Barriers to women’s leadership in higher education: a case study of two universities in the UK and wartime Ukraine

Abstract

This study examines barriers to women's advancement in leadership in higher education through a comparative analysis of Coventry University (UK) and Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture (Ukraine). Using the Social-Ecological Model as an analytical framework, the research investigates barriers across five interconnected levels: individual, interpersonal, organisational, community, and policy. Data were collected from 71 participants through focus groups, with an online survey as an additional channel at Coventry University, including women at various career stages and men in leadership positions. Results reveal convergent barriers—confidence deficits, career-family conflict, informal exclusionary networks—alongside context-specific manifestations. At the UK university, participants described how an established equality framework can coexist with persistent barriers; at the Ukrainian university, participants foregrounded gaps in policy implementation. Participants at Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture linked wartime conditions to displacement, fragmentation of professional networks, and deprioritization of gender-equality initiatives. Analysed through the SEM, barriers emerged as connected across levels rather than operating in isolation, with crisis conditions in Ukraine intensifying several of these linkages simultaneously. The findings describe a cross-sectional pattern by career stage, in which active self-doubt appears alongside withdrawal from leadership consideration. The study contributes an empirically grounded account of how similar barrier mechanisms operate across two contrasting institutional contexts, one of them under full-scale war.