Academe's glass ceiling: Societal, professional-organizational, and institutional barriers to the career advancement of academic women

Comparative Education Review

Volumn 44, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 493-513

  Bain, Olga ^a   Cummings, William ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0034344555     PISSN: 00104086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/447631     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. United Nations, The World's Women 1970-1990: Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations, 1991).
2. Glass Ceiling Commission. Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nations Human Capital (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 1995), pp. iii-iv.
3. Judith Glazer-Raymo reviews key features of U.S. academe that work against the promotion of women in "Women Who Lead: The Glass Ceiling Phenomenon," chap. 5 of her Shattering Myths: Women in Academe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 140-64.
4. For example, according to Ji-Sun Chung ("Women's Unequal Access to Education in South Korea," Comparative Education Review 38, 4 [November 1994]: 487-505), societies with a predominantly Confucian culture place much emphasis on the roles of women as mothers and wives, and thus they tend to discourage women from assuming positions that detract from these traditional responsibilities. However, among societies with highly gendered occupational structures, there is some evidence that rapid economic growth accompanied by expansion of managerial and professional positions leads to a reduction in the barriers to female access. Also see Mary C. Brinton, Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
5. For example, according to Ji-Sun Chung ("Women's Unequal Access to Education in South Korea," Comparative Education Review 38, 4 [November 1994]: 487-505), societies with a predominantly Confucian culture place much emphasis on the roles of women as mothers and wives, and thus they tend to discourage women from assuming positions that detract from these traditional responsibilities. However, among societies with highly gendered occupational structures, there is some evidence that rapid economic growth accompanied by expansion of managerial and professional positions leads to a reduction in the barriers to female access. Also see Mary C. Brinton, Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
6. The institutional cultures of certain employment sectors assume personal attributes or accomplishments that women find difficult to satisfy; the extreme case is the armed forces where junior personnel are expected to demonstrate exceptional physical strength and endurance. Similarly, organizations such as banks and other established corporations may have steep hierarchies and expect potential leaders to devote long years of continuous service as a prerequisite for upward mobility; women, insofar as they seek to interrupt their career for family responsibilities, can be handicapped in these settings. See Rosabeth Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic, 1977).
7. A useful overview and explanation for the differential proportion of females in various occupations is found in Barbara F. Reskin and Patricia A. Roos, eds., Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women's Inroads into Male Occupations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).
8. There are equally obvious reasons for expecting the prevalence of gender-based barriers in academia. As Suzanne S. Lie and Virginia E. O'Leary observe (Storming the Tower: Women in the Academic World, ed. Suzanne S. Lie and Virginia E. O'Leary [London: Kogan Page, 1990]), Western universities derive from monastic traditions where women were automatically excluded.
9. A thoughtful critique of the female-friendly hypothesis is found in L. H. Collins, J. C. Chrisler, and K. Quina, eds., Career Strategies for Women in Academe: Arming Athena (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1998).
10. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed. (New York: Free Press, 1957).
11. Gail Kelly, in her review of "Women in Higher Education" (in International Higher Education: An Encyclopedia, ed. Philip G. Altbach [New York: Garland, 1991], pp. 297-323), reported extensive cross-national data on first-degree enrollments by gender as well as on the academic profession, but she found less information on graduate-level enrollments (p. 311). Since then, there have been some improvements in the collection of reliable data on graduate-level enrollments in the more advanced countries (see Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], Education at a dance: OECD Indicators, 1997 [Paris: OECD, 1997], pp. 331-33). The new statistics confirm Kelly's generalization that "the higher the degree the fewer the women enrolled" (p. 311).
12. Gail Kelly, in her review of "Women in Higher Education" (in International Higher Education: An Encyclopedia, ed. Philip G. Altbach [New York: Garland, 1991], pp. 297-323), reported extensive cross-national data on first-degree enrollments by gender as well as on the academic profession, but she found less information on graduate-level enrollments (p. 311). Since then, there have been some improvements in the collection of reliable data on graduate-level enrollments in the more advanced countries (see Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], Education at a dance: OECD Indicators, 1997 [Paris: OECD, 1997], pp. 331-33). The new statistics confirm Kelly's generalization that "the higher the degree the fewer the women enrolled" (p. 311).
13. Mariam Chamberlain (Women in Academe: Progress and Prospects [New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991]) suggests that no more than one in every 20 institutions of higher education in the United States is led by a woman; those headed by women tend to be either religious or women's colleges. Women, while a clear minority, are somewhat better represented on boards of trustees.
14. For an introduction to institutional theory, see William K. Cummings, "The Institutions of Education: Compare, Compare, Compare!" Comparative Education Review 43 (November 1999): 413-37.
15. See Jonathan Cole, Fair Science: Women in the Scientific Community (New York: Free Press, 1979).
16. The survey known as the Carnegie International Survey of the Academic Profession focused on the research, teaching, service, and governance roles of academics. It was prepared by an international team made up of experts on higher education from each of the participating countries. It is described in The International Academic Profession: Portraits of Fourteen Countries, ed. Philip G. Altbach with a foreword by Ernest L. Boyer (Princeton, N.J.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1997).
17. Suzanne S. Lie, Lynda Malik, and Duncan Harris, eds., The Gender Gap in Higher Education (London: Kogan Page, 1994). Among the many other societal factors that might be considered is the relative supply of women with the training appropriate for seeking academic positions; however, given wide differences in the nature of academic qualifications and systems of graduate education as well as the tendency for many academic systems these days to recruit candidates trained in other countries, in most countries it is difficult to develop estimates of the pool of qualified women.
18. All of these propositions require significant qualifications. For example, concerning entry, as is illustrated in table 1, in Japan and Korea relatively few women gain entry positions, yet the women in these societies who do so have as great a chance as their male counterparts to advance. In contrast, in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Israel, where relatively large proportions of women get a start in academia, relatively few become full professors. And, finally, there is the intriguing case of Mexico, where the proportion of women among full professors is even greater than the proportion of women in academia, implying that in Mexico a woman has a better chance to become a full professor than does a man.
19. S. M. Lipset, First New Nation (New York: Basic, 1977).
20. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report, 1995 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
21. B. R. Clark, The Higher Education System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
22. Glazer-Raymo (n. 3 above), pp. 196 ff.
23. H. S. Astin, "The Meaning of Work in Women's Lives: A Psychological Model of Career Choice and Work Behavior," Counseling Psychologist 12, no. 4 (1984): 117-26; and H. Zuckerman, J. R. Cole, and J. T. Bruer, The Outer Circle: Women (New York: Norton, 1991).
24. H. S. Astin, "The Meaning of Work in Women's Lives: A Psychological Model of Career Choice and Work Behavior," Counseling Psychologist 12, no. 4 (1984): 117-26; and H. Zuckerman, J. R. Cole, and J. T. Bruer, The Outer Circle: Women (New York: Norton, 1991).
25. The recent study by Yu Xie and Kimberlee Shauman provides additional support for the view that the gender gap in productivity is largely attributable to "sex differences in personal characteristics, structural positions, and marital status" rather than to gender as such; see Yu Xie and Kimberlee A. Shauman, "Sex Differences in Research Productivity: New Evidence about an Old Puzzle," American Sociological Review 63 (December 1998): 847-70.
26. Virginia E. O'Leary and Judith M. Mitchell, "Women Connecting with Women: Networks and Mentors." In Lie and O'Leary, eds. (n. 7 above), pp. 58-73.
27. Kanter (n. 5 above) reports that women advance more rapidly in organizational environments where their numbers make up a critical mass.
28. L. S. Dix, ed., Women: Their Underrepresentation and Career Differentials in Science and Engineering: Proceedings of a Workshop (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1987).
29. Assuming a continuation in the 1975-88 rate of increase of U.S. academic women in the professorial rank at American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Category I Institutions (109 universities), Dona Alpert as reported by Glazer-Raymo, p. 50, estimated that it would take until 2041 for the proportion of women and men at the professorial rank to become equal.
30. Glenn R. Carroll and Michael T. Hannan, The Demography of Corporations and Industries (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
31. Joseph Ben-David, Centers of Learning: Britain, France, Germany, and the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977); Clark (n. 19 above).
32. Joseph Ben-David, Centers of Learning: Britain, France, Germany, and the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977); Clark (n. 19 above).
33. Daniel C. Levy, Higher Education and the State in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
34. "Women in Science-Comparisons across Cultures." Science 263 (March 11, 1994).
35. For a contrary view and evidence, see Nelly Stromquist, "Feminist Reflections on the Politics of the Peruvian University," in Women and Education in Latin America, ed. Nelly Stromquist (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1992), pp. 147-70.
36. Shigeru Nakayama, Science, Technology, and Society in Postwar Japan (London: Kegan Paul, 1991), pp. 221 ff. Also see Ruth Hayhoe, "An Asian Multiversity: Comparative Reflections on the Transition to Mass Higher Education in East Asia," Comparative Education Review 39, no. 3 (August 1995): 299-321.
37. Shigeru Nakayama, Science, Technology, and Society in Postwar Japan (London: Kegan Paul, 1991), pp. 221 ff. Also see Ruth Hayhoe, "An Asian Multiversity: Comparative Reflections on the Transition to Mass Higher Education in East Asia," Comparative Education Review 39, no. 3 (August 1995): 299-321.
38. The Egyptian data were not shared with the international coordinators, and the Russian, Dutch, and Hong Kong data did not include enough information on career advancement. Academic field was not recorded for Sweden.
39. Russia, where the response rate was an unacceptable 14.5 percent, was not included in this analysis.
40. The sample sizes varied widely: 3,529 respondents for the United States; 2,801 for Germany; 1,948 for the United Kingdom; 1,889 for Japan; 1,420 for Australia; 1,071 for Chile; 1,027 for Mexico; 984 for Brazil; 903 for Korea; and 502 for Israel. This is a total of 16,074; for some of the questions, there were missing data, so in the full regressions reported in table 4 only 13,264 cases were included. Without weighting, the statistical impact of the practices of these large sample countries, especially the United States, would dominate the results. The weighting strategy of equalizing the size of each country's sample enables the academic practices of Mexico to have the same chance to influence results as the practices of the United States or Germany.
41. The Australian sample has a higher proportion of women than is reported in Lie, Malik, and Harris (n. 15 above), p. 16; however, the Australian report on sampling indicates that the survey characteristics are close to the actual population characteristics. See Barry A. Sheehan and Anthony Welch, "The Australian Academic Profession," in Altbach, ed. (n. 14 above), pp. 52-94, esp. p. 63.
42. The Australian sample has a higher proportion of women than is reported in Lie, Malik, and Harris (n. 15 above), p. 16; however, the Australian report on sampling indicates that the survey characteristics are close to the actual population characteristics. See Barry A. Sheehan and Anthony Welch, "The Australian Academic Profession," in Altbach, ed. (n. 14 above), pp. 52-94, esp. p. 63.
43. See Ulrich Teichler, "The Conditions of the Academic Profession: An International, Comparative Analysis of the Academic Profession in Western Europe. Japan and the USA," in Inside Academia, ed. Peter A. M. Maassen and Frans A. Van Vught (Utrecht: Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, 1996), pp. 10-68, for an extended discussion of these institutional differences and for a cross-national comparison of academic workload, productivity, and rewards by academic rank.
44. Lipset (n. 17 above).
45. Equality is defined variously by social scientists, so we experimented with other operations, including the relative egalitarianism of legal codes and the degree of social participation. We finally settled on income equality, as this is the operation most frequently used by sociologists and economists. The 14 nations were placed in three strata according to the differential proportion of national income commanded by the top 10 percent of the population as reported in World Bank, Workers in an Integrating World: World Development Report, 1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 220-21.
46. Many studies have reported on "the productivity puzzle" that men seem to produce more academic products than women; these are summarized in Xie and Shauman (n. 22 above). To reduce the possibility of gender bias in measuring productivity, it is important to take account of various products as does our composite measure and to limit productivity to a fixed period (in this case, the 3 years immediately prior to the survey). We did separate analyses with selected components of the composite productivity index and found that gender differences held up for all of these.
47. Those variables in table 3 for which the central tendencies for women had the largest deviations from the sample statistic are most likely to have substantial interactions with gender.
48. For one review of logistic regression, see Damodar N. Gujarati, Basic Econometrics 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), p. 576.
49. The model described here went through five iterations, and the chi-square of goodness of fit was highly significant (P < .0001). The dummy variables of Other for field and United Kingdom for institutional type were intentionally excluded from the model, and the German type was excluded due to a statistical redundancy.
50. This is an exceptionally stringent level of significance, in recognition of the large sample size of 13,624 professors.
51. These relations were both verified for all of the societies listed in table 1 and for the subset of societies included in the Carnegie survey; the text provides a partial report of the findings.
52. While our analysis reports that the Australian model is more favorable to the promotion of women, it should be noted that other surveys of the Australian professoriate indicate a smaller prevalence of women in the upper ranks; especially note Felicity Allen, "Academic Women in Australia: Progress Real or Imagined?" in Lie and O'Leary, eds. (n. 7 above), pp. 13-23. This discrepancy leads us to downplay the importance of the Australian model in our concluding interpretation of the findings.
53. See n. 25.
54. See, e.g., Virginia E. O'Leary and Suzanne Stiver Lie, "Strategies for Change," in Lie and O'Leary, eds., pp. 236-41.
55. This is the principal argument of Xie and Shauman (n. 22 above).
56. These generalizations, articulated in the review of U.S. studies by Xie and Shauman and by Lionel S. Lewis in Scaling the Ivory Tower: Merit and Its Limits in Academic Careers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 133-36, are also supported by our analysis of the Carnegie international data set. See William K. Cummings, "Scholarly Productivity: Context, Commitment, Conditions, and Gender" (unpublished manuscript, University of Buffalo, Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education, 1998).
57. These generalizations, articulated in the review of U.S. studies by Xie and Shauman and by Lionel S. Lewis in Scaling the Ivory Tower: Merit and Its Limits in Academic Careers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 133-36, are also supported by our analysis of the Carnegie international data set. See William K. Cummings, "Scholarly Productivity: Context, Commitment, Conditions, and Gender" (unpublished manuscript, University of Buffalo, Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education, 1998).
58. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
59. A useful summary of this position is Louise Morley, "Interrogating Patriarchy: The Challenges of Feminist Research," in Breaking Boundaries: Women in Higher Education, ed. Louise Morley and Val Walsh (London: Taylor & Francis, 1996), pp. 128-48. Also see Mary Fonova and Judith Cook, eds., Beyond Methodology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
60. A useful summary of this position is Louise Morley, "Interrogating Patriarchy: The Challenges of Feminist Research," in Breaking Boundaries: Women in Higher Education, ed. Louise Morley and Val Walsh (London: Taylor & Francis, 1996), pp. 128-48. Also see Mary Fonova and Judith Cook, eds., Beyond Methodology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
61. Sue V. Rosser, Re-Engineering Female Friendly Science (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997).