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Gender differences in early post PhD employment in Australian universities

Title: Gender differences in early post-PhD employment and the influence of PhD context and family on women's academic careers

Investigators: Prof. Paul Boreham (UQ), Prof. Mark Western (UQ), Prof. Janeen Baxter (UQ), Assoc. Prof. Maryanne Dever and Assoc. Prof. Warren Laffan (UQ).

This project investigates how gender differences in early career academic employment paths and research performance are shaped by graduates' family formation and PhD experiences. This is achieved by analysing a new nationally-representative data set which holds survey responses of approx. 2,000 people who graduated with a PhD between 1999 and 2001 from the leading eight Australian research-intensive universities. The data will be analysed to assess gender differences in early career employment outcomes and research performance, the determinants of any such differences, and their implication for subsequent career advancement in the university sector.

This project has been supported in 2007 by a research grant from the Senior Women's Colloquium of the Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee (AVCC) (now Universities Australia) as part of their Action Plan for Women Employed in Universities 2006-10.

Here you can find the report on this project: "Gender Differences in Early Post-PhD Employment in Australian Universities: The Influence of the PhD Experience on Women's Academic Careers "

Aims and objectives
The project aims to:

Hypotheses
The project will examine the following hypotheses:

Background
Despite significant changes in the Australian higher education sector in recent decades which have seen growing numbers of women completing higher degrees and entering academic employment, women remain under-represented in senior ranks (above senior lecturer) in Australian universities (ABS 2006). Given that research performance remains a central factor in promotion to senior levels, it is critical to extend our understanding of the gendered dimensions of the PhD context and early career academic employment if we are to explain the differential career outcomes we currently see for women and men in the sector.

Existing research has identified a number of factors that contribute to women's disadvantaged status in the sector, including: their greater involvement in raising a family, leading to career interruptions, part-time employment and possibly lower productivity, all of which undermine career progression relative to men; men's stronger research performance in academic publishing and research grants; women's larger involvement in teaching and administration (Chrisler 1998); women's under-representation in disciplines that attract more funding and involve more collaboration and networks; and university cultures that do not easily permit academic staff to combine work and family responsibilities (Forster 2000). Terms such as 'leaking pipeline' (White 2004), 'academic proletariat' (Park 1996) and 'hurdles' (Toren & Moore 1998) have been used to highlight some of the processes leading to women's under-representation at senior levels in universities.

However, while a number of publications speculate on the causes of gender inequity in Australian universities very little empirical analysis of this question has been undertaken due to the lack of representative and relevant data (Probert 2005). By using a new nationally representative quantitative data set on the labour market outcomes of graduates of Australian doctoral programs, this project extends the evidence base about the causes of women's lower representation in senior positions in Australian universities.

The project explores three key lines of inquiry:

Existing research already points to some gender specific patterns in early career academic employment and performance. In the US, for example, women are more likely than men to form part of the 'academic proletariat' and to be 'rotated through entry level positions without serious consideration for tenure' (Park 1996: 46). Similarly, in the UK (Knights and Richards 2003) women are more likely than men to hold casual positions. For many women, their PhD and early career development years frequently overlap with their childbearing and child-rearing years. Because women rather than men tend to interrupt their academic careers to look after children, they accumulate fewer years in university employment which has implications for long-term productivity measured in the main by quantity of publications (Symonds 2006) and number and total value of grants (Probert 2005). But apart from family responsibilities, the PhD experience for women also differs in other respects (Leonard 2001, MPA 2003). Asmar (1999), when surveying 1993 PhD graduates from 8 Australian universities, noted that women were less integrated at their institutions, published less as co-authors and were less satisfied with their research environment when in post-PhD employment. This indicates possible carry over effects that are of relevance to the current investigation.

By following the entry of the 1999-2001 female PhD graduate cohort into university (and other) employment and by comparing their experiences with the male cohort from the same period, this project will establish gender differences in this critical phase of PhD graduates' careers. It will quantify differences in employment outcomes and be able to clarify questions such as whether, and to what extent, at this stage of their careers women are more likely to be 'gypsy scholars' than men, whether women are more involved in teaching and administration than men and what the current gender salary gap is at this stage of graduates' university employment. Moreover, by integrating the year of birth of graduates' children into their educational and employment and non-employment biographies and by analysing the resulting pattern, our investigation will also illuminate the role children play for women and for men before, during and after the completion of their PhDs. This will allow new insights into the timing and the extent of effects children have on early university careers. The study will add considerably to current knowledge of gender differences in employment and prospects for career progression in Australian universities and has the potential to influence debate in other national domains.

References

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