Box of delight

Often when I tell people that we have filled half of the top leadership positions at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering with women, I can almost see the unspoken assumption in many of their eyes: They think we did it by passing over better-qualified male candidates.

At the 10 U.S. engineering schools with the largest research budgets, women make up about 17 percent of the faculty. It’s always noticed when women constitute a higher-than-usual proportion of an engineering college’s leadership, but somehow we don’t make the same assumptions about talent when all of a school’s top positions are filled by men.

How does gender impact on working life? In The Paula Principle, education scholar Tom Schuller focuses on women and what holds them back. It’s ironic that this book’s author is a man; it can’t help but jar that this subject is being viewed from a position of privilege – women’s first-hand stories have historically been silenced, especially those of the working class and the marginalised. That said, Schuller’s own working life has shown a strong commitment to expanding learning opportunities for everyone, at any age, and his passion for social justice is stamped on every page of a study whose clarity and well researched insights are captivating.