Much warranted attention over the past few decades has been devoted to the problem of retaining women faculty in academe, particularly in areas where they are poorly represented such as in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This study uses descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling techniques to identify…

Researchers have identified some of the factors that inhibit the success of mothers in academia, including overt and covert discrimination, inequitable teaching and service assignments, and the lack of policies that support combining motherhood and academic work. Pretenure mothers are particularly vulnerable, as they attempt to balance increasing…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of women in the Sistah Network, an affinity group at a predominantly White institution, with mentoring goals to enhance the educational and social experiences of Black women in master's and doctoral programs and their mentors. The authors interviewed 18 women (faculty, staff, and…

This study used critical ethnography to document microaggressions experienced by women Staff and Faculty of Color at a predominantly White institution of higher education. This article focuses on invisibility, a specific type of microaggression, which emerged as a prominent finding. Participant narratives explicated three manifestations of…

When is a good time to have children? Where is a good place to raise a family? Should I work full time? These and other questions are common for faculty looking to combine work and family. In this article, we use feminist theory to analyze data from a longitudinal study of women faculty to explore the critical choices women as mothers make about…

Five lesbian faculty who were out in the workplace had positive personal and professional experiences in relation to how they negotiated family, campus culture, community, and personal fulfillment. This phenomenological qualitative study offers an alternative to deficit model research by exploring the participants' lived-experiences using a…

Fewer women attain tenure and reach the rank of professor than their male counterparts. The extant literature is rich in descriptions of barriers that women encounter while on the tenure track. This study was designed to focus on the environment of one large, public, high research university to determine the types of environmental barriers that…

Over the past 40 or so years, women's share of faculty positions in Canada and elsewhere has increased considerably, if not yet reaching parity. Yet working in the gendered university remains problematic. This article uses data from a qualitative research project in which 38 junior academics were interviewed about their responses to being on the…

This article is based on the authors' experiences as women academics who engage in informal peer mentoring to persist in the cultural milieus of their respective institutions. The authors draw on poststructural perspectives and the metaphor of the rhizome "running bamboo" to illustrate the connections they forged in a mentoring network…

The present study used critical ethnography and intersectionality theory to better understand the experiences of Women of Color (WOC) in the academy. WOC experience numerous and significant challenges in the academy that have the potential to stifle their career growth. Claiming increased acceptance and diversity in the academy without a…

Academic contrapower harassment (ACPH) occurs when someone with seemingly less power in an educational setting (e.g., a student) harasses someone more powerful (e.g., a professor). A representative sample of 289 professors from U.S. institutions of higher education described their worst incident with ACPH. Open-ended responses were coded using a…

In the following study, the authors sought to understand how self-efficacy contributed to the career success of five tenured Black women faculty employed at two predominantly White institutions. Investigating the level of self-efficacy was significant in understanding the behavior, attitudes, and strategies of study participants. The findings…

Though the number of women employed in the workforce has increased, there continues to be an inequity in employment of women in the highest ranks of community colleges. Guided by gendered organizational theory, the study looked at both overt and covert knowledge of genderedness at community colleges. As one might infer, institutional genderedness…

While many scholars have written about the experience of academic motherhood in higher education, with their research revealing a number of challenges faced by academic mothers, none have presented an in-depth view of the transition of returning to work after maternity leave. For this reason, the authors used a narrative inquiry approach to…

Men and women are perceived differently, and those perceptions can be damaging in a professional context. Unconscious bias expressed within work environments can introduce "micro-inequities" that impede career progression for women compared to men. This study examines title prefixes for faculty in the human resources database of a large…