The first joint meeting of the Avondale Women’s Network and the Alphacrucis College Executive Women’s Network was held Monday 20th May 2019. It was held at the two separate campuses but linked by video link to share in the expertise of the guest speaker.
Professor Cristina Rocha (PhD) is an anthropologist and the Director of the Religion and Society Research Cluster, Western Sydney University, Australia. She is the President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion. She co-edits the Journal of Global Buddhism and the Religion in the Americas series, Brill. She has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Utrecht, Kings College and Queen Mary College, CUNY Graduate Centre, and the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity.
Her publications have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Her research focuses on the intersections of globalisation, migration and religion with a special focus on Brazil and Australia. Her publications include: John of God: The Globalisation of Brazilian Faith Healing (Oxford University Press, 2017), The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions (with M. Vásquez, Brill, 2013), Buddhism in Australia (with M. Barker, Routledge, 2010), Zen in Brazil: The Quest for Cosmopolitan Modernity (Hawaii University Press, 2006).
The topic that Professor Rocha spoke about was the challenges women face in academia. She referred to the “glass cliff” a term coined by academics Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslem in 2005 in the British Journal of Management. The paper entitled “The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over‐Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions” discusses the phenomenon of women entering the board room only to find they are disproportionately represented in untenable leadership positions. A link to the full article is shown here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00433.x
The issue of mentoring was also raised, where women are encouraged to seek mentors especially those who are in their early stages of their careers, and those in leadership positions were encouraged to mentor others, be it informally or formally. The meeting was successfully run, where the two campuses were able to communicate with each other and share their experiences and hope for the future of women in higher education.
