Inhalt: Women remain underrepresented among faculty in nearly all academic fields. Using a census of 245,270 tenure-track and tenured professors at United States-based PhD-granting departments, we show that women leave academia overall at higher rates than men at every career age, in large part because of strongly gendered attrition at lower-prestige institutions, in non-STEM fields, and among tenured faculty. A large-scale survey of the same faculty indicates that the reasons faculty leave are gendered, even for institutions, fields, and career ages in which retention rates are not. Women are more likely than men to feel pushed from their jobs and less likely to feel pulled toward better opportunities, and women leave or consider leaving because of workplace climate more often than work-life balance. These results quantify the systemic nature of gendered faculty retention; contextualize its relationship with career age, institutional prestige, and field; and highlight the importance of understanding the gendered reasons for attrition rather than focusing on rates alone.
Quelle: Studies in Higher Education, (2023) , S 1–12
Inhalt: The disproportion of women to men at the top tier in the academic hierarchy, concerns politicians, academic leaders, students, and other stakeholders. A popular explanation for the gender imbalance in elite positions is that potential female candidates lack ambition and therefore do not have sufficient drive to make it to the top. In this study, we explore the issue of professional ambition among a group of women academics working as tenured associate professors in Norway. With the backdrop of VIE (Valence-instrumentality-expectancy) theory, we focus on two key subjective, but nonetheless contextual judgments that are assumed to underlie the decision to aim for a promotional opportunity; (i) Do I want it and (ii) Can I make it? Three sources of qualitative data provide interesting insights into these considerations, and our findings point to focusing more specifically on the perceived costs that are assumed to derive from making this career choice. The women are ambitious in the sense that they desire the professional clout and impact that comes with this top role (so, yes, they want it). However, a number of conditions are perceived to be central to the actual realization of their ambitions, such as more time, resources and transparency when it comes to the qualification process. The findings may serve as important to designing more suitable career conditions for this target group in practice. Finally, we propose the application of a context-specific gender perspective to better understand women’s career ambitions in higher education institutions (HEI).
Schlagwörter:career; career ambition; full professor; gender perspective; qualitative research; resources; track choice; women; work environment
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Wissenschaft als Beruf
Persistent pandemic: The unequal impact of COVID labor on early career academics
Autor/in:
Ballif, Edmée; Zinn, Isabelle
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: The COVID-19 pandemic has not only highlighted preexisting inequalities in academia but has also exacerbated them while giving rise to novel forms of disparities. Drawing upon our experiences as women, parents, and early career academics (ECAs) in Switzerland and enriched by feminist theory on reproductive labor and carework, we examine the unequal impacts of the pandemic. First, our analysis reveals how the pandemic disproportionately impacted ECAs, a group already in a position of precarity within academia. Second, we identify the broad range of tasks brought about by the pandemic as “COVID labor”. This essential labor—undervalued, invisible, and often unpaid—had a particularly negative impact on ECAs. Third, looking at various intersections of difference, we emphasize that the experience of COVID labor was far from uniform among ECAs with institutional responses disregarding its extent and unequal distribution. In conclusion, we underscore the importance of acknowledging the long-term consequences of COVID labor on ECAs, particularly those belonging to underrepresented groups. Neglecting these issues may lead to the loss of a wide range of talented scholars for reasons that are not related to the quality of their academic performance.
Schlagwörter:academia; Arbeit; care work; COVID-19; early career researcher; inequalities; intersectional; intersektional; labor; pandemie; precarity; Reproduktionsarbeit; Schweiz; Switzerland
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Closing the gender gap in academia? Evidence from an affirmative action program
Autor/in:
Fernandes, Mario; Hilber, Simon; Sturm, Jan-Egbert; Walter, Andreas
Quelle: Research Policy, 52 (2023) 9
Inhalt: This study investigates a unique incentive-based affirmative action program in Germany’s academic labor market. By analyzing a sample of business administration professors, we document that the probability that a newly tenured professor is female increases at universities that participate in this government program compared to universities that do not. By delving deeper into the mechanisms of the program, we show that program universities lowered the entry barrier for tenured professorships regarding publication records for new female professors. While favoring women, we show that the program had no harmful effects on male professors regarding the entry barrier to tenured professorships. Overall, we provide evidence
Highlights
The study analyzes an affirmative action program, the WPP, in the German academic labor market for business administration
The program increases the likelihood that a newly tenured professor is female at WPP universities
At WPP universities, the program lowers the entry barrier (publication records) for newly tenured female professors
In contrast, the program, does not affect publication records for newly tenured male professors of the effectiveness of financial incentives as a means of reducing female underrepresentation in academic labor markets.
Inhalt: Berufe mit einem hohen Anteil an Interaktionen wie beispielsweise Managementaufgaben werden tendenziell besser bezahlt als andere Tätigkeiten. Allerdings werden Frauen für solche interaktiven Aufgaben schlechter bezahlt als Männer, zeigt eine neue RWI-Studie. Eine wahrgenommene höhere Sozialkompetenz der Frauen gegenüber den Männern bei interaktiven Aufgaben zahlt sich demnach für sie finanziell nicht aus. Die Studienergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass Unterschiede in den Hierarchieebenen die Lohnlücke innerhalb interaktionsintensiver Berufe, wie im Management oder der Beratung, maßgeblich beeinflussen.
Das Wichtigste in Kürze:
- Wahrgenommene Vorteile von Frauen gegenüber Männern bei interaktiven Aufgaben hinsichtlich ihrer Sozialkompetenz verringern kaum das geschlechtsspezifische Lohngefälle. Zwar werden interaktionsintensive Berufe tendenziell besser als Berufe mit interaktionsarmen Aufgabenprofilen vergütet und der Beschäftigungsanteil von Frauen in interaktionsintensiven Berufen steigt zunehmend. Frauen erhalten aber für vergleichbare Aufgaben ein geringeres Einkommen. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine aktuelle Studie des RWI – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung.
- Detaillierte Zerlegungen entlang der Lohnverteilung zeigen, dass geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede in der Aufgabenspezialisierung nur eine geringe Erklärungskraft für das Lohngefälle haben. Dagegen zeigt die Analyse der Berufshierarchien, dass vergleichbare Aufgaben in höheren Positionen zu höheren Einkommen führen. Das bedeutet: Männer bekommen tendenziell ein höheres Einkommen, auch weil sie überdurchschnittlich oft in hochrangigen Berufen arbeiten – und nicht aufgrund ihrer Aufgabenspezialisierung. Die Hierarchieebene erklärt etwa 30 Prozent der Lohnlücke zwischen Frauen und Männern in interaktiven, gut bezahlten Jobs. Bei einer durchschnittlichen Lohnlücke von etwa 3,30 Euro pro Stunde für den Untersuchungszeitraum entfällt somit knapp 1 Euro auf hierarchische Unterschiede.
- Die Studienergebnisse legen nahe, dass undurchlässige Hierarchieebenen und nicht-finanzielle Arbeitsplatzpräferenzen – zum Beispiel flexible Arbeitszeiten, Homeofficeangebote sowie Pendelzeit – wesentliche Faktoren für geschlechtsspezifische Lohngefälle sein können.
- Für die Studie wurden Erwerbstätigenbefragungen des Bundesinstituts für Berufsbildung (BIBB), des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB) und der Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin ausgewertet. Die Querschnittsdaten umfassen rund 20.000 Personen in jeder der fünf Wellen aus den Jahren 1992, 1999, 2006, 2012 und 2018.
„Obwohl Frauen zunehmend in gut bezahlten, mit viel Interaktion verbundenen Berufen arbeiten, werden sie für diese Beschäftigung durchschnittlich schlechter bezahlt als Männer“, sagt RWI-Wissenschaftler Eduard Storm. „Das liegt insbesondere daran, dass Männer tendenziell in höheren Positionen arbeiten. Frauen nehmen hingegen eher Lohneinbußen in Kauf, um beispielsweise flexiblere Arbeitsbedingungen zu haben.“
Support on the way to the top? The effect of organisational equal opportunities measures on women’s promotion prospects
Autor/in:
Wanger, Susanne
Quelle: IAB-Discussion Paper (IAB-Discussion Paper: Beiträge zum wissenschaftlichen Dialog aus dem Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung), 13 (2022)
Inhalt: Even though women have been able to increase their participation in management positions to a small extent in recent years, they are still significantly underrepresented in management positions. Organisational measures to promote gender equality and work-life balance are seen as an option to reduce inequalities between men and women. However, there are relatively few firms that have formalised organisational gender equality policies. Against this background, I examine whether organisational measures may increase women's career opportunities or promote the assumption of management positions on a part-time basis. This is investigated using a German Linked-Employer-Employee dataset (LIAB) from 2012 to 2016 and logistic panel regression models. The results show that the targeted promotion of women in particular improves their chances of promotion. However, this is not the case for mothers and their chances of achieving a part-time management position: these are lower when targeted promotion of women is practised in a firm. Measures to improve reconciliation, such as firm support for childcare or for employees with dependents in need of care, have a positive effect on advancement to management positions. The effect of family-friendly working conditions in a firm is heterogeneous: while women have lower chances of promotion, their chances of obtaining a management position with reduced working hours are higher. In contrast, a firm's membership in a family-friendly network has a negative effect on the career and promotion opportunities of women.
Autor/in:
Ross, Matthew B.; Glennon, Britta M.; Murciano-Goroff, Raviv; Berkes, Enrico G.; Weinberg, Bruce A.; Lane, Julia I.
Quelle: Nature, 608 (2022) 7921, S 135–145
Inhalt: There is a well-documented gap between the observed number of works produced by women and by men in science, with clear consequences for the retention and promotion of women1. The gap might be a result of productivity differences2-5, or it might be owing to women's contributions not being acknowledged6,7. Here we find that at least part of this gap is the result of unacknowledged contributions: women in research teams are significantly less likely than men to be credited with authorship. The findings are consistent across three very different sources of data. Analysis of the first source-large-scale administrative data on research teams, team scientific output and attribution of credit-show that women are significantly less likely to be named on a given article or patent produced by their team relative to their male peers. The gender gap in attribution is present across most scientific fields and almost all career stages. The second source-an extensive survey of authors-similarly shows that women's scientific contributions are systematically less likely to be recognized. The third source-qualitative responses-suggests that the reason that women are less likely to be credited is because their work is often not known, is not appreciated or is ignored. At least some of the observed gender gap in scientific output may be owing not to differences in scientific contribution, but rather to differences in attribution.
The affective economy of feminist leadership in Finnish universities: class-based knowledge for navigating neoliberalism and neuroliberalism
Autor/in:
Morley, Louise; Lund, Rebecca
Quelle: Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 42 (2021) 1, S 114–130
Inhalt: Women leaders are frequently treated as one class – a homogenised group with essentialised skills and competencies in binary relationship to male leaders. We explore how feminist ways of knowing gender and leadership, and circulations of affects, shape women’s diverse leadership practices and identities within the neoliberal, and neuroliberal academy in Finland – a Nordic country with a sophisticated gender equality policy architecture. We debate the (re)production of social and material inequalities through epistemic injustice by exploring what possibilities are emerging from the assemblages and relational potential of policy interventions, global speaking back to patriarchal power, the revisioning of gender, and the inclusion of women in higher education leadership. Theoretically, the study intersects feminist affect notions, neoliberalism, neuroliberalism, and epistemic inclusion/injustice. We conducted 10 interviews with middle-classed women university leaders in five universities. They described how, in the absence of possibilities to facilitate major structural changes, they applied their feminist knowledge and invested affective labour in the mediation of neoliberal and neuroliberal cultures. The politics of representation – counting more women into neoliberal universities, as one class, is not, we conclude, a counter-normative force. We need to consider how to apply feminist knowledge for leading post-gender universities and imagining alternative futurities.
Quelle: Nomos (Arbeit, Organisation und Geschlecht in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 10), 2021. 300 S
Inhalt: Wie steht es um Emotionen im politischen Feld? Wie wichtig ist emotionales Kapital und was bedeutet es, Emotionsarbeit leisten zu müssen? Welche Rolle spielen dabei das Geschlecht sowie auch der Körper? Was folgt aus der zunehmenden Relevanz von Social Media im politischen Alltag? Ergeben sich hieraus neue emotionale Belastungen? Diese und weitere Fragen stehen im Zentrum dieses Buches. Es bietet einen Einblick in ein politisches Feld aus einer arbeits- und geschlechtersoziologischen Sicht. Die Verfasserin hat hierzu Bundestagsabgeordnete interviewt und kann so ein anschauliches Bild der emotionalen Herausforderungen politischer Arbeit geben.
Schlagwörter:Arbeitssoziologie; Emotionen; Geschlecht; Geschlechtersoziologie; Körper; Politik; Politikerin; Social Media
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung