Despite Australian and New Zealand Universities pledging to address gender inequities, the patriarchal history of universities continues to impact the careers of women in academia. Under-representation of women in senior leadership and a culture of masculinity can lead to a lack of resources for feminist leadership and a devaluing of women’s work. We investigate how women in academic leadership are playing the game differently, making strategic moves to navigate leadership in the neoliberal neopatriarchal academy. We explored the experiences of 22 women in academic leadership through online qualitative surveys and reflexive thematic analysis of the data, taking inspiration from Bourdieu’s work on habitus and doxa. Although women leaders were able to successfully make strategic moves to advance their careers, these were shaped by parenting status, race, culture, and age. The women’s leadership approaches were counter to the masculine doxa of the academic field, leading instead relationally. We do not suggest that there is a specific ‘female’ style of academic leadership, but that successful authentic leadership can be founded on a feminist ethics of care in contrast to neopatriarchy. Adoption of such approaches across the academy might unshackle academics across genders from their positioning in academic leadership hierarchies.

尽管澳大利亚和新西兰的大学承诺解决性别不平等问题，但大学的父权历史继续影响着女性在学术界的职业生涯。女性在高级领导层中的代表性不足和男性气质文化可能导致女权主义领导资源不足和女性工作被贬低。我们调查了学术领导中的女性如何以不同的方式玩游戏，在新自由主义新父权制学院中采取战略举措来驾驭领导层。我们从 Bourdieu 关于习惯和 doxa 的研究中汲取灵感，通过在线定性调查和对数据的反思性主题分析，探索了 22 名女性在学术领导方面的经历。尽管女性领导者能够成功地采取战略举措来推进她们的职业生涯，但这些举措受到育儿地位、种族、文化和年龄的影响。女性的领导方法与学术领域的男性 doxa 背道而驰，而是以关系方式领导。我们并不是说学术领导有一种特定的 “女性 ”风格，而是说成功的真实领导可以建立在女权主义的关怀伦理之上，而不是新父权制。在整个学术界采用这种方法可能会使不同性别的学者摆脱他们在学术领导层级中的地位的束缚。