Coping with Gender Inequities

Book excerpt: This book provides a discussion of women faculty members’ experiences on college and university campuses and examines their thoughts, perceptions, responsibilities, and status in the academy. Most specifically, this book explores the differences between male and women faculty in the academy; women faculty insight into teaching, research and service; how women faculty perceive their work environment; and the stress of faculty evaluation regarding tenure and promotion, and sharing of success stories and lessons learned. The author’s intentions is to share authentic narratives of women faculty members, in their own voices. The voices that are selected for this book are from different disciplines; some participants are junior faculty while others are senior faculty. All of the participants share their eyewitness accounts of how they successfully navigated the road to the professorate. This discussion is critical at this junction in the history of higher education pertaining to gender equity. Women counterpart to male faculty members provide a very visible and meaningful role on campuses. with all of the positive roles that women faculty play on campuses, women faculty report that they are still experiencing, to some degree, less satisfaction and greater challenges than their male counterparts in many aspects of their profession.