The domestic labour of academic governance and the loss of academic voice

While academic governance does not produce teaching and research, it provides the conditions that enable them to take place. The principal academic governance body within universities, the academic board (also known as the academic senate or faculty senate), therefore plays a key role in enabling universities to conduct their core business. However, at the same time as doing things that are necessary, the role of academic boards has come to be seen as unimportant. This development is considered in light of empirical data from universities in the US, UK and Australia. The paper argues that university governance represents gendered relations and that the role of academic boards is now largely procedural – the equivalent of housework – invisible unless not done well. Moreover, ‘done well’ is defined not by academic boards themselves but by university executives, whose masculine, managerial roles both replicate and control traditional academic board functions.