ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the purpose and product of Higher Education. It examines the market model of Higher Education institutions at its word, and analyses evidence of institutional discrimination from the perspective of management theory. The book shows that the very ‘idea that fair and objective judgements can be made and rewards allocated solely in proportion to worth, to individual merit, is, at best, naive and, at worst, a deception’. Women in Higher Education carry the burden of ‘gender’ manifested as proportionately lower pay for equivalent work, poorer working conditions, greater instability of employment, institutional sexism, overt and covert discrimination, bullying and harassment. The book explores the extent to which the creative feminist academic exposes herself to ‘risk’ and ‘danger’, and underlines the argument that feminist pedagogy is ‘impossible’ without creativity, which is always risky, even dangerous’.
