ABSTRACT
British universities have been under a great deal of public scrutiny during the last decades. Issues of status and access, combined with funding crises of various kinds, have made dramatic changes both to educational culture and quality. There has been, predictably, little scrutiny of the culture or quality of equal opportunities in higher education. For example, the last Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) report on policy, Words or Deeds?: A Review of Equal Opportunity Policies in Higher Education, concluded ‘that a tone of moral superiority or complacency plus ignorance of the issues was pervasive’ (Williams et al., 1989, p. 24). Nor has there been very much recognition of the special contributions made by women staff, academic and non-academic, since the literature on women in higher education is sparse (Humm, 1991).
