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.
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
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.
Un/making academia: gendered precarities and personal lives in universities
Autor/in:
McKenzie, Lara
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2021) , S 1–18
Inhalt: Recent scholarship on universities explores how academics’ families and partners restrict their careers and how academic labour limits these relationships, both in highly gendered ways. Such research less often considers how people’s close relations might unevenly support them in continuously relocating; dedicating unpaid time to ‘career development’; or taking on or influencing them to remain in short-term, poorly paid precarious roles. This paper explores precariously employed post-PhDs in Australia, investigating their gendered careers and personal lives. Drawing on interviews at three public universities, it shows how women with children and partners in particular raise concerns over how their relationships and work interact. Here, certain kinds of workers – men and single women, unencumbered by family responsibilities and restrictions on travel, and with access to financial resources – appear better able to navigate moves to more secure work. This paper argues that support from close relations is productive and restrictive for precarious academics’ careers.
When faith intersects with gender: the challenges and successes in the experiences of Muslim women academics
Autor/in:
Ramadan, Ibtihal
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2021) , S 1–16
Inhalt: This paper explores the experiences of eight Muslim women academics (MWA) within a range of sciences and humanities disciplines. The data draws from my doctoral study which examined the experiences of men and women Muslim academics at UK universities. Findings from in-depth interviews with participants highlight the intersectionality of religio-gendered identities as central to their experiences. Being hijabed in academia triggered gendered-Islamophobic micro-aggressions, whose potential impact on the participants was buffered by their resilience, positive outlook, and belief. Further, they capitalized on their visible faith to demystify negative perceptions about Muslims and to advance their career-through utilizing the diversity logic within academia, while recognizing its tokenistic nature. Despite facing challenges, the participants share certain qualities that facilitate success, with agency being the uppermost quality.
Schlagwörter:academics; akademische Karriere; Großbritannien; Intersektionalität; Islam; microaggressions; Muslim; muslim woman; Rassismus; UK
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Diversity, Europa und Internationales, Geschlechterverhältnis
Publishing, signaling, social capital, and gender: Determinants of becoming a tenured professor in German political science
Autor/in:
Schröder, Martin; Lutter, Mark; Habicht, Isabel M.
Quelle: PLOS ONE (PLOS ONE), 16 (2021) 1
Inhalt: We apply event history analysis to analyze career and publication data of virtually all political scientists in German university departments, showing that each published refereed journal article increases a political scientist's chance for tenure by 9 percent, while other publications affect the odds for tenure only marginally and in some cases even negatively. Each received award and third party funding increases the odds for tenure by respectively 41 and 26 percent, while international experience, social capital and children hardly have a strong influence. Surprisingly, having degrees from a German university of excellence strongly decreases the odds for tenure. Women with similar credentials have at least 20 percent higher odds to get tenure than men. Our data therefore suggests that the lower factual hiring rates of women are better explained by a leaky pipeline, e.g. women leaving academia, rather than because women are not hired even when they are as productive as men. The article contributes to a better understanding of the role of meritocratic and non-meritocratic factors in achieving highly competitive job positions.
Ein paar Auszüge: SSCI Publikationen sind besonders wichtig. Ähnliche Signalwirkungen haben Drittmittelprojekte und wissenschaftliche Auszeichnungen. Frauen mit gleichen Charakteristika wie Männer haben keine schlechteren Chancen, berufen zu werden. Danach interessierte uns, warum einige Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler produktiver sind.
How human capital, universities of excellence, third party funding, mobility and gender explain productivity in German political science
Autor/in:
Habicht, Isabel M.; Lutter, Mark; Schröder, Martin
Quelle: Scientometrics (Scientometrics), (2021) , S 1–27
Inhalt: Using a unique panel dataset of virtually all German academic political scientists, we show that researchers become much more productive due to the accumulation of human capital and third party funding. We also show however, that while universities of excellence have more productive researchers, individuals who go there do not become more productive. Finally, we show how women publish only 9 percent less than men with the same level of prior publication experience, but are about 26 percent less productive over their entire career, as early productivity leads to later productivity, so that women increasingly fall behind. These results cannot be explained through the influence of childbearing. Rather, they support the ‘theory of limited differences’, which argues that small differences in early productivity accumulate to large differences over entire careers, as early success encourages later success. Apart from generally showing why political scientists publish more or less, we specifically identify accumulative advantage as the principal reason why women increasingly fall behind men over the course of their careers.
Hier zeigen wir, dass Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler an Exzellenzuniversitäten produktiver sind („Bestenauslese“). Doch dieselbe Wissenschaftlerin / Wissenschaftler wird nicht produktiver, weil man dort hin geht. Die wichtigsten Prädiktoren späterer Produktivität sind vorherige Produktivität und Drittmitteleinwerbungen. Dass Frauen weniger publizieren, können wir nicht darauf zurückführen, dass sie seltener auf höhere Karrierestufen kommen („leaky pipeline“), sondern vielmehr auf geringere Publikationserfahrung zu Beginn ihrer akademischen Laufbahn. Frauen publizieren also anfangs weniger, und da frühe Publikationserfahrung zu mehr Produktivität führt, wird der Abstand zu Männern im Verlaufe einer Karriere immer größer. Dies wiederum kann man nicht damit erklären, dass Kinder die Produktivität von Frauen stärker senken als von Männern.
Schlagwörter:academic career; Bestenauswahl; Drittmittel; Exzellenzinitiative; Forschungsförderung; funding; German higher education system; Geschlechterunterschied; human capital; Humankapital; political science; Produktivität; publication; Publikationsverhalten; wissenschaftliche Karriere
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Quelle: Journal of Further and Higher Education, (2021) , S 1–14
Inhalt: The transition of early career researchers into academic posts is understood to be a crucial career step and marks a point at which representation of women declines significantly. The research adopts a participatory qualitative research methodology through career narrative interviews and group discussions with women engineers recently appointed into academic posts. It was found that academic careers are ‘hoped for’, but not described as a straightforward option in terms of either securing tenure or future career development. The collective career paths outlined were rarely linear and featured key moments of crisis and self-doubt, culminating in ‘tentative’ career identity formation in the face of gendered career structures. There is evidence of a pre-emptive and continuing uncertainty about the feasibility of an academic career that begins years before embarking on a PhD. The distinctive contribution of the study is the consideration of gendered early processes of forming an academic identity and ongoing collective experiences of becoming an academic.
Schlagwörter:akademische Karriere; early career researchers; Gender; Ingenieurwissenschaft; soziale Konstruktion; transition; Übergangsphase; wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Naturwissenschaft und Technik, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Quelle: Gender and Education, 32 (2020) 1, S 11–26
Inhalt: Drawing on data collected in a cross-disciplinary survey of early-career academics (ECAs) in New Zealand, this article explores the factors influencing ECA conference attendance. Our conceptual framework uses conference attendance as the dependent variable and measures gender, ethnicity, family responsibilities and workload. Three key features affect conference attendance: "demographic characteristics" (background features and prior experiences that affect an academic's willingness and ability to attend), "accessibility" (constraints to attending, such as financing, family responsibilities, institutional support or teaching commitments) and "purpose" (the value placed on attending conferences by the individual, the institution, or the discipline). In particular, we identify differences for women, Indigenous people, and those born overseas with respect to their ability to navigate and their inclination to attend national and international conferences.
Schlagwörter:conference culture; early career researcher; ethnic minority; gender inequality; Konferenz; Neuseeland; wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Diversity, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis