Nomination vs. election: do they influence women’s access to institutional decision-making bodies?

Sara Diogo (), Teresa Carvalho () and Zélia Breda ()
Additional contact information
Sara Diogo: University of Aveiro
Teresa Carvalho: University of Aveiro
Zélia Breda: University of Aveiro

Journal of Management & Governance, 2021, vol. 25, issue 3, No 9, 879-898

Abstract: Abstract Portuguese higher education institutions (HEIs) are excellent case-studies of women representation in academia, considering their significant presence and rapid growth in HEIs. Nevertheless, and despite efforts to minimise gender gaps, women are still underrepresented in top management and leading positions, contributing to increment the phenomenon of vertical segregation. Based on the reality of the Portuguese academia, and focusing on an in-depth case study of a Portuguese university, this paper analyses if and how the way decision-making bodies are constituted, influence the gender balance of their members. Recently, within the New Public Management (NPM) context, HEIs have been subjected to external pressures to create a new organisational environment aiming at substituting the collegial model of governance with a managerial one. In this context, there has been a trend to replace the election by the nomination as the dominant process to occupy decision-making positions. The opening hypothesis of this study is that the way decision-making bodies are constituted, impacts on their gender balance. More specifically, it is argued that the nomination process tends to be more advantageous to women than the election. However, although it is possible to conclude that the gender balance decreases with the increasing importance of the decision-making body, it is not accurate to say that there is a direct relationship between the way actors are chosen to these bodies and their gender balance. In other words, the way actors are chosen can not be seen as the only factor influencing the gender constitution of decision-making bodies. The study provides a relevant contribution to the literature on mechanisms and strategies to improve gender equality in institutional decision-making processes and bodies.

Keywords: Universities; Managerialism; New public management (NPM); Gender balance; Governance; Nomination; Election; Decision-making bodies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10997-020-09538-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jmgtgv:v:25:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s10997-020-09538-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/10997/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10997-020-09538-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Management & Governance is currently edited by Lino Cinquini

More articles in Journal of Management & Governance from Springer, Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().