Introduction

This chapter sets the scene for the book’s focus on women’s academic and professional services careers and leadership in higher education. To achieve this, we outline the research problem and what existing research has already found, including a discussion of women’s professional and academic services careers, barriers to career progression, leadership in HE, gendered leadership and women-only leadership programmes. The chapter outlines information about the longitudinal mixed-methods empirical study that feeds into this research book, giving detail on the methodology, sample and analytic approach adopted. A mixture of questionnaire surveys with closed and open questions, interviews and diaries was used. A total of 3796 women participated in the study, 1264 of whom participated at least twice over a period of up to four years. Most participants were drawn from six cohorts of the Aurora programme. There was also a comparison group of women who did not undertake Aurora and a small number of mentors of the participating women. Biographical detail is presented on the research team (book authors). Finally, we consider study limitations.