Academic women in the UK: Mainstreaming our experiences and networking for action

This article presents the experiences of women academics of management in the UK, who have used informal, collective strategies to move on, to mainstream their experiences and to challenge existing boundaries of management and their organisations. Having identified the repeating patterns of inequalities in management and management education as women academics, researchers and managers, the authors had to turn to action, to progress and to work on some solutions. This article explores the moving on process by presenting the experiences of women academics of management from two perspectives. Firstly, women academics' stories of their careers and their experience of management are outlined as an emancipatory consciousness-raising process. Secondly, the issues of moving on, taking action and challenging existing boundaries are discussed by means of a case study of a group of women academics who have chosen to question the confines of their working lives whilst gaining credibility in a changing context and driving some of the change for themselves. We offer the process we have engaged in as a strategy to support academic women to move on through critical reflection and action.