5.3.4 Presentation and discussion of significant themes from interview participants
A discussion of in-depth information shared by nine academic women HoDs during video
conference focus group sessions now follows. Where verbatim comments are quoted,
participants’ pseudo-names are used. Where comments are summarised, the names of the
participants are omitted.
5.3.4.1 Success factors, coping with stress and on being a female HoD
In this section participants’ views regarding critical success factors in their position as
HoD are reported. The requisite skills and abilities necessary for the job are also outlined.
As stress is an inevitable part of any demanding job, participants were also asked to share
their lived experiences regarding stress management as female HoDs.
(a) Success factors
Success in the job of HoD, according to the participants in this study, seems to hinge on
personal, professional and academic leadership skills. Subject knowledge, boldness,
fearlessness and assertiveness coupled with strong interpersonal skills (especially ability
to communicate up and down) are crucial to success.
As Tanya pointed out: ‘Well I think you have to have a very broad knowledge base of
your subject and associated subjects.’ Lee concurred: ‘What I think first of all is, one
needs to be skilled in the profession that you are a member of . So you need to have a
skill in the mainline subjects…’
Different skills and abilities are important for success in the job. Sally remarked that ‘you
need to know a lot about people…I had to know about buildings, labour laws, people
skills and so forth.’
Nikki picked up on the point of people skills and said: ‘I spend a lot of my day on people
issues. High on my list of success factors are negotiation skills — you have to have
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marketing skills but also strong negotiation skills, be patient and also assertive and
persistent…have to show people you will win, and that’s the way forward.
Understanding the budget is critical, as Sally pointed out: ‘I find finances unbelievably
boring. HoDs are not being encouraged enough to know what their finances are and even
how to do it, but it’s absolutely critical…’
The ability to listen, to network and negotiate and to be pro-active and innovative are
invaluable to the job. According to Cheryl:
if you’re going to be successful in the job you have to actually balance everything
– you have to be innovative; you actually should not be a ‘shrinking violet’. It’s
not good hiding in the corner. I think women have a tendency to be quiet,
reserved and shy. I think you have to be quite careful not to overdo it because
that’s counterproductive.
Betsy adds that one needs to have: ‘interpersonal communication skills and the ability to
be consistent with a large number of people, students and so on and also be able to
prioritise as the buck stops at your desk’.
Carol believes in the ability to multitask:
…need to be very organised and be able to multitask because you have a lot of
different things on your table all day- can’t book out the whole day for one thing
only. The people skills, interpersonal skills – very, very important management
skills that you need to apply to be able to do the job…and its long hours.
For Brooke the ‘first skill is being able to work in all directions with superiors and those
below you’. She continues:
be patient and diplomatic (it took me a while to learn how to change things
overnight)… do a lot of campaigning and consulting with stakeholders… be good at
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listening -active listening- so that you can hear the messages which are buried
beneath what people say overtly… have a good sense of humour and be good at
putting people at their ease and making them feel they can trust your, and can relax in
your company… obviously have certain amount of authority because you have to
chair committees have some skill in managing a budget – deans have to learn those
skills - I didn’t have experience in that before... be able to make tough decisions –
which is difficult for all of us…
(b) Coping with stress
Stress is an inevitable part of a demanding position, and the participants in this study all
admitted to having their fair share of it. There is no panacea for stress as the accounts of
the women involved in this study reflect. All of them rely on more than one mechanism.
As Brooke advises, ‘You have to draw on a lot of resources to cope.’
From the lived experiences of the women such resources include, among others, relaxing
and unwinding in various ways; relying on supportive spouses, partners, friends or
colleagues who help by listening sympathetically or by allowing ideas to be bounced off
them or by also contributing ideas; taking time off on weekends to relax and not do any
work or do something indulgent like shopping or relaxing with music, exercising,
prioritising and delegating, stepping back from work and focusing on self and other
aspects of one’s life and interests. A few typical comments on this theme include the
following:
I play golf and it’s a big de-stressing element and then I love my home pursuits. I
love gardening. I want to retire to a nursery at some stage. When I retire I want to
run a nursery – my own nursery. And I enjoy that…I enjoy my animals; I enjoy
my life; I have my family life and I think that’s a big de-stressing factor that I do
have, and that’s how I cope with stress. (Lee)
I have a very good friend…a professor in business and I sometimes go over to see[him]
for a cup of coffee and a whinge about the world. He’s not in my faculty - he doesn’t
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know some of the players, so if I want to stick pins into little white models…I
go…(laughs)… doesn’t know who they are, but he’s able to help. I also have a husband
who puts up with being somebody both for bouncing ideas off, also somebody for telling
me to stop thinking about it. (Nikki)
I find that a three or four week holiday per year really helps a lot. Getting away from
everything with your family, then you can get back and you’ve got energy again to do the
job. That is the way that I de-stress. (Carol)
For me a very important coping mechanism was to give attention to other aspects of my
life and to refuse to be defined only by the job. I had outside interests, I’m involved in
service organisations, involved in public speaking, involved with working wit youth
groups. (Betsy)
My partner is fantastic. He used to pick me up and pour me a drink at the end of the day
and make me a cup of tea and calm me down sometimes. (Brooke)
I’ve taken to learning languages. They cause you to really focus your mind on something
else, quite take your brainpower from what you’re doing and that’s very useful for me.
(Sally)
I take time to actually sort of step back from some things. I do practical things like write
down things I need to do and I prioritise. I also delegate. (Cheryl)
It’s important to have a lot of ‘me time’…for me, ‘me time’ is very important.(Jen)
Brooke and Lee offer some advice to aspiring HoDs, ‘Identify people who are
sympathetic that you can talk to, who can give you advice,’ and ‘Get on top of it! Do it
and get it done!’
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(c)
On being a female HoD
Having shared what they regarded as success factors, the participants went on to share
their experiences of being a female HoD, whether they thought it was an advantage or
not; whether they had to make any changes in their personal, professional and career life
to accommodate their new responsibilities; and whether they had experienced any
prejudice or negative attitudes toward them as female HoDs – or if they had been affected
by race, gender or sexism in their work.
There was a fairly even distribution of comments which pointed to the presence of
advantages and disadvantages in being a female HoD. Cheryl put it rather amusingly, “I
quite like to be a woman. I have not actually found that to be a problem”. Clearly she
thinks it is an advantage to be a woman. One of these advantages is that women are more
empathetic than men in that they are willing to listen to staff problems including personal
ones. They are also better at handling junior staff and seem to ‘know how to get on with
other women’.
Sally believes that:
…one of the advantages of being HoD is that by virtue of one’s position – one is
listened to. I’m not saying that you…you don’t have to fight from the ground
up…and you have forums where people will listen to you instantly --- so one is
able to move things faster than one could have if one was acting HOD or even not
head – and what has resulted from that is that one finds that one can take a
leadership position and one can take a stand.
For Lee it is an advantage to be a female Hod for two reasons:
I would say that in my profession leading up to this, it has been an advantage to
be a woman …uhm…it’s almost in a curious way that you’re looked upon…
when you come into a board meeting or when you have to address board members
and so on, you find that as a woman you are looked upon with curiosity – in fact
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you’re given more attention than the men would have been given – I don’t find
that an impediment, on the contrary. In the position that I’m in now, the university
strongly supports the gender side of equity, and from that point of view I’m in a
favourable position being of a female gender, so I do not have…uhm… I do not
find that …uhm… being a female has in any way negatively affected me – it’s
been an advantage.
One of the disadvantages is not being taken seriously as a woman so that you have to
constantly prove that you can do the job. Worse still is having men who have trouble
taking authority from a woman and thus undermine her authority at every turn.
Carol’s comment summarises the women’s thoughts on this issue:
The disadvantage - I feel that the men do not always take me seriously. Especially
when I’m sitting in a meeting with 30 male HOD’s. If I make a suggestion – I
have to be sort of very assertive—have to learn to be that way – not my
personality - otherwise I get ignored (that’s not part of my personality – I had to
learn to be assertive to make myself clear to them and the ideas that I have to
bring that to their attention – uhm- and if you’re sort of -in the department too
strict to especially the men , they think that – sorry to use the word – you are a
bitch – but if a man talks to you very strictly about your work , about what you’ve
not done, I think some might accept is that’s… it’s my manager, he may talk to
me like that. So that’s one of the disadvantages… you have to be very careful
about how you handle difficult situations so they don’t think you’re picking on
them.
As far as experiencing negative attitudes towards them as a woman or being affected by
racism, gender or sexism all, but one of the women interviewed, felt they were
discriminated against. Brooke felt that some of the men who could not take authority
from a woman somehow resented her. The rest of the women did not think there were
any gender differences and that whatever disadvantages existed, were not related to
gender but were of a general nature. Nikki felt that any negative attitude in her case, was
probably a result of resentment about the new faculty structure that had been introduced
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at the university and of which she was head. So she would be resented not as a woman
but as a figure representing the unfavourable structure.
Lee did not experience any negative attitudes towards her as a woman in the professional
and academic capacity but possibly in her private life. As a white person she felt she was
privileged not to be affected by racial discrimination. But that as a parent, she thought she
may be experiencing discrimination and being affected by it through her children’s
experience of affirmative action which has forced three of her four children to leave the
country to work elsewhere.
In Tanya’s days, it was rare to have a woman HoD. She grew up around boys and
believes her outlook on gender discrimination may have been influenced by that and the
fact that she pursued science subjects at university and had an easy relationship with the
boys. As she put it, “I became one of them… I’m one of the guys…I don’t see any
negative attitude.”
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