Analysing the multiple dimensions of women’s academic careers

academic labour markets are often overlooked in much of the gender and science research literature has analytical consequences, which are compounded by the relative homogeneity of women’s access to the most prestigious jobs in the academic hierarchy across national boundaries. Because women represent about 20% of Grade A professorships in most Western societies (see below), there is a marked tendency to presume that this under-representation must be the result of identical social processes across national contexts.

However, much existing research on similarly universal social phenomena (such as the “second demographic transition”) suggests that apparently similar social phenomena don’t necessarily result from identical mechanisms in all national contexts (cf. Douglass, 2005). Neither do these apparently common phenomena command identical levels of political and policy attention in all countries. Thus, women’s under-representation in full professorships may be a transnational reality, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is caused by the same factors, that it is within academic institutions. Increasing knowledge about gendered practices will probably shape the opportunities women have to challenge different forms of marginalisation or discrimination in the academy.

Although we focus here on the employment and care regimes that shape the national (and local) gender configurations in the seven GARCIA partner countries, we are not suggesting that the mechanisms behind women’s academic career patterns are determined by societal welfare regimes. On the contrary, research to date shows that the specific characteristics of national academic labour markets interact in quite unpredictable ways with the societal gender regimes to produce a particular matrix of opportunity and constraint for highly qualified women (and, indeed, men). This can be illustrated by the comparison of the contrasting patterns of feminisation of Danish and Finnish academic careers since the beginning of the 2000s. Figure 2 shows that, despite a similar (Nordic) welfare regime and almost identical patterns of women’s labour market participation in Denmark and Finland, academic careers are not gendered in the same way these two countries.

But, although women’s position in the academic hierarchy can’t be explained by the national level gender regime, it is nevertheless important to understand the precise kind of norms and expectations that women (and men) are facing as they envisage 1) continuing their studies to PhD level; 2) remaining in the scientific field in order to embark on an academic career path; 3) pursuing their academic career to the highest possible professional status.

Figure 2. The gender composition of academic careers in Denmark and Finland, 1999-2007

1.4.1. Some working hypotheses for the comparative analysis of women’s academic careers

Given the likely influence of the societal / local context on institutional arrangements and on individual aspirations, beliefs and practices, we hypothesise that:

1) The structure of opportunity and constraint available to different categories of women (single / married / divorced, with or without children, with or without other care responsibilities) differs significantly among the countries involved in the GARCIA project, but also within each national context, by region, education, social origin, etc.;

2) These societal / regional level gender norms are deeply embedded in the career structures of academic institutions, which tend to reflect the normative employment patterns (and family disinvestment) usually associated with white, middle-class men in each national setting;

3) However, since societal gender regimes can be more or less strongly differentiated and hierarchical in different national (and local) contexts, one can presume that women’s ability to conform to the inherently “masculine”

expectations associated with academic excellence will vary considerably from one country to another, as will the symbolic rewards and penalties associated with different forms of gender transgression;

4) The structural changes currently effecting academic labour markets in most national settings (reduced structural funding, standardisation of performance indicators, increased competition for funding, increasing student numbers,

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promotion of international mobility, etc.) are likely to destabilise the dominant professional ethos associated with these previously “male bastions” and to lead to increasing levels of internal segregation, by gender, but also by generation, type of contract and nationality, etc..

1.4.2. The gender equality index for GARCIA countries

Before summarising the most significant results from the National reports, it is perhaps useful to refer to existing measures of gender regimes associated with each GARCIA country. As indicated in Figure 3 (see also Appendix 1 for a more detailed presentation), the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) has recently developed a multidimensional indicator of gender equality that enables comparison between countries and an evaluation of evolutions over time, according to different dimensions of gender equality.²

Figure 3. The composition of the European Gender Equality Index, 2015

Source: EIGE 2015: 12.

According to these indicators, GARCIA countries cover quite a wide spectrum of gender equality cases. Clearly, some dimensions of the gender equality measures are more significant than others (see Table 1). Thus, all GARCIA countries score similarly (and well) on health indicators, but they are characterised by large discrepancies in relation to knowledge, time and power, with intermediate levels of dispersion in the domains of work and money.

2 The closer the Index is to 100, the higher the level of gender equality in a country. Unfortunately, this Index is only available for EU-Member states. In the absence of equivalent data for Iceland and Switzerland, we have used the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index (2014), which covers similar dimensions, although in less detail than the EIGE Index.

Table 1. Gender Equality Index Scores and Global Gender Gap Index Rankings, selected Source: EIGE 2015: 78, and World Economic Forum (2014).

However, as we have already stressed, this overall ranking of countries is not necessarily reflected in each of the policy domains analysed by the GARCIA project, nor does it directly reflect women’s position in the academic career hierarchy. Thus, for example, it is interesting to note that women’s access to grade A academic positions is equal to or higher than the EU27 average in four of the GARCIA partner countries (Table 2). Three of these countries register relatively high scores on the EIGE/World Economic Forum indexes (Iceland, Switzerland and Slovenia), whereas the fourth country (Italy) has – by far – the lowest overall gender equality index of all the cases studied here (see Table 1). A number of tentative interpretations can be advances here.

In the Italian case, it appears that relying on the national averages of these gender indicators is particularly misleading, since women’s labour market participation and family formation patterns are extremely different between different regions (Bozzon et al, 2015: 22). Whereas women in the southern regions of Italy tend to adapt their behaviour to the expectations of the

“male breadwinner / female carer” gender regime, notably by leaving the labour market when they become mothers, this is far less often the case in the Centre-North of the country, precisely where the GARCIA partner institution is located. It would appear that the very uneven economic development of the country throughout the 20^th Century has left a legacy of quite distinct regional “gender regimes”, despite a common set of welfare policies defined at the national level.

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Table 2. Number and proportion of female academic staff, by grade, 2010 Grade A Grade B Grade C Grade D Total

Source: European Commission / SHE Figures 2013: 90 and 107.

With this absence of statistical correlation in mind, we will now present a certain number of similarities and differences between the GARCIA countries as far as the gender, care and employment regimes are concerned. The aim here is to illustrate the considerable inter- and intra-country variations in the policies and practices that influence male and female employment and family-formation patterns, and that these societal level “gender configurations” are also in constant evolution, although not necessarily towards a more egalitarian sexual division of – paid and unpaid – labour.

2. ACADEMIC LABOUR MARKETS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE