The Interplay of Gender in the Careers of White Female and Male Senior Professors. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper.

A grounded theory study was conducted using open-ended interviews with white male and female senior, tenured faculty members. The setting was a major Midwestern research one university. Four male and five female participants, all white agreed to participate. An open-ended interview protocol was used. Following grounded theory strategies, open coding was used to organize and categorize the data. The findings indicated that most of the participants, male and female, did not set out to become professors. Three predominant themes emerged in the data analysis: attribution of academic success, teaching versus research, and attitudes toward sexual discrimination in academe. All but one of the participants were high achieving undergraduate students. Six of the nine went directly from undergraduate to graduate school. A clear gender difference was found regarding mentors: three of the four men described mentoring relationships but none of the women. The predicted gender dichotomy did not emerge in regard to teaching versus research. In attitudes toward sexual discrimination, the men expressed more overt support for gender equity, especially in faculty-student relationships, than the women. The female professors did not portray themselves as alienated from the culture of academe. The only official policies that the professors, both men and women, saw as barriers were nepotism laws. Men and women were equally committed to excellence in scholarship and involvement in their disciplines. (Contains 32 references.) (JLS)