Managing Femininity to Manage Success: How Women Thrive in Academic Medicine and Basic Science

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 20. Masculinized Spaces

Abstract

Women in the medical and basic science fields are still entering a male dominated space when they enter into the academy. Two main questions guide this research: 1) what are the experiences of female academic medical and basic sciences professors in a male dominated environment? And 2) what strategies did they enact in order to manage their success in the male dominated environment? This is a qualitative project studying twenty-six senior women faculty at a large Midwestern medical center. The qualitative method allows for a deeper look into narratives of women to better understand what happened in their experiences. Most but not all of the women in this study experienced isolation and exclusion, sexual harassment, and/or pressures to perform the “second shift.” These women worked to negotiate their professional identities as women by managing their femininity so as to be considered adherent to the unspoken code of the non-gendered worker. Strategies for this identity work were either appearing easy-going (i.e. ignoring gender constraints in the work place) or carefully constructing their femininity in order to downplay their difference based on gender in the professional realm. Women also explained their success as based on being exceptional and/or hardworking in a meritocracy that is not based on gender.

Author

• Emily V.M. Jones, University of Kansas