Paging the Administration

Women in French has a long history of supporting women and/in French. When the organization was created in 1978, its founding mothers stated that its goals included “promot[ing] women’s growth and impact within higher education settings by welcoming women’s leadership in departments, divisions, and the university hierarchy.” In 2018, exactly forty years after its creation, Women in French reached a new milestone: that goal had been achieved to the point where women leaders who had been integrated in the higher education administration hierarchy realized they actively wanted and needed to encourage more women to enter by hosting a roundtable about the importance of female voices in higher education administration, a topic that aligned perfectly with the conference theme of “Le bruit des femmes” (Women’s Voices). The roundtable aimed to demonstrate how women administrators find and use their voices while simultaneously underlining the importance of recruiting more women into higher education administration. The session was well attended, a lively discussion followed the panelists’ presentations, and audience members, some of whom were seasoned administrators while others were relatively new to higher education administration or were merely considering entering it indicated they found it a useful contribution to their professional development.