This Lecture Might Be Messy: The Role of Gender in Academic Life

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which gender informs our experiences in academia. Specifically, we look at the role of gender in three academic arenas: teaching, research, and service. With the first, we review how gender affects pedagogy, including student reception of the professor as an authority figure, levels of student incivility, student acceptance of “off-days,” and level of instructor preparedness on a day-to-day basis. With the second and third, we review how gender is addressed at the institutional level, including faculty integration and orientation, efforts at living out the mission statement, faculty leadership, promotion and tenure, and faculty resources and accommodations.This paper offers an extensive literature review, focusing on gender and academia, pedagogy, and faculty experience within the three areas of tenure decision: teaching, research, and service. Then, we suggest that the best way to study the gendered nature of the academy is by administering the original survey proposed in this paper, distributed to both men and women on each of our private liberal arts campuses, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Thus, we seek to critically assess the interaction between gender and academic life.