing students and faculty for dissenting views amid sky-high tensions and changing political winds. Sometimes this is an uphill battle against political and social pressure. It’s vital nevertheless.

    America already has plenty of division and distrust. Institutional neutrality is a critical tool for fostering academia’s only peaceful path through the storm: honest debate. All sides must have a fair chance to speak and be heard. If universities cannot deliver an environment that cultivates such discussion, they risk becoming just another partisan casualty in the culture war.

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