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This chapter explores an aspect of voluntary childlessness that has been neglected in previous research; how voluntarily childless (i.e. childfree) women engage in partnership formation processes and how they perceive that these processes become influenced by their voluntarily childless status. Drawing on interviews with 21 voluntarily childless, heterosexual, Swedish women, this chapter highlights how their childfree decision(s) impacted their partnering behaviour, their chances to form an intimate relationship and their preferences concerning partners and partnerships. The results show some of the challenges these women faced as they engaged in partnership formation processes concerning; for example, constraints in partner availability and potentially conflicting preferences regards autonomy, reproduction and intimacy. In addition, partnership formation was complicated due to a lack of communication, misunderstandings and disbelief in their childfree choices. The analysis illustrates that it was of utmost importance to these women that their intimacy goals were respected and protected during these processes but that some of them were also willing to negotiate their partner ideal. Nevertheless, this chapter ends with a discussion of relationship dissolution due to ambivalence concerning childfree choices and intimacy goals both on behalf of the childfree woman and her partner.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how women managers in Swedish higher education (HE) both support and resist policies about equal representation, and to discuss which factors influenced if, and how, these managers took on the role as change agents for gender equality.

The paper draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 women in senior academic management positions (vice-chancellors, pro vice-chancellors, deans and pro deans) in ten Swedish HE institutions.

The paper highlights how these women situated themselves in an academic context where gender relations were changing. They supported equal representation policies in their everyday managerial practice and also by accepting management positions that they were nominated and elected to on the basis of such policies. However, they also resisted these policies when they experienced a need to “protect” women from being exploited “in the name of gender equality”.

The paper addresses the call for research on the role of women managers in promoting, or preventing, change towards more gender balanced organizations. The paper builds on a small qualitative study with women only interviews. The study is therefore to be considered as explorative.

The paper makes a contribution to the research literature in the area of gender and change in academic organizations. The findings highlight how policies have different consequences in different settings and that people use their own (different) experiences when interpreting the effects of these policies. The findings thus show the varying impacts equal representation policies can have on women.

The discussion in the paper is situated in a unique empirical context characterized by demographic feminization and organizational restructuring. Most international literature on women in HE and in HE management is based on US or UK contexts. Swedish HE therefore provides an interesting setting. The analysis also addresses the call for more research that takes into account the multifaceted character of HE and that discusses disciplinary differences.

The intent of this chapter is to discuss women managers as change agents in higher education. It focuses women’s increased access to senior academic management positions in Swedish higher education and investigates to what extent this increase is accompanied by changes to a masculine management norm.

The chapter draws on a study that involved qualitative interviews with 22 women in senior management positions in 10 Swedish higher education institutions.

The analysis highlights how women managers become agents of change by challenging a masculine management norm in a work setting where men have dominated management positions. The women challenged the masculine management norm by their mere presence as women but also by adopting a different management style. It also illustrates the multiple aspects of women’s potential to take on the role as change agent.

The results could benefit the development of gender equality strategies and the making of structural changes in organizations dominated by a masculine managerial norm.

The study is based on unique empirical material. The interviewees are women pioneers in the Swedish Higher Education Sector, contributing to the demographic feminization of senior academic management positions and the organizational restructuring.

The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to explore if and how management ideals are gendered within the context of Swedish higher education management and second, to investigate if and how the gendered character of these ideals has been challenged by new managerialism.

The paper draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 women in senior academic management positions (Vice Chancellors, Pro Vice Chancellors, Deans and Pro deans) in ten Swedish higher education institutions. Discourse analysis is used to explore the constructions of the management ideal in the interviews.

The paper identifies how the interviewed women managers constructed two different management ideals: one old-fashioned and traditional masculine ideal that was superseded by a feminine ideal that they identified themselves with. The masculine ideal was presented as being replaced by the feminine ideal due to the restructuring of higher education and the reforms in line with new managerialism. However, the feminine ideal was also associated with a number of professional challenges.

The research study is limited to management in the higher education sector, but the results have general implications as it adds richness to our understanding of the gendered effects of new managerialism. However, the paper builds on a small qualitative study with women only interviews. The paper is therefore to be considered as explorative. More research is needed, especially including men.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

This introduction sets forth the main themes of the volume, reviews the methods employed by the contributors, and demonstrates the relationships among the chapters.

Each of the chapters demonstrates the gendered nature of the academy and some of the ways in which women, especially women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, are disadvantaged. None of them provides complete catalogues of the issues confronting women and none reach definitive conclusions regarding the ways and means of transforming the academy. Additional research and experimentation will be required.

The gender transformation of the academy holds the promise of more opportunities for women, especially but not only in STEM disciplines and higher administration, and greater probability of balance between work and personal life for all.

The chapter serves as an overall introduction to the volume and the subject matter more generally.

This chapter uses the historian’s method of micro-history to rethink the significance of the Supreme Court decision Muller v. Oregon (1908). Muller is typically considered a labor law decision permitting the regulation of women’s work hours. However, this chapter argues that through particular attention to the specific context in which the labor dispute took place – the laundry industry in Portland, Oregon – the Muller decision and underlying conflict should be understood as not only about sex-based labor rights but also about how the labor of laundry specifically involved race-based discrimination. This chapter investigates the most important conflicts behind the Muller decision, namely the entangled histories of white laundresses’ labor and labor activism in Portland, as well as the labor of their competitors – Chinese laundrymen. In so doing, this chapter offers an intersectional reading of Muller that incorporates regulations on Chinese laundries and places the decision in conversation with a long line of anti-Chinese laundry legislation on the West Coast, including that at issue in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886).