"Keeping your eye on the prize": Gender equality programmes in enterprise universities

This chapter explores the material impact of major transformations in the Australian academic field upon a group of ethnically and socioeconomically diverse academic women leaders who, because of their varying degrees of seniority, were positioned as 'key change agents' in their diverse locales. It examines two key questions. Firstly, despite long term policies of equity and diversity, how are such women leaders positioned in a field in which to be an academic leader/manager still requires that one both 'masculines and whitens'? Secondly, given the small amount of research upon such women and the largely unexamined assumption underpinning educational studies which posits white, middle-class as the naturalized subject location of leadership, what learnings can we draw from these women's experiences in relation to gender equality programmes in universities?