Devaluation, Not Work-Life Balance, Drives Academic Gender Gap

Women leave academia at higher rates than men, contributing to consistent gender imbalances at senior levels. Interventions often target work-life balance and motherhood. Katie Spoon and colleagues surveyed thousands of current and former tenure-line faculty in 29 academic fields across nearly all U.S. PhD-granting institutions. The authors asked respondents what needed to be different to reduce stress in their position or, for those who had left, what would have kept them in their position. Across respondents, 38% of women compared with 16% of men reported experiencing devaluation. Devaluation was also the topic most strongly associated with women both considering leaving and actually leaving. This pattern held across STEM and non-STEM fields, across nearly 300 institutions, and at every level of institutional prestige. It was strongest for women of color, and it was the only topic that grew more gendered with career age: a 19-point gender gap for early-career faculty widened to 31 points among late-career faculty. Despite reaching the top of their careers, women still reported having to justify their professional standing. For example, one senior Black woman in the social sciences wrote that she had to "justify each year why a course release is required [for me] to properly run the program," whereas a male colleague directing another program "was freely offered what I had to fight to keep," and a senior white woman in social work wrote, "I've had to fight for every raise I've received... [this] has made me realize over time that the university does not have my back... If I could see leaders in the higher ed space trying to solve these problems in earnest and large-scale ways, I may be tempted to stay." According to the authors, the results provide a basis for action by policymakers and institutions hoping to improve equity in academic retention.