Recruitment of men and women as academics by Australian universities

Entry of men and women to an academic career was studied through a survey of 230 men and women who in 1991 held a full-time appointment at lecturer level or above in Arts and Science disciplines in an Australian university. The women more often than the men had learned about the position they obtained from a source inside the department in which the job was being filled, had been encouraged by senior members of the department to apply, and had gained a position that was filled without advertisement. However, these differences arose because more of the women than the men had been a tutor in the department where they gained a lectureship. There were no differences in terms of how men and women had been recruited when allowance was made for this factor and whether a person had been residing within Australia immediately prior to appointment. The results are discussed with reference to why men have in the past and now do substantially outnumber women among academics in Australian universities. Although the survey suggests men and women who gained positions were recruited on similar bases, successful applicants need to be compared with unsuccessful applicants to obtain comprehensive understanding whether selection practices have disadvantaged women.The survey reported in this article was undertaken while Ray Over held an appointment as Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Education at Griffith University.     

CAREERS FOR MEN AND WOMEN IN BRITISH UNIVERSITIES: EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION

This article considers the position of women academics in British universities. It begins with an historical survey of the evolution of the university teaching career in the United Kingdom, with special reference to women. It then concentrates on the entry of women into academic careers, particularly after the Second World War. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the latest trends in higher education in the United Kingdom, especially attempts to make universities more cost effective, to rate their performance via performance indicators, and to attune them to the needs of the business world. These trends may end up making academic careers in the United Kingdom relatively less attractive than they were in the past, while inadvertently providing for greater feminization.     

Australian academics: Career patterns,work roles,and family life-cycle commitments of men and women

Men and women who held a full-time appointment at lecturer level and above in Australian universities in 1988 were compared in terms of the career paths they had followed, geographic mobility, domestic responsibilities, work roles, and levels of performance as an academic. Women had more often spent a period outside the workforce or in part-time employment due to childcare responsibilities. They more frequently had followed their partners to another city or country, they more often had been a tutor (a non-tenurable position) before becoming a lecturer. The survey indicated that substantially more women than men pursuing a full-time career as an academic were combining substantial household labour and childcare with employment. However, even when number of children and ages of children were considered, there were no differences between men and women in self-rated performance in such academic roles as research, teaching, and administration. The results are discussed with reference to the question of why in numerical terms there have been so few women academics in Australian universities.     

Beyond the Degree: Men and women at the decision-making levels in British higher education

The study is an analysis of gender and power in British universities. It draws from a lifetime of experience of the difficulties encountered by those women who do reach senior decision-making positions in academic institutions, in the UK and overseas. It spans a period of forty years which begins with women as an unassimilated minority among student populations and moves to an analysis of their opportunities for shared control beneath the glass ceilings of the levels they attain as established academics. A survey of the incumbents of senior management roles in universities reveals few women. Fewer attain honorific positions. Suggesting that the observations made represent an improvement on the past, the paper presents two case studies of the implications of senior administrative work for academic women's professional lives. The first is of a small university weighted in favour of a narrow band of technological disciplines and the second a large mainstream university with many women staff. From here, commenting on external influences in Britain and elsewhere, the paper concludes by suggesting: ways in which women's leadership in academic institutions might be encouraged; the role of the professional bodies in monitoring and promoting this; and the learning required by women themselves to become effective as leaders for change once in position.     

Good jobs – but places for women?

This article is concerned with men and women's experience of elite positions and with the extent to which such positions are seen as places for women, so as to provide an insight into their commitment to continuing in them. Senior management in universities are elite positions in terms of income; those who occupy them are relatively powerful internally, although relatively powerless in relation to the state and the market. Drawing on a purposive study of those at the top three levels (i.e. presidential, vice-presidential, and dean) in public universities, it finds little difference between men and women's perceptions of the advantages/disadvantages of these positions. However, in a context where roughly four-fifths of those in university senior management are men [O'Connor, P. 2014. Management and Gender in Higher Education. Manchester: Manchester University Press.], at the level of organisational narratives and at the interactional level, gender differences persist. These differences are reflected in variation in commitment to continuing in senior management positions.     

Financial Planning‐Chemistry as a Special Case

Although many women now hold qualifications that in the past guaranteed an academic appointment, few jobs are available in universities. In an unrestrained labour market, the sex ratio of academics in Australian universities is unlikely to change much over the next 10 to 15 years. The likely impact of affirmative action policies and practices is discussed.     

THE WAY TO SUCCESS? ON THE HISTORY OF ACADEMIC CAREERS FOR WOMEN IN AUSTRIA

The article sketches the history of the education of women in Austrian universities, particularly the University of Vienna, and the attempts of some of the first female graduates to pursue academic careers. Middle class women, just like middle class men, considered education and possible academic careers as sure ways to social and economic emancipation. However, if the model worked for men, it worked less well for women who although admitted to university studies in increasing numbers found that their attempts to pursue academic careers were fraught with many obstacles. Despite numerous female success stories, the university did not turn out to be, for women, a route to emancipation and career fulfilment. Even today, if Austrian women are accepted and are achieving success in other areas, in industry and in public service, for instance, they are doing so in these endeavours far more easily and in greater numbers than in the universities.     

Gender and career optimism—The effects of gender‐specific perceptions of lecturer support,career barriers and self‐efficacy on career optimism

Female university graduates tend to have less career success than their male counterparts. Career optimism is considered a crucial predictor of future career success, but little is known about predictors of career optimism. Based on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), we hypothesised that both perceived lecturer support and perceived career barriers impact career optimism via students’ self‐efficacy, and differentiated the model along gender lines using a subgroup path analysis. Two hundred and thirty‐two undergraduate psychology students from German universities answered an online questionnaire. Results revealed that the expected indirect effect of perceived lecturer support and perceived career barriers on career optimism via self‐efficacy was only identifiable in women. For men, we found a direct connection between perceived lecturer support and career optimism, as well as that an increase in perceived career barriers reduced males’ self‐efficacy. We were unable to identify any sex differences in career optimism.     

The academic "hurdle race": A case study

This study analyzes the career patterns of a cohort of faculty members in a large Israeli university and shows that women constitute a small minority in that university, and that their rank advancements are fewer, slower, and lower than men's. We examine three possible explaining mechanisms: (a) "Thresholds" - according to which after women cross a certain barrier, differential career development on the basis of gender disappears or is, at least, greatly reduced. (b) "Ceilings" - according to which women's advancement is curbed before they reach the highest rank. (c) "Hurdles" - according to which women, as compared to men, are confronted by more obtrusive barriers at each step of the academic career. We found that no threshold could be detected after which gender differences are reduced and that the ceiling effect may be a by-product of women's extended career paths. Rather, the analysis of the case study suggests that women's career trajectories are characterized by "hurdles", i.e., at each rank they stay longer and their advancement probability is lower than men's even when their publication rates are taken into account.     

Nurturing Careers in Psychology: Combining Work and Family

The academic workplace, with its requirements for achieving tenure within the first 6 years of employment, is designed in ways that discriminate against young faculty with family care responsibilities, most notably mothers. Mason and Goulden (Academe, http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2002/02nd/02ndmas.htm, 2002, Academe, http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2004/04nd/04ndmaso.htm, 2004) found that women faculty who have babies within the first 5 years following the receipt of their doctorate are less likely to earn tenure than women without babies or men in general. Women at research-intensive universities are twice as likely as their male colleagues to report that they had fewer children than they wanted. In addition, only one-third of women who begin their academic career at research-intensive institutions without children will become a mother. These inequities, sometimes called the “baby gap” or “motherhood penalty” make academic institutions difficult places for new faculty with family care responsibilities. Suggestions are provided to assist new faculty in successfully combining their work and family roles (e.g., establish gender equity in parenting and negotiate for family-friendly policies) and to senior faculty and administrators who want to nurture the careers of their younger colleagues (e.g., support the use of family-friendly policies on campus).     

Comparative career accomplishments of two decades of women and men doctoral graduates in education

Patterns of doctoral study and subsequent career progress were compared for 756 men and women doctoral graduates in education at a research university from two six-year periods, one before and one after a rapid nation-wide increase in the percentage of women doctorates. Despite advantages relative to men in admission, financial support and full-time study, women doctorates of both periods had achieved less career progress than men but held similarly positive perceptions concerning career impact of the degree. Work experience prior to doctoral study strongly predicted career progress for both genders. Thus, affirmative action may have positively affected the careers of recent women doctorates who were younger and who began study with less established careers than women doctorates prior to 1970.     

Correlates of career advancement in Australian universities

Academics in Australian universities who were lecturers in 1978 and senior lectures by 1988, or senior lecturers in 1978 and readers/associate professors by 1988, are compared with academics who had remained at the same level of appointment over this period. Career advancement was associated not only with demographic variables, but with work habits, and level of performance in research-related academic roles. These measures were themselves intercorrelated. The variables that most distinguished the academics in the sample who had been promoted from those who had not included rate of publication in refereed journals, level of citation, research grants applied for and obtained, and the number of PhD students under a person's supervision. Likelihood of promotion was correlated negatively with self-reported commitment to teaching. This demonstration that career advancement is associated primarily with an academic's record of achievement in research is consistent with claims in the literature about the incentive and reward system operating within Australian universities.     

Career prospects in British universities

A manpower planning model is used to examine the likely effects of slower university growth on the career prospects of staff in British universities. Various policies have been suggested as ways of easing the expected promotion blockages, such as lowering the age of retirement, changing the tenure arrangements and encouraging mid-career secondment of staff to other organisations. It is found that, for the British university system, such policies would have to be very drastic to be effective in keeping promotion ages at their present values.An alternative approach is suggested in which the senior grade sizes would be allowed to vary over time so as to prevent staff promotion prospects from declining, and the cost of such a policy is estimated. The model is also used to give some indications of the future prospects for postgraduate students seeking university employment.     

Similarities and differences in collegiality/managerialism in Irish and Australian universities

In the collegial model the basis for appointment to senior management in the collegial model is nomination by a community of scholars, whereas it is by line management in the managerial one. This article focuses on the basis of appointments in universities and the gendering of such structures. Data are drawn from qualitative interviews with both men and women senior manager-academics at Dean level and above in Ireland and Australia (N = 44). In both countries the power of the President/Vice-Chancellor (VC) was very much as a Chief Executive Officer in the managerialist model, rather than the ‘primus inter pares’ of the collegial model. Moreover, Presidents/VCs controlled the appointments of Vice-Presidents/Deputy VCs and Deans and were seen as being able to affect the gender profile of senior management. However, in the Australian system (in contrast to the Irish one) there was no ambivalence about the VC actively rectifying gender inequalities in management. In a context where hybrid forms of management are emerging, this article questions the relevance of collegial/managerialist models in understanding the gendering of universities.     

Women in the academic profession: Evolution or stagnation?

This article focuses on women in the academic profession and reports a study of the social origins of Greek university staff and their career pattern. Data show that women have made few gains as university professors over the past twenty years. The gains recorded in Greece are the result of democratization of the university. As women enter the academy, particularly on teaching staffs, they tend to be older and from more middle-class professional backgrounds than are their male peers. The author notes that the entry of women as academics occurs at a time when universities are experiencing a decline in real and symbolic power.     

Responding to regulatory jolts in the English higher education sector

Throughout the world universities are having to face constantly changing environments. A particular type of important change is public policy reforms or regulatory jolts. The English higher education sector is an example of the latter, where constant regulatory jolts have been seen in past decades. Leaders at universities have needed to interpret these environmental changes and decide how to cope with them. In this paper, the case of the post-Browne Review reforms in England’s higher education sector is used in order to explore how senior leaders in universities make sense of regulatory jolts. Based on primary qualitative research, which involved 47 semi-structured interviews with senior university leaders in England, including 24 vice-chancellors, I explore how senior leaders in universities interpreted, or made sense of, the post-Browne Review regulatory jolt. The paper suggests that senior university leaders’ interpretations might be deeply intertwined with their identity interpretations of who they are throughout these periods of turbulence.     

福建省高等院校人事工作人员工作满意度探析

通过问卷调查法了解福建省高校人事工作人员工作满意度总体状况,结果表明:高级职称人事工作人员工作满意度的各个维度上的得分均高于中级和初级职称;二本院校、职业院校人事工作人员总体工作满意度分值显著高于重点大学、一本院校。同一院校中男女人事工作人员之间存在升迁进修的明显差异;同一院校中总体工作满意度并不存在性别差异。提出高校管理层须重视人事管理人才的培养,促进人事管理人才的可持续发展建议。     

Does research productivity decline with age?

The research productivity of psychologists holding appointment in British universities was studied within a cross-sequential design. Publication rates in 1968–1970 and 1978–1980 were compared across groups differing in terms of chronological age and date of birth. At both times of measurement psychologists above 45 years of age published less frequently than younger psychologists. Psychologists who held appointment in 1980 as well as 1970 published less frequently in 1978–1980 than in 1968–1970, irrespective of their age in 1970. Although productivity dropped with age, there was considerable variability in output between younger and older psychologists. Further, a person's publication rate in 1978–1980 was better predicted by their past productivity (publication rate in 1968–1970) than by their age. These results are discussed in the context of factors that affect research productivity, as well as changes that will occur in the age distribution of British academics over the next 20 years.     

Is there a gendered agenda in academia? The research experience of female and male PhD graduates in Australian universities

Women in higher education appear to lag behind their male colleagues in many respects. Research has shown that women are less likely than men to have full-time positions, tenure, or senior status. In research -- crucial to an academic career -- they tend neither to lead research teams, nor to apply for, nor to hold large research grants. Female academics are often seen as less productive, especially when it comes to publication rates. Women just beginning or resuming their careers appear particularly vulnerable. This paper draws on data from a study of PhD graduates in Australian universities in order to investigate the research experiences of women and men at an early stage of their careers. The findings presented in the paper suggest that some of the traditional disadvantages seen as affecting university women are now diminishing. The paper goes on to argue, on the basis of the data, that some documented phenomena such as women's lower publication output and their non-participation in collaborative networks are due to factors not always highlighted in the literature -- factors, for example, such as women's choice of discipline area. While the paper rejects the proposition that an explicitly 'gendered agenda' exists in academia, it notes that newly-graduated female PhDs in Australia are still more likely than their male colleagues to report dissatisfaction on a number of levels. The paper concludes with a call for further research on the more affective aspects of academic women's research experiences.     

Retaining female postgraduates in academia: the role of gender and prospective parenthood

Women remain under-represented in almost all academic levels at universities internationally, and previous evidence has suggested that women move out of the university system in increasing numbers as they progress from postgraduate study to an academic career. The current study aimed to explore the role of gender in the reports of study experiences and future career plans of Australian postgraduate research students (n?=?249). Questionnaire data indicated women were significantly less likely than men to rate an academic career as appealing. In particular, female postgraduate students without dependent children were least likely to want to pursue an academic career. On the basis of qualitative analysis, we attribute this finding, at least in part, to a perceived incompatibility between motherhood and an academic career and discuss the implications for gender equity in higher education.