Women and Minority Faculty Job Satisfaction

Abstract

Introduction Demographic predictions of an increasingly female-and minority-based work force have reinvigorated interest within the academy in recruiting qualified women and minority members into its professional ranks. According to the Hudson Institute [27], as many as 80 percent of the new entrants into the labor force over the next decade will be women and minorities. Such statistics have particular relevance for higher education, where the pool of faculty applicants appears to be shrinking while the demand for new faculty grows [7]. Not since the 1960s have colleges and universities focused so much attention on establishing a faculty that reflects the of our national population. By and large, however, enthusiasm for increasing the number of women and minorities on our campuses has outstripped our understanding of the experience of these traditionally underrepresented groups in academe. Demographic data indicate that the majority of women and minority faculty are concentrated at less prestigious, two- and four-year colleges and at the lower end of the faculty ranks (or in nontenure-track positions) [1, 15, 18, 32, 36, 41]. Unfortunately, information that might help us to understand the demographic patterns we have found is incomplete. We need to know more about the institutional factors, as well as the personal and professional proclivities, needs, and interests, that determine women's and minorities' participation in higher education - and ultimately their success in and satisfaction with the academic world. In particular, assumptions about how women and minority faculty function, and wish to function, may prove as damaging to their professional growth and development within the academic community as present discrimination and insensitivity. The study presented in this article examines women and minority faculty's professional role interests and values and assesses how well they fit with the norms of the institutions they serve. Faculty Role Interests, Satisfactions, and Allocation of Work Time To the extent that the existing literature begins to sketch a coherent portrayal of women and minority faculty, the picture that emerges is not necessarily the most promising one. Data suggest lower research productivity, a heavy teaching orientation, and substantial commitment to institutional service [9, 11, 20, 30, 34, 45, 46]. Female and especially minority academics' greater involvement in service has been explained as a product of a mutual desire on the part of the university and these traditionally underrepresented individuals to further the goals of diversity on campus [5, 18]. Moreover, because of their commitment to the values of community and to the intellectual and social development of their students, female and minority faculty are reported to invest more time and energy in their teaching and to derive more satisfaction from it [5, 20, 30]. Finally, it has been argued that women's and minority's research productivity suffers from their commitment to teaching and service and from the more acute work and family/community conflicts experienced by these groups [30, 40, 52]. Given what Bowen and Schuster [7, p. 147] describe as the current publishing obsession, the emerging professional profile of women and minority faculty, if true, suggests that they are less attuned to, and less likely to receive, institutional rewards and recognition based on scholarly productivity. Problems with Current Portrayals of Women and Minority Faculty One problem in interpreting much of the available data is the confound between gender/racial status and institutional affiliation/academic rank mentioned earlier. As Finkelstein [20, p. 199] noted in his comprehensive review of the faculty development literature, overall male-female work activity disparity may be a function of the higher concentration of females in the less research-oriented universities and comprehensive colleges. Women and minorities are more likely to be employed at institutions and in positions that emphasize teaching and service - whether through predilection, discrimination, or both. …