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Abstract
Women in academia experience gender disparities rooted in patriarchy, hegemony, socialization practices and policies, and gendered microaggressions. While the perpetrators are most commonly White cis male faculty colleagues, sometimes these actions are committed by fellow women colleagues. In this paper, four racially/ethnically diverse cisgender women faculty from different universities across the U.S. share composite scenarios that highlight themes relevant to gendered expectations, privileges afforded to men at the expense of women, and relational aggression that speaks to the complexity and intersectional challenges faced by cis women navigating the contemporary academic workplace. The authors draw on the lens of discursive masculinity to detail the normalization of disparate expectations placed on women faculty in institutions of higher education. The authors conclude the paper by offering strategies that women faculty can draw on, including the creation of a co-mentoring circle that can provide a powerful counterspace for the active resistance of hegemonic masculinity and the negative impact of navigating gendered hostilities in higher education.
Keywords: Gender disparities, discursive masculinity, microaggressions, mentoring, faculty co-mentoring
Introduction
Those who cannot or choose not to adapt to the masculine academic culture face the choice of challenging the existing system or leaving academia, though the two are not mutually exclusive. (Fox, 2020, p. 211)
The literature is clear about the kind of gender disparities that exist for women in academia; disparities rooted in patriarchy, hegemony, and socialization practices and policies (Fox, 2020; Kelley et al., 2018). Such disparities play out in various ways including women experiencing more bias in their teaching evaluations (Cardel et al., 2020) and not being recognized or rewarded for the greater service work they fulfill when compared to their White cis male counterparts (Hanasono et al., 2019). This includes relational service like mentoring, advising, recruiting, writing letters of recommendation, and even organizing social events that contribute to the sense of community for faculty and students; work that is not easily quantifiable, visible, or valued through tenure and promotion (Hanasono et al., 2019; Misra et al., 2021). Other institutionalized gender biases are prominent in family leave policies, with women encouraged to make choices related to motherhood, pregnancy and caretaking around promotion, tenure, and academic calendars (Mason et al., 2013).
Women must also contend with gendered microaggressions, often at...