Off Track in Academia

While I can't pretend to be in the know about the gender politics of legal academia, an interesting study was brought to my attention by the FeministLawProfs today.  The study, the largest of its kind, found that

"[Women academics] are deeply frustrated by a system that they believe undervalues their work and denies them opportunities for a balanced life. While the study found some overt discrimination in the form of harassment or explicitly sexist remarks, many of the concerns involved more subtle “deeply entrenched inequities."

Even as somebody who is not involved in academia, I have always been keenly aware of the higher percentage of women in the non-tenure track positions and in positions of service, such as assistant deanships and counselors.  I recently had a discussion with an aspiring professor who informed me that many women take non-tenure track positions just to get their foot in the door of academia later to find out that it is nearly impossible to jump from one track to the other.  This is very similar to the track of "staff attorney" which is a non-partnership track at many large firms.  There too, it is nearly impossible to jump the tracks. 

However, the similarities between the numbers for women in academia and law firms are striking.  Believe it or not, in a statement criticizing the study, the university at which the author of the study works said this about it the progress of women on its faculty:

Women account for 43 percent of assistant professors, 37 percent of associate professors, and 22 percent of full professors. Those figures are going up in science and technology fields too, [the school] noted, and women now are 37 percent of assistant professors, 31 percent of associate professors and 18 percent of full professors in those disciplines.

Boy, this "progress" looks very similar to law firm numbers where women are 47% of junior associates and 18% of partners.  Hmmmm.

Preventing Violence Against Law Profs

Tracy McGaugh at Feminist Law Profs reviews a piece coauthored by Carol Parker, U. Tennessee-Knoxville College of Law: "Anger and Violence on Campus: Recommendations for Legal Educators." In the wake of the latest university shooting--at Northern Illinois U last week--Parker's recommendations feel especially timely. The article, which is publicly available on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), outlines predictors of violent behavior and policies for violence prevention. Most of the policies require enactment by school administrations--these aren't risks that profs can manage entirely on their own. The article, McGaugh explains,

touches on the almost-taboo topic of junior faculty members who have to choose whether they will press administration to take measures to keep professors safe or whether they will keep quiet so they don’t get labeled as a trouble-maker and hurt their chances of promotion. Choosing between livelihood and life is probably not a choice any of us thought we’d have to make.

[More after the jump]

Wow! Great insight into Choices and Consequences Written by a Mother/Professor

All I can say is "wow". There is an incredible post titled "Choices, Consequences, Constraints" up on Scatter from this weekend. Click here to read it in its entirety, which I strongly recommend if you are at all interested in some perspective on what it can be like to be a mom and an academic at the same time.

The blogger writes about some of her choices and related emotions in her struggle to be a professional woman and a parent in a situation where both she and her husband worked. The post is gripping in its honesty and at the same time piercing in its revelations about the unfair nature of the burdens placed on mothers by our society. She writes...

Scary Numbers on Women in Academia

Ann Farmer's new research on legal academic hiring puts a new twist on the disturbing news reported earlier this week that universities are generally creating fewer tenured professorships.

For the 2004–2005 academic year, women comprised

• 25% of tenured full professors
• 46% of tenure-track assistant professors
• 66% of lecturers and instructors
• 54% of associate deans without professional titles
• 68% of assistant deans without professional titles

Suspended UConn law prof will return to work, but will not be allowed to teach feminist legal theory [Clippings]

Two weeks ago when law prof Robert Birmingham showed a clip from a documentary that contained an image of a scantily clad woman, he was asked to take an immediate leave of absence from the UConn School of Law. Now comes word that Birmingham will return to teaching in the spring--but he won't be allowed to teach his course in feminist legal theory that had been previously scheduled.

Read the original news of his suspension here and the follow-up about his return here [via law.com]. What do you think? Does the sanction fit the crime? Was there any crime?

The other women's career

Reading many of these discussions about women dropping out of the legal profession, especially out of big firms, inspired me to look up statistics on women law professors, which as we know are only slightly easier to find than women Senators. If wanting to be a good mother is driving women out of legal practice, how does that explain the shameful dearth of female law professors, particularly tenured ones? An academic schedule seems much more conducive to having a family, and might, in theory, be more about intellectual achievement and less about the aggressiveness that we associate with large firms. With the high numbers of women graduating from law school, why don't the ranks of our own law faculties reflect the student bodies?