Global linkages,the higher education pipeline,and national contexts: The worldwide growth of women faculty,1970

Abstract

Despite the surge in women’s enrollments in higher education over the last several decades, women continue to be unequally represented in faculty careers around the world. In this article, we use data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to examine and explain regional and global trends in percentages of women faculty within 92 countries from 1970 to 2012. Drawing on world society and development perspectives, we posit that women’s representation among faculty is influenced by a combination of global norms of justice and women’s rights as well as national contexts. Results of descriptive analyses show remarkable growth over time for all world regions, although gender parity has yet to be reached. Using country fixed effects panel regression strategies, we find that countries with higher levels of women who earn higher education degrees, stronger linkages to global norms of women’s rights, and higher levels of economic development are more likely to have higher percentages of women faculty, with the caveat that the effect of economic development is conditioned by national levels of women’s caregiving burdens. Although the pipeline argument serves as a popular narrative, women’s access to higher education is only part of the story; our analyses indicate that percentages of women faculty are shaped by the intersection of norms, national contexts, and human capital.

Keywords

Cross-national global linkages higher education women faculty world society

Introduction

Over the past four decades, women’s participation in higher education has significantly contributed to the dramatic growth of higher education enrollments around the world (Charles and Bradley, 2002). In the 1970s, women’s undergraduate enrollments began rising at rates that were double those of men, such that, by the 1990s, women outnumbered men in enrollment and graduation rates in a majority of countries (Bradley, 2000; Bradley and Ramirez, 1996; Buchmann and DiPrete, 2006; Charles and Bradley, 2002; McDaniel, 2012; Schofer and Meyer, 2005; United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2012). Despite the extraordinary growth of women undergraduates, gender gaps for faculty positions continue to persist. Consequently, women are overrepresented as consumers of higher education but are underrepresented as faculty members and producers of new knowledge.

In reaction to these trends, universities, national governments, and the global community have made increasing the number of women faculty an explicit goal (Kim et al., 2010; Müller, 2007; Rees, 2007; Sagaria, 2007). As innovations stemming from research and development are seen as key sources of national economic growth, these stakeholders frame the under-representation of women in research careers as a critical issue of national and global concern (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics (UNESCO UIS), 2012). Without the full incorporation of women into higher education, the academy, as well as societies, are deprived of the scholarship and other innovations that women produce (Boxer, 1998; David, 2004). In addition, women faculty serve as role models and mentors to students. Numerous studies show the importance of same-gender role models in improving student performance and outcomes, especially in traditionally male-dominated contexts and fields of study (Bettinger and Long, 2005; Dasgupta and Stout, 2014; Sax et al., 2005; Sonnert et al., 2007). The presence of more women faculty on campuses not only benefits women but also boosts men’s leadership skills and psychological well-being (Sax, 2008).

The existing scholarship on women’s representation among higher education faculty consist mainly of studies of specific countries or institutions (cf. Altbach, 1996, 2000; Altbach et al., 2012; May et al., 2010; Morley and Crossouard, 2016; Teichler et al., 2013). Many of these studies suggest that the ‘chilly climate’ for women in higher education (Glazer-Raymo, 1999; Hall and Sandler, 1982; Maranto and Griffin, 2010; Sandler, 1993) or gendered inequalities in academic practices keep women from entering or advancing in academic ranks (Van den Brink and Benschop, 2011). Other studies also substantiate gender-based salary and promotion disparities (Renzulli et al., 2013; Toutkoushian and Conley, 2005; Umbach, 2007) as well as disproportionate time spent on teaching and engaging in service (Doyle and Hind, 1998; Rosser, 2003), which hinder women’s research and scholarly productivity (Teodorescu, 2000). Women endure more sexual harassment and cyberbullying (Cassidy et al., 2016; Marshall et al., 2014), report higher levels of stress and lower levels of satisfaction (Bozeman and Gaughan, 2011), and attest to a lack of formal and legal mechanisms to protect them (Maranto and Griffin, 2010; Park, 1996). While these accounts provide rich descriptions of the specific contexts shaping the status of women faculty in their respective countries, more longitudinal and cross-national analyses are needed that describe and explain trends in women’s representation among higher education faculty, and gauge the extent to which these changes are influenced by national and global factors in an era of increasing globalization of higher education (Altbach et al., 2009).

This study investigates historical patterns of the representation of women in faculty positions¹ across 92 countries from 1970 to 2012. While others have examined trends in women’s participation in higher education over the past four decades (Bradley, 2000; Bradley and Charles, 2004; Bradley and Ramirez, 1996; Charles and Bradley, 2002; Schofer and Meyer, 2005), our research is motivated by the critical question of what explains variations in the percentages of women faculty within countries. Drawing on world society and development perspectives, we posit that women’s representation among faculty is influenced by a combination of global norms of justice and women’s rights as well as national contextual factors. We begin by outlining our theoretical perspectives, which are the basis for a country fixed effect regression analysis. Following a discussion of the findings and implications, we conclude with suggestions for future research.

Theoretical frameworks and hypotheses

Gender equity as a global model

Similar to the levels of education preceding it (Boli et al., 1985; Meyer et al., 1977, 1992; Wotipka et al., 2017), the incorporation of women into higher education shows remarkable similarities in countries around the world (Meyer et al., 2007; Schofer and Meyer, 2005). One explanation for the widespread growth of women in higher education enrollments is that the goal of gender equality in higher education has emerged as a global model of progress and justice (Bradley and Ramirez, 1996). As countries become more economically, politically, and culturally interlinked to these global norms over time, they are more likely to align with gender equitable policies and practices (Meyer et al., 1997; Nakagawa and Wotipka, 2016; Suárez et al., 2009; Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008a), which may lead to greater higher education enrollments among those who were previously underrepresented.

Cross-national research links the diffusion of international norms within world society to the work of international organizations, especially inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the United Nations and the World Bank and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) (Finnemore, 1993; Gray et al., 2006). Among the former, UNESCO is most attentive to the issue of gender and education (Vaughan, 2010), including higher education (David, 2016; Stromquist, 1997). At its 1998 World Conference on Higher Education, the focus of the Declaration adopted by participants was on ‘diversification in higher education’ and ‘sociocultural and economic development’. Attention to women was the focus of Article 4, titled ‘Enhancing participation and promoting the role of women’. To that end, participants adopted a framework for action that called for states and their governments to:

… define and implement policies to eliminate all gender stereotyping in higher education and to consolidate women’s participation at all levels and in all disciplines in which they are under-represented at present and, in particular, to enhance their active involvement in decision-making

and further to

remove gender inequalities and biases in curricula and research, and take all appropriate measures to ensure balanced representation of both men and women among students and teachers, at all levels of management … . (UNESCO, 1998)

Ten years later, in the final communiqué adopted at the 2009 World Conference on Higher Education in Paris, participants recognized that

Expanding access has become a priority in the majority of Member States and increasing participation rates in higher education are a major global trend. Nevertheless, great disparities persist, constituting a major source of inequality. Governments and institutions must encourage women’s access, participation and success at all levels of education. (UNESCO, 2009: 3)

These declarations called upon higher education institutions to ‘increase their interdisciplinary focus and promote critical thinking and active citizenship’ so as to lead to, among other things, ‘the realization of human rights, including gender equity’ (UNESCO, 2009: 2). UNESCO (2014) pays increasing attention to women’s leadership in higher education, and in conjunction with field offices, higher education institutions, and government and civil society organizations, supports several programs aimed at increasing women’s representation in leadership positions.

These efforts are propelled by a myriad of INGOs that play salient roles in spreading normative models of world culture and discourse (Boli and Thomas, 1997, 1999; Schofer and McEneaney, 2003). In the case of women’s rights, women’s international non-governmental organizations (WINGOs) are influential carriers of world models of justice concerning the advancement of women globally (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Prügl and Meyer, 1999; Schofer and McEneaney, 2003; Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008b) and are instrumental in providing political power to women (Paxton et al., 2006). During major international women’s conferences in the 1990s, for example, WINGOs served as key influencers in shaping global debates surrounding women’s issues (Friedman, 2003) and put the ‘women and education’ discourse on a global platform (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Lechner and Boli, 2005; Stromquist, 1997; True and Mintrom, 2001). In the Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, the global community called upon governments to ‘eliminate gender disparities in access to all areas of tertiary education …’ (United Nations, 1995: 28), and an entire sub-section was devoted to enhancing women’s access to vocational and science and technology education. With this in mind, we expect that countries with stronger linkages to global models of women’s rights through memberships in WINGOs also have greater percentages of women faculty (H₁).

The pervasiveness of the world model of gender equality is evident in the expansion of the international women’s rights movement as represented by the near universal adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), viewed as among the most important international agreement concerning women’s rights (Bunch, 1990; True and Mintrom, 2001; Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008b). Ratified by 189 out of 193 member states of the United Nations by 2018,² CEDAW is one of the most widely adopted international human rights treaties. Doing so commits countries to implementing a series of measures to end all forms of discrimination against women (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR), 2016), including in education (Article 10). Because CEDAW is a source through which women make legal claims about their global rights at local and national levels (Bernard, 1987; Cole, 2013), countries’ adoptions of CEDAW hold substantial effects for women’s equality in various spheres of economic, political, and social life (Arat, 2001; Cole, 2013; Liu and Boyle, 2001; Weiss, 2003). Considering that most countries denied women the right to vote at the start of the twentieth century (Ramirez et al., 1997), this remarkable feat underscores the extent to which countries are now influenced by global norms supporting the rights and advancements of women (Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008b). Therefore, we expect that countries that adopt CEDAW have higher percentages of women faculty (H₂).

Both WINGO linkages and CEDAW adoption provide a lens through which to consider the effects of global norms on educational trends and women’s status on a cross-national basis (Berkovitch, 1999; Meyer et al., 1977, 1992; Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008b). However, we view WINGOs as active carriers of global discourses on women’s rights, whereas CEDAW constitutes a national signal of a legislative agenda. Both are important, but we consider the possibility that it is the confluence of both WINGOs and CEDAW adoption that drive structural changes that benefit women. As global scripts increasingly emphasize universal women’s rights as a conventional norm, the combination of WINGO memberships with the codification of women’s rights, legislatively, may motivate or pressure (Van der Vleuten, 2005) countries to support women in higher education, both as students and educators. Thus, we expect that greater memberships in WINGOs in countries that have adopted CEDAW corresponds with higher percentages of women faculty (H₃).

A leaky pipeline?

From a pipeline perspective, growing numbers of women entering higher education should lead to expanded opportunities for women to pursue graduate studies and potentially obtain faculty positions (Glazer-Raymo, 1999; White, 2004). Women’s increasing participation in higher education, which reflects the acquisition of work-related skills and knowledge, is the most critical factor fueling the growth of women in the overall paid labor market (Collins, 1971; Treiman and Terrell, 1975). Such trends are particularly true for high-status occupations such as professorships, which are usually held by graduate degree holders. Furthermore, some have argued that an ‘institutional demystification’ process occurs as members of certain status groups (e.g. women) gain access to previously closed institutional settings (e.g. higher education) (Weiss et al., 1976), whereby the entry of women into one traditionally male-dominated sector opens doors for women to enter other previously denied sectors (Schofer and Meyer, 2005).

By contrast, recent studies provide counter-evidence to this logic, arguing that the prominence of the ‘leaky pipeline’ in higher education shrinks the pool of qualified women for academic positions (Blickenstaff, 2005; Glazer-Raymo, 1999; Van Anders, 2004; White, 2004). Starting from entrance into faculty positions, then from junior to senior faculty positions, and even more so as leaders within the highest ranks of higher education, gender gaps are greatest at the highest tiers of the academic pyramid (European Commission, 2016; Mason and Goulden, 2004; Morley, 2007, 2014; Rees, 2001). Leaks in the pipeline, it is argued, are due in part to a ‘chilly climate’ in higher education, which may not socialize women to faculty career options (Clark and Corcoran, 1986) and poses challenges to recruiting and retaining women in faculty positions (Glazer-Raymo, 1999; Williams et al., 2006). Political and labor supply constraints outside of the university system, as well as discrimination and policies favoring men within academia (Castleman and Allen, 1998; Morley, 2014), are well-recognized contributors to this problem. The situation is even worse for underrepresented racial and ethnic minority women (Agathangelou and Ling, 2002; Gregory, 2001; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 2012; Thomas and Hollenshead, 2011; Turner and Glazer-Raymo, 2008), those of certain social classes and castes (Morley and Crossouard, 2016), with spouses or partners (Rice et al., 2007), and in countries with long-held cultural beliefs about women’s roles in society (Gaskell et al., 2004; Luke, 2001; Rhoads and Gu, 2012; Twombly, 1998).

Nevertheless, the ‘feminization of higher education’ (Charles and Bradley, 2002: 594) in countries throughout the world is so significant that women now make up a majority of not only undergraduates, but increasingly, students in graduate degree programs leading to doctoral degrees (UNESCO, 2012). Therefore, we expect that a country’s share of higher education graduates who are women is positively associated with its percentage of women faculty (H₄).

Economic development

National economic development has long been theorized to play an instrumental role in improving women’s status across various sectors of society, including higher education (Bradley and Ramirez, 1996). Historically, women are more likely to pursue higher education in countries with greater levels of national wealth (UNESCO, 2012). Educational advancements and innovations are more likely to emerge earlier and in greater magnitude in developed countries, as development is a function of a society’s values and investments in social structures such as schooling (Rostow, 1960).

Countries with higher levels of economic development experience greater rates of women’s participation in the paid labor force through several key mechanisms (Apodaca, 1998; Weiss et al., 1976). To some degree, industrial development reduces the amount of time women spend on housework, which provides them with increased opportunities and greater freedom to gain the training and skills needed to enter the paid labor force and specialized occupations. Women’s freedom from domestic responsibilities extends to caretaking – economic development coincides with declining fertility rates, due in part to the increased cost of raising children in urbanized environments (Dyson, 2013).

This argument can be extended to the realm of women in faculty positions. While faculty positions were historically held by men, economic development enabled women to gain greater levels of education. Greater demand for higher education by students, along with heightened needs for cutting-edge research and new knowledge, opened up opportunities for women to become faculty members. Consequently, we expect that increases in women’s rates of labor force participation in a given country correspond with greater percentages of women faculty (H₅). In addition, we consider the argument that increases in levels of economic development in a given country correspond with increases in educational and occupational opportunities for women, including access to faculty positions in higher education (H₆).

Gender roles

Many women faculty are caught between two ‘greedy institutions’ comprising the demanding requirements of the family and the university (Currie et al., 2002; Probert, 2005; Raddon, 2002; Wright et al., 2004). While policies and initiatives exist to recruit and retain women faculty, it remains the case that women are more likely than men to take time off or work fewer hours to care for young children, which diminishes their scholarship productivity and disadvantages them compared with counterparts who are devoid of such obligations (Ginther and Kahn, 2009; Gregory, 2006; Mason and Goulden, 2004; Mayer and Tikka, 2008). Across many countries, women faculty report experiencing daily challenges of combining the demands and expectations of academic work and family life (Acker and Armenti, 2004; Mabokela and Mawila, 2004; Morley and Crossouard, 2016; Wolf-Wendel and Ward, 2006; Wright et al., 2004). When faced with these challenges, women may turn away from or exit such positions, thereby making it harder for higher education institutions to hire or promote them. As such, we expect that national increases in average caregiving responsibilities for children correspond with lower percentages of women faculty (H₇).

As mentioned earlier, women’s economic outcomes tend to improve in contexts of higher national wealth: women’s education, incomes, and maternal health grow with economic development. Furthermore, women’s fertility also tends to decline in industrial and post-industrial economies for a number of reasons, including the higher cost of child care (Dyson, 2013), delayed ages of marriage (Bongaarts and Potter, 2013), and an increasing normativity of smaller family sizes to cope with work-life pressures (Cleland and Wilson, 1987). Women’s domestic roles and economic development are innately connected, given that structural changes to economies, particularly from rural- to urban-based economies, can correspond with changed expectations for women’s social status. However, economic changes do not automatically alter women’s domestic roles; development processes can also impose dual burdens on women as caretakers and income earners (Chang and Song, 2010). Thus, persisting expectations that women are primarily domestic caretakers can offset the benefits of economic development for women. We thus consider that social expectations of women as domestic caretakers in a given country condition the impact of economic development on percentages of women faculty. Specifically, we hypothesize that a country’s economic wealth is positively associated with its percentage of women faculty; however, that positive relationship is moderated by the level of caregiving responsibilities for children (H₈).

Political development

Studies show that countries with higher levels of political development, particularly democratic governance, also provide stronger economic, political, and social rights for women (Gray et al., 2006; Inglehart et al., 2002; Ramirez et al., 1997; Swank, 2002). In the realm of education, the widespread shift from authoritarian to democratic rule in the post-World War II era facilitated the mass incorporation of women and other previously excluded populations into all levels of schooling (Ramirez et al., 1997; Schofer and Meyer, 2005). Furthermore, democratization processes play important roles in that women gain significant opportunities to push for change and carve out their places in the political system during times of political flux (Chowdhury et al., 1994). As democracies fundamentally demand legal protections of individual, civil, and political liberties (Molyneux and Razavi, 2005; Suárez et al., 2009), countries undergoing democratization are more likely to adopt and promote greater opportunities for women, notably in the public sphere (Fallon et al., 2012), which may lead to new educational and occupational opportunities. Thus, we hypothesize that a country’s level of democratization is positively associated with its percentage of women faculty (H₉).

Similarly, countries with greater women’s political representation can better mobilize issues related to advancing women’s status in society. For instance, countries with more women in positions of political power are more likely to enact family and childcare policies deemed central to the advancement of women in the paid labor force (Bleijenbergh and Roggeband, 2007; Chattopadhyay and Duflo, 2004; Clots-Figueras, 2011; Gray et al., 2006; Kittilson, 2008; Lambert, 2008), which may lead to more women in higher status occupations (Chang, 2004). In addition, increasing the presence of women in political office enables them to obtain occupational positions dominated by men throughout history (Paxton et al., 2006). While in office, these women are symbols of women’s power and prestige and serve as role models to women considering other high status careers. Therefore, we expect that higher percentages of women in a country’s parliament correspond with greater percentages of women faculty (H₁₀).

Data and methods

We use data from the UNESCO UIS (2014) that tracks aggregate figures on teaching staff, disaggregated by gender at the tertiary level, in nearly 200 countries from 1970 to 2012. Our dataset includes 92 countries and 706 country-year observations, the maximum number of countries with non-missing data, and represent a range of economic, political, and social characteristics (see Appendix 1).³

Dependent variable

The dependent variable is measured as the percentage of all faculty who are women in higher education institutions by country. We include faculty for all tertiary levels,⁴ that is, International Standards Classification of Education (ISCED) Levels 5, 6, 7, and 8.⁵ Our analyses cover the years 1970–2012. In order to maximize non-missing data, we aggregate the data at 5-year intervals. For example, the dependent variable at year 1970 takes on the average of values between 1970 and 1974, the year 1975 takes on the average values between 1975 and 1979, and so on. The years between 2010 and 2012 are averaged together for the values representing year 2010.⁶ This is true of all independent variables as well.

Independent variables

We use several variables as measures of national-level socioeconomic, political, and demographic contexts.⁷

The first set of independent variables captures countries’ linkages to global norms pertaining to women’s rights. We use the logged number of memberships in women-focused international non-governmental organizations (WINGOs) to measure a country’s embeddedness in a world culture that promotes and advances the status of women. Berkovitch (1999) first compiled memberships in WINGOs by country from 1875 to 1985 from the Yearbook of International Organizations (Union of International Associations, various years). Recently, Hughes et al. (2017, 2018) expand this list to include data through 2008 while further updating the list of WINGOs by searching for terms specific to women’s INGOs from print and online editions of the Yearbook. We use their measure and log it to allow for percentage-level interpretations of the coefficients. We also test this relationship using just INGOs (not women-specific) and find the results to be non-significant.

To measure how embedded a given country is in the international women’s movement, we include a dichotomous indicator that identifies whether a country ratified CEDAW. Adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly (during the Decade for Women) and in force since 1981, the ratification process is ongoing, with countries signing and ratifying the Convention in different years. The data come from the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (2016).

Pipeline effects are measured by the percentage of women holding tertiary degrees for a given country. Measured as an average percentage over a 5-year interval, the data come from the UNESCO UIS (2014). We use the lagged dependent variable as a control for historic norms regarding women faculty. It is plausible that women’s current representation as faculty is influenced by the historic momentum of past levels. As noted earlier, women faculty serve as mentors and role models for women who may become faculty in the future (Bettinger and Long, 2005). These lags are treated as control factors in our multivariate models.⁸

To measure a country’s economic development, we use its logged gross national income (GNI) per capita from the World Development Indicators (2014). While gross domestic product (GDP) is the most commonly used measure of development in global studies (Schofer and Meyer, 2005), GNI takes cross-national remittances into account. In many low-income countries, these remittances can amount to a substantial percentage of the overall wealth of a country. Thus, we argue that GNI is a closer approximation of family incomes as it combines GDP with foreign incomes, which can make a considerable difference in household spending on, among other goods, education. Data for women’s labor force participation come from the International Labor Organization’s (2014) ILOSTAT Database. This measure is defined as a country’s share of women in employment as a percentage of men and women combined.

A country’s youth dependency ratio is used to account for its level of caregiving burdens. The national youth dependency ratio is defined as the number of youth (under 15 years) per 100 working-age persons (between 15 and 65 years old). Averaged over 5-year intervals, the data come from the World Bank (2014).⁹ We use a measure of a country’s level of democracy from the Polity IV Project dataset (Marshall and Jaggers, 2012), which assigns countries a democracy score ranging from −10 to 10; a positive 10 represents a highly democratic country, while a negative 10 represents a highly autocratic country. The Inter-Parliamentary Union (2014) is the source for longitudinal data for percentages of women-held seats in national parliaments. We provide summary statistics of the variables included in this study in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics of variables used in the analysis of percentages of women faculty.

Variable name	Mean	Standard deviation	Minimum	Maximum
Percent women faculty	29.3	12.8	0	69
WINGO memberships (logged)	3.2	1.0	−1.6	5.3
Country ratified CEDAW	0.6	0.5	0	1
Percent tertiary degrees women	47.1	13.2	3.9	73.9
Percent labor force women	36.4	10.9	5	54.8
GNI per capita (logged)	1.3	1.6	−2.7	4.6
Dependency ratio	63.3	18.3	17.0	109.5
Polity IV democracy score	3.1	7.4	−10	10
Percent parliament women	12.6	10.5	0	51

Sources: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Yearbook of International Organizations, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, World Development Indicators, International Labour Organization ILOSTAT Database, Polity IV Project, and Inter-Parliamentary Union.

WINGOs: women’s international non-governmental organizations; CEDAW: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; GNI: gross national income.

Country sample N = 92; observations = 706.

Methods

We employ panel models with country fixed effects in order to account for unobserved heterogeneity at the country level over time. In analyzing these panel data, fixed effects allow for countries to serve as their own control over time, so any potentially omitted time-invariant variables are assumed to exert the same effect on the country over time. This estimation strategy produces coefficient estimates net of potentially confounding factors attributed to between-country differences. A Hausman test indicates that a fixed effects model is preferred over a random effects model (chi-square = 46.8, probability chi-square > 0.00), although both models provide similar results. All models use 5-year intervals between 1970 and 2012, with the year 2010 being the average of years between 2010 and 2012. The model takes the general form

Y_{it} = β_{0} + β_{1} {(X)}_{it} + β_{2} {(Country)}_{i} + ε_{it}

where i is an index for countries; t is an index for years; Y is the percentage of women faculty; X is a vector of time-varying predictors, that is, WINGO memberships, CEDAW ratification, women’s share of higher education graduates, women’s share of the labor force, GNI per capita, dependency ratio, democracy, and women in national parliaments; Country is a vector of country fixed effects, which accounts for all time-invariant characteristics of countries over time; and ε is the error term.

One issue in these analyses is the potential for endogeneity between our outcome, women as a percentage of faculty in a country, and a key indicator, the percentage of women with a tertiary degree. One solution is to include an instrumental variable; however, an appropriate instrument is not available. In the absence of a valid instrument, scholars often use a difference generalized method-of-moments (GMM) technique. In a difference GMM, country-specific factors are controlled for while all feasible lags of the dependent variable are used as an instrument to account for observed factors’ correlation with the error term. We ran several difference GMM models that satisfied the tests regarding autocorrelated error terms (Arellano-Bond test) and instrument validity (Sargan test). However, findings from the difference GMM models yielded results similar to findings from the country fixed effects models that included a lagged dependent variable. Therefore, we use the latter in our analyses.

It is important to note that this study does not demonstrate causal inference in explaining the growth of women faculty cross-nationally. It should also be noted that we ran several alternative models that included lagged independent variables for women’s share of higher education graduates, women’s share of the labor force, GNI per capita, dependency ratio, and democracy. Across all specifications that included lagged independent variables, we observed no significant results. Despite limitations on causal inferences, this study offers both an unprecedented, exploratory analysis of national- and global-level factors that may explain changes over time. We begin the empirical analysis by describing trends of women in faculty positions by world regions and for the world as a whole.

Findings

Descriptive analysis

We present percentages of faculty positions by gender and world regions in Figure 1. Five-year averages between 1970 and 2012 show that the percentage of women in faculty positions around the world more than doubled, growing from less than 18 percent in 1970 to nearly 38 percent by 2012. Compare this with the growth in women’s share of higher education enrollments, which started at around 30 percent for all countries, and was around 55 percent by the end of our time period of study (an increase of 83 percent). The rate of change for women faculty was considerably faster (114%) albeit there was more room for improvement. Furthermore, while gender parity has yet to be reached in faculty ranks, the rise in the number of women in faculty positions exceeds those of most other high-status professions (Charles and Grusky, 2004). In examining the percentage of Fortune 500 chief executive officers (CEOs) who are women, we see a similar upward trajectory since 1995; however, unlike the percentage of women faculty, only a tiny fraction of Fortune 500 CEOs are women (6.4% in 2017) (Zarya, 2017). Descriptively, the share of women holding political positions has risen in many countries since the mid-1980s. However, these gains are not consistent, and some countries experienced little improvement or even retrenchment. The global average of women’s legislative representation stands at below 18 percent (Fallon et al., 2012).

Figure 1.

Percentages of women faculty, world and regional averages, 1970–2012.

These remarkable changes in women in faculty positions are evidenced across diverse regions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), women nearly doubled their percentage of faculty positions by the end of the time period, increasing from one-quarter of faculty to 49 percent. These trends are corroborative of studies showing that faculty in Latin American countries, such as Argentina and Costa Rica, are distributed fairly evenly across gender, albeit the highest positions of the faculty hierarchy are occupied mostly by men (Lamarra et al., 2011) and many aspects of these societies remain traditional (Twombly, 1998).

The findings for CEE are somewhat expected in that women outnumbered men in tertiary enrollments in the former Communist countries of CEE during this time period. It is important to note, however, that these countries experienced drastic reductions in public funding in their transitions to market economies, leading to overall declines in the quality of research and teaching across the higher education sector (Silova and Magno, 2004). As these institutions struggled to adapt through their transition years, many countries in the region suffered from unequal institutional structures comprised of a few large, historic universities on one end and a plethora of small, specialized institutions without the resources to compete with elite universities on the other (World Bank, 2002). The growth of the percentage of women faculty in this region is encouraging, but comes at a time of continuous dwindling public resources and a declining quality of higher education.

Women faculty in Arab states experienced the most dramatic gains, rising from 14 percent in 1970 to 32.5 percent in 2012 – an increase of over 125 percent. Such growth mirrors the uptick in women’s participation in higher education. Yet, women find it challenging to land good jobs, let alone leadership positions, in colleges and universities (Lindsey, 2012) as higher education remains a largely patriarchal institution (Mazawi, 1999).

By contrast, the world’s lowest percentages of women faculty are found in the Sub-Saharan African and South and West Asian regions. The scarcity of resources in these regions means that relatively few students pursue higher education as a whole; among them, women are less likely to gain access (UNESCO, 2012). Nonetheless, women made significant inroads into faculty positions. With women making just 13 percent of faculty positions in Sub-Saharan Africa in 1970, that number increased to 21 percent in 2012 – an increase of over 61 percent. For South and West Asia, the increase was 113 percent (from 13% to 27%). These advances are astonishing given that deeply entrenched societal barriers discourage women from considering careers as academic leaders in many countries in these regions (Morley and Crossouard, 2016). However, because of missing data, our sample does not include two-thirds of countries from Sub-Saharan Africa. As such, we may be overestimating the percentages of women faculty in Africa because those countries that have the time and resources to collect higher education data are more likely to experience greater growth in women’s participation in it.

Finally, averages for East Asia and the Pacific as well as North America and Western Europe generally mirror those for the world. After the late 1980s and up to 2012, percentages of women faculty in these regions were slightly above world averages at each interval. In the case of East Asia, the percentage of women faculty increased from around 19 percent in 1970 to over 43 percent in 2012. Declining marriage and birth rates coupled with institutional support and quotas have enabled more women to become faculty members in this region (Fujita, 2006; Kim et al., 2010). In the case of North America and Western Europe, the percentage of women faculty increased from just under 16 percent to over 41 percent. Some of these improvements may be explained by commitments that promote the mainstreaming of gender equality in the European Union (Rees, 2007) and reform efforts led by elite institutions in the United States (Sagaria, 2007).

In sum, women have made substantial advances into faculty positions over the past four decades. While differences by region exist and parity has yet to be reached, the overall gains made by women are undeniable.

Multivariate analysis of percentages of women faculty

In Table 2, we present the results of country fixed effect models predicting the percentage of women faculty in a given country between 1970 and 2012. Model 1 consists of all binary associations for independent variables and percentages of women faculty. Model 2 includes all independent factors simultaneously. Model 3 presents the results from dynamic regression estimates, which includes a 10-year lag of the dependent variable. Finally, Models 4 and 5 test the interaction of global influences and economic characteristics. Both interaction models include the lagged dependent variable. While the total number of observations in the non-lagged models is N = 706 for 92 countries, the inclusion of the 10-year lag reduces our sample to N = 532 for 84 countries as some countries only have two periods of observations.

Table 2.

Fixed effects estimates of percentages of women faculty, 1970–2012.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5
	Binary	Full Model	Full Model + Lag	Full Model + Lag + Interaction	Full Model + Lag + Interaction
WINGO memberships (logged)	8.49*** (0.36)	2.84*** (0.52)	2.05*** (0.53)	1.52** (0.57)	1.71** (0.54)
CEDAW ratified	11.90*** (0.57)	2.00** (0.75)	0.59 (0.65)	−3.68 (1.90)	0.41 (0.65)
Percent tertiary degrees women	0.67*** (0.03)	0.27*** (0.03)	0.15*** (0.04)	0.14*** (0.04)	0.18*** (0.04)
Percent labor force women	0.74*** (0.06)	0.06 (0.05)	0.11 (0.07)	0.11 (0.07)	0.11 (0.07)
GNI per capita (logged)	4.75*** (0.35)	0.62 (0.32)	0.31 (0.35)	0.15 (0.35)	2.24** (0.79)
Dependency ratio	−0.53*** (0.03)	−0.13*** (0.03)	−0.08* (0.03)	−0.10** (0.03)	−0.05 (0.03)
Polity IV democracy score	0.84*** (0.08)	0.08 (0.06)	0.02 (0.06)	−0.00 (0.06)	0.05 (0.06)
Percent parliament women	0.54*** (0.04)	0.13*** (0.04)	0.06 (0.04)	0.04 (0.04)	0.05 (0.04)
10-year lag: women faculty			0.47*** (0.04)	0.46*** (0.04)	0.45*** (0.04)
Interaction: WINGOs × CEDAW ratification				1.35* (0.57)
Interaction: Logged GNI × Dependency ratio					−0.03** (0.01)
Constant		9.38** (3.63)	3.49 (3.88)	7.65 (4.24)	1.71 (3.91)
Observations	706	706	532	532	532
R-squared		0.63	0.71	0.71	0.71
Number of countries	92	92	84	84	84

WINGOs: women’s international non-governmental organizations; CEDAW: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; GNI: gross national income.

***

p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.

We hypothesize that greater levels of linkages to global models of women’s rights, through counts of WINGO memberships, are positively associated with percentages of women faculty. The binary results in Model 1 show that each percentage point increase in the number of memberships in WINGOs in a country is associated with an 8.49 percentage point increase in women faculty. However, the magnitude of the WINGO effect is substantially lower in multivariate models. In Model 2, the coefficient for logged WINGO memberships is 2.84 and is even lower in dynamic Model 3 (coeff = 2.05). Even so, the findings consistently show that memberships in WINGOs are positively related to the percentage of women faculty in a country, supporting Hypothesis 1 regarding the effect of embeddedness in world society. In particular, this embeddedness is in a world culture that specifically promotes and advances the status of women rather than in world society more generally, as results for memberships in all INGOs were non-significant.

Another measure of linkages to global models of women’s rights, a dichotomous variable that captures whether a country has ratified CEDAW in a given year, is positively associated with women faculty in both the binary (1) and full (2) models. The binary association between CEDAW ratification and the percentage of women faculty is 11.9, which indicates that countries that ratify CEDAW have an 11.9 percentage point greater representation of women faculty compared to countries that do not ratify CEDAW. In Model 2, which includes all other factors, the coefficient for CEDAW ratification is substantially attenuated at 2.00. In the model specification that includes the lagged dependent variable (3), the magnitude for years since CEDAW ratification is further reduced to 0.59 and is non-significant. Generally, the findings support Hypothesis 2 – a country that signals its commitment to international women’s rights through the ratification of CEDAW has a higher percentage of women faculty.

An important theme in this article is to assess the impact of global influences on percentages of women faculty, net of national economic, political, and social characteristics. Thus, in Model 4, we run a dynamic regression with an interaction between logged memberships in WINGOs and whether a country has ratified CEDAW. In comparison to Model 3, the interaction does not significantly mediate other national coefficient estimates. However, we observe that the main effect for memberships in WINGOs is positive and significant (coeff = 1.52), whereas the main effect for CEDAW ratification is not significant. The interaction for memberships in WINGOs and CEDAW is significant with a coefficient of 1.35. These results indicate that the confluence of WINGO connectivity and CEDAW ratification is associated with higher levels of women faculty. Each percentage point increase of memberships in WINGOs, in the absence of CEDAW ratification, is associated with a 1.52 percentage point increase in women faculty. However, that effect is nearly doubled in countries that have ratified CEDAW, illustrated by the interaction coefficient of 1.35. These findings support Hypothesis 3 – the effect of WINGO membership on women faculty is conditioned by whether a country has adopted CEDAW.

The percentage of women with a tertiary degree is positively associated with women faculty across Models 1 through 3. In Model 1, the coefficient of the percentage of women with a tertiary education is 0.67. In the full Model 2, the coefficient for women tertiary degrees is 0.27, which indicates that each percentage point increase in women tertiary degree holders is associated with a 0.27 percentage point increase in women faculty. The inclusion of the lagged dependent variable corresponds with a mitigated coefficient for women with tertiary degrees. Model 3 shows that each percentage point increase in women with tertiary degrees is associated with a 0.15 percentage point increase in women faculty. The consistent positive association between women’s tertiary education and women faculty supports Hypothesis 4 – that higher educational attainment is a prerequisite for increases in faculty positions for women.

We also assess whether women’s labor force participation is associated with percentages of women faculty. In Model 1, we observe a positive association (coeff = 0.74). However, we do not observe a significant association between women as a percentage of the labor force and women faculty in multivariate or lagged dependent variable models. Thus, we examine the variation in the data on women’s share of the labor force within countries and find that the between-country standard deviation for women’s labor force participation is 10.1, whereas the within-country standard deviation is 5.4. The non-significance of women’s labor force participation may be partially attributed to the relatively small changes in this variable. The argument in Hypothesis 5 is therefore not supported; rather, we find that women’s labor force participation is not associated with higher percentages of women faculty. The results partially support our hypothesis that national economic development, measured as a country’s logged GNI per capita, is positively associated with percentages of women faculty in the binary model. In Model 1, the logged GNI per capita coefficient (4.75) shows that a 1 percentage point increase in GNI per capita is associated with a 4.75 percentage point increase in women faculty. However, the coefficient for GNI per capita in the multivariate models is non-significant. The relationship with GNI per capita is largely mediated by the inclusion of the dependency ratio in Model 2 and the lagged dependent variable in Model 3. Thus, the results provide little support for Hypothesis 6 – that greater levels of national economic development are positively associated with percentages of women faculty. We discuss one possible explanation for this surprising result shortly.

We also test the relationship between a country’s percentages of women faculty and its level of domestic caregiving. We consistently observe negative coefficients across all models. Whereas the coefficient in Model 1 is −0.53, multivariate results are relatively small as each additional dependent (under 15 years) per woman is associated with a 0.13 lower percentage of women faculty, as seen in Model 2. In Model 3, which includes the 10-year lagged dependent variable, each additional dependent is associated with a 0.08 percentage point decrease of women faculty. These results provide partial support for the argument that a higher need for domestic caregiving is negatively associated with percentages of women faculty (Hypothesis 7).

The mediation of the GNI coefficient, upon inclusion of the dependency ratio, indicates that economic impacts on women faculty are also conditional on women’s domestic burdens. We also note that GNI per capita is strongly and negatively correlated with the dependency ratio (r = −0.66). Given the surprising non-significance of GNI per capita, we ran an additional analysis (Model 5) that tests the interaction of GNI per capita and the dependency ratio. We observe a significant and positive main effect for GNI per capita (coeff = 2.24) whereas the main effect for the dependency ratio is not significant. The interaction term for GNI and the dependency ratio is negative and significant (coeff = −0.03). Thus, there is evidence that the economic effect on percentages of women faculty is conditional on a country’s level of fertility and what we consider women’s domestic obligations. In other words, higher ratio of dependents to working age women reduces the positive effect of economic wealth on the representation of women faculty. We observe that national economic development is positively associated with percentages of women faculty when the ratio of youth dependents to women is low. As the dependency ratio is increasingly skewed, the effect of national wealth is further mitigated. These results support Hypothesis 8: the wealth effect is moderated by the number of dependents per woman.

Democratization is only significantly and positively related to percentages of women faculty in Model 1; it is not significant in the lagged and non-lagged multivariate models. Hypothesis 9 is not supported. We also hypothesized that higher levels of representation by women in national parliaments is positively associated with percentages of women faculty. We observe positive associations in the binary model (coeff = 0.54) and a small but significant association between women parliamentary representation and women faculty (coeff = 0.13) in Model 2. However, the inclusion of the lagged dependent variable in Model 3 mediates the coefficient for women in parliament. Overall, these findings show limited support for Hypothesis 10. Women’s parliamentary representation is a significant factor for increases in women’s faculty percentages except in dynamic models.

Figure 2 presents the predicted levels of women faculty (based on Model 4 estimates) by four categories of CEDAW ratification and WINGO memberships. We define low and high levels of WINGO memberships based on the global mean of WINGO memberships for each time period. We note that since 1979, nearly all countries in our sample ratified CEDAW by 2010. Countries that ratified CEDAW generally have higher predicted percentages of women faculty. However, one notable exception is the case of countries that did not ratify CEDAW but have relatively high levels of memberships in WINGOs. In that case, by 2010, those countries on average have the highest predicted percentages of women faculty. At the same time, among countries that did ratify CEDAW, countries with higher numbers of memberships in WINGOs tend to have higher predicted percentages of women faculty over time compared to those with low numbers of WINGO memberships.

Figure 2.

Predicted levels of percentages of women faculty by four categories of CEDAW ratification and WINGO memberships. Relative levels of WINGO memberships are based on whether membership levels for a given country-year observation are below (low) or at or above (high) the global mean levels of WINGO memberships in a given year.

Overall, the results indicate that global linkages, the higher education pipeline, and national contexts significantly contribute to explaining the rise in women faculty around the world. We acknowledge that economic factors are more conditionally related to percentages of women faculty as the number of dependents, which typically are within women’s sphere of responsibility, moderates the national wealth effect. Although this study cannot directly distinguish which factor has the strongest impact in our models, the effects of women higher education graduates and WINGO linkages constitute the strongest significant effects throughout the models, including when controlling for other factors. While the pipeline may be leaking, it is not so leaky that women are not earning degrees necessary to enter academic ranks. This is especially so where connections to the global women’s rights movement are strongest and for women in better-resourced countries with fewer dependents.

Discussion

At the onset, we problematized a paradoxical phenomenon concerning women in higher education: despite the surge in women’s enrollments in higher education over the last several decades, women continue to be unequally represented in faculty careers around the world. While they comprise a disproportionately high percentage of consumers of higher education, they remain underrepresented as the creators of new knowledge and innovations. Our findings reveal that women represent less than half of faculty positions in higher education institutions worldwide. But at a worldwide average of 38 percent in 2012, women’s advance into faculty positions is nothing short of remarkable. Few other professions of similar status experienced similar growth over time and so widely across all world regions. With better data, future research could examine the relationship between prestige of institutions, hiring practices, competition, and funding sources among other institutional characteristics and organizational practices (Kanter, 1977; Kulis, 1997; May et al., 2010).

In support of our main argument, we find that women’s representation in faculty positions increases significantly in countries that are more strongly connected to an international system that normatively supports gender equality. Both memberships in WINGOs and ratifications of women’s treaties like CEDAW play critical roles in compelling national governments to act on their commitments to gender equality (Bernard, 1987; Cole, 2013; Paxton et al., 2006). Despite countries exhibiting varying degrees of gender equality throughout their histories and up to the present (Dorius and Firebaugh, 2010), the data support the notion that countries more stronger linkages to global norms of women’s rights increasingly promote the advancement of women in higher education.

The significant interaction between memberships in WINGOs and CEDAW ratification suggests that over time, the concurrence of CEDAW ratifications and increasing numbers of memberships in WINGOs corresponds with higher percentages of women faculty. This finding has important implications regarding the ways in which global discourse shapes women’s occupational contexts. States may signal their adherence to gender equality through ratification of global policy proscriptions such as CEDAW (Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008b). However, as CEDAW ratification has become increasingly normative at the global level, a country’s adoption may also indicate that it signals adherence to gender equality without a sincere engagement in some cases. What may be required for action on CEDAW is an active civil society that holds governments accountable to their commitments for women (Van der Vleuten, 2005). The findings also suggest that the influence of WINGOs increases over time, reflecting an increasing effectiveness of WINGO messaging and initiatives. The findings suggest that both explanations are plausible, particularly given that countries that do not ratify CEDAW and have low levels of WINGOs consistently have the lowest percentages of women faculty. However, in the most recent years, memberships in WINGOs have the strongest positive association with percentages of women faculty whereas the impact of CEDAW ratification has waned over time. In this analysis, we are not able to test the causal chain of CEDAW and WINGO impacts. However, our findings indicate that future research should consider the sequence of global policy and global organizational influences.

The growth of women students in higher education exerts the strongest and most stable effect on the advancement of women faculty. As discussed, there are several mechanisms through which the growing percentages of women in higher education should lead to greater numbers of women faculty (Glazer-Raymo, 1999; White, 2004). Foremost, graduating from higher education (if not also graduate education) is a prerequisite for obtaining an academic position. Thus, it is not surprising to find a significant and strong relationship between growth in women’s higher education completion and increases in percentages of women faculty over time.

Both of these findings support a world society theory explanation for the incorporation of women into higher education – first as students and increasingly as faculty. Now that gender equality has emerged as a global model of progress and justice, more gender equitable policies and practices diffuse into further aspects of social life (Meyer et al., 1997; Nakagawa and Wotipka, 2016; Suárez et al., 2009; Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008a). As actors linked to global models, nation-states experience such changes regardless of national characteristics that differentiate them from others. Despite economic, political, and cultural differences, countries are trending in the direction of gender equality. Our findings suggest that types of linkages to world society matter for the case of growth of women faculty: the results for memberships in INGOs are non-significant, but memberships in women’s INGOs are significant. Future studies could explore how these women’s organizations support diversity-affirming organizational structures and environments that lead to greater percentages of women faculty (Wotipka et al., 2018).

And yet, some forms of development still matter. We find that growth in national economic development, as measured by logged GNI per capita, is positively associated with more women faculty when women have, on average, fewer dependents. While GNI per capita does not independently correspond with percentages of women faculty, the significant interaction between GNI and the dependency ratio is indicative of the unique challenges women face. Caring for young children often occurs at a stage when faculty members are at their careers’ busiest. Thus, even when economic contexts are seemingly favorable for women’s continued growth in academia, structural changes can be offset by domestic obligations, particularly when those responsibilities are not shared between partners. As research repeatedly shows, women in all economic contexts disproportionately perform domestic tasks (Greenstein, 2009). The balance between national economic growth and women’s access to the benefits this growth confers is an important issue to be addressed in the women’s rights sphere.

The negative association between the dependency ratio and percentages of women faculty, as well as the dependency ratio’s moderating effect on GNI, highlights the importance of women’s expected roles as domestic caregiver. We acknowledge that higher education institutions are paying increasing attention to the needs of parents (Ward and Wolf-Wendel, 2012), and countries that address the provision of childcare find benefits in terms of reduced occupational segregation by gender (Smyth and Steinmetz, 2008). Even so, middle-class women face increasing pressures to cultivate all aspects of their children’s lives (Ferree, 2010), which further exacerbates time constraints. This, coupled with competition among countries to establish world-class universities (Altbach and Balán, 2007) by raising expectations for excellence among their faculty, only makes caregiving responsibilities all the more challenging. Despite an abundance of literature suggesting that those who are commonly tasked with such demands, namely women, are turning away from faculty careers because of perceived or known amounts of time required for successful academic careers, women are still finding their way into faculty positions.

Interestingly, women’s representation in the labor market is not associated with increases in women faculty. With the rapid expansion of women in the paid labor force in countries globally over the last several decades, women now permeate a diverse range of employment sectors, including those previously excluded to women (Charles, 2011). As this ‘institutional demystification’ (Weiss et al., 1976) process occurs, women are able to gain entry into new positions, including faculty positions within higher education institutions. The fact that elite professional and managerial positions are less gender-typed than they were 40 years ago (Charles and Grusky, 2004) may explain the non-significance of the measure of women’s participation in the labor force. Future studies could use more refined measures related to the labor force, such as a country’s economic protections for women (Moorhouse, 2017).

Democratic rights are deemed critical for improving the status of women in the public realm, in that such rights provide the necessary tools for women to participate on equal footing with men in the political realm (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), 2000). However, we do not find that countries with higher levels of democratic governance or representation of women in parliament also have higher percentages of women in faculty positions when controlling for other factors. The influence of women in power may be limited within states whose ideology and institutions are still largely male-dominated (Connell, 1987; Stromquist, 1995). Future analyses could examine more nuanced effects of democratization processes (Fallon et al., 2012).

Concluding remarks

While the worldwide growth of women students in higher education receives ample attention, existing studies have not adequately theorized the global and historical trends of women as educators of higher education. Although the pipeline argument serves as a popular narrative, women’s access to higher education is only part of the story: our analyses indicate that percentages of women faculty are shaped by the intersection of norms, national circumstances, and human capital. Unpacking the ways in which gender norms impact women’s faculty representation can fill theoretical gaps in pipeline and socioeconomic perspectives. The significance of norm diffusion in our findings further highlights the multidimensionality of women’s faculty percentages in particular and gender equal outcomes in general. In short, we suggest that the configurations of normative and socioeconomic change constitute the context in which women navigate higher education environments.

Access alone also does not lead to equal experiences or status attainment (David, 2016). In addition to broader trends, future studies should examine more detailed trends of rank, salary, and field of study, among other crucial characteristics that encompass the full experience of faculty in higher education, such as race, ethnicity, and social class, among others (Goastellec et al., 2013). While women made substantial gains over the last four decades, intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender remain highly relevant in terms of women’s experiences as faculty members (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 2012; Mabokela and Mawila, 2004) and as campus leaders (Turner, 2007). Understanding how women’s presence in faculty positions may change the nature of the profession and higher education more generally could be useful for helping to open the doors for even more women.

We suspect that women’s increasing participation in higher education as students will remain a strong predictor of women’s growing representation within faculty positions. At the same time, other critical factors – social, professional-organizational, as well as institutional factors (Bain and Cummings, 2000) – must be addressed in order for substantial social change to occur for women within academia. Future research should include characteristics of higher education systems to determine their influence on the status of women in academia at different points along the pipeline. While the inroads made by women in faculty positions is nothing short of remarkable, it will take some time before equality is achieved.

Footnotes

Appendix 1 Acknowledgements

For their helpful feedback, we wish to thank Francisco O. Ramirez, John W. Meyer, Woody Powell, Eric Bettinger, Shelley Correll, Evan Schofer, Anthony Lising Antonio, Miriam Abu Sharkh, Daniel Scott Smith, members of the Stanford Comparative Workshop and the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, and IJCS editor, David A. Smith, and the anonymous reviewers. We appreciate the research and editorial assistance provided by Jared Furuta, Nadine Ann Skinner, and Xiaoyu Feng. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 9th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education (and Research), Paris, September 2016.

Funding

Financial support for this project came from the Institute of Education Sciences and the Clayman Institute for Gender Research.

Notes

References

Acker

Armenti

(2004) Sleepless in academia. Gender and Education 16(1): 3–24.

Agathangelou

Ling

LHM

(2002) An unten(ur)able position: The politics of teaching for women of color in the US. International Feminist Journal of Politics 4(3): 368–398.

Altbach

(1996) The International Academic Profession. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Altbach

(2000) The Changing Academic Workplace: Comparative Perspectives. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College Center for International Higher Education.

Altbach

Balán

(eds) (2007) World Class Worldwide: Transforming Research Universities in Asia and Latin America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Altbach

Androushchak

Pacheco

et al . (2012) Paying the Professoriate: A Global Comparison of Compensation and Contracts. New York: Routledge.

Altbach

Reisberg

Rumbley

(2009) Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution – A Report Prepared for the UNESCO 2009 World Conference on Higher Education. Paris: UNESCO.

Apodaca

(1998) Measuring women’s economic and social rights achievement. Human Rights Quarterly 20(1): 139–172.

Arat

(2001) Women’s rights as human rights: The Turkish case. Human Rights Review 3(1): 27–34.

10.

Bain

Cummings

(2000) Academe’s glass ceiling: Societal, professional-organizational, and institutional barriers to the career advancement of academic women. Comparative Education Review 44(4): 493–514.

11.

Beck

Drori

Meyer

(2012) World influences on human rights language in constitutions: A cross-national study. International Sociology 27(4): 483–501.

12.

Berkovitch

(1999) From Motherhood to Citizenship: Women’s Rights and International Organizations. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

13.

Bernard

(1987) The Female World from a Global Perspective. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

14.

Bettinger

Long

(2005) Do faculty serve as role models? The impact of instructor gender on female students. American Economic Review 95(2): 152–157.

15.

Bleijenbergh

Roggeband

(2007) Equality machineries matter: The impact of women’s political pressure on European social-care policies. Social Politics 14(4): 437–459.

16.

Blickenstaff

(2005) Women and science careers: Leaky pipeline or gender filter? Gender and Education 17(4): 369–386.

17.

Boli

Thomas

(1997) World culture in the world polity: A century of international non-governmental organization. American Sociological Review 62(2): 171–190.

18.

Boli

Thomas

(eds) (1999) Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations since 1875. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

19.

Boli

Ramirez

Meyer

(1985) Explaining the origins and expansion of mass education. Comparative Education Review 29(2): 145–170.

20.

Bongaarts

Potter

(2013) Fertility, Biology, and Behavior: An Analysis of the Proximate Determinants. New York: Academic Press.

21.

Boxer

(1998) When Women Ask the Questions: Creating Women’s Studies in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

22.

Bozeman

Gaughan

(2011) Job satisfaction among university faculty: Individual, work, and institutional determinants. The Journal of Higher Education 82(2): 154–186.

23.

Bradley

(2000) The incorporation of women into higher education: Paradoxical outcomes? Sociology of Education 73(1): 1–18.

24.

Bradley

Charles

(2004) Uneven inroads: Understanding women’s status in higher education. Research in Sociology of Education 14: 247–274.

25.

Bradley

Ramirez

(1996) World polity and gender parity: Women’s share of higher education, 1965–1985. Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization 11(1): 63–91.

26.

Buchmann

DiPrete

(2006) The growing female advantage in college completion: The role of family background and academic achievement. American Sociological Review 71(4): 515–541.

27.

Bunch

(1990) Women’s rights as human rights: Toward a re-vision of human rights. Human Rights Quarterly 12(4): 486–498.

28.

Cassidy

Jackson

Faucher

(2016) Gender differences and cyberbullying towards faculty members in higher education. In: Navarro

Yubero

Larrañaga

(eds) Cyberbullying across the Globe. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 79–98.

29.

Castleman

Allen

(1998) The ‘pipeline fallacy’ and gender inequality in higher education employment. Policy, Organisation and Society 15(1): 23–44.

30.

Chang

Song

(2010) The stranded individualizer under compressed modernity: South Korean women in individualization without individualism. The British Journal of Sociology 61(3): 539–564.

31.

Chang

(2004) Growing pains: Cross-national variation in sex segregation in sixteen developing countries. American Sociological Review 69(1): 114–137.

32.

Charles

(2011) A world of difference: International trends in women’s economic status. Annual Review of Sociology 37: 355–371.

33.

Charles

Bradley

(2002) Equal but separate? A cross-national study of sex segregation in higher education. American Sociological Review 67(4): 573–599.

34.

Charles

Grusky

(2004) Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

35.

Chattopadhyay

Duflo

(2004) Women as policy makers: Evidence from a randomized policy experiment in India. Econometrica 72(5): 1409–1443.

36.

Chowdhury

Carver

Johnson

et al . (1994) Redefining politics: Patterns of women’s political engagement from a global perspective. In: Nelson

Chowdhury

(eds) Women and Politics Worldwide. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp. 3–24.

37.

Clark

Corcoran

(1986) Perspectives on the professional socialization of women faculty: A case of accumulative disadvantage? The Journal of Higher Education 57(1): 20–43.

38.

Cleland

Wilson

(1987) Demand theories of the fertility transition: An iconoclastic view. Population Studies 41(1): 5–30.

39.

Clots-Figueras

(2011) Women in politics: Evidence from the Indian states. Journal of Public Economics 95(7–8): 664–690.

40.

Cole

(2013) Government respect for gendered rights: The effect of the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women on women’s rights outcomes, 1981–2004. International Studies Quarterly 57(2): 233–249.

41.

Collins

(1971) A conflict theory of sexual stratification. Social Problems 19(1): 3–21.

42.

Connell

(1987) Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

43.

Currie

Thiele

Harris

(2002) Gendered Universities in Globalized Economies: Power, Careers, and Sacrifices. Oxford: Lexington Books.

44.

Dasgupta

Stout

(2014) Girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics: STEMing the tide and broadening participation in STEM careers. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1(1): 21–29.

45.

David

(2004) Feminist sociology and feminist knowledges: Contributions to higher education pedagogies and professional practices in the knowledge economy. International Studies in Sociology of Education 14(2): 99–123.

46.

David

(2016) Gender equality and inequality in global higher education: Changing the rules of the game? In: Côté

Furlong

(eds) Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Higher Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 338–355.

47.

Dorius

Firebaugh

(2010) Trends in global gender inequality. Social Forces 88(5): 1941–1968.

48.

Doyle

Hind

(1998) Occupational stress, burnout and job status in female academics. Gender, Work and Organization 5(2): 67–82.

49.

Dyson

(2013) Population and Development: The Demographic Transition. London: Zed Books.

50.

European Commission (2016) She Figures 2015. Brussels: European Commission.

51.

Fallon

Swiss

Viterna

(2012) Resolving the democracy paradox: Democratization and women’s legislative representation in developing nations, 1975 to 2009. American Sociological Review 77(3): 380–408.

52.

Ferree

(2010) Filling the glass: Gender perspectives on families. Journal of Marriage and Family 72(3): 420–439.

53.

Finnemore

(1993) International organizations as teachers of norms: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and science policy. International Organization 47(4): 565–597.

54.

Friedman

(2003) Gendering the agenda: The impact of the transnational women’s rights movement at the UN conferences of the 1990s. Women’s Studies International Forum 26(4): 313–331.

55.

Fujita

(2006) The status of women faculty: A view from Japan. Journal of Women’s History 18(1): 177–180.

56.

Gaskell

Eichler

Pan

et al . (2004) The participation of women faculty in Chinese universities: Paradoxes of globalization. Gender and Education 16(4): 511–529.

57.

Ginther

Kahn

(2009) Does Science Promote Women? Evidence from Academia 1973–2001 (No. w12691). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

58.

Glazer-Raymo

(1999) Shattering the Myths: Women in Academe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

59.

Goastellec

Ates

Park

et al . (2013) Academic markets, academic careers: Where do we stand? In: Kehm

Teichler

(eds) The Academic Profession in Europe: New Tasks and New Challenges. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 93–120.

60.

Gray

Kittilson

Sandholtz

(2006) Women and globalization: A study of 180 countries, 1975–2000. International Organization 60(2): 1975–2000.

61.

Greenstein

(2009) National context, family satisfaction, and fairness in the division of household labor. Journal of Marriage and Family 71(4): 1039–1051.

62.

Gregory

(2001) Black women faculty in the academy: History, status, and future. The Journal of Negro Education 70(3): 124–138.

63.

Gregory

(2006) The cultural constructs of race, gender and class: A study of how Afro-Caribbean women academics negotiate their careers. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 19(3): 347–366.

64.

Gutiérrez y Muhs

González

Niemann

et al . (2012) Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.

65.

Hall

Sandler

(1982) The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One for Women? Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges.

66.

Hughes

Paxton

Quinsaat

et al . (2017) Women’s International Nongovernmental Organizations, 1950–2013(Computer File). Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (distributor).

67.

Hughes

Paxton

Quinsaat

et al . (2018) Does the global north still dominate women’s international organizing? A network analysis from 1978 to 2008. Mobilization: An International Quarterly 23(1): 1–21.

68.

Inglehart

Norris

Welzel

(2002) Gender equality and democracy. Comparative Sociology 1(3): 321–345.

69.

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2014) ILOSTAT database. Available at: www.ilo.org/ilostat (accessed 2 December 2014).

70.

Inter-Parliamentary Union (2014) Women in national parliaments. Available at: http://www.ipu.org/english/home.htm (accessed 7 December 2014).

71.

Kanter

(1977) Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.

72.

Keck

Sikkink

(1998) Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

73.

Kim

Yoon

McLean

(2010) Policy efforts to increase women faculty in Korea: Reactions and changes at universities. Asia Pacific Education Review 11(3): 285–299.

74.

Kittilson

(2008) Representing women: The adoption of family leave in comparative perspective. The Journal of Politics 70(2): 323–334.

75.

Kulis

(1997) Gender segregation among college and university employees. Sociology of Education 70(2): 151–173.

76.

Lamarra

Marquina

Rebello

(2011) Argentina: Changes in academics’ involvement in governance and management of public universities. In: Locke

Cummings

Fisher

(eds) Changing Governance and Management in Higher Education: The Perspectives of the Academy. New York: Springer Science & Business Media, pp. 19–34.

77.

Lambert

(2008) The comparative political economy of parental leave and child care: Evidence from twenty OECD countries. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 15(3): 315–344.

78.

Lechner

Boli

(2005) World Culture: Origins and Consequences. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

79.

Lindsey

(2012) Arab women make inroads in higher education but often find dead ends. Chronicle of Higher Education 58(22): A12–A14.

80.

Liu

Boyle

(2001) Making the case: The women’s convention and equal employment opportunity in Japan. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 42(4): 389–404.

81.

Luke

(2001) Globalization and Women in Academia: North/west-south/east. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

82.

Mabokela

Mawila

KFN

(2004) The impact of race, gender, and culture in South African higher education. Comparative Education Review 48(4): 396–416.

83.

McDaniel

(2012) Women’s advantage in higher education: Towards understanding a global phenomenon. Sociology Compass 6(7): 581–595.

84.

Maranto

Griffin

AEC

(2010) The antecedents of a ‘chilly climate’ for women faculty in higher education. Human Relations 64(2): 139–159.

85.

Marshall

Dalyot

Galloway

(2014) Sexual harassment in higher education: Re-framing the puzzle of its persistence. Journal of Policy Practice 13(4): 276–299.

86.

Marshall

Jaggers

(2012) Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2012. Vienna, VA: Center for Systemic Peace.

87.

Mason

Goulden

(2004) Marriage and baby blues: Redefining gender equity in the academy. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 596(1): 86–103.

88.

May

Moorhouse

Bossard

(2010) Representation of women faculty at public research universities: Do unions matter? ILR Review 63(4): 699–718.

89.

Mayer

Tikka

(2008) Family friendly policies and gender bias in academia. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 30(4): 363–374.

90.

Mazawi

(1999) Gender and higher education in the Arab states. International Higher Education 17: 18–19.

91.

Meyer

Boli

Ramirez

et al . (1997) World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology 103(1): 144–181.

92.

Meyer

Boli-Bennett

Ramirez

et al . (1977) The world educational revolution, 1950–1970. Sociology of Education 50(4): 242–258.

93.

Meyer

Frank

Ramirez

et al . (2007) Higher education as an institution. In: Gumport

(ed.) Sociology of Higher Education: Contributions and Their Contexts. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 187–221.

94.

Meyer

Ramirez

Soysal

(1992) World expansion of mass education, 1870–1980. Sociology of Education 65(2): 128–149.

95.

Molyneux

Razavi

(2005) Focus Beijing plus ten: An ambivalent record on gender justice. Development and Change 36(6): 983–1010.

96.

Moorhouse

(2017) Sex segregation by field of study and the influence of labor markets: Evidence from 39 countries. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 58(1): 3–32.

97.

Morley

(2007) Gender and U.K. higher education: Post-feminism in a market economy. In: Sagaria

MAD

(ed.) Women, Universities, and Change: Gender Equality in the European Union and the United States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 133–144.

98.

Morley

(2014) Lost leaders: Women in the global academy. Higher Education Research & Development 33(1): 114–128.

99.

Morley

Crossouard

(2016) Women’s leadership in the Asian century: Does expansion mean inclusion? Studies in Higher Education 41(5): 801–814.

100.

Müller

(2007) Between change and resistance: Gender structures and gender cultures in German institutions of higher education. In: Sagaria

MAD

(ed.) Women, Universities, and Change: Gender Equality in the European Union and the United States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 23–41.

101.

Nakagawa

Wotipka

(2016) The worldwide incorporation of women and women’s rights discourse in social science textbooks, 1970–2008. Comparative Education Review 60(3): 501–529.

102.

Park

(1996) Research, teaching, and service: Why shouldn’t women’s work count? The Journal of Higher Education 67(1): 46–84.

103.

Paxton

Green

Hughes

(2006) The international women’s movement and women’s political representation, 1893–2003. American Sociological Review 71(6): 898–920.

104.

Probert

(2005) I just couldn’t fit it in: Gender and unequal outcomes in academic careers. Gender, Work and Organization 12(1): 50–72.

105.

Prügl

Meyer

(1999) Gender politics in global governance. In: Prügl

Meyer

(eds) Gender Politics in Global Governance. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, pp. 3–16.

106.

Raddon

(2002) Mothers in the academy: Positioned and positioning within discourses of the ‘successful academic’ and the ‘good mother’. Studies in Higher Education 27(4): 37–41.

107.

Ramirez

Shanahan

Soysal

(1997) The changing logic of political citizenship: Cross-national acquisition of women’s suffrage rights, 1890 to 1990. American Sociological Review 62(5): 735–745.

108.

Rees

(2001) Mainstreaming gender equality in science in the European Union: The ‘ETAN report’. Gender and Education 13(3): 243–260.

109.

Rees

(2007) Pushing the gender equality agenda forward in the European Union. In: Sagaria

MAD

(ed.) Women, Universities, and Change: Gender Equality in the European Union and the United States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 7–21.

110.

Renzulli

Grant

Kelly

et al . (2013) Pathways to gender inequality in faculty pay: The impact of institution, academic division, and rank. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 34: 58–72.

111.

Rhoads

(2012) A gendered point of view on the challenges of women academics in the People’s Republic of China. Higher Education 63(6): 733–750.

112.

Rice

Wolf-Wendel

Twombly

(2007) Helping or hurting women? The case of dual career couple policy at the University of Kansas. In: Sagaria

MAD

(ed.) Women, Universities, and Change: Gender Equality in the European Union and the United States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 197–214.

113.

Rosser

(2003) Attracting and retaining women in science and engineering. Academe 89(4): 24–28.

114.

Rostow

(1960) The Stages of Economic Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

115.

Sagaria

MAD

(2007) Women, Universities, and Change: Gender Equality in the European Union and the United States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

116.

Sandler

(1993) The campus climate revisited: Chilly climate for women faculty, administrators and graduate students. In: Glazer-Raymo

Townsend

Ropers-Huilman

(eds) Women in Higher Education: A Feminist Perspective. Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press, pp. 175–203.

117.

Sax

(2008) The Gender Gap in College: Maximizing the Developmental Potential of Women and Men. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

118.

Sax

Bryant

Harper

(2005) The differential effects of student-faculty interaction on college outcomes for women and men. Journal of College Student Development 46(6): 642–657.

119.

Schofer

McEneaney

(2003) Methodological strategies and tools for the study of globalization. In: Drori

Meyer

Ramirez

et al . (eds) Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 43–74.

120.

Schofer

Meyer

(2005) The worldwide expansion of higher education in the twentieth century. American Sociological Review 70(6): 898–920.

121.

Silova

Magno

(2004) Gender equity unmasked: Democracy, gender, and education in Central/Southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Comparative Education Review 48(4): 417–442.

122.

Smyth

Steinmetz

(2008) Field of study and gender segregation in European labour markets. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 49(4–5): 257–281.

123.

Sonnert

Adkins

Fox

(2007) Undergraduate women in science and engineering: Effects of faculty, fields, and institutions over time. Social Science Quarterly 88(5): 1333–1356.

124.

Stromquist

(1995) Romancing the state: Gender and power in education. Comparative Education Review 39(4): 423–454.

125.

Stromquist

(1997) Gender sensitive educational strategies and their implementation. International Journal of Educational Development 17(2): 205–214.

126.

Suárez

Koo

Ramirez

(2009) UNESCO and the associated schools project: Symbolic affirmation of world community, international understanding, and human rights. Sociology of Education 82(3): 197–216.

127.

Swank

(2002) Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States. New York: Cambridge University Press.

128.

Teichler

Arimoto

Cummings

(2013) The Changing Academic Profession. Dordrecht: Springer.

129.

Teodorescu

(2000) Correlates of faculty publication productivity: A cross-national analysis. Higher Education 39(2): 201–222.

130.

Thomas

Hollenshead

(2011) Resisting from the margins: The coping strategies of black women and other women of color faculty members at a research university. Journal of Negro Education 70(3): 166–175.

131.

Toutkoushian

Conley

(2005) Progress for women in academe, yet inequities persist: Evidence from NSOPF: 99. Research in Higher Education 46(1): 1–28.

132.

Treiman

Terrell

(1975) Sex and the process of status attainment: A comparison of working women and men. American Sociological Review 40(2): 174–200.

133.

True

Mintrom

(2001) Transnational networks and policy diffusion: The case of gender mainstreaming. International Studies Quarterly 45(1): 27–57.

134.

Turner

CSV

(2007) Pathways to the presidency: Biographical sketches of women of color firsts. Harvard Educational Review 77(1): 1–38.

135.

Turner

CSV

Glazer-Raymo

(2008) Women of color in academe: Experiences of the often invisible. In: Glazer-Raymo

(ed.) Unfinished Agendas: New and Continuing Gender Challenges in Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 230–252.

136.

Twombly

(1998) Women academic leaders in a Latin American university: Reconciling the paradoxes of professional lives. Higher Education 35(4): 367–397.

137.

Umbach

(2007) Gender equity in the academic labor market: An analysis of academic disciplines. Research in Higher Education 48(2): 169–192.

138.

Union of International Associations (Various years) Yearbook of International Organizations. Munich: KG Saur.

139.

United Nations (1995) Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 4-15 September 1995. New York: United Nations.

140.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics (UNESCO UIS) (2012) International Standard Classification of Education: ISCED 2011. Available at: www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/isced-2011-en.pdf (accessed 18 November 2014).

141.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics (UNESCO UIS) (2014) Education [online database]. Available at: http://uis.unesco.org/ (accessed 13 November 2014)

142.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (1998) World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: Vision and Action. Paris: UNESCO.

143.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2009) The new dynamics of higher education and research for societal change and development, communique. 2009 World Conference on Higher Education, UNESCO, Paris, 5–8 July.

144.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2012) World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education. Paris: UNESCO. Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002155/215522E.pdf (accessed 4 August 2017).

145.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2014) Priority Gender Equality Action Plan, 2014–2021. Paris: UNESCO. Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002272/227222e.pdf (accessed 7 August 2017).

146.

United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) (2016) Committee on the elimination of discrimination against women. Available at: http://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/cedaw/pages/cedawindex.aspx (accessed 21 December 2016).

147.

United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) (2000) Gender Justice, Development and Rights: Substantiating Rights in a Disabling Environment. New York. Available at: http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/85DA5FE227613A4A80256B67005DA4F9/$file/gender.pdf (accessed 11 December 2014).

148.

Van Anders

(2004) Why the academic pipeline leaks: Fewer men than women perceive barriers to becoming professors. Sex Roles 51(9/10): 511–521.

149.

Van den Brink

Benschop

(2011) Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence: Sheep with five legs. Organization 19(4): 507–524.

150.

Van der Vleuten

(2005) Pincers and prestige: Explaining the implementation of EU gender equality legislation. Comparative European Politics 3(4): 464–488.

151.

Vaughan

(2010) Girls’ and women’s education within UNESCO and the World Bank, 1945-2000. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 40(4): 405–423.

152.

Ward

Wolf-Wendel

(2012) Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

153.

Weiss

(2003) Interpreting Islam and women’s rights: Implementing CEDAW in Pakistan. International Sociology 18(3): 581–601.

154.

Weiss

Ramirez

Tracy

(1976) Female participation in the occupational system: A comparative institutional analysis. Social Problems 23(5): 593–608.

155.

White

(2004) The leaking pipeline: Women postgraduate and early career researchers in Australia. Tertiary Education and Management 10(3): 227–241.

156.

Williams

Alon

Bornstein

(2006) Beyond the ‘chilly climate’: Eliminating bias against women and fathers in academe. Thought & Action Fall: 79–96.

157.

Wolf-Wendel

Ward

(2006) Academic life and motherhood: Variations by institutional type. Higher Education 52(3): 487–521.

158.

World Bank (2002) Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education. Washington, DC: World Bank.

159.

World Bank (2014) World Development Indicators. Washington, DC: World Bank.

160.

Wotipka

Ramirez

(2008a) Women’s studies as a global innovation. In: Baker

Wiseman

(eds), The Worldwide Transformation of Higher Education. Amsterdam: Elsevier JAI Press, pp. 89–110.

161.

Wotipka

Ramirez

(2008b) World society and human rights: An event history analysis of the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. In: Simmons

Dobbin

Garrett

(eds) The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 303–343.

162.

Wotipka

Rabling

Sugawara

et al . (2017) The worldwide expansion of early childhood care and education, 1985-2010. American Journal of Education 123(2): 307–339.

163.

Wotipka

Smith

Ramirez

(2018) The diversity-affirming organizational structures and environments (DOSE) index. Unpublished Manuscript, Stanford Graduate School of Education, Stanford, CA.

164.

Wright

Assar

Atkinson

et al . (2004) Greedy institutions: The importance of institutional context for teaching in higher education. Teaching Sociology 32(2): 144–159.

165.

Zarya

(2017) The 2017 Fortune 500 includes a record number of women CEOs. Fortune, 7 June. Available at: http://fortune.com/2017/06/07/fortune-women-ceos/

Global linkages,the higher education pipeline,and national contexts: The worldwide growth of women faculty,1970–2012

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Theoretical frameworks and hypotheses

Gender equity as a global model

A leaky pipeline?

Economic development

Gender roles

Political development

Data and methods

Dependent variable

Independent variables

Methods

Findings

Descriptive analysis

Multivariate analysis of percentages of women faculty

Discussion

Concluding remarks

Footnotes

Appendix 1

Acknowledgements

Funding

Notes

References