Women, Decision Making and Academia: An Unholy Alliance

Considers the role of women within academia and outlines their experience of decision making within this context. Outlines the significant results of a study on female academics within one institute of higher education. In particular, women are found to experience an exclusion from informal networks and a consequent lack of access to real-time information via the grapevine. They also perceive themselves to have less influence on organizational decision making than their male counterparts and suffer from a greater feeling of intimidation of authority, finding it difficult to make themselves heard in decision-making meetings.