The conditions under which women academics work provide the impetus for this article. Current trends in feminist and other writing are moving us away from dwelling on the disadvantages women experience in the academy. Yet the findings from the two Canadian studies reported here suggest that issues around children and career, anxieties about evaluation, and fatigue and stress shape the daily lives of women academics. The women do find ways and means of coping and resisting, ­sometimes collectively, although one of the major responses—working harder and sleeping less—might be considered somewhat short of empowering. We also look at what the prospects are for changes in university policies and practices.

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Sleepless in academia

A serious problem exists in the academic world, namely doctoral education attrition rates that approach 50% in some disciplines. Yet, calls for action have generally been ad hoc rather than theory driven. Further, research has not been conceived and implemented with sufficient breadth to integrate factors influencing the outcomes across the societal/supra‐societal, institutional and departmental/disciplinary contexts. Concurrently, epistemological questions are being directed at the appropriateness of both the content and the process of doctoral programs. In this paper, we propose as a heuristic, an integrative framework of nested contexts to guide both research and action. The framework integrates the range of factors influencing doctoral student experience, so that we can envision responding to this issue in a coherent and effective fashion.

Reframing Our Approach to Doctoral Programs: An Integrative Framework for Action and Research.

(2008). Problems in the Pipeline: Gender, Marriage, and Fertility in the Ivory Tower. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 79, No. 4, pp. 388-405.

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Problems in the Pipeline: Gender, Marriage, and Fertility in the Ivory Tower

Traditionally, gender equity in the academy is evaluated in terms of women’s professional success as compared to men’s. This study examines gender equity not only in terms of professional outcomes but also in terms of familial outcomes, such as childbirth, marriage, and divorce. Using data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients as well as data from a 2002 to 2003 survey of the work and family issues facing ladder-rank faculty in the nine campuses of the University of California system, the authors followed more than thirty thousand Ph.D.s in all disciplines across their life course and surveyed more than eighty-five hundred active University of California faculty. Results indicate that gender equity in terms of familial gains is as elusive as gender equity in terms of professional employment, raising the fundamental issue of what gender equity means in a university setting or in any fast-track employment setting.

Marriage and Baby Blues: Redefining Gender Equity in the Academy

Is there gender discrimination in academia? Analysis of interviews with 80 female faculty at a large Research One university—the most comprehensive qualitative data set generated to date—suggests both individual and institutional discrimination persists. Overt discrimination has largely given way to less obvious but still deeply entrenched inequities. Despite apparent increases in women in positions of authority, discrimination continues to manifest itself through gender devaluation, a process whereby the status and power of an authoritative position is downplayed when that position is held by a woman, and through penalties for those agitating for political change. Female faculty find legal mechanisms and direct political action of limited utility, and increasingly turn to more subtle forms of incremental collective action, revealing an adaptive response to discrimination and a keen sense of the power dynamics within the university. Women attributed the persistence of gender inequality not to biology but to a professional environment in which university administrators care more about the appearance than the reality of gender equality and a professional culture based on a traditional, linear male model. Respondents described heart-wrenching choices between career and family responsibilities, with tensions especially intractable in the bench sciences. They advocated alternative models of professional life but also offered very specific interim suggestions for institutions genuinely interested in alleviating gender inequality and discrimination.

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Gender Equality in Academia: Bad News from the Trenches, and Some Possible Solutions

This research explores the maternal and career progression decisions of different generations of women professors in Canada. Nineteen women, interviewed in-depth, reveal how they carefully plan childbearing and childrearing experiences around their demanding work schedules, by having May babies or posttenure babies. Results demonstrate the need for alternative models of academic careers.

Carmen Armenti

Papers

Sleepless in academia

May Babies and Posttenure Babies: Maternal Decisions of Women Professors.