Breaking through the Glass Ceiling: Navigating towards Leadership Positions as a Woman International Academic

Abstract

While emerging research suggests that women have made great gains within the higher education sector, significant challenges remain. Notably, women are still severely under-represented in leadership positions in the academe, and this is even more so for international academics. As an early-career academic, I am fortunate that my journey so far has allowed me to hold various leadership positions (both informal and formal). In this book chapter, I reflect on my own experiences. In so doing, I share insights into how to be an ‘opportunist’ in gaining leadership positions as a woman, breaking through the glass ceiling – that symbolic obstacle women hit – while being an international academic. The chapter starts with a brief overview of my background and my non-traditional pathway into the Sport Management discipline more broadly and the sub-discipline where I now feel at ‘home’. In what follows, I consider how some of the barriers and challenges I faced along the way have served to shape my future self. It is, perhaps, not without some degree of irony, that strategies I developed to mitigate or overcome these led to what I term self-created opportunities. The chapter then reflects on some of the successes I have achieved.

Citation

Thompson, A.-J. (2022), "Breaking through the Glass Ceiling: Navigating towards Leadership Positions as a Woman International Academic", Nachatar Singh, J.K. (Ed.) Academic Mobility and International Academics (Surviving and Thriving in Academia), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 17-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-510-420221003