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The Positioning and Making of Female Professors pp 49–73Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

‘You Must Wait to Be Asked’: Career Advancement and the Maternal Body

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education ((GED))

Abstract

Research demonstrates consistently how the route to professor is gendered. Structural inequalities within academic systems can make it hard for women to achieve the status of Chair. It has been argued, for example, that women academics may be judged on their ‘maternal bodies’ (or their potential for reproduction) rather than on performance. Relatedly, women’s commitment to the academy might be questioned due to unfair and unsubstantiated institutional assumptions that female scholars may at some point in their career prioritize parenting over employment (irrespective of whether they are in practice mothers). It has been shown, additionally, that women are less likely than men to be invited into career-advancing networks. Yet should women seek to pursue their own career advancement, they may be treated as ‘pushy’. Nevertheless, despite such structural barriers to career progression, some do reach professorial level. In this chapter, I share advice received from good colleagues, as well as some personal learning which helped move forward my research career. Acknowledging how some of these opportunities were serendipitous rather than strategic, I nevertheless embed such experiences within existing research on women in management, offering some personal thoughts on what might prove helpful, including the benefits of not waiting to be asked.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Professor of Organization Studies, University of Liverpool Management School, Liverpool, UK

    Caroline Gatrell

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  1. Caroline Gatrell
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Correspondence to Caroline Gatrell .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of the West of Scotland, Ayr, UK

    Rowena Murray

  2. Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Denise Mifsud

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Gatrell, C. (2019). ‘You Must Wait to Be Asked’: Career Advancement and the Maternal Body. In: Murray, R., Mifsud, D. (eds) The Positioning and Making of Female Professors. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26187-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26187-0_3

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