9. Finance Academy Gender Inequity Case Study

The story in this chapter tells of asymmetric power in a male only finance department of a business school. The power allows both overt discrimination and implicit bias to operate against women in curriculum decisions and development. This chapter showcases the non-tangible forces aligning against a woman in the academy: systemic gender discrimination, unspoken power differentials, capitalist profit priorities, and implicit bias. The analysis offers an original insight, that two female archetypes lurk in the collective male unconscious: the handmaiden and the cheerleader. One way to correct systemic gender discrimination is by ensuring the number of women in power positions reaches a critical mass, rather than just the one or two who become tokens in their work area.