Literature Review of The University Teaching Trap of Academic Women

Abstract

Commonplace division of labor practices in Canadian academia favor a forty percent focus on each of teaching and research, with a twenty percent focus on service. The social climate, workplace culture, and social structure of academe often burdens women faculty with excessive teaching responsibilities. This may inhibit both their career success, and personal work-life balance. The absence of workplace policies, career and institutional support often encumbers women faculty and produces inequities in the workplace triggering what is defined as the "teaching trap". Smaller universities, financial cutbacks in the university system, and the general neglect of the needs of women academics serves to maintain both unfair, and unequal treatment of women scholars in the academy. The implications of these issues are discussed.Keywords: Women faculty, university teaching trap, workplace culture, structural barriers, Canada