Synopses & Reviews
Although women have made great strides in the world of academia overthe past four decades, they still occupy a relatively small number ofthe coveted top rung of university positions.
In Academic Careers and the Gender Gap, Maureen Bakerexplains the reasons behind this inequality, drawing on interviews withmale and female scholars, previous research, and her ownthirty-eight-year academic career. Using a feminist political economyand interpretive theoretical framework, she shows that genderinequality still affects countless female academics throughout Canada,the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.Although women in these countries earn nearly half of all new PhDs,Baker argues that current university priorities, collegial relations,and gendered families impede women's ascension to moreprestigious positions and keep them clustered in the junior ranks.Tracing the evolution of university hiring practices alongside shiftingfamily dynamics and the personal and professional ambitions ofacademics, Baker sets academia in the wider context of restructuringlabour markets and gendered earning patterns within families. Theresult is a revealing portrait of significant and persistentdifferences in job security, institutional affiliation, working hours,rank, salary, job satisfaction, collegial networks, and career lengthbetween male and female scholars.
Maureen Baker is a professor of sociology at theUniversity of Auckland in New Zealand.
Review
Maureen Baker argues that despite the progress made in improving women's career chances in academia, women still come second to men on a range of indicators. Her ambitious book is an unusual and welcome exercise in comparative sociology and higher education, featuring Canada and New Zealand, where she has conducted original research, but set in a wider context of Australia, the UK, and the USA. This study by a leading sociologist has strong policy implications and should appeal to academics, doctoral students, administrators, and managers working in universities.
- Sandra Acker, Professor Emerita, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Synopsis
Women earn nearly half of all new PhDs in Canada, the United States,Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Why, then, do theyoccupy a disproportionate number of the junior-level universitypositions while men occupy 80 percent of the more prestigious jobs? InAcademic Careers and the Gender Gap, Maureen Baker draws oncandid interviews with male and female scholars, previous research, andher own thirty-eight-year academic career to explain the reasons behindthis inequality. She argues that current university priorities andcollegial relations often magnify the impact of gendered families andidentities and perpetuate the gender gap. Tracing the evolution ofuniversity priorities and practices, Baker reveals significant andpersistent differences in job security, working hours, rank, salary,job satisfaction, and career length between male and femalescholars.
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
1 Setting the Scene
2 Gendered Patterns of Education, Work, and Family Life
3 University Restructuring and Global Markets
4 Social Capital and Gendered Responses to University Practices
5 Gendered Families and the Motherhood Penalty
6 Subjectivities and the Gender Gap
7 Explaining the Academic Gender Gap
Methodological Appendix
Notes
References
Index