Message to deans, department chairs, and other administrators in higher education: Pay more attention to associate professors— particularly women, for whom the path to promotion is often murky and less traveled.
That’s one of several recommendations from a panel of the Modern Language Association, whose new report, released today, describes how male associate professors in English and foreign languages are routinely promoted to full professor quicker than women are. To help reverse that trend, the MLA’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession suggested several moves, such as backing away from the monograph as the dominant form of scholarship that counts toward advancement, attaching bigger salary increases to the jump from associate to full professor, and creating mentor programs that focus specifically on preparing associate professors for promotion. The report, “Standing Still: The Associate Professor Survey,” is available on the association’s Web site.
“Every associate professor should be promoted at some point,” said Kathleen Woodward, a professor of English at the University of Washington and the report’s lead author. “Universities have devoted so much attention to assistant professors trying to get tenure, as they should, but associate professors are important, too.”
The report shows that women at doctoral institutions take two and a half years longer than men to reach full professor. The gap shrinks to one and a half years at master’s institutions, and the smallest gap—a year is at baccalaureate colleges. A closer look at private independent colleges by the association revealed that women there take three and a half years longer than their male counterparts to advance to associate professor.
Over all, the average time to promotion for female associate professors is 8.2 years, compared with 6.6 years for men.
And although many studies show that female academics spend more time caring for children than do their male peers, the association’s report found that such family obligations aren’t the tipping point when it comes to advancement. Women are promoted more slowly than men, no matter what their marital or parental status is, according to the report, for which 400 professors were surveyed.
Shortage of Mentors
Rosemary G. Feal, the association’s executive director, says more people need to be aware of the barriers that keep associate professors, especially women, from advancing to the rank of full professor.
For instance, junior faculty members can typically count on help from formal and informal mentors to navigate the tenure process. But associate professors often have few devoted resources to tap as they try to move up. And female academics, in particular, often report that they have fewer opportunities for mentorship than men. Focused mentor programs that begin the moment scholars are promoted to associate professor could help close the gap, Ms. Woodward says.
“We’re not talking about going out to lunch every now and then,” Ms. Feal said. “We mean making it clear to associate professors what the path for promotion looks like and helping the associate professor get there. It means providing resources for the person to do the work that’s required for them to advance.”
Another problem is that expanding the definition of scholarship and research in English is way overdue. Tenure and promotion committees, Ms. Woodward said, shouldn’t emphasize the monograph’s importance at the expense of public scholarship and work that is produced and distributed digitally.
Giving more weight to service activities, too, is also key when it comes to promoting female academics, said Lisa Maatz, director of publicly policy and government relations at the American Association of University Women. Women and minorities often “end up doing more committee work and more advisory work” that isn’t credited fairly toward advancement, said Ms. Maatz, whose organization has produced its own research on the obstacles female professors who seek promotion face. “If you talk to any woman on campus, regardless of her discipline, she’s going to have a disturbing story about moving forward or getting tenure, despite how many women are on campus,” said Ms. Maatz, who generally agreed that the report’s recommendations could make a difference at many institutions. “We need to continue to create policies that get us to equity.”
Some women surveyed by the association said they have resigned themselves to a lifetime as an associate professor because they’re engaged in activities that won’t be “rewarded” by their institution, such as working with students, preparing course materials, and doing research that involves the community.
“We’re hearing from associate professors that they’re actively choosing to do these things,” Ms. Feal said. “They’re saying ‘If the university doesn’t reward me, well so be it, because these are the things that matter to me.’” According to the report, female associate professors, for the most part, are less satisfied with their jobs than are their male counterparts.
Still, more associate professors would possibly push ahead toward promotion anyway, if the pay at the higher rank was worth it. But the “increase in salary at promotion generally offers little incentive to aspire to and strive for promotion,” the report said. Lobbying for more money is “a tough sell in this economy, but we’re thinking about the future,” Ms. Feal said.
