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Women Professors across STEMM and Non-STEMM Disciplines: Navigating Gendered Spaces and Playing the Academic Game

Author

Listed:
  • Colette Fagan

    (The University of Manchester, UK)

  • Nina Teasdale

    (Glasgow Caledonian University, UK)

Abstract

Women remain poorly represented in the highest positions in academia, despite their increasing participation. This article seeks to understand how women who have reached senior occupational positions in Higher Education Institutions have navigated their organisational and disciplinary settings. In the process we explore how experiences compare across male and female-dominated spaces, integrating field theory with Acker’s work on ‘gendered organisations’ to develop the idea of academic disciplines as ‘gendered spaces’. Empirically we draw upon a qualitative study of women professors working across science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) and non-STEMM disciplines in a large research-intensive university in the UK. Utilising Bourdieu’s concept of ‘the game’, we show how they navigate the academic game within the context of differing ‘gendered spaces’; complicit in the game yet recognising it as unfair, and thus (inadvertently) reproducing gendered structures and practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Colette Fagan & Nina Teasdale, 2021. "Women Professors across STEMM and Non-STEMM Disciplines: Navigating Gendered Spaces and Playing the Academic Game," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(4), pages 774-792, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:35:y:2021:i:4:p:774-792
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017020916182
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Elizabeth Cotton & T Alexandra Beauregard & Janroj Yilmaz Keles, 2021. "Gender Equalities: What Lies Ahead," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(4), pages 615-620, August.
    2. Laurie Cohen & Joanne Duberley & Beatriz Adriana Bustos Torres, 2023. "Experiencing Gender Regimes: Accounts of Women Professors in Mexico, the UK and Sweden," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(2), pages 525-544, April.
    3. Christian Möller & Saffron Passam & Sarah Riley & Martine Robson, 2024. "All inside our heads? A critical discursive review of unconscious bias training in the sciences," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 797-820, May.
    4. Trudy Bates, 2022. "Rethinking how we work with Acker's theory of gendered organizations: An abductive approach for feminist empirical research," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 1041-1064, July.

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