Women Faculty at an Evangelical University: The Paradox of Religiously Driven Gender Inequalities and High Job Satisfaction

Abstract

This article examines the job satisfaction of women faculty at an evangelical university. Using mixed methods, the authors compared the job satisfaction of women faculty at an evangelical university with their male counterparts, as well as with men and women faculty at a secular research university in the same region. Paradoxically, they found higher levels of gender inequality at the evangelical university when compared to the secular university, yet also found higher levels of overall job satisfaction among female faculty at the evangelical university when compared to their secular university counterparts. The authors conclude that the evangelical “toolkit”1 which highly values personal relationships with students combined with a form of “benevolent sexism”2 on this campus that allows for cordial and warm relationships between male and female faculty while simultaneously excluding women from important information and resources explain these paradoxical results.