As International Women’s Day comes by again, it’s important that those of us in higher education take the time to reflect on women’s access to the sector. This year’s theme is ‘Accelerate Action’, inspired by the fact that, as per current estimations, it will take until 2158 to reach ‘full gender parity’ (International Women’s Day, 2025). ‘Accelerate Action’ demands that each sector of society takes action to tackle gender disparities with urgency. 

This theme serves as a timely reminder that, despite many gains in women’s rights, the fight for women’s equality globally is far from over. And although I question whether it’s possible to estimate when we will reach something as subjective and debatable as ‘gender parity’, the statistic is still a useful reminder of how far we are from gender equality. 

It’s tempting, perhaps, to feel that within higher education, the work has been ‘done’. It is undeniably true that women’s access to university has been transformed in recent years. Just over 100 years ago, Oxford University had only just opened its doors to women (Oxford Royale, 2025). Now, that picture looks very different. At The University of Manchester, women now make up 57% of the overall student population, although they are still notably underrepresented in some science and engineering cohorts (University of Manchester, 2024). An intersectional lens, however, can illuminate how, despite this progress, there remains an urgent need to ‘accelerate action’ in the sector. 

Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality to help understand how structures of oppression overlap and collide (1989). She highlighted how a narrow focus on racism and sexism as singular issues ignores the specific barriers facing Black women, overlooking the fact that they are at once both Black and female, subject to racism and sexism in ways that are interlocked and compounded (Crenshaw, 1989). Other systems of oppression, such as class, (dis)ability, migration status, and queerness, equally combine in differing ways. In higher education, an intersectional lens allows us to recognise that women who identify with other marginalised identities experience unique barriers in both accessing and succeeding in the sector (Crenshaw, 2017). 

For example, the underrepresentation of Black women within academic staff highlights the importance of intersectionality. The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) released statistics for the 2023/34 cycle a few weeks ago (2025). Their data reveals that although women are more than half of the student body, they are underrepresented within professors, at 32% (HESA, 2025). Crucially, if we look at those who identify as both ‘Black’ and ‘female’, this drops to 0.3% of professors nationally, much lower than the estimated 2.2% they make up of the population of England and Wales (ONS, 2023). In the Rollock Report, Black women professors reported a culture of microaggressions and a lack of transparency or fairness in promotions as just some of the many barriers they faced along their academic journey (2019). 

Furthermore, a commitment to intersectionality means highlighting the marginalisation of intersectional groups – which often depends on readily available statistical data. I started the research for this article taking for granted that there would be a breadth of data available about different intersectional identities at this University. 

Although the quality and quantity of data regarding access to higher education has vastly improved in recent years, I was surprised by the limited amount of free-to-access statistics on intersecting identities and their barriers to both access and attainment at student level. For example, HESA’s student data (2024) and the Office for Students’ Access and Participation data (2023) split protected characteristics as distinct singular categories, a structural representation of the erasure that Crenshaw first warned of (1989).  

In order to ‘Accelerate Action’ this International Women’s Day (and beyond), it’s imperative to incorporate a strong understanding of intersectionality, as well as how marginalisation functions to erase overlapping minority identities. Black women’s access to higher education is a critical example of how this is realised, from the chronic lack of representation at the higher level, right down to the very structuring of how we collect student data. 

Reference list:

• Crenshaw, K. (1989). ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(Article 8), pp. 139–167.  
• Crenshaw, K. (2017). Kimberle Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later. https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later  
• HESA (2025). Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK 2023/24. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/28-01-2025/sb270-higher-education-staff-statistics  
• HESA (2024). Higher Education Student Statistics: UK 2022/233. Who’s studying in HE?: Personal characteristics | HESA 
• International Women’s Day (2025). IWD 2025 campaign theme is ‘Accelerate Action’. https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Theme  
• Rollock, N. (2019). Staying Power. The career experiences and strategies of UK Black female professors. https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/10075/staying-power/pdf/ucu_rollock_february_2019.pdf  
• Office of National Statistics (2023). Ethnic group by age and sex, England and Wales: Census 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/ethnicity/articles/ethnicgroupbyageandsexenglandandwales/census2021  
• Office for Students (2023). Access and participation data dashboard. Data dashboard – Office for Students 
• Oxford Royale (2025). A History of Women’s Education in the UK https://www.oxford-royale.com/articles/history-womens-education-uk 

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