Women, Service, and the Misunderstood Professoriate

A few months ago, several higher education scholars collaborated on a book to address gender inequities in colleges and universities titled, "Unfinished Agendas: New and Continuing Gender Challenges in Higher Education". While I am preparing a more in-depth post to review the book, one of the chapters received some attention in the higher ed news and in the blogsphere that sparked some serious debate. This chapter, "Shattering Plexiglass" discusses the increase in service responsibilities that women encounter once the achieve tenure. Insidehighered noted a few of the findings:

Following tenure, 16 of the women studied and only 5 of the men experienced significant increases in their service obligations at their universities.

The study didn’t suggest that these service duties didn’t represent important work. Many of the assignments were valuable for the professors’departments or institutions. The newly tenured women — much more so than the men — became academic program coordinators or were appointed to lead institutional committees with real clout. In a number of cases, the assignments also reflected values that were especially important to the women involved, such as playing a role in work to remove gender bias from the institution.

While these assignments may well help these women’s careers over time if they go an administrative route, and while these assignments may accomplish good, they take women more than men away from scholarship. The women reported feeling unprepared for some of their assignments and unsure about how they fit into their careers — but many did not feel they could turn down this role.

What I find most interesting are the comments that stemmed from this article. While the Insidehighered comments included testimonials from other women who mostly confirmed the study findings, comments on other blogs were laden with a suspicion of the professoriate and the appearance of a disdain for female academics who take on too much service. Here is a sampling of the comments:

Also, I'm not sure we need to worry too much about tenured professors who can't get ahead. Seems to me they've already gotten ahead and are merely looking to extend their lead.

This seems like a stupid complaint. Women are disproportionately getting pulled into leadership roles, oh noes! Is there any kind of difference that can't be turned into a problem that needs solving?

Men face the same pressures. Talk to any professor, and you will find that they are part of search committees, admissions committees, journal reviews, etc. Please show us some data about women being disproportionately brought into academic service. I, for one, do not believe that this is a problem holding women back in academia. There are others reasons for that.

These comments concern me because there is a clear misunderstanding regarding what we do in academe and (dare I say) a misogynistic attitude toward female academics. I ask, what do we need to do as academics to inform the public of our roles/job requirements/job demands/etc.? How did we get to the place where the professoriate is viewed with suspicion by the general public (or at least those who read blogs)? Are these comments gender-laden and how do we address the bias?


Donald Hall in his book, "The Academic Community" which I blogged about last week, believes that we need to be multivocal -- develop the ability to speak to the public about our work and the importance of the professoriate. Are we just sitting in the ivory tower? What are the implications for all academics and women faculty in particular?