Gender and the Faculty Care Gap: “The Obvious Go-To Person” for Canadian University Students’ Personal Problems

Abstract

A mixed methods analysis of Canadian natural sciences and engineering faculty’s workplace experiences revealed a gendered care gap with women reporting greater responsibility for students’ personal and mental health problems, including suicidal thoughts and behaviour, and sexual assault. Statistical results demonstrated that women were approached by a significantly greater number of students to discuss serious non-academic issues and experienced more stress as a result. A comparative qualitative analysis found faculty’s responses to students’ problems were informed by gendered cultural care expectations thatrequire women to be more supportive than men. However, female and male faculty’s care burden may also be exacerbated by institutional factors, including senior administrative positions, undergraduate class loads, and teaching courses with mental health-related content. As such, the care gap is relevant to understanding the extent to which gender inequality is embedded within the structure of universities.

Achieving academic promotion: The role of work environment, role conflict, and life balance

“…Time to research is an opportunity that allows research growth in that it affords research engagement, planning, publishing, and grant writing, all of which are unlikely to be achieved without adequate time. Despite increasing work experience and well-intentioned collegial advice, research suggests that women carry more service and teaching-related duties (Dengate et al, 2019;Guarino & Borden, 2017). Our study corroborates the finding that female faculty commit more time to teaching than male faculty, which may, if excessive, undermine research capacity (i.e., planning, publishing, and grant preparation).…”

“…In comparison to male faculty, women, regardless of academic rank, carry out more service, especially internal service (Guarino & Borden, 2017). Women also report more student demands and "special favor" requests (El-Alayli et al, 2018, p. 136) and provide more (stress-inducing) non-academic care to students (Dengate et al, 2019). Women also spend more time on teaching duties (Todd et al, 2008); ironically, mounting evidence indicates that student evaluations are biased against female instructors (Mitchell & Martin, 2018).…”

“…In making meaning of their career progress to date, some female participants specifically questioned whether female-pattern work experiences (e.g., high demands for service, students who challenge their authority) and life experiences (e.g., pregnancy, child and elder care) hinder their advancement, as these demands make time for research less accessible (Dengate et al, 2019;El-Alayli et al, 2018;Guarino & Borden, 2017). Additionally, some men, but no women, indicated that funding and/or leaves assisted them in achieving full professorship, presumably by providing time for research.…”

“…All too often, gender equality policies are poorly practised, ignored, overlooked, treated only as guidelines, and even overturned by university committees (Roos et al, 2020;van den Brink et al, 2010). Despite this, many academics, perhaps especially women, favour re-imagining the promotion process to more highly value and reward teaching and service-related contributions, thus making the promotion system more equitable (Dengate et al, 2019).…”

Frequency, topic, and preferences: Tracking student engagement with several modalities of student–instructor contact in a first‐year course

“…Another report suggests that students prefer instructors with high professional knowledge of the field in which the course is based [ 30 ] and perceived approachability of the instructor may play a role in student use of office hours [ 15 ]. Women are often viewed as more approachable [ 31 ] and previous research indicates that many students with personal problems or requests for favors prefer to contact female instructors [ 32 ]. However, it is unclear how the gender/sex presentation of the instructor relates to student engagement with office hours and other formats of student–instructor interaction.…”