The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education has released results from a survey of tenure-track faculty at research universities. What’s novel about these findings is that they document significant differences in job satisfaction between male and female professors. In particular, women in social science disciplines reported significantly greater job satisfaction than their male counterparts.
Inside Higher Ed breaks down the categories in which female academics felt less satisfied. Some of these relate to the tenure process, but many others are relevant to an institution like BUMC: teaching obligations, family-friendly policies, funding expectations. That women in the social sciences, departments that tend to have a more even gender distribution, felt less satisfied indicates that achieving parity in hiring is only a start.
In fact, I wonder if the higher concentration of women in those departments makes it easier to share information and become aware of inequities. This points to the need to keep faculty development programs in mind for mid-career professors as well as new hires.
Tags: job satisfaction