Abstract
This chapter examines the notion of “the higher the fewer” in academic women’s career progression internationally, explains why the academic pipeline is an ineffective explanation for women’s lack of career progression, and discusses cultural influences on career progression and the effect of cumulative disadvantages. The chapter concludes with new directions for understanding academic women’s career progression.
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Notes
- 1.
Table 2.1 was created from US data presented by the AAUP (2015) which cites a total academic workforce of 383,424 academics (AAUP, 2015, Table 13). The distribution of academic staff across the ranks (AAUP, 2015, Table 12) was then used to calculate the percentage of men and women in each rank for Table 2.1. The AAUP (2015, Table 12) data have been adjusted for male lecturer from 3.5%, not 3.6% due to a rounding error. This correction was required to make the male staff numbers sum to 216,635 (i.e., 56.5% of 383,424). No rank was indicated for 4853 staff members (AAUP, 2015, Table 13). Hence, these data were excluded from Table 2.1.
- 2.
EU-27 indicates 27 countries in the European Union.
- 3.
This calculation is based on the data in Table 2.8. It was calculated that from 2007 to 2015, the percentage of female academics in Levels D and E increased by a total of 6.4 percentage points. This was calculated to be an average increase of 0.9142 percentage points per year for those 7 years. To reach 50% participation, the percentage must increase another 19.1% (from 30.9% in 2015). Thus, increasing by 0.9142 percentage points per year, it is predicted that it will take 20.89 (rounded to 21) years to achieve gender parity in the Australian professoriate.
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Diezmann, C., Grieshaber, S. (2019). The Higher the Fewer. In: Women Professors. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3685-0_2
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