While gender inequalities in academia have been the subject of research for the past 40 years (Easterly and Ricard, 2011), there has been limited attention to whether work and career experiences of women academics might vary by generation. “Generation” can refer to both an individual’s chronological age and to the era in which one’s academic career took place. Generation and Gender in Academia attempts to address that lack of attention by comparing and contrasting the personal narratives of nine women. All are members of the Women in Higher Education Management (WHEM) network, and each is at a different stage in her career. The book is a welcome contribution to the literature on gender inequality and on academic careers, not only because of the fascinating stories it contains, but also for its thoughtful analysis of what has and has not changed for women academics across time.
The book is divided into four parts. Part I contains an overview of the book’s aims and its structure. Part II contains the personal narratives of the five “mature” women in the WHEM network. Each narrative reviews the woman’s personal journey through education and academia, and concludes with reflections on the “key lessons” that stand out from their experiences. Part III contains the personal narratives of the “next generation” – four early- and mid-career women who not only recount their own experiences but also compare their stories to those of the “mature” women in Part II. Part IV explores the themes that emerge through comparison of differences and similarities between the experiences of the women in the two groups, and concludes by identifying future challenges for women undertaking careers in higher education.
The greatest strength of Generation and Gender in Academia is perhaps the power of the personal narratives from each of the nine participants. These narratives are notable not only for their honesty, but also for their attention to personal and situational factors – such as national origin, social class, and family status – that affected the narrator’s experiences in academia. At a time when younger women may relate less strongly to feminism because they take gender equality for granted (Rúdólfsdóttir and Jolliffe, 2008), the “mature” narrators’ stories are particularly valuable as illustrations of the significant barriers and constraints that female academics have faced in striving for equitable treatment. In contrast, the stories of the “next generation” are somewhat more positive in showing that institutional attitudes and policies have evolved to be more supportive of women’s academic careers. However, these stories also demonstrate how many constraints women academics still face – such as difficulties in finding appropriate mentors or supervisors, or in getting issues specific to women academics to be acknowledged or addressed.
The book also makes an important contribution to the understanding of women’s experiences in academia by assessing changes in the general post-secondary education context that have affected academic career patterns. For example, the managerialization of higher education – the increasing use of organizational structures and practices developed in the private sector (Teelken, 2012) – is identified as a trend that has restricted research topics and influenced the direction of research outputs. While such changes have obviously affected both male and female academics, their inclusion in this book demonstrates how institutional- or system-wide factors are important to include in analyses of career patterns of a specific demographic group.
The final section of the book identifies four main themes collectively underlying the individual narratives: national context, organizational context, family/class/location, and agency. However, two other contextual factors for these findings should also be noted. First, the nine participants’ academic careers were, for the most part, at universities. Since post-secondary education or higher education also encompasses other types of educational institutions, such as community colleges and trade/vocational institutions, the themes identified in this analysis might or might not emerge from narratives of women academics working at post-secondary institutions other than universities. Second, although the analysis is a cross-cultural analysis encompassing eight countries, the majority of these countries have experienced some degree of higher education standardization of curriculum and practices (e.g. the “harmonization” in European higher education as a result of the Bologna accord; Keeling, 2006). Academic career patterns may be different in countries or regions where such standardization is not as common or as extensive.
The conclusion of the book asserts that “the challenge, then, is for women embarking on academic careers to understand that they may still not be able to aspire to a traditional academic career path” (p. 189). Some readers may find it disappointing that after such a thorough and thoughtful examination of academic women’s career experiences, the book’s ending to some degree reinforces the status quo. For example, it recommends that “early- and mid-career academic women need to understand that either short-term mobility or longer assignments are a requirement for career development” (p. 190). Framing geographic mobility as a career “requirement” overlooks the reality that many academics of either gender are unwilling or unable to undertake such geographic changes; the book’s conclusion would be stronger if it provided strategies to challenge such expectations rather than simply noting their existence.
On the whole, however, Generation and Gender in Academia is a worthwhile read both as a set of enlightening personal stories and as an examination of how academic women’s experiences have evolved across time. For classroom use, it would be most appropriate for inclusion in upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses examining changes in careers or workplaces. It is somewhat depressing to compare the experiences of the “mature” and the “next generation” participants and to realize that, perhaps, more has not changed than has changed. But that realization provides a sound basis for future explorations of women’s careers and personal experiences in academia.
