Gender, Networks, and Disciplinary Culture: Rethinking Inclusion in Academic Departments

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 9: Women in Academia

Abstract

Despite decades of equity initiatives, women—particularly women of color—remain underrepresented and undervalued in academia, especially in STEM. Traditional interventions often rely on individualized strategies such as mentoring, which aim to address perceived deficits rather than the structural and cultural conditions that reproduce inequality. This study reframes academic departments as complex adaptive systems in which norms, status hierarchies, and collaboration patterns shape faculty inclusion and advancement. Using social network analysis across three departments in a large urban research university, we examine research, teaching, service, and interpersonal networks to assess how gender, tenure status, and disciplinary culture influence network position. Visualizations and centrality measures show that women are not structurally excluded from departmental networks; they are at least as embedded as men, and often more so in teaching and service domains. Regression analyses confirm that tenure status and departmental norms, rather than gender, predict network centrality. These findings challenge deficit-based assumptions about women’s advancement and suggest that increased embeddedness may reflect undervalued forms of labor rather than institutional power. We argue that advancing equity requires moving beyond individualized solutions and realigning how universities structure, resource, and evaluate departments to send consistent signals about which contributions are valued and rewarded.

Authors

• Jennifer A. Johnson, Virginia Tech

• Zhuofan Li, Virginia Tech

• Deirdre Condit, Virginia Commonwealth University