scholarly journals Women Professors across STEMM and Non-STEMM Disciplines: Navigating Gendered Spaces and Playing the Academic Game

2020 ◽  
pp. 095001702091618
Author(s):  
Colette Fagan ◽  
Nina Teasdale

Women remain poorly represented in the highest positions in academia, despite their increasing participation. This article seeks to understand how women who have reached senior occupational positions in Higher Education Institutions have navigated their organisational and disciplinary settings. In the process we explore how experiences compare across male and female-dominated spaces, integrating field theory with Acker’s work on ‘gendered organisations’ to develop the idea of academic disciplines as ‘gendered spaces’. Empirically we draw upon a qualitative study of women professors working across science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) and non-STEMM disciplines in a large research-intensive university in the UK. Utilising Bourdieu’s concept of ‘the game’, we show how they navigate the academic game within the context of differing ‘gendered spaces’; complicit in the game yet recognising it as unfair, and thus (inadvertently) reproducing gendered structures and practices.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Cheng ◽  
Olalekan Adekola ◽  
JoClarisse Albia ◽  
Sanfa Cai

PurposeEmployability is a key concept in higher education. Graduate employment rate is often used to assess the quality of university provision, despite that employability and employment are two different concepts. This paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility for graduate employability from the perspectives of four key stakeholders: higher education institutions, students, government and employers.Design/methodology/approachThere are two stages to this literature review which was undertaken across bibliographic databases. The first stage builds a conceptual understanding of employability, relating to definition and how employability can be achieved and enhanced from the perspective of stakeholders. A structured search employing Boolean searches was conducted using a range of terms associated with key stakeholders. The second round of review drew on documentary analysis of official statements, declarations, documents, reports and position papers issued by key stakeholders in the UK, available online.FindingsIt reveals that responsibility for employability has been transferred by the UK government to higher education institutions, despite clear evidence that it needs to be shared by all the key stakeholders to be effective. In addition, there is a gap between employers' expectation for employability and the government's employability agenda.Originality/valueThis article highlights that solely using employment rate statistics as a key indicator for employability will encourage the practice of putting employers' needs above knowledge creation and the development of academic disciplines, with the consequence that higher education will become increasingly vocation driven.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 969-988
Author(s):  
Emily I. Nwakpuda

Philanthropic support of higher education is a growing area of interest among academic fundraisers and philanthropy scholars. The academic fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), in particular, are in need of a better understanding of their major donors. This article analyzes a unique database of announced gifts to higher education institutions from 1995 to 2017 to investigate relationships between major donors’ characteristics and the magnitude of their gifts to STEM and all other academic disciplines. Major donors to STEM are disproportionately entrepreneurs who, on average, give larger gifts to STEM than other major donors. Quantile regressions reveal a positive and statistically significant relationship between major donors’ entrepreneurial status and gift amounts at the 99th quantile (worth US$100 million or more). As major funding sources for academic STEM are increasingly threatened, these findings are pertinent to academic institutions seeking to leverage major donors as an alternative source of funding.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Bradley

There is increasing concern about high rates of dropout from universities, especially among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In the UK this is related to recent changes in higher education policy, especially the imposition of a higher fees regime and the uncapping of student numbers. While recent research has explored the demography of students who drop out, less is known about the reasons for dropping out, or indeed the reasons why some students who are unhappy with their student experience nonetheless stay on. This article uses data from a longitudinal qualitative study, the Paired Peers project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, to explore this issue in detail. A typology of reasons for dropping out is offered: homesickness; loneliness and a sense of not fitting in; problems with academic study, including having chosen the wrong course; and money issues. The first two appear the most powerful; the notion of ‘fish out of water’ derived from the work of Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) is used to explain it. The article also explores the motivation of those who experience these problems and report high levels of stress, but nevertheless decide to stay on.


Sociology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Donnelly

This article seeks to re-invigorate debate about how we theorise inequalities in higher education. The work of sociologist Basil Bernstein has not yet been brought to bear in this area, despite the affordances it brings in teasing out the implicit rules that perpetuate inequalities in higher education. Drawing on empirical findings from a qualitative study into the impact of university-led ‘outreach’ work in the UK context, the article applies and tests the work of Bernstein. It is argued that his framework offers the analytical precision to expose the implicit rules and principles that underlie young people’s encounters with higher education.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-217
Author(s):  
Karijn G. Nijhoff

This paper explores the relationship between education and labour market positioning in The Hague, a Dutch city with a unique labour market. One of the main minority groups, Turkish-Dutch, is the focus in this qualitative study on higher educated minorities and their labour market success. Interviews reveal that the obstacles the respondents face are linked to discrimination and network limitation. The respondents perceive “personal characteristics” as the most important tool to overcoming the obstacles. Education does not only increase their professional skills, but also widens their networks. The Dutch education system facilitates the chances of minorities in higher education through the “layering” of degrees. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-132
Author(s):  
Michael Russell
Keyword(s):  

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