Women Leading Change in Academia : Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Cliff, and Slipper

In Women Leading Change in Academia: Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Cliff, and Slipper, a groundbreaking collection, Callie Rennison and Amy Bonomi convene the perspectives of diverse women academic leaders who discuss their rise to key leadership positions and effective change-making in higher education, despite underlying structural barriers and bias that disadvantage women. 

Contributors underscore the revolutionary power and innovation that women leaders bring to bear to improve upon business as usual in the academy—even in the “glass cliff” scenario when their risk of failure should be highest. Women across leadership positions—presidents, provosts, deans, and department chairs—discuss leading strategic planning, culture change, and navigating the “double bind,” along with strategies for successful negotiation, networking, mentoring, and work-life balance. Contributors also underscore strategies for leading powerful innovation and change in the academy early in their careers when they do not hold formal leadership roles and experience marginalization due to their identity. 

Opening chapters examine institutional power structures, intersectionality, bias, along with enacting change-making leadership in spite of these barriers. Additional chapters offer insight on the power of mentorship, strategic networking for women in the academy, negotiation strategies, professional development and work-life. The collection addresses moving on, up or out of formal leadership in the academy, how to create institutional change, and strategies for rising, revolutionizing, and redoubling efforts to support women leaders. 

Women Leading Change in Academia is intended for women, allies, and institutions committed to equitable conditions for women leaders to be maximally impactful. The text is co-sponsored by Division 35 of the American Psychological Association, the Society for the Psychology of Women, an organizational base for all feminists, of all genders and of all national origins, who are interested in teaching, research, or practice in the psychology of womxn.

Callie Rennison, Ph.D. is a professor and has served as associate dean of faculty affairs in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver. She has also served as the director of the Office of Equity and as a Title IX coordinator for the University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campuses.

Amy Bonomi, Ph.D., M.P.H. is director of the Children and Youth Institute at Michigan State University. She serves as a special advisor to the Office of the Provost, co-administers MSU’s Women’s Leadership Institute, and was chair of the Human Development and Family Studies department from 2013-2019.