Gender and academic careers Kate Sang, School of Management and Languages, Heriot Watt University Warwick, February 2013

Gender and academic careers (UK)  Women are over-represented in the ‘junior’ levels of academia (post-doc and lecturer).  HESA Data 2010/11 women 42% of academic staff, 19.8% of Professors (slight increase), vast majority of support staff  HEFCE (2010) – gender pay gap 20.3% - suggestion higher than UK wide. Argues result of disciplinary segregation and lower working hours.

Gender and academic careers  Mobility – male academics more likely to receive job offers outside own institution (Blackaby et al., 2005).  Masculine career model (Knights and Richards, 2003) – research, uninterrupted career history, aggression, competitive – silences the marginalised – conform or resist (Doherty and Manfredi, 2006).  Women only writing retreats – beneficial for women academic (NZ, Grant, 2006).  Women – less prolific? Bird (2011) – depends on the discipline – homosociality as well.

Feminist academics  ‘Chilly Climate’ (Chilly Collective, 1995).  Symbolic violence from both other faculty and students (Davidson and Langan, 2006).  Resistance to feminism from student body and faculty (Morrison et al., 2005).  Ethos of feminism may be incompatible with managerialism within universities (Edwards, 2000).  Feminist call to arms (Lee, 2005) – resist market driven HE changing relationships between staff and students.  Personalised knowledge generated by feminist research – difficult to publish (Edwards, 2000)

Gender and academic careers – recent work  Feminist academics (focus groups)  Social network analysis (patterns of publishing in HRM)  Case study of E&D  Migrant academics (data collection ongoing)  Sang et al (forthcoming) Frayed Careers of Migrant Female Professors in British Academia: An Intersectional Perspective Gender, Work and Organization  Further field work in Australia and New Zealand May 2013 (funded by Carnegie Trust and HWU )

Suggestions  Networks  Mentoring  No networks? Set one up!  ‘intelligent life outside universities’

Refs  Bird, D. K. S. (2011). Do women publish fewer journal articles than men? Sex differences in publication productivity in the social sciences. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(6),  Blackaby, D., Booth, A. L. and Frank, J., (2005) Outside Offers and the Gender Pay Gap: Empirical Evidence from the UK Academic Labour Market. Economic Journal, ,  Knights, D. and Richards, W. (2003) Sex discrimination in UK academia. Gender, Work and Organisation, 10, 2,  Doherty, L., Manfredi, S., (2006) ‘Women’s progression in UK universities’ Employee Relations, Vol 28 (6)  Grant, B. M. Writing in the company of other women: exceeding the boundaries. Studies in Higher Education 31(4):  Chilly Collective (Eds) Breaking anonymity: the chilly climate for women faculty. Waterloo, ON. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.  Davidson, D. and Langan, D The breastfeeding incident: teaching and learning through transgression. Studies in Higher Education. 31(4):  Morrison, Z.; Bourke, M.; Kelley, C ‘Stop making is such a big issue’: Perceptions and experiences of gender inequality by undergraduates at a British University, Women’s Studies International Forum 28:  Edwards, R Numbers are not enough: on women in higher education and being a feminist academic. Academic Work and Life, Volume 1, (International Perspectives on Higher Education Research): Ed: Tight, M. JAI Press.  Lee, D Students and Managers Behaving Badly: An exploratory analysis of the vulnerability of feminist academics in anti-feminist market driven UK higher education. Women’s Studies International Forum 28: