Gender equality mainstreaming and the Australian academy: paradoxical effects?

Abstract Australian Universities consistently rank highly on lists that celebrate the most gender equal higher education institutions in world. Despite participation institutional frameworks for equity accreditation, what often lies beneath outward display of equality is a lived experience inequality. Whilst there relative amongst academics employed at universities overall, men continue to dominate appointments professorial or senior executive levels. At same time, asymmetries make women’s access opportunities and resources are valued by sector difficult. Women who intersections with care, mothering, race, sexual identity, class, ability face additional obstacles. In this paper, three women academia attempt disrupt dominant masculine ideology value system sharing our (in)equality academy.