Career Strategies For Women In Academia

In this new volume, editors Lynn H. Collins, Joan C. Chrisler, and Kathryn Quina provide a wealth of information about institutional pitfalls in higher education professions, advice on how to handle difficult situations, and encouragement to those who persevere in their pursuit of an academic career.

Continuing to challenge American colleges and universities is the underrepresentation of women faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, particularly Latinas and other underrepresented women of color. Advancing Women in Academic STEM Fields through Dual Career Policies and Practices, comprised of scholarly essays, case studies, and interviews, argues that to address equity issues related to women faculty, academic institutions should consider work-life perspectives, including dual careers, when designing faculty recruitment, retention, and advancement strategies. By connecting the topic of dual career hiring to gender and ethnicity, the volume extends the current research on work-life integration by sharing best practices and approaches that have worked among institutions of higher education while incorporating issues related to intersectionality.

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 university positions while men occupy 80 percent of the more prestigious jobs? In Academic Careers and the Gender Gap, Maureen Baker draws on candid interviews with male and female scholars, previous research, and her own thirty-eight-year academic career to explain the reasons behind this inequality. She argues that current university priorities and collegial relations often magnify the impact of gendered families and identities and perpetuate the gender gap. Tracing the evolution of university priorities and practices, Baker reveals significant and persistent differences in job security, working hours, rank, salary, job satisfaction, and career length between male and female scholars.

Individuals in mid-career positions in higher education typically feel that they are faced with fewer engagement endeavors and new initiatives with which they can participate in as institutions tend to find them not as new and their ideas no longer as cutting edge, even though they very well may be. For women in academia, this phenomenon is even more complex. Typically, by mid-career, women have survived the sprint to tenure while juggling family/caregiver responsibilities. Post-tenure they may find themselves in a space where they have more control over their work and can engage at a more comfortable pace. However, without institutional support and personal determination to remain engaged, women may find themselves facing stagnation in their career development. Thus, it is essential that mentorship opportunities are established and career trajectories put in place for mid-career women. Women in Higher Education and the Journey to Mid-Career: Challenges and Opportunities considers specific challenges, issues, strategies, and solutions that are associated with female academics during mid-career phases. The book includes a variety of emerging evidence-based professional practice and narrative personal accounts as written by administrators, faculty, staff, and students. The book considers strategies for remaining vibrant and productive and suggestions from successful mid-career women academics and reflections from women who have passed the mid-career phase. Covering topics such as tenure, self-care, and academic leadership, this reference work is ideal for administrators, faculty, policymakers, academicians, scholars, researchers, practitioners, instructors, and students.

This text provides advice and information for academics across disciplines, including: how to establish networks; how to assess your prospects for promotion; how to climb out of a teaching rut; how to develop a theme for your journal publication; and how to convert your thesis into a book.

This book explores the experiences and perspectives of female professors. Analysing the gendering of this process using various theoretical perspectives, this edited collection examines the active ‘making’ of careers, and how this has been possible. The editors and contributors cut across institutions, cultures and continents to seek to understand how women navigate the gendered process of becoming a professor, with each chapter applying a different theoretical or methodological approach to her experience. The chapters are not mere descriptions of career trajectories, but analytic narratives anchored within distinct theoretical and philosophical frameworks. In turn, they shed important light on how – and if – institutional structures and systems are adapting to move towards gender equality. Offering practical advice as well as thoughtful reflection, this book will be of especial interest to early career female academics.

Mentoring and career guidance are the missing ingredients in women’s career planning at the higher education level. Career Moves recognizes and gives voice to some of the common career concerns of women in higher education and responds to these through well informed, researched and experiential chapters focussing on interests specific to women in academia. Career Moves draws on the substantial knowledge, experience and information of successful women currently working in higher education. Each chapter presents strategic information for academics working in higher education who may be seeking insider’s advice about negotiating their careers. The authors, as ‘mentors’, reflect, discuss and offer critical learning to the readers. The aim is to help guide and shape women’s career moves in higher education. In this international edition authors have given personal accounts of what works and how women could prepare for the next stages of their academic careers. Authors have given sociological accounts of obstacles and how these can impede women if they are not aware of strategies to overcome barriers. Insights about successful mentoring programs are highlighted to provide possible models for organizations. Career Moves is an international collection of book chapters that explore a range of specific issues that all women in higher education face or will face as they move up the career ladder.

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.