Overview

Women earn nearly half of all new PhDs in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Why, then, do they occupy a disproportionate number of the junior-level positions at universities while their male counterparts continue to snap up 80 percent of the more prestigious jobs? In Academic Careers and the Gender Gap, Maureen Baker explains the reasons behind this inequality, drawing on interviews with male and female scholars, previous research, and her own thirty-eight-year academic career. Using a feminist political economy and interpretive theoretical framework, she argues that current university priorities and collegial relations often magnify the impact of gendered families and identities and perpetuate the academic gender gap. Baker sets academia in the wider context of restructuring labour markets and gendered earning patterns within families. The result is a revealing portrait of significant and persistent differences in job security, institutional affiliation, working hours, rank, salary, job satisfaction, collegial networks, and career length between male and female scholars.

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9780774823968

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Reviews

Academic Careers and the Gender Gap is an original study that offers valuable new insights on the gendering of academic work, especially with respect to the changing nature of the university context and the academic profession. A particular strength lies in the rich qualitative data that sheds valuable light on ongoing debates in the sociology of gender, work, and family. -- Karen D. Hughes, Professor of Sociology and Business (Strategic Management and Organization), University of Alberta

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

Author Information

Maureen Baker is a professor of sociology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

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