Do you introduce yourself as ‘an academic’ or do you try to recalibrate your identity, showing breadth beyond your vocation?
Following the release of research by Future Campus earlier this year showing that older women in senior, ongoing academic roles are the least happy cohort of workers in the sector, a new Curtin University study seeks to understand the way that women in these roles see themselves, in a new paper published this week.
The paper documents four typical personas:
- The Expert Academic, who is a leader in her field and respected as such;
- The Reflective Academic, who ponders on and summarises her academic career;
- The Disengaging Academic, who is getting ready to move out of the workforce and into retirement; and
- The Insecure Woman, who feels challenged by the tension between the role they are expected to play within the HE system and the role they would like to play.
The research was based on interviews with 17 academic women aged 43-72.
The paper provides some interesting points of consideration, both for women who fall into this category and those who lead teams and/or control work environments in which they work.
Understanding the challenges, self-perception issues and opportunities to engage and motivate women who may relate to these personas may offer an opportunity to address the levels of dissatisfaction reported in the Future Campus 2023 workforce survey.
The paper says that the context and expectations that women find themselves in in academia shape how they are expected to act and further research to explore perceptions of both male and female academics in relation to gender and how they conceptualise their roles.
