Margaret W. Sallee

Performing Masculinity: Considering Gender in Doctoral Student Socialization

This article suggests that doctoral student socialization is a gendered process. Through a qualitative case study of engineering students in one department, the author considers how various norms and practices, including competition and hierarchy along with overt objectification of women, point to the masculine nature of the discipline.

Using Qualitative Research to Bridge Research, Policy, and Practice

Too often, researchers get a bad name for engaging in inquiry that is inaccessible to the practitioner and policy communities who could most benefit from it. Although speaking to others in the scholarly community is important, researchers must also be able to translate their results into more accessible language for multiple audiences. This article suggests that qualitative research offers a particular potent means of reaching those outside of the academy and conducting meaningful inquiry. The article provides suggestions for ways to bridge the divide between multiple constituencies and how qualitative research can affect both theory and practice.

Adding Academics to the Work/Family Puzzle: Graduate Student Parents in Higher Education and Student Affairs.

Based on interviews with 18 parents who were enrolled in higher education and student affairs master’s programs and also employed on college and university campuses, this article explores the ways that student parents navigate their academic, familial, and professional responsibilities. Using role conflict theory as a theoretical guide, this study considers the strategies student parents use to meet the demands of multiple roles. Findings suggest that while participants value their identities as students and take steps to meet the expectations associated with that role, they prioritize their roles as parents above all else.

Toward a Theory of Gendered Socialization.

The purpose of this article is to introduce gender into models of doctoral student socialization. Although stage models of socialization explain how students acquire the skills to succeed in a discipline, they are content- and identity-neutral. Since stage models address how socialization occurs for all students, they cannot account for the idiosyncrasies of disciplines or how social identity influences an individual’s integration to a new department. Using theories of gender performance as a theoretical lens, my purpose is to extend models of doctoral student socialization to consider how gender both influences and is produced as students progress through their programs.

The Divided University: The impact of budget cuts on faculty in two disciplines

This article explores how budget cuts affected faculty in two departments—a physical sciences department and a humanities department—at one research university in the United States. Using theories of academic capitalism as a guide, the author focuses in particular on changes in governance structures and increasing competition between disciplines for resources and prestige. The article suggests that the physical sciences department was relatively spared, due to its ability to bring in external grants and the role played by the department head while the humanities department suffered from a mass exodus of faculty. Both departmental and institutional operations signal the ways in which universities are increasingly adopting market-like behaviours to survive.

Beyond Gendered Universities? Implications for Research on Gender in Organizations

The purpose of this study is to understand the extent to which Acker’s (1990) concept of gendered organizations frames extant scholarship and to explore the implications of using this framework to address gender inequities in organizational life, and particularly in academe. Through a systematic analysis of articles, we found that while Acker’s work is highly cited, few studies use Acker’s theory as it was originally intended. We also identified limitations of Acker’s theory as well as the ways in which scholars have applied it in their own work. We argue the need for scholars who are informed by Acker to engage with all aspects of her theory and push it in new directions. We also challenge scholars of gender and organizations to integrate multiple, and perhaps more complicated, frameworks in order to understand academe in more nuanced ways and to generate new ideas to enhance social justice.

Performing masculinity: considering gender in doctoral student socialization

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to suggest that doctoral student socialization is a gendered process. Design/methodology/approach – This article uses a qualitative case study methodology, studying engineering students in one university department. Findings – The author considers how various norms and practices, including competition and hierarchy along with overt objectification of women, point to the masculine nature of the discipline. Originality/value – Although stage models of socialization are helpful in that they provide an outline of students’ various tasks as they progress through their doctoral programs, they can account neither for the culture of disciplines nor for the identities of students who populate them. The author suggests that students in engineering are prepared to embrace competition and hierarchy, norms that point to a gendered disciplinary culture. Although, certainly, particular interests will lead students to pursue different majors, the discipline serves to reinforce cul...

Neoliberalism Across Borders: A Comparative Case Study of Community Colleges’ Capacity to Serve Student-Parents

ABSTRACT Community colleges in the United States and Canada operate within postsecondary environments that are being reshaped by neoliberal policymaking. As community colleges in both countries respond to the pressures of neoliberalism, their capacity to serve students already marginalized by their “nontraditional” status may be affected in contradictory ways that benefit some students while further disadvantaging others. This article drew on data from a comparative case study of two urban community colleges, one in the United States and one in Canada, to explore how the increasing marketization of postsecondary education in both countries is affecting each college’s position within its particular postsecondary environment and, in turn, is shaping its capacity at the organizational level to support its student population. As a means of highlighting the consequences of neoliberal processes on marginalized students, we focused our attention at the organizational level on resources and supports targeted at students with dependent children, a group of students who are often rendered invisible—both by neoliberal discourses and traditional postsecondary policies and practices.

Troubling Gender Norms and the Ideal Worker in Academic Life

We are suggesting that the power structure and hierarchy that are foundational to the notion of the ideal worker is more complicated for faculty who also have the ability to access forms of power. Faculty, at least full-time, tenure-line faculty, are not simply under immediate threat of dismissal and other forms of hierarchical power found in other more corporate-like organizations. And, faculty do often create the very processes of evaluation in tenure and promotion which gives them the agency to “run things themselves.” The lack of an immediate threat to job security and the agency to create the systems of evaluation initially appear to stand in contrast to the ideal worker where strict structural hierarchy and false notions of choice frame a discriminatory environment for women. In fact, evidence of some of these efforts is found in research on faculty.

Expanding Conceptualizations of Work/Life in Higher Education: Looking Outside the Academy to Develop a Better Understanding Within

Over the last two decades, work/life balance has come to occupy an increasingly important place in the higher education literature. Research has focused on policy development and usage, demographic shifts, and cultural acceptance of faculty efforts at both the meso and macro organizational levels to maintain a balance between work and family. Research in higher education has developed alongside work/family research in other disciplines, sometimes incorporating important tenets, but leaving others out. In particular, the literature has yet to integrate new frameworks from organizational studies and psychology or adopt a critical stance promoted in the literature on gendered organizations. Additionally, faculty parents remain the primary target of work/life research, neglecting the concerns of non-parenting faculty as well as all staff and students. The purpose of this chapter is to present and critique the work/life literature in higher education, introducing literature from organizational studies and psychology to illustrate how the field has built upon research from other disciplines as well as overlooked critical areas of scholarship. The chapter concludes with a set of recommendations to push the boundaries of work/life scholarship forward to generate new insights and help create a more equitable academy for all who populate it.