ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three issues affecting women's experiences of higher education; women's relationship with academic knowledge; the ways in which procedures in higher education support and maintain dominent definitions of academic success; and what Mary Evans calls the success ethic in higher education. It explores these issues with reference to relationships between women in higher education from own experience and with reference to the discussion that took place amongst women in the conference workshop. Traditional definitions of success in Higher Education exclude the experiential, the spiritual and the emotional, and procedures within the academy serve to maintain these rigid boundaries. If we paused to consider these questions we would then be faced with further questions about which academic structures and procedures are blocking potential contribution to knowledge and learning in Higher Education. The personal costs involved in attempting to achieve success are very high.
