Macro Changes and the Implications for Equality and Social and Gender Justice in Higher Education

This chapter considers the implications of global changes for equality and social and gen­der justice in HE. Taking a feminist perspective it renders visible the limited impact that neo-liberal transformations have had on women’s equal participation in university educa­tion. Starting from a consideration of the international statistical evidence on the massive expansion of HE, the authors consider how white middle-class male privilege remains en­trenched in complex ways in new forms of HE. This is shown most clearly through the pursuit of an uncritical notion of excellence and the approaches to pedagogical spaces. The chapter considers how student parents are treated ‘carelessly’ or without care, and how the majority of academic staff have become precarious workers, whilst privilege re­mains for white middle-class men in power.