Thinking about leaving an academic career: gender differences across career stages

ABSTRACT

Women’s academic careers are shorter, slower, and progress less than those of men. We investigated gender differences in thinking about leaving an academic career across career stages. Our analysis of data from an online survey of academics in the Czech Republic (1657 individuals) showed that in men, the trajectory of such considerations gradually decreases after obtaining a Ph.D. (except for 6–10 years post-Ph.D.), while in women it starts to drop significantly only after earning associate professorship and even then the decrease is less steep than for men. In both men and women, differences in thoughts of leaving across career stages were explained mostly by biological age and salary but in women, leadership position was also an important factor. Surprisingly, neither in men nor in women were differences in thinking about leaving explained by job satisfaction. Our findings imply that for women, achievement of a leadership position is more important with respect to thoughts of leaving than for men and that career age is for women less important than academic rank. We suggest that gender differences in trajectories of thinking about leaving may be linked to different perceptions of career prospects, especially at the career stage of 11 + years post-Ph.D.

KEYWORDS:

• Thoughts of leaving academic career
• gender differences
• career stages
• career age
• academic rank
• career prospects

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Marta Vohlídalová for her valuable comments and Anna Pilátová for careful proof reading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Here is an example of the career code at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University: https://is.muni.cz/do/sci/normy/SM/SM19-02/SM_2_2019_EN_Career_Code_SCI_MU.pdf?kod=CH2MP_1W1E.

2 Our questionnaire included the question ‘Why did you consider leaving?’. However, the answers to this question are not part of the present analysis because of the word limit. We analyse the subjective reasons separately. The text thematizing these reasons is in progress.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is based on data collected in research project ‘Analysis of Barriers to and Support Strategy for Gender Equality in Science and Research’ implemented in 2017–2018 by the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences as part of Operational Programme Employment (European Union from the European Social Fund) (reg. no. CZ.03.1.51/0.0/0.0/15_02 8/0003571).

Notes on contributors

Kateřina Cidlinská

Kateřina Cidlinská is a researcher in the field of sociology, higher education studies and gender studies. Her research topics are working conditions in academia, academic careers, exits from academic career and intersectoral mobility, gender inequalities in academia, and professional identities. Currently she is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. Previously she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences, and doctoral candidate at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences.

Zuzana Zilincikova

Zuzana Zilinčíková is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Cologne (Germany). In her research, she focuses mainly on family dynamics, inequality and migration. She was formerly a post-doctoral researcher at UCLouvain (Belgium) and a doctoral researcher at Masaryk University (Czech Republic) where she received her doctoral degree in sociology in 2019.