Early career patterns of men and women in British universities

Abstract

The early career paths of 436 men and 162 women who took up lectureships in British universities in English, modern languages, or psychology in 1971-1973 were identified. Proportionately fewer women (61 percent) than men (80 percent) held a full-time post in a British university ten years after their initial appointment. Among those retaining a university appointment, relatively fewer women (8 percent) than men (18 percent) had advanced to the level of senior lecturer, reader, or professor. Factors that may have served to restrict the career development of women in British universities are discussed. There now is a higher proportion of women than in the past in the pool of graduates who are qualified for academic posts. However, the end to university growth makes it unlikely that the sex ratio of academics will shift substantially in the 1980s or the 1990s. Since promotion has become more competitive than it was in the past, the current sex ratio at senior levels of appointment may also remain relatively unchanged.The number of women in academic appointments in British universities has always been below the representation of women as students. For example, in 1979 women received 37 percent of all first degrees awarded by British universities, as well as 23 percent of all higher degrees. In the same year, however, women held only 14 percent of full-time teaching and research positions in British universities. Further, the men and the women in academic posts differed substantially in terms of their status. Women numbered only one in 40 professors, and one in sixteen senior lecturers or readers. The ratio was instead one in seven

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Slashing university education: Women’s academic crime fiction in Thatcher’s Britain

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