Gender Distribution in Academic Leadership: An Exploratory Study of Top Universities of Bangladesh

Underrepresentation of women in numerous fields, including academia, especially in the engineering and technology domain have been studied from various perspectives. Bangladesh has had its fair share of studies resulting in efforts, policies and strategies to establish gender equality. Yet, despite the increasing presence of women in the Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering (STEM) fields and beyond, a conspicuous dearth of women can be observed at the top level of leadership in academia. In this paper, we look at publicly available data on academic leaders (vice-chancellors, deans, academic heads, etc.) and faculty member designation distributions of the top 10 universities of the country according to a recent ranking. To fully understand the academic leadership scenario in engineering and affiliated fields, we must observe the entire faculty distribution in academia in general. We explore the presence of women in two tiers of leadership, Tier 1 and Tier 2 leadership, and find an alarming but predictable scenario of non-mentionable presence of women at the top administrative podium, despite their presence as faculty members. We note the ubiquity of this ‘vanishing tip’ at 60% of these top universities which are often considered the role models for the other hundred plus institutions in the country. Analysing the data from several dimensions, we provide some interesting correlation and insights into the scenario and identify tangible points to focus on in further research.