1. This is evidenced not just by the sheer quantity of research in this area - the numerous books, articles and journals produced - but by the now routine inclusion of gender issues, perspectives and so forth in most, if not all, law schools in the United Kingdom.

2. Cownie, F ‘Women Legal Academics-A New Research Agenda?’ (1998) 25(1) J Law and Society 102 at 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, citing Trow, M ‘The Public and Private Lives of Higher Education’ 104 Daedelus 113 Google Scholar. See also Pierce, J Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms (Berkeley CA: California University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. See eg, Thornton, M Dissonance and Distrust: Women in the Legal Profession (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Haight Farley, C ‘Confronting Expectations: Women in the Legal Academy’ (1996) 8 Yale J Law and Feminism 333 Google Scholar; Chused, R ‘The hiring and retention of minorities and women in American law school faculties’ (1988) 1137 UPaLR 537 Google Scholar; Guinier, L et al ‘Becoming Gentlemen: Women's Experiences at One Ivy League Law School’ (1994) 143 Penn LR 51 Google Scholar; The Chilly Collective (eds) Breaking Anonymity: the Chilly Climate for Women Faculty (Waterloo Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Press, 1995); S McIntyre ‘Gender Bias within the law school: The “Memo” and its impact’ in The Chilly Collective, ibid, ch 7; Fineman, M ‘The New “Tokenism”’ 23 Vermont LR 289 Google Scholar; Bender, L ‘For Mary Joe Frug: Empowering Women Law Professors’ (1991) 6 Wisconsin Women's Law Journal 1 Google Scholar. An excellent account of the account between men and legal feminism can be found in P Halewood ‘White Men Can't Jump: Critical Epistemologies, Embodiment, and the Praxis of Legal Scholarship’ (1995) 7(1)Google Scholar Yale J Law and Feminism 1.

4. This literature is now voluminous. Questions of gender have informed, in a particularly clear way, the development of policy initiatives, the contours of internal organisational politics and understandings of the various ‘day to day’ employment practices of legal professionals. See further Sommerlad, H and Sanderson, P Gender Choice and Commitment: Women Solicitors in England and Wales and the struggle for equal status (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998)Google Scholar; McGlynn, C The Woman Lawyer: Making the Difference (London: Butterworths, 1998)Google Scholar; Brockman, J Gender in the Legal Profession: Fitting or Breaking the Mould? (British Columbia: UBO Press, 2001)Google Scholar; McGlynn, C ‘The Business of Equality in the Solicitors' Profession’ (2000) 63 MLR 442 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hagan, J and Kay, F Gender in Practice: A Study of lawyers' Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Hull, K and Nelson, R ‘Gender Inequality in Law: Problems in Structure and Agency in Recent Studies of Gender in Anglo-American Legal Professions’ (1998) Law and Social Inquiry 681 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ross, D Bridging the Gap: A Report on Women in Law (London: Quarry Douglas Consulting Group, 1990)Google Scholar; Podmore, D and Spencer, A ‘Gender in the Labour process - the case of women and men lawyers’ in Knights, D and Wilmott, H (eds) Gender and Labour Process (Aldershot: Cower, 1986)Google Scholar; Harrington, M Women Lawyers: Rewriting the Rules (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1992)Google Scholar; Skordaki, E ‘Glass Slippers and glass ceilings: Women in the Legal Profession’ (1996) 3 IJLP 7 Google Scholar.

5. Sommerlad and Sanderson, n 4 above. This issue has secured a high media profile over the past decade. See eg, ‘Mothers, Lawyers and Jugglers’ The Times, 23 November 1990 ‘My Learned friends Want to be More Flexible’ The Times, 14 April 1998; ‘A Friend of the Family’ Law Society Gazette, 14 April 2000.

6. McGlynn (1998), n 4 above.

7. Although see eg Leighton, P, Mortimer, T and Whatley, N Today's Law Teachers: Lawyers or Academics? (London: Cavendish, 1995)Google Scholar.

8. F. Cownie, n 2 above, at 102 and 104.

9. Wells, C ‘Working Our Women in Law Schools’ (2001) 21 LS 1 at 116 Google Scholar; Cownie, n 2 above; Cownie, F ‘Women in the Law School - Shoals of Fish, Starfish or Fish Out of Water?’ in Thomas, P (ed) Discriminating Lawyers (London: Cavendish, 2000)Google Scholar. Also C Wells and B Felsteiner ‘Remains of the Day: The Women Law Professors Project’ (1999) Paper presented at the Law and Society Association Annual meeting, Chicago, May.

10. Wells, n 9 above.

11. On which, see generally Becher, T Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Halsey, A H Decline of Donnish Dominion: The British Academic Professions in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Becher, T and Kogan, M Process and Structure in Higher Education (London: Routledge, 2nd edn, 1992)Google Scholar; P Scott The Meanings of Mass Higher Education (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995); C Bargh, P Scott and D Smith Governing Universities: Changing the Culture? (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996); M Trow Managerialism and the Academic Profession: Quality and Control (London: QSC, 1994).

12. In using this term it is not my intention to take the parameters of ‘family’ for granted. See Silva, E, E, and Smart, C (eds) The ‘New’ Family? (London: Sage, 1999)Google ScholarPubMed; Smart, C and Neale, B Family Fragments (Cambridge: Polity, 1999)Google Scholar. See further below.

13. See n 46 below.

14. On British law schools generally, see eg, Bradney, A ‘Law as a Parasitic Discipline’ (1998) 25 J Law and Society 71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradney, A ‘Legal Education in the 21st Century’ in Grant, J et al Legal Education 2000 (Aldershot: Cower, 1988)Google Scholar; Bradney, A ‘Ivory Towers or Satanic Mills: Choices for University Law Schools’ (1992) 17 Studies in Higher Education CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brownsword, R ‘Where are all the law schools going?’ (1996) The Law Teacher 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cownie, F (ed) The Law School: Global Issues, Local problems (Aldershot: Cower, 1999)Google Scholar; R Brownsword ‘Law schools for lawyers, citizens and people’ in Cownie, ibid; Bradney, A and Cownie, F ‘Transformative Visions of Legal education’ (1998) 25 J Law and Society 1 Google Scholar; Bradney, A and Cownie, F ‘Working on the Chain Gang?’ (1996) 2 Contemporary Issues in Law 2 at 15Google Scholar; Harris, P and Jones, M ‘A Survey of Law Schools in the UK’ (1996) 3 Law Teacher 91 Google Scholar; Twining, W L ‘Thinking About Law schools: Rutland Reviewed’ (1998) 25 J Law and Society 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Twining, W L Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1994).Google Scholar

15. As Celia Wells concisely puts it,‘Readers of this journal [Legal Studies] most likely work in a law school. Readers of this journal most likely are male, pale, middle-class and able-bodied. True, there is more chance that they are female than there would have been 20 years ago, but those women will almost invariably be fit and white’: Wells, n 9 above, at 116.

16. There is reason to believe, eg, that the experience of Oxbridge as a ‘total institution’ facilitates a distinctive lifestyle in relations with colleagues and students and is qualitatively different from many (if not all) other United Kingdom universities. On the ‘macho’ and ‘intimidating’ culture of Cambridge University, where it has been reported 66% of women lecturers have felt at some time excluded: ‘Macho Dons get equality training’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 2 February 2001; ‘Cambridge Machismo ‘Intimidates’ Minorities’ Independent, 3 1 January 2001.

17. See Bradney, n 14 above; Becher, n 11 above, p 30; Twining (1994), n 14 above.

18. Wells, n 9 above, Cownie, n 2 above; also McGlynn, C ‘Women Representation and the Legal Academy’ (1999) 19 LS at 68 Google Scholar. Whilst recognising there are dangers in drawing wider inferences from the study of one discipline, the exploration of a distinct subject area has a potential analytic use for developing an understanding of the changing nature of academic work more generally (a point made by both Wells and Cownie, ibid).

19. The shifting hierarchy of law schools in the United Kingdom is discussed below.

20. Cownie, n 2 above, at 103.

21. Cownie, n 2 above, at 109.

22. Cownie, n 2 above, at 103–104.

23. Becher, n 11 above, quoted in Cownie, n 2 above, at 109.

24. See generally Thornton, M (ed) Public and Private: Feminist Legal Debates (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Boyd, S ‘Can law challenge the public/private divide? Women, work and family’ (1996) 15 Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 161 Google Scholar.

25. McGlynn (2000), n 4 above.

26. See Collier, R ‘Feminising the Workplace’? (Re)constructing the ‘good parent’ in ‘employment law and family policy’ in Morris, A and O'Donnell, T (eds) Feminist Perspectives on Employment Law (London: Cavendish, 1999).Google Scholar

27. Eg recent years have witnessed industrial action on the part of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) concerned, at least in part, with redressing the well-documented and pervasive pay disparities between men and women academics.

28. That gender equity is an ethical question is thus accepted by those universities which publicly ally themselves to declarations of equal opportunity. Both employers and university teaching and support staff have developed policies aimed explicitly at an overhaul of those recruitment and promotion procedures which have been seen to discriminate against women and ethnic minority staff: Independent, 8 August 2000.

29. On the Athena Project for the advancement of women in Science and Engineering and Technology, eg, see further http://www.athena.ic.ac.uk. Note also the CVCP (now Universities UK) funded Women in Higher Education Register, open to all women working in higher education in the United Kingdom.

30. Women in academic jobs in the United Kingdom are paid on average 18% less than their male counterparts: AUT Analysis of staff record data for1998/ provided by HESA (London: AUT, 2001). There is much evidence to suggest that women predominate in the lower status and less secure positions in universities: Woodward, W ‘Gender pay gap at universities widens’ Guardian, 17 July 2001; ‘Women lose out as university pay gap widens’ Independent, 24 May 2000.Google Scholar

31. On women academics generally, see Acker, S ‘Contradictions in Terms: Women Academics in British Universities’ in Arnot, M and Weiler, K (eds) Feminism and Social Justice in Education (London: Routledge Falmer, 1993)Google Scholar; Acker, S Gendered Education (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Brooks, A Academic Women (Milton Keynes: SRHE and Open University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Malina, D and Maslin-Prothers, S (eds) Surviving the Academy: Feminist Perspectives (London: Falmer Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bannerjhi, H et al Unsettling Relations: The University as a Site of Feminist Struggle (Toronto: Women's Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Morley, L and Walsh, V (eds) Breaking Boundaries: Women in Higher Education (London: Taylor and Francis, 1996)Google Scholar; Morley, L Organising Feminisms: The Micropolitics of the Academy (London: Macmillan Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Statham, A, Richardson, L and Cook, J Gender and University Teaching (New York: SUNY, 1991)Google Scholar; West, J and Lyon, K ‘The trouble with equal opportunities: the case of women academics’ (1995) 7 Gender and Education 51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Overall, C A Feminist I: Reflections from Academia (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Bagilhole, B ‘Being Different is a very difficult me to hoe: survival strategies of women academics’ in Davies, S, Lubelska, C and Quinn, J Changing the Subject: Women in Higher Education (London: Taylor and Francis, 1994)Google Scholar; Collins, L H et al Career Strategies for Women in Academe (Thousand Oaks CA: Sage, 1998)Google Scholar; Vasil, L ‘Social Process Skills and Career Achievement among Male and Female Academics’ (1996) 67 J Higher Education 103 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. WLP ‘Working With Women Workshop: The Cat-Flap in the Glass Ceiling’ (June 1999: ALT/SPTL sponsored); ‘Strategic Thinking for the Millennium: Women and Law Conference’ University of Westminster, London, 2000.

33. Eg the SLSA Women's Network

34. In the form, eg, of developing a mentoring ‘buddy’ system for women legal academics. These networks paid an active role in mobilising the responses of women academics in the United Kingdom subsequent to the publication in 2001 of publicity material by Cavendish Publishing which was widely seen to be sexist and offensive (Cavendish themselves have been the publishers of a major series of books on ‘Feminist Perspectives.’ on law). In the light of protests Cavendish Publishing withdrew the advertising and offered a full apology.

35. The argument of Cownie, n 2 above.

36. McGlynn, n 18 above; Cownie, n 2 above. In the vast majority of law schools there are few women heads of department and few women law professors.

37. David, M and Woodward, D (eds) Negotiating the Glass Ceiling: Careers of Senior Women in the Academic World (London: Falmer Press, 1998).Google Scholar

38. For up-to-date data on intake into the law school and the legal profession more generally, see further Thomas (ed), n 9 above; ‘Girls Take Over the Academy’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 5 May 2000.

39. Bell, C M ‘All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten (playing soccer): A feminist parable of legal academia’ (1995) Yale J Law and Feminism 7 at 133–136 Google Scholar; Bird, S ‘Welcome to the Men's Club: Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity’ (1996) 10 Gender and Society 2 at 120-132CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collier, R ‘“Nutty Professors”, “Men in Suits” and “New Entrepreneurs”: Corporeality, Subjectivity and Change in the Law School and Legal Practice’ (1998) 7 Social and Legal Studies 27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collier, R ‘Masculinism, Law and Law Teaching’ 19 Int J Sociology of Law 427 Google Scholar; Thornton, M ‘Hegemonic Masculinity and the Academy’ (1989) 17 Int J Sociology of Law Google Scholar.

40. An excellent account of which can be found in Thornton, n 3 above.

41. Thornton, M ‘Authority and Corporeality: The Conundrum for Women in Law’ (1998) 6 Feminist Legal Studies 147 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This concern is encapsulated by a recent cartoon in the newsletter of the British Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) concerning the establishment of the SLSA Women's Network entitled ‘Speak Up, I Can't Hear You’.

42. Eg the link between women and ‘caring’, pastoral roles and the common association of assertion and self-promotion on the part of women, in contrast to men, with aggressiveness.

43. Abrams, K ‘Cross-Dressing in the Master's Clothes’ 109 Yale LJ 745.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. See further A R Hochschild The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (1997); Hochschild, A R The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (London: Piatkus, 1989)Google Scholar; Epstein, C, Seron, C, Oglensky, B et al The Part-Time Paradox: Time Norms, Professional Lives, Family and Gender (New York: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Williams, J Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

45. See eg, Hakim, C ‘Five feminist myths about women's employment’ (1995) 45 BrJ Soc Google Scholar; Hakim, C Key Issues in Women's Work: Female Heterogeneity and the Polarisation of Women's Employment (London: Athlone, 1996)Google Scholar.

46. The term ‘work-family’ is understood to encompass more complex and multi-faceted issues than simply those around child care. Work-family refers to any connection between the work and personal domains of an individual, involving both structural (time commitment- geographical location-family size) and psychological aspects (job/life satisfaction, stress, general health and well-being). The evolving work-family paradigm embraces issues of legislative change, organisational policies, procedures and programmes. See further Hogarth, T et al Work-Life Balance 2000: Baseline Study of work-life balance practices in Great Britain (London: Institute For Employment Research/DFEE, 2000)Google Scholar. See further Lewis, S and Lewis, J (eds) The Work-Family Challenge: Rethinking Employment (London: Sage, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Campbell Clark, S ‘Work/family border theory: a new theory of Work/family balance’ 53 Human Relations 6 at 747Google Scholar.

47. Williams, n 44 above.

48. See further Radford, J (ed) Gender and Choice in Education and Occupation (London: Routledge, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McGlynn (1998). n 4 above; Abrhams, K ‘Cross-Dressing in the Masters Clothes’ (2000) 109 Yale LJ 4 at 745 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49. Fineman, M The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies, (New York: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar

50. Abrams, n 48 above, at 750.

51. Williams, n 44 above, at 1.

52. Connell, R W Gender and Power (Cambridge: Polity, 1987).Google Scholar

53. Abrhams, n 48 above, at 746.

54. Abrhams, n 48 above, at 746.

55. A threefold classification utilised by Wells, n 9 above.

56. Connell, R W The Men and the Boys (Cambridge: Polity, 2000) p 18.Google Scholar

57. Blaxter et al The Academic Career Handbook (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1998) p 3.

58. See eg Crompton, R, Gallie, D and Purcell, K. Changing forms of employment: organisation, skills and gender (London: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar; Rifkin, J The End of Work (New York: Tarcher Putnam, 1996)Google Scholar; Walby, S (ed) Gender Segregation at Work (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

59. A shift interlinked with the now dominant belief that a flexible, efficient and appropriately credentialised workforce is essential to the competitive future of post-industrial, service-based economies such as Britain: ‘Higher Education has become central to the economic well being of nations and individuals. The qualities of mind that it develops will be the qualities that society increasingly needs to function effectively. Knowledge is advancing so rapidly that a modem competitive economy depends on its ability to generate that knowledge, engage with it and use it to effect. Above all, the country must enable people, in large numbers and throughout life, to equip themselves for a world of work which is characterised by change’ National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education Higher Education in the Learning Society (Norwich: HMSO, 1997) at 51 (henceforth the Dearing Report).

60. On the idea of family practices see further D Morgan ‘Risk and Family Practices: Accounting for Change and Fluidity in Family Life’ in Silva and Smart, n 12 above.

61. Changes which have been explored in a growing scholarship concerned with the relationship between gender, work and organisation See eg, Hem, J and Parkin, W ‘Sex’ at ‘Work’: The Power and Paradox of Organisation Sexuality (London: Sage, 1995)Google Scholar; Acker, J ‘Gendered institutions: from sex roles to gendered institutions’ (1992) 21 Contemporary Sociology 5 at 565CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Acker, J ‘Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A theory of gendered organizations’ (1990) 4 Gender and Society 2 at 139 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nicolson Gender, P, Work and Organizations: A Psychological Perspective (London: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar; Savage, M and Witz, A (eds) Gender and Bureaucracy (London: Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar.

62. It is in this context, eg, that a wider ‘crisis of masculinity’ has been identified, not least in relation to debates about crime and criminality: Collier, R Masculinities, Crime and Criminology (London: Sage, 1998)Google Scholar.

63. Kimmell, M and Kaufman, M ‘Weekend Warriors: the new men's movement’ in Kimmell, M (ed) The Politics of Manhood: Pro feminist Men Respond to the Mythopoetic Men's Movement (and the mythopoetic leaders answer) (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995) p 18 Google Scholar. See further Martin, B ‘Knowledge, Identity and the Middle-class: From Collective to Individualised Class Formation?’ (1998) The Sociological Review at 653–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64. This is issue to which scant attention has been paid. By way of exception see L Segal ‘Opinion’ Guardian, 8 May 2001.

65. Above n 9.

66. In this process students are increasingly seen as stakeholders and to whom academics, as producers, should be accountable. This shift is embodied in the ‘Student Charter’, published in 1995 by the then Department of Education, setting out the ‘entitlements’ students can expect from institutions in their higher education.

67. AUT Pay Claim 2001-02 (London: Aut, 2001). See also Watson, D ‘Opening up pay and promotion’ (2001) AUTLook 219 at 10–12.Google Scholar

68. On the latter see Dearing Report, n 59 above, chart 3.16. On the impact of ICT on universities, see G Noble and Lupton, D ‘Consuming work: computers, subjectivity and appropriation in the university workplace’ (1998) Sociological Review 803–827 Google Scholar. This is something which has itself, of course, been seen by some to have a downside: ‘Stressed Managers complain of e-mail overload’ Independent, 24 February 2000.

69. On the ‘new managerialism’ in universities and the increase in the power of managers vis-âG-vis academic staff, see further Dearlove, J ‘The Academic Labour Process: From Collegiality and Professionalism to Managerialism and Proletarianisation?’ (1997) 30 Higher Education Rev 1 at 56–75 Google Scholar : See also Farnham, D Managing Academic Staff (Buckingham: Open University Pres/SRHE, 1999)Google Scholar; Willmott, H ‘Managing the Academics: Commodification and Control in the Development of University Education’ (1995) 48 Human Relations 9 at 993-1027CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bargh, C, Scott, P and Smith, D Governing the Universities: Changing the Culture? (Buckingham, Open University Press/SRHE, 1996)Google Scholar; Trowler, P Academics Responding to Change: New Higher Education Frameworks and Academic Cultures (Buckingham: Open University Press/SRHE, 1998)Google Scholar.

70. AUT Higher Education in the New Century (London: AUT, 1999) p 10; HESA (1999) ‘Higher Education Management Statistics Sector Level 1997/98’, p 23.

71. McCarthy, P and Humphrys, R ‘Debt: the reality of student life’ (1995) 49 Higher Education Quarterly 78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the growing agenda of mergers ‘Let's Work Together’ Guardian, 18 September 2001.

72. AUT Trends in Casual Employment in Higher Education (London: AUT, 2000) Table 7.

73. See further Barnard, J (1998) ‘Reflections on Britain's Research Assessment Exercise’ 48 JLE 4 at 467-95Google Scholar; Bush, M ‘Grading and Degrading the Dons’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 March 1996 Google Scholar. Also Vick, D et al ‘The Perceptions of Academic Lawyers Concerning the Effects of the United Kingdom's Research Assessment Exercise’ (1998) 25 J Law and Society 4 at 536 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The consequences of selectively funding academic research have transformed the ethos and practices of law schools, not least the relatively low priority now given to teaching in the development of an academic career: Court, S ‘Negotiating the Research Imperative: The Views of UK Academics on their Career Opportunities’ (1999) 53 Higher Education Quarterly 1 at 65-87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Court, S Opportunity Blocks: a survey of appointment and promotion in UK Higher Education (London: AUT, 1998)Google Scholar. Also, on the implications for law journals in the United Kingdom, Campbell, K, Vick, D, Murray, A et al ‘Journal Publishing, Journal Reputations and the United Kingdom Research Assessment Exercise’ (1999) 24 J Law and Society 4 at 470–501 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An overview of different frameworks for measuring research ‘quality’ can be found in Boaden, R and Cilliers, J ‘Quality and the RAE: Just one aspect of performance?’ (2001) 9 Quality Assurance in Education 1 at 5–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74. ‘Administration, the third part of the trio of major academic activities, is rarely mentioned’ (Court, n 73 above, at 65). It is not argued that research did not figure in promotions before the first RAE took place in 1986. However, there is evidence that the research ethos is now fundamental to the academic career and that the majority of academics as well as the academic institution itself in terms of its mission see it as such (the Dearing Report, n 56 above, Report 3, p 108). Cf Halsey, n 9 above, at 189).

75. See further M Thornton ‘Among the Ruins: Law in the Neo-Liberal Academy’ (2000) Paper presented as keynote address at ‘The Challenge of Change: Rethinking Law as a discipline’, Workshop on Legal Knowledge and Legal Education in the Twenty-first Century, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 14-15 April.

76. See further Currie, J and Newson, J (eds) Universities and Globalization: Critical Perspectives (Thousand Oaks, Sage, 1998)Google Scholar. For an alternative critique of the assumptions about a ‘golden age’ underlying the ‘McDonaldisation’ of higher education thesis see A Hudson ‘Power Plays To Market Moves’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 July 2001. Cf R Boden ‘Corporate Crackdown’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 20 April 2001.

77. Marginson, S Markets in Education (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997)Google Scholar; Currie, J et al Global Practices and University Responses (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, forthcoming 2002)Google Scholar; Currie, J et al Gendered Universities in Globalized Economies: Power, Careers and Sacrifices (Langham, Maryland: Lexington Books, forthcoming 2002).Google Scholar

78. See n 66 above.

79. Kelsey, J ‘Privatising the Universities’ (1988) 25 J Law and Society 51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One result for law schools, Thomton suggests (n 75 above), is the increasing marginalisation of non-commercial subject specialisms. Experience in Canada would support this view: Boyd, S ‘Privatization, Law and the Challenge to Feminism: Reflection on Legal education as a Site of Struggle’ (2001) Paper presented at Feminist Political Economy and Law: Revitalizing the Debate, Osgoode Hall Law School, 24 March 24 (copy with author).Google Scholar

80. Thornton, n 75 above.

81. Readings, B The University in Ruins (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

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83. By this I mean that the demands are such that it is increasingly necessary for academics not only to work longer hours but also to be geographically mobile both in career terms and in relation to the formation and sustaining of academic networks: Court, S ‘The Use of Time By Academic and Related Staff’ (1996) 50 Higher Education Quarterly 4 at 237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84. ‘Elite Plans to go it alone over pay’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 8 December 2000.

85. Bradney has commented ‘There are happy law schools as well as unhappy ones: those which are collegiate and those which are not’ (1999) 18 SPTL Reporter, Spring, at 2. The reasoning processes of academics in dealing with research, academic culture and identity has been explored by M Wager ‘Emotions and Professional Identity in Academic Work’ (2001) Paper presented to the Higher Education Close-up Conference 2, Lancaster University, 16-18 July.

86. ‘Excellence Comes Through Diversity’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 2 February 2001.

87. Currie, J et al Gendered Universities in Globalized Economies (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002 forthcoming)Google Scholar.

88. Cownie, n 2 above; Wells, n 9 above.

89. Bradney, n 85 above. Compare Axtell, J The Pleasures of Academe: A Celebration and Defense of Higher Education (Lincon, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1988)Google Scholar. It is, of course, important to recognise the broader context of a well-documented decline in job satisfaction for public workers generally: Guardian 27 March 2001. For a more optimistic assessment see M Presdee ‘Heart of Academic Continues to Beat’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 3 August 2001.

90. A recent survey of academics in the United Kingdom found that 25% had suffered from a stress-related illness during the last 12 months which was serious enough to warrant taking time off work. 53% of academics reported poor psychological health, including stress, sleeplessness and depression, while 44% of university lecturers had seriously considered leaving higher education and 49% had considered early retirement over the past few years: Kinman, G Pressure Points: A survey into the causes and consequences of occupational stress in UK academic and related staff (London: AUT, 1998)Google Scholar. Kinman also found that, on average, more women academics than men reported that the pressure to publish had increased significantly (para 9.11.2); and that women, rather than men, reported the difficulty balancing family and workplace commitments as a source of stress (para 9.11.12). See also McNay, I The impact of the 1992 RAE on Institutional and Individual Behaviour in English Higher Education: The Evidence from a research project (Bristol: HEFCE, 1997)Google Scholar. The AUT itself runs a 24-hour stress-line for members: Tel08705 234533.

91. Rose, N ‘Transcending the Public/Private’ (1987) 14 J Law and Society 1 at 69 Google Scholar. See also Rose, N and Valverde, M ‘Governed by Law?’ (1998) 7 Social and Legal Studies 4 at 541 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Drawing on the work of Foucault, an attempt has been made to relate this theoretical framework to the law school in the work of Bradney and Cownie. (1990), n 14 above; Foucault, M Discipline and Punish (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979)Google Scholar; Foucault, M Power Knowledge (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

92. ‘Successful’ is, of course a problematic term. See Pahl, R After Success (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)Google Scholar. For a different view of the ‘inevitability’ of academic failure C Elliot ‘Flophouses’ The Australian, 20 June 2001, pp 36–37. See generally Henkel, M Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education (London: Jessica Kinsley, 2000)Google Scholar; Talib, A ‘The Continuing Behavioural Modification of Academics since the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise’ (2001) Higher Education Review 30–46.Google Scholar

93. I do not wish to absent myself from this argument. It is also recognised that not all readers of this journal will be legal academics.

94. Vick et al, n 73 above, at 554.

95. There is a strong argument to be made that many women and men in the legal academy have, to varying degrees, given up collegiality in favour of self-promotion.

96. Vick et al, n 73 above, at 552, suggest that women in law schools have been more likely than men to believe that their department's approaches to the RAE has discouraged departmental cohesiveness and teamwork, in so doing damaging inter-departmental relationships and increasing stress.

97. Thornton, n 75 above.

98. Bradney (1998), n 14 above, at 76. Also Goodrich, P ‘Of Blackstone's Tower: Metaphors of Distance and Histories of the English Law school’ in Birks, P (ed) What Are Law Schools For? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

99. ‘Pay Rises will be linked to performance’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 22 June 2001.

100. See further, for an excellent account of this process, Hillyard, P and Sim, J ‘The Political Economy of Socio-Legal Research’ in Thomas, P (ed) Socio-Legal Studies (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1997 Google Scholar). The argument that the increasingly close relationship between universities and commerce poses a threat to long-term innovation is well-made by J Rutherford ‘Uncreative Friendship’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 27 April 2001. For an alternative view see M Wicks ‘We Must Work Together’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 5 May 2000. See also Garber, M Academic Instincts (Princeton University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

101. Thornton, n 75 above.

102. Grants obtained, number of articles published, students taught and supervised and so forth: Thornton, n 75 above. For some, of course, ‘We would all be better off if academics wrote fewer but better books’: L Segal ‘Opinion’ Guardian, 13 February 2001.

103. And, indeed, the role of senior academics themselves: Wells, n 9 above, at 124.

104. Chrisler, J ‘Teacher versus scholar: role conflict for women’ in Collins, L H et al (eds) Career Strategies for Women in Academe (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).Google Scholar

105. Thornton, n 75 above. Understood, following Giddens, as a feature of a more general ‘reflexive project of the self’, the growing use of personal academic web pages provides, in many instances, a spectacular example of the individual capacity for self-promotion.

106. Bassnett, S ‘A Crushing Workload’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 8 December 2000.Google Scholar

107. For a general account of the gendered temporalities of work in the United Kingdom since the 1930s see Glucksmann, M Cottons and Casuals: The Gendered Organisation of Time and Space (York: Sociologypress, 2000).Google Scholar

108. Sommerlad and Sanderson, n 4 above.

109. White, M ‘Lets Bring Back the Weekend’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 8 June 2001.Google Scholar

110. For the view that this has in the past, in effect, produced a market in male academics, see Gray, J ‘Letter’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 17 November 1995 Google ScholarPubMed; J. Barnard, n 73 above, at 476; ‘Women lost out when partners switch jobs’ Independent, 24 February 2000.

111. See n 83 above.

112. See further Vick et al, n 73 above, at 554; on how the interaction of ‘bureaucracy, home and child care are damaging women's career prospects’ in the academy, Bassnett, n 106 above: on the positive response of some women academics to Bassnett's argument, which has been described as ‘as welcome as a moan among friends’, ‘Letters’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 15 December 2000; on women academics being ‘held back by a fear of failure’ in making research grant applications the new climate, ‘Risky Business’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 17 October 2000; on the exclusion of women in RAE returns, ‘Staff lose out in wily bids for RAE cash’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 6 July 2001; ‘Tertiary system pumped by testosterone’ The Australian, 15 August 2001. Also ‘Women's Enjoyment of Career Plummets’ Guardian, 13 June 2001.

113. This term echoes the title of McMahon, A Taking Care of Men: Sexual Politics in the Public Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the argument of which will be discussed and developed below.

114. Bowen, L ‘Beyond the Degree: Men and Women at the decision-making level in British Higher Education’ (1999) 11 Gender and Education 1 at 5–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On masculinity and management generally, see Hearn, J ‘Men, Managers and Management: the case of higher education’ in Whitehead, S and Moodley, R (eds) Transforming Managers: Engendering Change in the Public Sector (London: UCL Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Collinson, D and Hearn, J Men as Managers, Managers as Men (London: Sage, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Itzin, C and Newman, J (eds) Gender, Culture and Organisational Change (London: Routledge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wajcman, J. Managing Like A Man: Women and Men in Corporate Management (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).Google Scholar

115. Bradney and Cownie, n 14 above.

116. Thornton n 75 above. See also Sinclair, A Doing Leadership Differently: Gender, Power and Sexuality in a Changing Business Culture (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Jones, K, Compassionate Authority: Democracy and the Representation of Women (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar.

117. For a rare recognition of how biography has informed both the career trajectory of a male legal academic and, in particular, his personal relationship to feminism, see Goodrich, P ‘Barron's Complaint: A Response to 'Feminism, Aestheticism and the Limits of Law’ (2001) Feminist Legal Studies 9 at 149-70Google Scholar. Given the structuring of the academic career, the later shift into an essentially managerial role within many university structures presents (some) men with understandable financial and psychological rewards. For an excellent account of the structural and psychological dimensions of this process, see Redman, P and Mac an Ghaill, M ‘Educating Peter: The Making of a History Man’ in Steinberg, D et al (eds) Border Patrols: Policing the Boundaries of Heterosexuality (London: Cassell, 1997)Google Scholar. An attempt to ‘make visible male sexualities in further education’ is contained in C Haywood and M Mac an Ghaill ‘A Man in the Making: Sexual Masculinities Within Changing Training Cultures’ (1997) Sociological Review 576–590.

118. Lingard, B and Douglas, P Men Engaging Feminisms: Pro-feminism, Backlashes and Schooling (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

119. Entrepreneur: ‘an individual who organises, managers and assumes the risk of the business enterprise’ OED. It is generally understood that this individual operates in the for-profit world, undertaking activities for personal benefit or for the benefit of shareholders. This can be distinguished from the notion of ‘social entrepreneur’ who might, whilst engaging in these tasks, operate in a non-profit area to benefit a target group or community.

120. See Whitehead, S ‘From paternalism to entrepreneurialism: the experience of men managers in UK post compulsory education’ (1999) 20 Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 1 Google Scholar. It is possible to map these changes onto a not dissimilar process in relation to the legal profession: see eg, Burrage, M ‘From a Gentleman's to a public profession: status and politics in the history of English Solicitors’ (1996) 13 IJLP 45.Google Scholar

121. Wells, n 9 above.

122. Wells, n 9 above, at 129.

123. Wells, n 9 above. An empirical study of this process can be found in D Kerfoot and Whitehead, S ‘Boys Own Stuff Masculinity and the Management of Further Education’ (1998) Sociological Review 436–457 Google Scholar. See also Whitehead, S ‘Men, Managers and the Shifting Discourses of Post-Compulsory Education’ 1(2) Research in Post-Compulsory Education at 151–168.Google Scholar

124. J Hearn, quoted in Wells, n 9 above, at 129.

125. Thornton (n 75 above) observes the way in which these senior managers, who are almost invariably male, surround themselves with men who possess similar characteristics to themselves. On homosociability and the academy generally, seen 39.

126. Currie et al, n 87 above.

127. ‘Gender pay gap at university widens’ Guardian, 17 July 2001, reporting a pay gap in some universities of over 30% between women and men.

128. Giddens, A The Transformations of Intimacy (Cambridge: Polity, 1992)Google Scholar: Beck, U and Beck, E Gernsheim The Normal Chaos of Love (Cambridge: Polity, 1995)Google Scholar. Other readings, couched more in terms of the pragmatics of parliamentary politics, similarly suggest that it is women, rather than men, who are exhausted, disappointed in existing relations and, importantly, demanding change.

129. See further McMahon, n 113above; McMahon, A ‘Male readings of feminist theory: the psychologization of sexual politics in the masculinity literature’ (1993) 22 Theory and Society at 675CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C Cockburn In the way of women: Men's resistance to sex equality in organisations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991).

130. Thornton, M ‘Liberty, Equality and ? : Endowing Fraternity With a Voice’ (1996) 18 Syd LR4 at 566 Google Scholar. See further Markus, M ‘Women, Success and Civil Society: Submission to, or Subversion of, the Achievement Principle’ in Benhabib, S and Cornell, D (eds) Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (Oxford: Polity, 1987).Google Scholar

131. Koontz, P ‘Gender Bias and the legal profession: Women “see” it, men don't’ (1995) 15 Women and Politics 1.Google Scholar

132. Fineman, n 49 above, at 100.

133. Abrams, n 43 above, at 75 1.

134. Abrams, n 43 above, at 6.

135. As Gerson observes, men, women, family and, indeed, ‘work’ are categories which need to be treat cautiously: Gerson, K No Man's Land: Changing Commitments to Family and Work (New York: Basic Books, 1993).Google Scholar

136. Above, n 60.

137. Above, n 60, at 13.

138. Without an adequately theorised notion of such a subject, for example, it is difficult to see either how social change achieved in this context (presuming, that is, that there is seen to be a ‘problem’ in the first place and that some change within the working practices of law school is itself a desirable end).

139. And which, in effect, can excuse individual and group behaviour as manifestations of a broader problem of ‘masculinity’: McMahon (1999), n 113 above.

140. See further Goodrich, P ‘The critic's love of the law: Intimate observations on an insular jurisdiction’ (1999) Law and Critique 1.Google Scholar

141. Bradney (1998), n 14 above.

142. Cownie (1999), n 14 above.

143. One of the clearest discussions of this can be found in Thomas, n 14 above.

144. See O'Donovan, K ‘Fem-Legal and Socio-Legal: An Incompatible Relationship’ in Thomas, P (ed) Socio-Legal Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997).Google Scholar

145. It is this ‘failure to change’ institutionally which informs, to a degree, Goodrich's recent critique of the United Kingdom Critical Legal Studies movement: n 140 above.

146. Goodrich intriguingly suggests, in his recent (broadly) psychoanalytically-based requiem for British critical legal studies (n 140 above), ‘a degree of Oedipal acting out’ in the ‘interventions’ (p 12) of those (mostly) male legal scholars who engaged in ‘internecine critique’ (p 8) with what was at least perceived during the 1980s and early 1990s to be the jurisprudential establishment. Such. ‘critique was not predicated upon self-criticism’, he suggests, ‘and the principal result of this was a largely unreflective exteriorisation of critical analysis and polemic to address the work of contemporaries, peers, colleagues and fellow-travelling allies’ (p 13). See further, by way of response and dialogue, Barron, A ‘Feminism, Aestheticism and the limits of Law’ (2000) 8 Feminist Legal Studies 3 at 275–317 CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Goodrich, P ‘Barron's Complaint: A Response to Feminism, Aestheticism and the Limits of Law’ (2001) Feminist Legal Studies 9 at 149-70Google Scholar.

147. Following Goodrich's observations (n 140 above), a tradition that it is possible to read as one in which a group of upwardly mobile male intellectuals succeed simultaneously in retaining a class heritage whilst differentiating themselves from those who (selfishly?) used their cultural capital to their own economic advantage. Compare the argument of S|Hall ‘Daubing the Drudges of Fury’ (forthcoming) Theoretical Criminology. In the shifting political economy of legal research there is a case to be made that it has been possible to exploit intellectual and cultural advantages of an ostensibly ‘outsider’ status in the quest for credibility amongst other academics.

148. Wells, n 9 above.

149. This term was used in a session at the Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference Bristol, April 2001. It is cited here (unattributed) as it captures what has become, for many legal academics, a commonly held view of the consequences of the shifting hierarchy. In a context in which universities will increasingly seek private income to fund core activities (‘Going it alone’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 18 December 2001), and with varying degrees of success, it is unlikely that the grade inflation across law schools in the 2001 RAE will result in any more general shift within this emerging hierarchy.

150. A recognition, eg, that the choice and commitment to care about is not necessarily the same thing as caring for. See further Sevenhuijsen, S Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist Considerations about Justice, Morality and Politics (London: Routledge, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tronto, J C Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar; Tronto, J C ‘Women and caring: what can feminists learn about morality from caring?’ in Jaggar, A and Bordo, S (eds) Gender, Body, Knowledge (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Benhabib, S Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (London: Routledge, 1992).Google Scholar

151. Thornton, M ‘Technocentrism in the Law School: Why the Gender and Colour of Law Remain the Same’ (1998) 36 Os HLJ 2 at 369–398 Google Scholar; Thornton, n 75 above. See also Hillyard and Sim, n 100 above.

152. The clear lessons to date from the private sector on the benefits of promoting the family-friendly workplace, and of taking issues of work-life balance seriously, are, eg, illuminating. On the legal profession see Kay, F ‘Flight from Law: a competing risks model of departures from law firms’ (1997) 31 Law and Society Review 2 at 728 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For clear evidence, eg, that management itself gains benefits from the provision of family friendly working arrangements; that employee productivity increases; morale is improved, and that it is easier to recruit and retain a motivated workforce, see Forth, J, Lissenburgh, S, Callender, C et al Family-Friendly Working Arrangements in Britain (London: DfEE Research Report No 16, 1997)Google Scholar; Dex, S and Scheibl, F ‘Business Performance and family-friendly policies’ (1999) 24 J General Management 4 at 34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bevan, S, Dench, S, Tamkin, P et al Family Friendly Employment: The Business Case (London: DfEE Research Report No 136, 1999)Google Scholar. See generally Hogarth, T et al Work-Life Balance 2000: Baseline Study of work-life balance practices in Great Britain (London: Institute For Employment Research/DFEE, 2000)Google Scholar; D Cohen ‘Rich Man, New Man?’ Independent, 4 March 1997.

153. Including, to a degree, the legal profession itself Chambers, M ‘Part-Time partners: the Linklaters Initiative’ 19 Commercial Lawyer 21 Google Scholar; Chambers, D L ‘Accommodation and satisfaction: women and men lawyers and the balance of work and family’ Law and Social Inquiry 14 Google Scholar; N MacErlean ‘Long Hours: a sign of poor practice’ The Lawyer, 6 October 1998; Mullally, M ‘Berwin Leighton re-evaluates “quality of life” for employees’ (1999) Legal Week, 22 April, at 7.Google Scholar

154. ‘Top Class Research Faces Cash Squeeze’ The Times, 10 December 2001.

155. Dearlove, n 69 above.

156. Eg, whilst continuing to take on teaching responsibilities and other professional commitments on an ad hoc basis.

157. Martin, n 63 above.

158. It has become commonplace to state that the ‘brightest’ and most (financially) ambitious law students have, over the past thirty years, tended not to view a career as a legal academic as a ‘first choice’ on graduation. Implicitly, there has been an assumption that some other factor motivated those of us who ‘became’ legal academics. At the present moment concern is being expressed that the best students are turning away from graduate study across disciplines more generally: note, eg, the Bennett Inquiry survey of the humanities and social sciences in the United Kingdom undertaken as part of the British Academy's Review of graduate studies. It is important here not to underestimate the continued power of corporate law firms in United Kingdom law schools or the lure of the large firms for law graduates: see Thornton (1998), n 151 above, pp 382–386.

159. On the legal profession, eg, see McGlynn, C ‘The Business Case For Equality in the Solicitor's Profession’ (2000) MLR 63 at 442–457Google Scholar. Cf Pleck, J ‘Are Family-Supportive Employer Policies Relevant For Men?’ in Hood, J (ed) Men, Work and Family (London, Sage, 1993).Google Scholar

160. The erosion of collegiality experienced in the higher education sector stands in marked contrast, eg, to governmental attempts to counter the decline of collegiality and foster community in other contexts. Lacy, F J and Sheehan, B A ‘Job Satisfaction Among Academic Staff an International Perspective’ (1997) Higher Education 34 at 305–322.Google Scholar

161. Burchell, B et al Job Insecurity and Work Intensification: Flexibility and the Changing Boundaries of Work (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1999)Google Scholar, reporting that two-thirds of surveyed employees say they ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ work longer than their basic working hours: Also ‘UK's work burden grows fastest in Europe’ Guardian, 21 June 2000;‘Workforce Close to Breaking Point over Britain's long hours culture’ Independent, 11 June 2001; ‘Fear at the top’ Guardian, 12 May 1999. Bradney has neatly, light-heartedly, summed up what is happening in United Kingdom universities: ‘In the universities, families are frowned upon; new academics have to take an oath to abstain from all personal relationships for the first ten years of their careers, agree to take their meals by intravenous injection and promise to go to the toilet only on every second Sunday’ Bradney, A ‘Rejoice, Rejoice’ (2001) SPTL Reporter 23 at 1.Google Scholar

162. Ceridian Performance Partners The Price of Success—Beyond the Great Work Life Debate (London: Ceridian Performance Partners and Management Today, 1999).

163. Thorsen, F ‘Stress in Academe: What Bothers professors?’ (1996) 31 Higher Education at 471 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Generally, Worrall, L and Cooper, C The Quality of working Life: A Survey of Managers' Changing Experience (London: Institute of Management, 1999)Google Scholar. Cf K Coxon ‘Vanishing Calm’ Guardian, 12 June 2001; ‘Stressed Dons Left Suicidal’ Times Higher Education Supplement, 31 March 2000 (reporting the Australian study UnHealthy Places of Learning, National Tertiary Education Union, 2000).

164. ‘Half of all managers said they don't have time to build relationships outside work and a quarter of the men and a third of the women said work was harming their sex life’ The Price of Success, n 162 above.

165. I am grateful to Katherine O'Donovan (private communication, 3 August 2001) for pointing out that the term ‘sacrifice’ is, perhaps, misleading in this context. If it is the case that subjectivities are socially formed, and desires/aspirations shaped in particular discursive and structural contexts, it is not difficult to anticipate that gender will not (and, evidence suggests, has not) prevented some women from adapting to a masculinist managerial culture. On this view, women who do enter law teaching may have their desires so shaped that they do not opt for parenthood. It has been suggested by some legal academics (private communications with author), following on from the above, that the behaviour of women in universities has changed, with women at times adopting, within an increasingly competitive academic environment, what have been culturally understood as masculine practices (eg, in self-promoting, bullying behaviour). More generally, a heightened desire for and perceived institutional pressure to obtain ‘early promotion’ (what one colleague has termed the ‘Baby Professor’ Syndrome) is something which has been reported as widespread amongst both male and female legal academics. Such developments can, it could be argued, be seen to be bound up with wider processes of individualisation, the fracturing of traditional promotion procedures fostered by the new managerialism and the erosion of collegiality within the academy more generally. As noted above, however, this is something which would also appear to have favoured men rather than women :‘Men [remain] the overwhelming beneficiaries of this system’ D Aitkin, quoted in The Australian, 15 August 2001.