Gender differences in higher education from a life course perspective : Transitions and social inequality between enrolment and first post-doc position
Autor/in:
Lörz, Markus; Mühleck, Kai
Quelle: High Educ (Higher Education), 77 (2019) 3, S 381–402
Inhalt: In the last decades, a vast number of post-industrialised economies have experienced a growing participation of women in higher education. However, men and women still differ with regard to their subsequent academic careers and labour market prospects. While several studies have disentangled the cumulative process of gender inequalities along the path to higher education, few studies cover two or more subsequent transitions in the academic career following graduation from upper-secondary education. We have investigated gender differences at five educational stages between graduation from upper-secondary education and the first post-doc position. To explain gender differences, we have integrated arguments of individual decision-making and educational, familial and work context conditions. This life course perspective leads us to propose several hypotheses on why the academic careers of men and women would differ in terms of transitions to the next education stage and graduation. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal dataset which covers a large part of individual educational and academic careers of a cohort of students, beginning at the age of 20 years and extending up to the age of 40 years. Our results show that gender differences are more pronounced at the beginning of the academic career and tend to fade out at later stages. In particular, gender differences occur most strongly at transitions to the next educational stage rather than being caused by different graduation rates. These differences can be explained only to a very minor extent by performance. Separated analysis shows that men and women differ in their reasons to start or stop an academic career, with family circumstances in particular having different consequences.
Family-friendly academic conferences : A missing link to fix the “leaky pipeline”?
Autor/in:
Bos, Angela L.; Sweet-Cushman, Jennie; Schneider, Monica C.
Quelle: Politics, Groups, and Identities, 7 (2019) 3, S 748–758
Inhalt: Traveling to academic conferences to present research and network is essential for scholars to achieve success in the academy. Scholars with family obligations face barriers to participating in conferences, partly because most regional and national conferences are not organized to be family-friendly. While balancing travel to academic conferences with family responsibilities is a challenge faced by all academics, this burden can be especially high for women. As such, improving the family-friendly features of conferences could be one way to patch the “leaky pipeline” of young female scholars leaving the academy, and facilitate the movement of female faculty through the ranks from Assistant to Associate to Full Professor. We identify these barriers to conference attendance and how they might contribute to the leaky pipeline and share innovations from family-friendly small conferences that minimize these burdens. We also review what the major political science association conferences are doing to be family-friendly, and offer details about further recommended changes. Finally, we highlight one exemplary institutional policy and examples from other disciplines. Our conclusion is that there are many simple and affordable ways to make political science conferences more family-friendly and that these changes are necessary to creating an inclusive discipline.
Schlagwörter:academy; conferences; Frauen in der Wissenschaft; Gender; Mutterschaft; parenting; political science discipline
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf
‘Mentoring and sponsorship in Higher Educational institutions : Men’s invisible advantage in STEM’?
Autor/in:
O’Connor, Pat; O'Hagan, Angela; Myers, Eva Sophie
Quelle: Higher Education Research and Development, 39 (2019) 4, S 1–14
Inhalt: This article is concerned with the source of men’s invisible advantage in the male dominated disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It is suggested that this advantage has been obscured by combining sponsorship and mentoring. The research asks: Are men or women most likely to be mentored? Is it possible to distinguish between mentoring and sponsorship? Is there gender variation in either or both of these depending on the source – whether from the academic supervisor, line manager or other senior academics. This qualitative study draws on interview data from 106 respondents (57 men and 48 women) at junior, middle and senior levels, in four universities: one each in Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland and Turkey. It shows that both men and women received mentoring from their PhD supervisor, albeit with slightly different reported nuances. Men were more likely than women to receive sponsorship in that relationship. Both men and women received sponsorship from the Head of Department, whose wider responsibilities may have reduced homophily. Men were more likely than women to receive sponsorship and mentoring from senior men, with most women indicating a lack of access to such senior academics. By distinguishing between mentoring and sponsorship, this article contributes to our understanding of the way male dominance in STEM is perpetuated and suggests the source of men’s invisible advantage in STEM.
Parenting on the Path to the Professoriate : A Focus on Graduate Student Mothers
Autor/in:
Kulp, Amanda M.
Quelle: Res High Educ (Research in Higher Education), 19 (2019) 3, 105 S
Inhalt: This study presents new findings on tenure-track job outcomes for mothers who parented children during graduate school. Using NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates (2000–2005) and Survey of Doctorate Recipients data (2000–2013), I explore how PhD mothers’ accumulation of career-related resources in graduate school influences their likelihood of attaining tenure-track jobs.
Inhalt: The transitional phase in the Twenty first century epoch has marked the most challenging stage of human lives. Employment and life style patterns are gradually transforming with the advent and influence of globalization, modernization, and urban ways of living and enhanced competition from the other nations. The role of women is very challenging due to the higher level of expectations; they have to gratify to make their living in the male dominating society. Women have to perform multiple roles and are expected to make proper balance between their personal as well as professional lives. In order to meet their personal, professional and social needs, they have to struggle with numerous gauntlets in the complex environment. The conflict in their job role and family role is one of the biggest challenges in the present era. Hence, the study aims at providing the insight to the conceptual framework of work-life balance, its significance in the lives of working women as well as various measures to ensure the certainty of balance in their lives.
Schlagwörter:Frauen in der Wissenschaft; Frauenrolle; Globalisierung; Lifestyle; Modernisierung; work-life balance
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf
Zwischen "Exzellenz" und Existenz : Wissenschaftskarriere, Arbeits- und Geschlechterarrangements in Deutschland und Österreich
Autor/in:
Binner, Kristina; Weber, Lena
Quelle: GENDER (GENDER – Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft), 11 (2019) 1-2019, S 31–46
Inhalt: In der Gesellschaft wie auch in der Wissenschaft haben einige Veränderungen in Richtung Geschlechtergleichstellung stattgefunden. In den letzten Jahren werden wissenschaftliche Karrieren in Deutschland und Österreich jedoch nach ‚Exzellenzkriterien‘ und dem Leitbild der ‚unternehmerischen Hochschule‘ reorganisiert und Karrierepfade prekarisiert. Dieser Beitrag untersucht länderübergreifend, ob sich dadurch Geschlechterarrangements erneut ungleich gestalten. Dazu wird mit der Perspektive der alltäglichen und biografischen Arbeitsarrangements der Zusammenhang zwischen wissenschaftlichen Karrieren und Geschlecht analysiert. Im Fokus stehen die subjektiven Wahrnehmungen von Alltagsorganisation und biografischen Entscheidungen von NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen, die in zwei qualitativen Interviewstudien befragt wurden. Es wird auf der Subjektebene gezeigt, wie in Zeiten ‚exzellenter‘ Spitzenforschung Geschlechterungleichheiten in Alltag und Biografie erzeugt werden.
Subjectivation processes and gender in a neoliberal model of science in three Spanish research centres
Autor/in:
Vayreda, Agnès; Conesa, Ester; Revelles‐Benavente, Beatriz; González Ramos, Ana M.
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 26 (2019) 4, S 430–447
Inhalt: From a Foucauldian approach, neoliberal rationality in science can be understood as a form of governance of the self that produces mechanisms through which the subject is constructed and subordinated at the same time. In this study we examine subjectivation processes and gender in centres of research created under neoliberal scientific rationality. We analyse 19 semi‐structured interviews of men and women researchers conducted in three highly competitive centres of excellence — a context rarely addressed in the literature of academic subjectivities. Following a critical discourse analysis, we show how subjectivation processes of neoliberal rationality result in two main discursive mechanisms of subjection that prevent or hinder alternative subjectivities and collective resistance, especially for women, presenting a double turn that we call: a ‘turn on oneself’ and a ‘gendered turn on oneself’. We conclude that these centres are spaces which provide the conditions of possibility to develop a scientific entrepreneurial self, excluding ‘other’ scientific subjectivities and preventing possible resistances that could emerge from them.
How Job Sharing Can Lead to More Women Achieving Senior Leadership Roles in Higher Education : A UK Study
Autor/in:
Watton, Emma; Stables, Sarah; Kempster, Steve
Quelle: Soc. Sci. (Social Sciences), 8 (2019) 7, 209 S
Inhalt: This article explores the opportunity that job sharing offers as a way of encouraging more women into senior management roles in the higher education sector. There is a scarcity of female leadership representation in the higher education context, in particular a lack of female leadership pipeline. The article examines the underlying influences that limit the representation of women in leadership roles. To address these contextual limitations the process of job sharing is offered as a possible solution for harnessing the skills and talents of women in leadership positions in higher education and enabling the development of a leadership pipeline. To illustrate how such job sharing could occur the article provides a detailed vignette of a job share between two senior women leaders within a single UK university context and the positive impact this had on the organisation, the individuals and their leadership development. This article seeks to make a contribution by exploring how leadership job sharing can occur and sets out some recommendations for the adoption, negotiation and establishment of job share structures in the future.
Schlagwörter:co-constructed autoethnography; job sharing; Leadership; women in higher education
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf
Autor/in:
Bellinger, Franziska; Bolten, Ricarda; Grünberger, Nina; Ruge, Wolfgang B.
Quelle: MedienPädagogik (MedienPädagogik: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung), (2019) , S 174–192
Inhalt: Die im Jahr 2016 von Dander et al. publizierten Ergebnisse zur Situation des wissenschaftlichen «Nachwuchses» sensibilisierten für eine zunehmende Prekarisierung der Beschäftigungsverhältnisse von Qualifikandinnen und Qualifikanden in der deutschsprachigen Medienpädagogik, die sich auch auf den privaten Kontext ausweitet. Die Kolleginnen und Kollegen wiesen damit auf Problemlagen von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler in Qualifikationsphasen hin, um so eine kritische Diskussion und Reflexion in der eigenen Disziplin anzuregen. Knapp vier Jahre nach der ersten Erhebung wurde eine erneute Fragebogenuntersuchung zur Lage der Qualifikandinnen und Qualifikanden in der Medienpädagogik durchgeführt, die eine Vergleichsbasis zur Umfrage aus 2014 bieten soll. Neben den thematischen Schwerpunkten zur a) Zufriedenheit mit den Arbeits- und Beschäftigungsbedingungen, b) Zufriedenheit mit der Betreuungssituation und c) der Work-Life-Balance wird hierin auch den Aspekten d) Internationalisierung und Vernetzung Beachtung geschenkt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Zufriedenheit im Vergleich zu von vor vier Jahren leicht abgenommen hat, obwohl der Arbeit an den Qualifikationsarbeiten auf den Stellen tendenziell mehr Zeit eingeräumt wird. Die mangelnde Planbarkeit der Karriere und oftmals fehlende berufliche Sicherheit zählt nach wie vor zu den problematischsten Aspekten für die Qualifikandinnen und Qualifikanden in der deutschsprachigen Medienpädagogik.