Remodellers of female career preference in academia: Does religiosity serve as a mediator?

Abstract

There is a growing concern over female career preference (FCP) due to the complexities of underlying factors. However, little is known about how these factors affect FCP, especially in academia. This study aims to investigate these factors by conceptualising them as institutional remodellers (IR), socioeconomic remodellers (SER), and personal remodellers (PR) and their impact on FCP in academia through the mediating role of religiosity (RL). The data was collected from 710 female academics and analysed using the partial least squares (PLS) technique. The findings indicate that IR and SER are the significant and positive enablers and PR is a significant negative inhibitor of FCP. The mediation findings elucidate that RL mediates the relationship between FCP/IR and FCP/PR whereas; no evidence of mediation exists between FCP/SER. Our results are useful for designing gender-inclusive strategies for academic institutions.

Keywords:

• Academic career
• career preference
• female academics
• career enablers
• career inhibitors
• religiosity

Disclosure statement

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