Women in academia are more likely than their male colleagues to feel devalued at work, and in turn, this pattern contributes to women’s higher rate of attrition in higher education, according to a new study from scholars at the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Vermont, and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
The authors analyzed 6,615 survey responses from current and former tenure-line faculty across nearly 300 doctoral degree–granting institutions and 29 disciplines. Out of all the topics included in the survey, the largest gender gap in responses centered on devaluation — the experience of feeling excluded, disrespected, mistreated, or held to different standards than other colleagues.
Some 38 percent of women and 16 percent of men reported experiencing devaluation. Among respondents who had experienced devaluation, women were more likely than men to say devaluation was tied to their gender, race, age, or parenthood status (52 percent versus 13 percent). Overall, women of color were the most likely group to report devaluation (48 percent). The gender gap in devaluation also grows with age, with women at the end of their careers more likely to say they have felt devalued in their role.
Notably, devaluation was consistently higher for women than men in all disciplines, but some areas of study did have larger gaps than others. Women’s reports of devaluation were highest in engineering and economics and lowest in psychology and computer science.
Across both current and former faculty members, women were more likely than men to leave or consider leaving their position, and they were more likely to cite devaluation as a reason for exiting academia.
“Our results demonstrate that certain groups of faculty experiences in academia, such as many women’s experiences, particularly women of color, are distinct from other groups in ways that may not be visible to them,” the authors write. “For academia to achieve the organizational change that women report is necessary to reduce the greater devaluation they report experiencing, faculty of all backgrounds need access to the particular gendered aspects of faculty life that they may not experience to the same extent in their own careers.”