In a landmark UNESCO report, Women in Higher Education Management (1993), editor Elizabeth Dines commented that "with hardly any exception the global picture is one of men outnumbering women at about five to one at middle management level and at about twenty or more to one at senior management level".

Two decades of feminist research, most of it emanating from 'north' and 'western' countries, has asked: What is the problem? What are the many-levelled visible and invisible barriers that impede academic women's access to the most senior ranks in higher education?

Women have made great strides in attaining middle management positions in public sector employment but higher education, particularly the prestigious university sector, seems like a closed shop for women. Perhaps higher education is perniciously resistant to women's attainment of positions of power and authority because in any society, the university is commonly the most valued and often 'sacred' knowledge industry, historically the exclusive preserve of men as speakers of truth and knowledge.

My own interest in women in higher education stems from my experience starting as a lowly part-time tutor, then lecturer, on revolving six month contracts, having worked in Canada and, the last 13 years, in Australia.

Part of my work in Australia has been to teach in some of the programs my university offers around the region including Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. In that context, as well as through the annual treks to overseas conferences, overseas sabbaticals and research projects, I have met and formed many friendships with academic women in this region and around the world. Through those experiences I have listened to and shared women's experiences in academia.

However, what this has taught me is that underlying some fairly universal patterns of inequality and 'glass ceiling' barriers, there are many cultural differences that shape different forms of unequal access and career mobility which have not been investigated in the research on women in higher education. There follows a brief synopsis that cannot do justice to the complexity of women's experiences, or the subtle shades of cross-cultural differences. To date I have completed four case studies in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia.

In each country I interviewed about 15 women in several universities. Each country sample included several women at lecturer and/or senior levels. Senior women held positions as Heads, Deans and Deputy Deans, Directors of research centres, and Pro-Vice chancellor. Questionnaires and interview questions were formulated for each country in collaboration with local women. Balancing family and childcare needs with professional careers is the single biggest obstacle for women.

Even single women claimed they were not exempt from family care, especially care of elderly parents which many said becomes the responsibility of unmarried female siblings. In Singapore and Hong Kong, all the single women in my sample had at least one of their aged parents living with them.

The single women I interviewed claimed that they had much more time to devote to their jobs, but that being single also carried a price. For instance, cultural attitudes remain skeptical toward single women who attend social institutional-based functions without a partner, who socialise with other married or unmarried male colleagues.

Women expressed concern at the possibilities of "being seen" with someone which will lead to "whispers" - "people will talk". Muslim Malay women also echoed such concerns: "I think it's cultural, especially with Malays like me. The men and women don't really work together and if they do, people's perception is that there is something going on, something funny, which is not very nice".

Weekend or evening functions are often out of bounds and so women miss out on networking opportunities or the kinds of social events where important 'insider' information gets passed around over a drink, or over a game of golf. This is part of the informal cultural milieu that can make women invisible. The cultural stigma associated with women's single status and the constraints this can impose on social behaviours is, in the words of many women, "a very Asian thing". All the women had a least one overseas postgraduate degree (from the US, UK, Canada or Australia) which gave them a 'benchmark' for cultural comparison.

Many felt that women academics in the west "speak out", "self-promote", and seem more "individualist" than Asian women. In contrast, the Thai and Malay women and especially women in Hong Kong and Singapore felt that the 'Asian' way was more subdued: women prefer working "behind the scenes", "behind closed doors", working "quietly", not arguing against superiors or speaking out too much (on committees, etc.). Of course, this then often leads to "men taking all the credit" for women's contributions.

Repeatedly, the issue of 'face' surfaced: not arguing with or contesting superiors, because it would undermine their power and status; maintaining credibility through support of the status quo and performing an "Asian sense of what it means to be womanly" or else "you will lose face"; compliance with a system of patronage ('naungan') whereby duty and loyalty to "the one who groomed you" tends to constrain autonomous action.

The western literature advocates an ethos of individualism and goal-directed self-promotion for women's career mobility; however, in an 'Asian' context such strategies do not readily apply. Unlike the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculties of Law, Medicine, or the Natural Sciences tend to be male dominated. In these enclaves, women find few role models or female colleagues which, many claimed, leads to a sense of profound isolation.

As senior academics today most are often the only women on university committees: "there is always this segregation, men and women, even when we sit in meetings - boys and old boys network". Regardless of discipline, most claimed that part of the isolation they feel is that they are the first ones at work in the morning and the last to leave at night, with weekends often devoted to catching up with the paper work. Time and again women would say: "I hate the paperwork!" Interestingly, most seemed to understand why their jobs were somewhat lonely and all- consuming. Their explanations: "women pay attention to all the details", "we cross all the t's and dot all the i's"; "we stay late and double check everything"; "I and the other women here, we see a project through from start to finish, the men they give that work to their secretaries".

Similar perceptions arose about women's leadership style. Although most argued that one cannot generalise about sex-typed leadership and management styles, most agreed that women by and large take "all angles into account before making a decision", are concerned about "feelings of staff, their personal concerns and family problems", and are more "consensus building" by "nurturing" and building relationships.

In other words, women sensed that they devote considerably more time to their jobs than their male colleagues. Another issue is that of management training. Most had no formal training and had to learn the hard way about budgets, procedural protocol, and administrative trivia.

A common complaint was that in-service management training funds were often suddenly not available when women wanted to attend, or else the training programs were held on weekends or out-of-town retreats with overnight stays, which did not fit well with women's schedules. I asked all the women if gender equity policies and programs would be useful interventions to enhance women's career mobility.

In the west, equity units and policies are institutionalised in most universities. Provisions include equity targets (e.g., committee representation; hiring, promotion, and tenure targets, etc.); policies for the non-sexist use of language in university documents; provision of mentoring and management training programs; workplace childcare; career management, retirement or investment seminars; annual accountability to federal agencies on hiring, tenure, and promotions benchmarks and targets.

Most women said that they personally saw benefits in such initiatives. However, almost all agreed that such gender based provisions would "alienate" women and men, that women would not participate if it "was women only", that it would "divide the sexes", and that in their culture "we don't think of sex-role, we think of people". Clearly, the evidence counters such claims of gender neutrality.

Unfortunately, the lack of public accountability of gendered academic staffing patterns has made it difficult to research where women are institutionally concentrated. In all four countries I have investigated university websites, university annual reports, and federal ministerial websites on the higher education sector and have found no data on gender distribution in academic staff classification, tenure or promotion rates.

Quality assurance discourses now sweeping the sector globally, as part of a larger economic rationalist agenda, might make accountability a weapon women can use by making their institutional marginality more visible. Finally, ethnicity adds another significant political dimension to the concept of gendered glass ceilings. In relatively homogenous Thailand, ethnic divisions were not an issue. In Singapore virtually no Malay women are in senior executive positions. In Hong Kong, women noted emergent tensions about shifting ideologies and hiring patterns in favour of Mandarin-fluent and mainland Chinese academics.

In Malaysia, all the Chinese and the few Indian women I was able to locate expressed resentment at the social policies that reserve senior positions for bumiputera Malays: "Basically the top management are men and Malays. Very few non-Malay Chinese or Indians ever get to the top. The posts and assistants they are all political. You don't have a chance to get up".

The Malay women, by contrast, did not think that this ethnic glass ceiling was a problem for Chinese because "they do well in business", they "teach in private colleges", or they go overseas. However, the disheartening testimony from the Chinese women was that "we don't want to go elsewhere for recognition", and nor do they see their research or career aspirations as attainable in the second-tier college or private tertiary sector.

Women in academia have struggled up the ladder against many odds. All the women were proud of their achievements but regretted the costs: deferring having children until PhDs were completed or a tenured job was secured, divorce for some, lack of time for family, outsourcing childcare to maids, and so on. Women in their 50s were looking forward to retirement and resuming research and writing interests. Younger women were more optimistic about their career opportunities claiming that generational changes were underway that were more accepting of women in powerful positions.

Why are women's extraordinary abilities, contributions and pivotal role in any society so routinely undervalued and their aspirations thwarted? Women are a huge productive force. To deny them the structural and ideological support that would enable their full and equal access, participation, and share of reward outcomes in the professions of their choice, is to deny and impoverish society as a whole.

Although there are many men in all institutions that support equitable workplace opportunities for women, patriarchy as a whole is not voluntarily going to give up power and authority.

Women need to take charge of their educational goals and professional aspirations. That may mean mounting a cohesive and collaborative effort across women's class or ethnic differences to lobby for and implement a modified, culturally-appropriate mix of the kinds of gender equity initiatives that have been institutionalised in the west.

This is political work but women are expert negotiators and mediators. As one of the last remaining bastions of patriarchal privilege and power, higher education can only benefit from a greater gender balance over the control and administration of knowledge, and embodiment of that knowledge in students and subsequent generations.

Contact : A/Prof. C. Luke, Reader, Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland, St.Lucia, Q 4072, Australia. Tel: +61 (7) 3365-6550. Fax: +61 (7) 3365-7199. Email: c.luke@mailbox.uq.edu.au