The Wiley Handbook of Gender Equity in Higher Education

Introduction

Marcus B. Weaver‐Hightower and Nancy S. Niemi

With women's ascendancy in higher education enrollment since the 1980s, many seemingly assume that gender issues have been “solved.” This is a restrictive understanding of the role that gender plays in higher education – including that it relates only to cisgender women – and it would be just as uninformed to say that because women vote, political equity has been achieved. Just as colleges and universities cannot be reduced to their admissions offices, our focus on gender cannot be reduced to how many women are paying customers. Gender, like the master narratives of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, insinuates itself into every facet of higher education institutions, influencing who does what, how, for what compensation and status, and with what amount of physical and emotional safety. Further, institutions sit within complex webs of external cultures that refract what happens inside them into different and often distorted images of colleges and universities. What happens in schools is the results of actions and reactions in a million small contexts, beginning long before anyone gets to college and remaining long after they leave or graduate.

This volume, The Wiley Handbook of Gender Equity in Higher Education, looks at many facets of higher education frequently overlooked when one supposes enrollment causes equality. Such a false equation can actually undermine the progress of the majority of enrollees, and ...