Gender Parity within the Gender—Sustainability Paradigm: A Case Study on Management Structures of the Romanian Academia

Abstract

Our study proposes a Romanian national perspective of the gender–sustainability paradigm in higher education under the Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5) approach. The starting point is the interlinkage of the two concepts, gender parity and sustainability, depicted on a fundamental societal domain. Data collection was completed following a census approach, resulting in staffing data on 47 Romanian state-owned universities. Data collected envisaged the tenure teaching staff, divided into two gender groups; the count was focused on executive roles and collective managerial elected bodies for the 2015–2019 mandate. The gender situation was analyzed quantitatively by the number of teaching staff, their gender structure, and their representation in the executive functions and collective decision-making bodies. We calculated gender indexes and used statistical correlation coefficients to explain the relations between the different categories of personnel and their influence on establishing the management structures. The results of the gender configuration analysis were further associated with the latest national meta-ranking of Romanian universities. Our findings show that Romanian universities demonstrate sustainability under SDG5 through their institutional capacity to use either feminine majorities or a statistically detected pro-female voting propensity in order to construct optimally gendered management structures through vote only.