Cross-National Analysis of Women Faculty in Higher Education Institutions

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

In the last decade, women have increasingly outnumbered men in gross tertiary enrollments throughout countries around the world. Yet, women’s representation of faculty positions, particularly in higher echelons of the academic hierarchy and across certain fields, has failed to mirror these gendered trends. The persistent under-representation of women faculty has been well documented in specific countries or regions throughout the world, but there remains far less documentation on the phenomenon from a macro comparative, cross-national perspective. This dearth of cross-national analysis is largely driven by the challenges of obtaining comparable data of faculty systems in higher education institutions (HEIs) cross-nationally. Not only is there extensive variation in how faculty positions are categorized across countries, these characteristics vary vastly across different types of universities and fields of study within universities around the world. Consequently, few studies to date have compiled comparative data on academic faculty on a cross-national scale. To begin filling this gap, my dissertation aims to collect and analyze a uniquely constructed dataset drawn from a probability sample of HEIs cross-nationally. Data will be collected on current faculty (2013-14 academic year) from 23 advanced and developing countries, across six diverse fields of study. Fine tuning the cross-national data collection strategy remains the primary challenge in the current phase of my dissertation. The goal of this data collection is to capture a current global snapshot of female faculty in HEIs cross-nationally, covering as large of a sample as possible given the time constraints of a dissertation. While the short-term goal is to compile a dataset for my dissertation, the larger-term goal is to begin developing a unique dataset of women faculty cross-nationally which can be further expanded after the dissertation process.

Author

• Mana Nakagawa, Stanford University