Why Are There So Few Female Leaders in Higher Education: A Case of Structure or Agency?

A significant gender imbalance remains at executive management level within higher education despite a number of initiatives to increase the number of women in the leadership pipeline and ensure they are better prepared for these roles. This article presents findings from a recent study on the appointment of deputy and pro vice chancellors in pre-1992 English universities that provide fresh insights into why this might be the case. These findings challenge the notion of women’s missing agency - characterised by a lack of confidence or ambition and a tendency to opt out of applying for the top jobs - as an explanation for their continued under-representation. Rather, they highlight the importance of three structural factors associated with the selection process: mobility and external career capital, conservatism, and homosociability. An approach of ‘fixing’ the women is therefore unlikely to be sufficient in redressing the current gender imbalance within university executive management teams

Clergy work-related satisfactions in parochial ministry: the influence of personality and churchmanship

The aim of this study was to test several hypotheses that clergy work-related satisfaction could be better explained by a multidimensional rather than a unidimensional model. A sample of 1071 male stipendiary parochial clergy in the Church of England completed the Clergy Role Inventory, together with the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Factor analysis of the Clergy Role Inventory identified five separate clergy roles: Religious Instruction, Administration, Statutory Duties (conducting marriages and funerals), Pastoral Care, and Role Extension (including extra-parochial activities). Respondents also provided an indication of their predispositions on the catholic-evangelical and liberal-conservative dimensions. The significant associations of the satisfactions derived from each of the roles with the demographic, personality, and churchmanship variables were numerous, varied, and, with few exceptions, small in magnitude. Separate hierarchical regressions for each of the five roles indicated that the proportion of total variance explained by churchmanship was, in general, at least as great as that explained by personality, and was greater for three roles: Religious Instruction, Statutory Duties, and Role Extension. It was concluded that clergy satisfactions derived from different roles are not uniform and that churchmanship is at least as important as personality in accounting for clergy work satisfaction

Enhanced insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle and liver by physiological overexpression of SIRT6

Objective: Available treatment for obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is suboptimal. Thus, identifying novel molecular target(s) exerting protective effects against these metabolic imbalances is of enormous medical significance. Sirt6 loss- and gain-of-function studies have generated confounding data regarding the role of this sirtuin on energy and glucose homeostasis, leaving unclear whether activation or inhibition of SIRT6 may be beneficial for the treatment of obesity and/or T2DM. Methods: To address these issues, we developed and studied a novel mouse model designed to produce eutopic and physiological overexpression of SIRT6 (Sirt6BAC mice). These mutants and their controls underwent several metabolic analyses. These include whole-blood reverse phase high-performance liquid chromatography assay, glucose and pyruvate tolerance tests, hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp assays, and assessment of basal and insulin-induced level of phosphorylated AKT (p-AKT)/AKT in gastrocnemius muscle. Results: Sirt6BAC mice physiologically overexpress functionally competent SIRT6 protein. While Sirt6BAC mice have normal body weight and adiposity, they are protected from developing high-caloric-diet (HCD)-induced hyperglycemia and glucose intolerance. Also, Sirt6BAC mice display increased circulating level of the polyamine spermidine. The ability of insulin to suppress endogenous glucose production was significantly enhanced in Sirt6BAC mice compared to wild-type controls. Insulin-stimulated glucose uptake was increased in Sirt6BAC mice in both gastrocnemius and soleus muscle, but not in brain, interscapular brown adipose, or epididymal adipose tissue. Insulin-induced p-AKT/AKT ratio was increased in gastrocnemius muscle of Sirt6BAC mice compared to wild-type controls. Conclusions: Our data indicate that moderate, physiological overexpression of SIRT6 enhances insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle and liver, engendering protective actions against diet-induced T2DM. Hence, the present study provides support for the anti-T2DM effect of SIRT6 and suggests SIRT6 as a putative molecular target for anti-T2DM treatment

Hepatic glucose uptake and disposition during short-term high-fat vs. high-fructose feeding

In dogs consuming a high-fat and -fructose diet (52 and 17% of total energy, respectively) for 4 wk, hepatic glucose uptake (HGU) in response to hyperinsulinemia, hyperglycemia, and portal glucose delivery is markedly blunted with reduction in glucokinase (GK) protein and glycogen synthase (GS) activity. The present study compared the impact of selective increases in dietary fat and fructose on liver glucose metabolism. Dogs consumed weight-maintaining chow (CTR) or hypercaloric high-fat (HFA) or high-fructose (HFR) diets diet for 4 wk before undergoing clamp studies with infusion of somatostatin and intraportal insulin (3–4 times basal) and glucagon (basal). The hepatic glucose load (HGL) was doubled during the clamp using peripheral vein (Pe) glucose infusion in the first 90 min (P1) and portal vein (4 mg·kg−1·min−1) plus Pe glucose infusion during the final 90 min (P2). During P2, HGU was 2.8 ± 0.2, 1.0 ± 0.2, and 0.8 ± 0.2 mg·kg−1·min−1 in CTR, HFA, and HFR, respectively (P < 0.05 for HFA and HFR vs. CTR). Compared with CTR, hepatic GK protein and catalytic activity were reduced (P < 0.05) 35 and 56%, respectively, in HFA, and 53 and 74%, respectively, in HFR. Liver glycogen concentrations were 20 and 38% lower in HFA and HFR than CTR (P < 0.05). Hepatic Akt phosphorylation was decreased (P < 0.05) in HFA (21%) but not HFR. Thus, HFR impaired hepatic GK and glycogen more than HFA, whereas HFA reduced insulin signaling more than HFR. HFA and HFR effects were not additive, suggesting that they act via the same mechanism or their effects converge at a saturable step

Work-related psychological health among clergywomen in Australia

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect, the Francis Burnout Inventory conceptualises good work-related psychological health among clergy in terms of negative affect being balanced by positive affect. This paper sets out to explore the relationship between work-related psychological health and psychological type (as assessed by the Francis Psychological-Type Scales) among a sample of 212 Australian clergywomen who completed the National Church Life Survey Form L in 2006. The data supported the internal consistency reliability of the Francis Burnout Inventory and Francis Psychological-Type Scales and found that work-related psychological health was positively related to extraversion and sensing

Mid-Career academic women and the prestige economy

Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with women academics based in London higher education institutions in the UK, this paper investigates the gendered nature of the prestige economy in academia. We explore how mid-career academic women strategise their career development and the opportunities and barriers they perceive, particularly in relation to the accrual of academic esteem. Concept maps were used to facilitate dialogue about career plans and provided an artefact from the interviewee’s own perspective. The analysis draws on the concept of prestige, or the indicators of esteem that help advance academic careers, against the backdrop of a higher education context which increasingly relies on quantitative data to make judgements about academic excellence. The interviews indicated that women generally feel that men access status and indicators of esteem more easily than they do. Many women also had ambivalent feelings about gaining recognition through prestige: they understood the importance of status and knew the ‘rules of the game’, but were critical of these rules and sometimes reluctant to overtly pursue prestige. The findings are valuable for understanding how women’s slow access to the highest levels of higher education institutions is shaped by the value that organisations place on individual status