Guest editorial: A feminist manifesto for higher education: towards re-gendering and regeneration

Abstract

When we first set out the call for this special issue, our motivation was both personal as well as visionary – we wanted to confront and problematize the ways neoliberalism and growing marketization have not only changed academia itself but it also reshapes us, academics within it. It is not about yet another abstract policy construct: it is a change that impacts our daily lives, our identities and what is valued and what is forgotten. While neoliberal imperatives impact all who work in higher education, its consequences and realities are gendered. Under the false promise of meritocracy and inclusivity the existent hierarchies, power imbalances and gender inequality, create conditions where women and other marginalized groups face additional challenges. Gender is something that is being done to another, involving hidden strategies of sometimes subtle discrimination in the workplace (Czarniawska, 2006).With this special issue, we aimed to shed more light onto how conflicting aspects of gender, embodiment, neoliberal policies and market-driven approaches, shape the experiences, opportunities and challenges faced by women in academia, contributing to broader discussions within the fields of gender studies, higher education research and management. This is a manifesto because we want to make these issues manifest in their cultural context: open to be (re-)interpreted, questioned, explored and ultimately changed not as further “change management” projects, but re-imagined and re-aligned with the profession’s deep cultural assumptions and meaning making dynamics (Hatch, 1993).With this aim in mind, this special issue brings together eight contributions that collectively reveal the multi-layered ways of how these conflicting aspects intersect. The authors examine contexts as diverse as Chinese journalism departments, Nigerian universities, Australian business schools and Syrian women in UK refugee integration programmes, yet the underlying dynamics are alarmingly familiar: institutional hypocrisy, structural exclusion, time scarcity and the search for space.The landscape of higher education has been deeply transformed by the forces of neoliberalism and marketization, reshaping the ethos and practices within academic institutions worldwide (Fleming, 2017, 2021; Halligan, 2010; Kostera, 2019; Parker, 2012; Parker et al., 2021; Rhodes and Pullen, 2023; Izak et al., 2017). These transformations have introduced a competitive, performance-oriented culture, emphasizing efficiency, productivity and market values. The embracing of neoliberal and market-focused strategies in higher education transforms universities to operate more like businesses (Connell, 2013, 2015; Giroux, 2014; Halligan, 2010; Rhodes et al., 2018). This includes adopting performance metrics, fostering competition and applying (the worst) management-style reminiscent of the private corporate sector, all of which reframe higher education institutions as entities driven by business principles. However, the university does not produce goods or services in the same way as a business; nor is it a public institution in the sense of being an institution serving as an administrative instrument of state power (see, e.g. Mintzberg, 2023 on the different types of organizations). Its functioning requires its members to have an ethos and a calling and thus requires a specific structure, as well as management function (Giza, 2019).The impact of neoliberalism in academia implies a radical shift away from its professional and organizational identity and signifies a paradigm shift, echoing Bourdieu’s (1984) distinction between Homo academicus and Homo oeconomicus (Górska, 2024). Initially, the unifying discourse has centred on individual dilemmas, but today it pervades the academic narrative, advocating for academic “efficiency”, productivity and a need for “continuous improvement” – where academia increasingly resembles a factory with scholarly writing and teaching as its products, while students as its clients. Peter Fleming (2017), in his book Death of Homo Economicus, assesses “wreckage capitalism”, where the pervasive economization of our lives under neoliberalism transforms individuals into micro-entrepreneurs, thereby challenging the notion of education and work as communal goods. The author criticizes the outdated economic model that continues to shape policies and practices in academia (and beyond).Gender plays an important role in this context, which has become clearly obvious during the pandemic (Lipton, 2020; O'Keefe and Courtois, 2019; Plotnikof et al., 2020; Rosa, 2021). Masculine managerial strategies aim at rendering bodies obsolete while stressing abstract orders (Fotaki, 2013). Women are expected to demonstrate male characteristics to “succeed” under such a regime and must set aside embodied and feminine qualities (Fotaki, 2013; Höpfl and Matilal, 2007; Lund and Tienari, 2018). This emphasis on efficiency and measurable outcomes creates a framework where academics outside of the male hegemonic order, often faced with additional responsibilities such as domestic duties and caregiving, are perceived as “riskier” investments. Defining “difference” as something to be managed, organizations impose a strategy of control on what they regard as “the problem of difference”, paying lip-service to ideas of equality, while at the same time promoting a strongly patriarchal mode of managing, ordering and defining differences (Czarniawska and Höpfl, 2002).Gendered bodies in academia, unwilling or unable to adapt to the neoliberal order, find themselves at the intersection of neoliberal paradigms and facing gender inequities, navigating a labyrinth of gendered biases, stereotypes and expectations (Acker and Armenti, 2004; Burkinshaw, 2015; Górska, 2023; Fox et al., 2017; Hengel, 2017; Spoon et al., 2023; Trevino et al., 2017).Under neoliberal pressures, universities increasingly start to mirror corporate practices, where faculty members increasingly resemble employees rather than educators, students are viewed more as clients than learners, while deans and rectors act increasingly more as CEOs (Fleming, 2021). At the same time, gender inequalities persist, masked under the façade of meritocracy and neutrality (Górska et al., 2025).The academic environment, dominated by male norms, marginalizes female faculty, affecting their experiences and contributions. Marginalization is not just about policy inadequacies or implementation failures; it reflects a profound cultural entrenchment that resists change over time (Gardiner and Finn, 2023; Meschitti and Marini, 2023). Women and other minorities are excluded and pushed to the peripheries unless they conform to patriarchal norms, which devalues their perspectives and contributions, leading them to navigate a dual role of complicity and resistance to their own marginalization (Fotaki, 2013). Differences accumulate and generate a number of synergetic effects, complicating the already knotty situation of women in academia, marginalizing them even further (Czarniawska and Sevón, 2008; Höpfl, 2007).As a result, they find themselves navigating a complex terrain where neoliberal paradigms intersect with embedded gender inequities, presenting a unique set of barriers, biases, stereotypes and expectations towards women (Burkinshaw, 2015; Fox et al., 2017; Lipton, 2020; O'Keefe and Courtois, 2019).The special issue touches a chord that resonates with many academics: the call attracted a strong international interest, we have received 33 submissions from over 100 authors representing diverse countries, disciplines and career stages. The eight articles selected for publication offer varied yet interconnected perspectives on how gendered embodiment is shaped, constrained and sometimes re-imagined within neoliberal academia. Spanning multiple methodological approaches, they address both the intimate, lived realities of gendered academic work and the structural, policy-driven contexts in which these experiences display. This scope of engagement showcases how the topic resonates across different cultural, social and institutional contexts, proving its significance for understanding the contemporary academic landscape. In what follows, we group the contributions into thematic categories that show distinct but corresponding conversations, showing how each article advances the agenda set out in our call, and contributing to the Manifesto.One of the most striking themes that arises across the special issue is how neoliberal academia governs not just our work but our time, lives, bodies and intimate decisions.Mao et al.’s (2026) study of academic mothers in China explores how childbirth impacts women’s lives, producing conflicts between family and scholarly timelines. They show how cultural traditions, institutional metrics and personal strategies interact to create a “temporal tyranny” that leaves little room for rest or resistance.Sharafizad’s (2026) research on work–family trade-offs of Australian female academics shows that there is always a “cost of “success”. For some, career advancement is only made possible by delaying or declining parenthood, enduring relationship breakdowns or internalizing the ideal academic persona at significant personal cost.Gaggiotti and Gasparri’s (2026) ethnographic account of egg freezing in UK academia takes this further, examining the professional and personal rationales of early career academics for delaying motherhood. In an academia defined by short-term contracts and hyper-competition, the body becomes another site for strategic management, while pregnancy and motherhood can be limitations to “succeed”. To overcome this fertility treatments are positioned (and sometimes subsidized) as “career-friendly” benefits.These contributions showcase how women’s decisions, bodies and family lives are subjected to the same logics of calculation, efficiency, optimization and risk management that govern the neoliberal university itself. The expectation to be competitive, fill out the efficiency boxes, and “produce” reconfigures women’s relationships, family life and decision to have children. What is framed as “choice”: whether to have children, when to have them, whether to freeze one’s eggs, how to allocate one’s hours, is in reality shaped by structural pressures that expect the idealized, disembodied academic worker. A masculine and patriarchal one.Neoliberal academia is a patriarchal project, defining embodiment, family and personhood in ways that legitimize and further its strategic aims.Two articles take us to the intersectional edges of exclusion, where gender inequalities intersect with displacement, race and structural marginalization.Speed and Scurry’s (2026) study of Syrian women from refugee backgrounds introduces the concept of the “canvas ceiling” to capture the combined barriers faced when forced migration collides with the gendered hierarchies of neoliberal academia. Here, academic careers are constrained not only by the well-documented demands of hyper-competition and precarious contracts but also by immigration policies, credential recognition regimes and the pervasive tendency to view refugee scholars through a humanitarian rather than professional lens.Akahome and Skubis’ (2026) exploration of technofeminist pedagogy in Nigerian universities expands the intersectional lens into the domain of teaching. By embedding feminist ethics into technology and design education, her work not only challenges the masculine norms of STEM fields but also disrupts the colonial and neoliberal legacies embedded in curricula and pedagogy. This intervention shows that structural exclusion is not confined to hiring, promotion or contract terms, while it is also reproduced in what we teach, whose expertise is legitimized and which epistemologies are systematically marginalized.Neoliberal academia reproduces colonial structures of marginalization and generates new ones, based on issues central for the profession such as epistemology and pedagogy.Several contributions in this special issue study the relationship between formal equality initiatives and the neoliberal systems in which they are embedded. What emerges is a portrait of equality work that is constantly negotiated, sometimes co-opted, and frequently compromised by the very institutional logics it seeks to dismantle.Chen et al.’s (2026) multiple-case study of gender-sensitive academic workplaces reveals how market-driven ideas frequently undermine inclusivity. They show how universities, in their path to appear globally competitive and prestigious, are often merely “tokenistic” – adopting the language of diversity while not talking the necessary steps to realize it (Moss Kanter, 1993). The result is a paradox: policies branded as progressive become instruments in the competition for prestige, with equity subordinated to profitability.Similarly, Afiouni et al.’s (2026) autoethnographic account of implementing Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) takes us into the hypocrisy of higher education institutions and the micro-politics behind (the lack of) institutional change. Working within an EU-funded consortium, the authors document how formal equality agendas collide with rooted hierarchies, opaque decision-making and the performative embrace of “gender mainstreaming” for the sake of funding or rankings. Power, they show, operates through both visible structures and informal networks, producing situations where GEPs are used to signal compliance to external stakeholders while leaving the gendered status quo largely intact.Vohlidalova et al.’s (2026) comparative survey of academic work trajectories in Czechia traces a different but equally entrenched form of inequality. Their holistic life-course approach demonstrates how neoliberal reforms, far from creating meritocratic opportunity, intensify existing gaps by rewarding uninterrupted mobility and privileging fields and institutions that already skew male. Generational patterns reveal that the rhetoric of progress masks enduring structural barriers: women remain overrepresented in teaching-intensive, lower-status and more precarious positions, while male-dominated fields earn the rewards of research excellence frameworks.These studies showcase a persistent contradiction: equality policies in neoliberal academia are often positioned as evidence of institutional virtue, yet their design and implementation are shaped by logics of competition, performativity and managerial control. While behind these are the real gains: the prestige, position in rankings and obtained accreditations – not the true equality. Rather than challenging the neoliberal university, such policies can become a tool for its reproduction, a form of gender-washing that uses the language of justice to mask the continuity of inequity.Neoliberal academia uses equality as a tool for creating a favorable image of its strategies by the co-optation of important social causes and thus sabotaging them, which is one of the dominant trends of corporate extraction and marketization of social morality (Rhodes, 2022).As academics, we call for future research and academic deliberation. Chantal Jaquet (2021) argued that regenerating the culture of social deliberation is crucial for the regeneration of democracy. Therefore, our Manifesto is both an academic one, as well as endowed with a strong vision of social progress. We academics can contribute to beneficial social change by doing what we do best – by developing directions for scholarship. We propose the following ones, based on the insights from the texts collected in is special issue:An important dimension of this re-gendering project is reflexivity, the active practice of examining our own positionalities, experiences and identities as scholars and members of academia (Eriksen et al., 2007). Reflexivity in this sense is an ethical commitment to acknowledge the ways our unique backgrounds, privileges and vulnerabilities shape the knowledge we produce, the way we work together and co-create academia. We invite academics to engage with their own work not as disembodied intellects but as whole human beings situated within intersecting structures of power. In doing so, reflexivity becomes a form of resistance, a shield to the neoliberal drive to standardize and depersonalize academic labour.In opening of this Manifesto, we stated that neoliberalism is not yet another abstract policy construct. It is a lived reality that shapes our daily lives, our identities and the boundaries of what is valued and what is forgotten. It is embedded in the metric systems devised by corporate-like CEO-deans, who draw lines between “valuable” and “non-valuable” research, “meaningful” and “meaningless” contributions. Under such logics, the over a yearlong development process of this special issue is deemed unprofitable for the system. It does not move a university up the rankings or yield quick returns in grant income. Accordingly, our work will remain unnoticed and unappreciated by the universities driven by this logic.And yet, for us as guest editors as well as authors of this Manifesto, and we hope for our authors and readers, its value is beyond question. Each article in this collection contributes something meaningful to the body of scholarship on gender, embodiment and higher education. Each pushes back against the narrowing of academic worth to what can be counted in Excel spreadsheets. We see the value of research in the depth of its insight, its capacity to challenge dominant narratives and its potential to inspire change, even if it cannot be reduced to a performance metric.While academia can no longer pretend to be meritocratic and neutral, it must also stop treating gender equality plans and diversity policies as symbolic tokens, gestures that signal virtue while masking inequality and maintaining the status quo.The articles in this special issue are, collectively, an invitation and a provocation: to imagine a different university, more collegial, equal and human centred. We believe this is achievable within a new, community oriented, matriarchal paradigm, following the vision of Anna Giza: