The Gender Gap in the Academic Labor Crisis

Felicia Carr The Gender Gap in the Academic Labor Crisis Current discussions of the academic labor crisis do not acknowledge that for women, especially for women in composition, labor issues and unfair working conditions have been a concern since the 1970s. I argue that the only reason the problem is now known as the academic labor crisis is because unfair labor practices have begun to affect men as well. Women appear to have made significant employment gains and at many institutions gender parity issues are no longer given serious consideration. It comes as a surprise to many academics that women are still working for less in the academy and that women are suffering disproportionately in the labor crisis. But even worse than laboring for less are the positions women are more likely to work in and the levels they are most likely to reach during their academic careers. Not only are women paid less than men in almost every faculty position, they are much more likely to stay on the lower rungs of the academic ladder. Women are also more likely to be working at less prestigious schools and at community colleges that pay less. According to a recent report by the American Association of University Professors, "substantial disparities in salary, rank and tenure between male and female faculty persist despite the increasing proportion of women in the academic profession" (Benjamin ). These observations lead to a key question in reassessing the role of the gender gap in the academic labor crisis: What is the future for women in the academy? Will they eventually enter the ranks of full professors as equal partners in academic endeavors, or will they take a different track into a world of adjunct and restricted work? In order to judge the position and future of women in the academy, one must first examine the academic labor crisis—not as a genderneutral event as it is usually portrayed—but rather as a phenomenon that disproportionately affects women. To demonstrate this, I will outline statistics on tenure, the development of feminized fields, the growing wage gap, constricted job prospects for women, the relationship between part-time work and women, and the consequences of part-time work. All provide a bleak answer to the question about women's future in a changing academy. While women are entering the academy as both students and scholars in increasing numbers every year, they are not making inroads into its upper levels. According to the latest statistics available in a study by the U.S. Education Department, women account for 36% of all full-time faculty, while men hold 64% of all full-time jobs (Leatherman, "Part-Timers" A18). [Refer to Table 1: Faculty 272 the minnesota review Employment by Sex as of 1997.] In addition to dominating full-time appointments, men are also much more likely to hold tenured positions . Currently, 72% of men working full time have tenured positions ; forwomen working full time that figure is only 46%—a figure basically unchanged since 1975 (Douglas). The Stanford history department provides a clear example of the inequities in tenure. In 1999 they had twenty-nine tenured men and five tenured women. Under the tenure of Dean John Shoven, six men who came up for tenure in the history department were approved. Ofthe fourwomen who came up, one was approved, one approved with a demotion in rank, and two rejected. One rejected woman, Karen Sawislak, a graduate of Yale, had numerous articles, a well-received book, and excellent teaching evaluations (Sawislak B4). Based on her discovery that only 11.4% of the full professors at Stanford were women, Sawislak filed a sex discrimination lawsuit on behalf of herself and 30 other women. Stanford is not an unusual case in its of treatment women. More recent figures from Stanford indicate that women now represent 19 percent of the faculty, an improvement, but still less than the national average in 1998 of 28.3 percent reported by the American Association of University Professors for women at doctoral granting universities (Feder). These figures demonstrate that at research institutions parity for women in tenure-track appointments is a long way off—at current rates women will reach...