Journal Articles

Beyond the Chilly Climate: The Salience of Gender in Women’s Academic Careers

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The prevailing metaphor for understanding the persistence of gender inequalities in universities is the “chilly climate.” Women faculty sometimes resist descriptions of their workplaces as “chilly” and deny that gender matters even in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. I draw on interviews with women academics (N=102) to explore this apparent paradox, and I offer a theoretical synthesis that may help explain it. I build on insights from Ridgeway and Acker to demonstrate that women do experience gender at work, but the contexts in which they experience it have implications for how they understand gender’s importance and whether to respond. Specifically, I find that women are likely to minimize or deny gender’s importance in interactions. When it becomes salient in structures and cultures, women understand it differently. Placing gender in organizational contexts can better inform our understanding of gender inequality at work and can help in crafting more effective efforts to foster gender equity.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Gender & Society

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2017

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

08912432

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 31, Issue 1, February 2017; pp. 5–27

Subject(s)

Gender
Higher education
Work
Theory
discrimination

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