WOMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION: GENDER DIFFERENCES IN CAREER CHOICES

In nearly all OECD countries, there is a significant gap between men and women’s career choices in the higher education; therefore, the labor market outcomes remain substantially different. Additionally, there is a persistent gender pay gap, which begins after the graduation and rarely diminishes in the coming years even though women are equitably represented at the in the most of the higher education institution.

In order to understand why women keep different career paths, making them earn less, a well-rounded qualitative research was conducted in Turkey. In this research, 90 woman academics were strategically selected from 15 research universities. This qualitative research focused particularly on the process of the phenomenon rather than the outcomes. Hence, this interpretive study explored participants’ experiences through in-depth interviews to understand the particular question of the research. By using the NVivo, the data were analyzed to explore the real hidden meaning and reasons of the situation.

The results of the depth analysis showed that the most of the participants (89%) mentioned that they were significantly affected by their academic ecosystem. Although they had chosen Science, Technology, Science, and Math majors as their majors, they could no go further in these fields. In other words, they left the school after the university graduations or they could not be so successful as male academic people in the academic career. More importantly, as the participants (76%) had clearly pointed out that they were pushed early in their career path towards such as teaching and administration rather than research. Some of them (32%) had also clarified that they were under the pressure of their male colleagues. According to the participants’ opinions (65%), most of talented and bright women could not move to the next stage of their academic career even due to their female colleagues. Beyond the internal factors in the universities, as some of the participants (28%) had argued there were also external factors by which most of the women in higher education had been affected, such as long working hours, family issues, and cultural issues. Another important awareness done by the participant (76%) was that most of the research grants were under control of the male colleagues. Even though most of the women in research took serious responsibilities, most of the decision-making processes were belonging to the senior male researchers in the research. Hence, the women in research earned less than the men in research, which made them frustrated and unqualified. As they mentioned (56%) there were vicious circles in the research ecosystem at the universities.

As a result, the awareness about the women in the research at the universities should be improved to have better research and innovation results at the universities, particularly at the research universities by decreasing unconscious biases; hence, new higher education policies are needed.