Abstract
Gender data are presented from a study into sociology PhD completions and student research outputs during enrolment at Australian ‘Group of Eight’ interdisciplinary schools of social science. Findings confirm views and impressions offered by Australian sociology academic leaders. The present data contributes to this wider discussion by describing patterns in the contemporary cohort of sociology PhD students. First, we document a stable gender composition of the discipline in Australia reflective of the literature across several decades rather than a recent feminisation process. Second, we report for this cohort of contemporary PhD sociology completions in Australia women and men publish at similar rates during candidacy. Third, there is no significant gendered difference between students at any level of research output production. Fourth, methodological approaches used by sociology doctoral students confirm the epistemological domination of qualitative analysis in this current cohort of sociology PhD theses.
Keywords
Introduction
The present article about gender differentiation comes from an investigation of academic research outputs during PhD enrolment. Research outputs were defined as refereed journal articles and book chapters within certain quality parameters described below. This examination of Australia’s ‘Group of Eight’ (Go8) elite universities identified 173 sociology PhD completions in the five-year period from 2013 to 2017, yielding 256 published outputs. The findings were based on all sociology completions at these eight universities within the major social science school or departments in which sociology as a discipline is taught. In contrast to studies such as Hatch and Skipper (2016), all completions, not a subset of completions entering academic careers were included. This broader inclusion has advantages for understanding the contribution of sociology at several levels – profession, school, university and government funders. Methodologically speaking, however, it makes collection of data more interesting but more difficult, drawing on publicly available information.
Our research questions were first, and perhaps most obvious, to establish numbers and proportions of men and women sociology PhD completions at the multidisciplinary schools of social science in the second decade of this century. A second question was whether men or women were more research productive during their PhD enrolment? Third, could we observe gender differences in methods used by men and women in their doctoral research?
Scope of the study
This study focused on the elite Australian Go8 universities for several reasons. First, they are the highest ranked universities in Australia, all appearing in the 2017 top 150 world rankings for sociology, 5 in the top 40 (QS Top Universities, 2018). This is mirrored in the latest Australian Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA, 2019) rankings for sociology which places three of these universities at level 5 (well above world standard), four at level 4 (above world standard), and one at level 3 (at world standard). Second, these universities receive the lion’s share of funding available to universities in Australia and dominate knowledge production with more than half of research outputs for Australia (Dobson, 2012: 98). Third, historically these institutions have produced the bulk of the completed PhDs, Dobson reporting that before the Dawkins reforms in 1989 they awarded 69.4% of PhDs in Australia; even with the 1990s expansion of other universities they still dominate at about 50% of all PhDs produced (Dobson, 2012; Larkins, 2019). Fourth, data presented in this article shows high numbers of women PhD completions and women’s proportionate research outputs during their PhD candidacy. Charting gender comparisons is pertinent to: research productivity, the balance of high levels of research effectiveness, career trajectories, workforce participation and academic position. Beyond these primary numbers and percentages are multiple layers of interpreting knowledge production and the future direction of the discipline.
Early productivity and future research career
A major report by Dever et al. (2008) focusing on graduates across all disciplines from Go8 universities, identified two periods – PhD enrolment, and years immediately after PhD completion – as ‘critical points in career trajectories for both males and females’. Publishing of research outputs is central in this career establishment phase, but a number of studies document that women do not see themselves as supported by academic staff generally and particularly in terms of producing research outputs. For instance, Asmar (1999) concluded that females and males were just as likely to publish as sole authors, but females in her sample were less likely to co-author and less likely to report positively on research training opportunities during doctoral enrolment. An American Sociological Association study reported that women experienced less assistance with publishing during candidacy, while highlighting that doctoral publishing dramatically increases chances of obtaining full-time academic employment (ASA, 2004).
Publishing research outputs during candidacy has been reported as a significant predictor of subsequent research productivity (Horta and Santos, 2015; Laurance et al., 2013; Pinheiro et al., 2012). Larkins (2018) brings discussion of gendered participation in the academic workforce to the present. He reviews staff numbers across Australia’s university sector, documenting continuing growth of female participation to 2018, persistent over-representation of females at lower academic levels and under-representation of female academics sector-wide at more senior levels. Significantly, he refers to very active policies of Australian universities recruiting women academics in order to address the gender imbalance. Cuthbert et al. (2019: 15–16), however, observe:
Although a higher level of education lowers or breaks down many barriers for women to enter professions that are/were dominated by men, gender stereotypes do not necessarily cease to exist. Meanwhile, the awareness that women in the search for professional careers should not necessarily shed their household duties is also on the rise. After a woman has survived the on-campus challenges as a female student, she is likely to be faced with bigger dilemmas from the ‘sticky floor and glass ceilings’ in employment situations, from the expectation of marriage, partnering, birth giving, and child raising, and from the moral judgments placed on her balancing the demands of work and home.
Bell and Bentley (2005) recognise this tension between progress in gender equality on one hand and career aspirations and family on the other. They suggest completion of a PhD may function as a ‘tipping point’ for females, pivoting around issues of confidence and competing priorities in making strategic career choices that would allow them to progress in their careers. These points have been elaborated by studies such as those done by van Anders (2004) and Lundy and Warme (1990). In addition to Cuthbert et al.’s phrase ‘sticky floor and glass ceilings’, other explanations for gendered exclusions in academia have included ‘leaking pipe’ (White, 2004), a gendered ‘academic proletariat’ (Park, 1996), and various ‘hurdles’ (Toren and Moore, 1998).
Gender characteristics of Australian sociology
Dobson (2012) provides a tertiary sector context through time. The first Australian PhDs were awarded in 1948, science the early emphasis in postgraduate research, but rapidly burgeoning across all academic disciplines. Fifteen years later, when the Australian Sociological Association was established in 1963, the discipline’s professoriate was almost entirely male. The university sector expansion from the 1960s onwards saw inclusion of students from non-traditional backgrounds by gender and class, with more women students at both undergraduate and graduate levels. This was particularly so for sociology, Harley and Wickham (2014: 31) commenting that from this early period ‘sociology in Australia has attracted considerably more female than male students (well in excess of the percentage of females in the total population of university students)’. According to the graphs and tables presented by Dobson (2012) for all university disciplines, the trend of female participation in PhD study steadily increased across the half-century to over 50% of completions by 2009. Within this trend he noted contrasting women’s PhD participation across disciplines. Science, engineering and business reported lower female participation, while arts, humanities and health showed higher female participation.
There is a general understanding by Australian sociology leaders that the discipline has always had a high proportion of female student participation (Collyer, 2017; Connell, 2015; Harley and Wickham, 2014; Huppatz, 2012). However, scholarly reflections on historical data about the Australian discipline are conscious of limitations in their empirical data, Harley and Wickham (2014: 27) making the following statement regarding the feminisation of the discipline:
The body of data on the gender of sociology students and staff is also patchy and incomplete, but even with these constraints the data paint a clear picture of a discipline which has allowed and/or encouraged the participation of women.
This reflects confidence in speaking of a general feminised state of the Australian discipline. Harley and Wickham (2014: 31) report that from 1983 to 2000 female participation in humanities and social sciences at all student levels changed from 64% to 69%. They do not break out the postgraduate ratio that is of particular interest in the present article.
We were able to gather specific information for PhDs for one university over 50 years from 1971 to the present. Monash University sociology PhDs since 1970 show a much higher participation by women than Dobson’s data for the whole university sector: in the 1970s the national 10% was 30% below Monash’s 40% completions by women sociology PhDs. Ever since that time this proportion outpaced the national gender proportion of women PhDs, sitting in the present decade at 62.8% of all Monash sociology PhD completions, about 13% above the national average of 50% reported by Dobson for 2009 across all disciplines (personal communication, senior administrator). It is not always understood that gender differentiation within broad categories of humanities and social sciences mask sharp gender differences between disciplines compared to sociology. One dean commented that postgraduate politics and philosophy were hyper-masculinised disciplines compared to sociology.
Aggregated Australian PhD completions from 2000 to 2009 are divided by Dobson (2012: 98) into eight categories. Sociology fits within ‘Arts, Law & Creative Arts’ and throughout this decade there were more completions by women than men, from a low of 51.1% trending upwards to 61.3% in 2009, approximately 1% growth per year. Harley and Wickham (2014: 31) summarise developments regarding Australia’s gender composition in sociology:
A discipline which was dominated by men in 1959 has now more women than men in academic posts at all levels, though only marginally so at senior levels. The trend is then clearly towards feminisation.
Within the overall picture of a highly feminised discipline this is about academic teachers and researchers rather than students. Harley and Wickham’s (2014) comments are mirrored in Collyer’s (2017: 84) summary:
The sociologists who taught in Australia’s first sociology departments in the 1960s . . . were also, with the exception of Jean Martin, all men. Office holders of the associations and societies were also all men, as were members of the editorial board of the associations’ journal. . .. In contrast, the current sociological workforce is biased towards the female sex. There are more female than male sociologists in this country, and women are fairly well represented at the helm of its associations, sections, departments and journals.
Germov and McGee (2005) detail academic ranking, using data from the TASA 2004 membership list. Reviewing academic positions from sessional levels to the professoriate, they noted gender proportions of 350 academic staff at 34.3% men and 66.7% women. At the highest levels of professors and associate professors the gender balance was 49.6% men and 50.4% women, ‘this is disproportionate when considering that two-thirds of the TASA members are female’ (Germov and McGee, 2005: 370). Between 2010 and 2015 the proportion remained similar for overall membership (not solely academic) at 33.5% men and 66.5% women, again confirming the contemporary gender proportion of around one-third men to two-thirds women (TASA, 2015). Larkins (2018) observes that Australian universities are currently actively increasing the proportion of women academics. Within this general pattern sociology has already shown a distinct feminisation trajectory and the effect of these university sector pressures for change may have different impacts than on other traditionally gendered academic fields.
Another way of assessing gender proportions is considering sociology of health as a major subdiscipline in Australian sociology since the 1990s (Collyer, 2017). Collyer’s (2012) study compared sociology of health in the US, UK and Australia by reviewing all publications in major international health sociology journals (1990–2009) using biographical information on first authors. Those describing themselves as sociologists had similar gender proportions to other authors. Collyer (2012: 208) summarised her findings:
Focusing on the first authors in our study population, 69 per cent of these are women in the Australian context, 51 per cent in the British context, and 50 per cent among the authors from the United States.
In these decades Collyer showed Australian authorship by women grew as first authors from 62% to 75%, while remaining about the same in the US (48% to 52%) and the UK at 51%. She concluded sociology of health is ‘a feminine [subfield] in Australia, but more equally structured by gender in the other two countries’ (Collyer, 2012: 208). Once again this data indicates a one-third/two-thirds gender ratio.
In a New Zealand study Crothers (2018) used 2013 census data (n = 4260) respondents claiming their highest qualification was in sociology; of these 71% were women. This does not necessarily imply all respondents were educated locally or as graduates, simply that they were currently resident in New Zealand. Crothers’ summation that it is a well-known fact that the discipline of sociology is feminised can be read, within the antipodean context of Australian and New Zealand sociology disciplines, in contrast to other countries with different gender profiles in higher degree cohorts and academic workforces.
Methods
Stage I: Establishing sociology PhDs at Go8
The process of establishing sociology PhD completions at the relevant School of Social Science is outlined in Figure 1. This flow diagram uses a series of diamond decision points by which we distinguished inclusion and exclusion in two stages. The first stage was the identification of theses that fell within the inclusion criteria. The second stage in data collection, shown in Figure 2, worked through a decision process for included theses to identify research outputs achieved by candidates in the period of doctoral enrolment. This data collection method allowed us to gather original empirical data to address our gender composition questions about this cohort of sociologists and to identify gender patterns in knowledge production.
First stage: PhD thesis identification and selection.
Second stage: PhD thesis articles identification and selection.
Sociology as a discipline
When looking at PhD completions at any of the Go8 universities many theses from various different organisational units can be perceived as sociological. Even fields that may seem quite distant from sociology have PhD completions categorised as sociology. For instance, the University of Queensland research repository allows searches by FOR codes (Australian and New Zealand Fields of Research), 1608 meaning sociology (ABS, 2008). Performing this search between 2013 and 2017 identifies 20 sociology thesis completions at the School of Social Science, but also recognises another 54 theses whose authors claimed 1608 as part of categorising their theses, but whose primary home was one of the following organisational units: Schools of Education, Social Work and Human Services; Population Health; Mechanical and Mining Engineering; Human Movement Studies; Geography; Planning and Environmental Management; Political Sciences and International Studies; Journalism and Communication; Pharmacy; Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work; Communications and Arts; Psychology; Agriculture and Food Sciences; University of Queensland (UQ) Business School; Faculty of Medicine; Sustainable Minerals Institute and the Institute of Social Science Research. This demonstrates how widely sociology research is dispersed across the university. Permutations of this pattern are seen at all Go8 universities.
Delimiting the present study to the interdisciplinary schools of social science that have been the traditional home of sociology at these Go8 institutions (often resulting from institutional restructuring merging previous sociology departments with other social sciences) met several methodological difficulties (personal communication, research dean; Cuthbert, 2019). While undoubtedly important sociological research is conducted across the university in this wide range of fields, variable percentages of sociology claimed, and other professional foci increased the ambiguity around including them. Records were often not fully kept by universities and the temptation to follow all indications of sociology theses would have led to issues that could not be resolved. Instead, focusing on the primary sociology unit recognised three things: most sociology completions were achieved within these units; most sociologists were located in these units; and disciplinary sociology teaching took place in them (Collyer, 2012: 205).
Choosing the period 2013–17
This half-decade was the most recent period we could access data on completions and research outputs. At a half-decade length, it allowed for smoothing annual fluctuations. At the same time its recency means it provides a window into current patterns and practices in contemporary Australian sociology. Additional robustness from a longer dataset would have shifted focus from the current Australian situation and would have run into questions of institutional incompleteness in the records for periods sociology was non-existent in some universities. Marshall et al. (2009: 21) note ‘the University of Western Australia and the University of Adelaide, did not appear to offer any sociology subjects in 2008’. Another source comments ‘until August 2017 the University of Adelaide did not officially have a Sociology Department, that being covered under the (interdisciplinary) Department of Gender Studies and Social Analysis (and before that Gender, Work and Social Inquiry)’ (personal communication, academic administrator). Creating a longitudinal dataset thus runs into difficulties of institutional change, late formation of departments, and incomplete, especially non-digitised, repository records.
Identifying sociology theses
As we continued to identify sociology theses within the broad inclusion of the 2013–17 period and location within the primary social science units, a further question had to be addressed in identifying theses as completions in sociology. Simply downloading theses from university repositories did not necessarily disclose the disciplinary basis of the thesis; often generic labels of social science and sometimes even faculty titles seemed at odds with a clear statement of the discipline within which the thesis fell. For instance, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) during the period covered by our research ceased offering a designated PhD in sociology or any other discipline, replacing it with a generic PhD in Social Sciences (personal communication, postgraduate administrator). FOR codes were not always available to help clarify the matter.
For these reasons several strategies were adopted to re-inspect whether sociology theses collected so far continued to be relevant and to ensure we had not missed any. As part of checking theses and adding any so far missed we investigated first, official social science school websites, second, PhD candidates’ profiles on those websites where available (also, in one instance, the Australian National University’s [ANU’s] School of Sociology provided a list of sociology PhD completions on its website). We also examined profiles of sociology academics in those administrative units for their supervisions. This process allowed us to generate a provisional list of PhD thesis completions. Specific steps taken varied by the institution under consideration and what information was initially established. This provisional list was then checked with university administrators or higher degree research (HDR) coordinators.
We asked if they were they able to confirm the theses listed should be included as sociology PhDs and were there more theses they could name that should be added? Information supplied from six of the eight universities caused us to revise our lists. Two institutions, University of Western Australia (UWA) and Sydney University did not participate in this revision process. We decided to include all theses from the UWA that were labelled on the front page as ‘Sociology & Anthropology’ and for Sydney all theses that we established were done in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy in this time period, from their institutional research repository.
Stage II: Establishing sociology PhDs research outputs
The second stage of our data collection procedures began with the population of completed PhDs and worked through several decisional steps in determining research outputs during enrolment (Figure 2).
Identifying research outputs
Starting with a PhD thesis in the university repositories we investigated any research outputs produced by the candidate during their studies. The exemplary case was the University of Queensland; in those theses, without exception, the thesis front-matter listed publications during candidature, publications included in the thesis, and FOR codes. This made determining outputs during candidature straightforward and transparent. Obtaining the information on outputs from the other seven universities, however, was complicated and varied in difficulty. At some other institutions individual students also provided information in their theses about their outputs during candidature, but this practice was variable. Because of this we found it necessary to utilise several strategies to fill out missing information about student outputs. First, we inspected theses’ reference sections for information on outputs. Second, we searched through institutional websites, including students’ university profiles if available, in which students might have mentioned their outputs. Third, we looked up students’ academic social media profiles, in particular Academia, ResearchGate and GoogleScholar. More than half of students in our sample had one or more of these profiles. Fourth, again we went back to CVs, although these were available in few cases, to crosscheck information about students’ publications. Fifth, we used different databases, including Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO and Informit, to find missing bibliographic information about outputs and identify previously unseen ones. GoogleScholar was particularly helpful in retrieving information on PhD outputs which were published in opensource journals. Tracking research outputs included erasing duplications of the same item gathered from different sources, and reconciling inconsistent information.
Including and excluding research outputs
This broad approach allowed us to gather a wide range of outputs. We noted detailed bibliographical information about every single output, starting with the title, when published, where published, page, volume and issue numbers. We also identified the considerable variety of outputs including the following: journal articles, chapters, popular books, conference proceedings, book reviews, editorials, encyclopaedia entries, articles in magazines and commissioned reports. We assessed this range of outputs to distinguish and include only refereed journal articles and book chapters. This is similar to other studies investigating academic research productivity, applying the rationale that these forms of knowledge production are commonly used as the key measures for hiring, promotion, institutional performance and funding.
From the list of PhD candidates’ publications it was not immediately obvious what would count as refereed journal articles and book chapters. We downloaded and inspected the outputs included and visited publishers’ websites to collect information about particular journals or books. Journal websites were searched to determine whether the article was peer reviewed or non-peer reviewed. Details inspected for articles and book chapters included submission, acceptance and publication dates, and author’s biographical notes, acknowledgements and funding sections if available. The recent rise of predatory journals necessitated checking the academic credentials of outlets and in some cases making decisions to exclude. Books and book chapters caused some problems. For example, co-edited books were not counted as an output by themselves. However, if the introduction, one chapter and the conclusion all had the PhD candidate’s name attached to them, this was recorded as three outputs. In the case of a co-authored book where we could not distinguish individual chapter authorships this was recorded as only one output. Journal articles were the predominant vehicle of production.
Outputs in the period of candidacy
There were several questions that needed to be answered to ensure that research outputs were achieved during doctoral enrolment. Defining candidacy, thus involved asking was this output produced pre-candidacy or was there evidence of it being completed during candidacy? A parallel process of using multiple sources to identify research outputs was also used to identify PhD start and finish. Information from theses’ acknowledgements sections, LinkedIn, and academic social media profiles, CVs or personal websites helped identify the enrolment period. In some cases it was not possible to establish thesis start dates from publicly available information. However, article biographical information often clarified an author’s academic status as a student or otherwise. To establish end dates for inclusion we adopted the common practice of other researchers allowing a publication date one year after thesis submission to recognise the delay between article reviewing, processing and publication (Björk and Solomon, 2013; Horta and Santos, 2015; Pinheiro et al., 2012). The definition of timely completion varied by university and appears to be narrowing today. We allowed a broad inclusion but excluded four theses production of which exceeded 10 years.
Finalising the data
A spreadsheet was created into which we copied information about PhD candidates’ university affiliation, gender, start date, finish date, sole or co-authorship and number of research outputs and their type. The spreadsheet data was uploaded to SPSS-24 for analysis and table preparation.
Results
The results discussed below are focused around the contents of Tables 1–5: contrasts among the Go8 group of universities in gender differences in sociology PhD completions. Although PhDs that could be classified as sociology appear across various schools and fields, the data presented here is drawn from the multidisciplinary schools of social sciences in which sociology teaching is most often situated at those institutions. In some instances the name ‘sociology’ appears in the departmental name within the school, but ANU is the only university that has a distinct ‘School of Sociology’ in its own right. This has more in common with the North American practice of having separate sociology academic units (Collyer, 2012: 205).
Australian Go8 universities sociology PhD completions by gender 2013–17.
Sociology PhD students’ research outputs by gender 2013–17.
Refereed journal articles or book chapters.
Sociology PhD students’ research output differences within gender 2013–17.
Refereed journal articles or book chapters.
Go8 PhD students’ total counts of outputs by level of productivity.
Refereed journal articles or book chapters.
Methods used in Australian Go8 sociology theses by gender 2013–17.
Table 1 summarises sociology doctoral student PhD completions across the Australian Go8 institutions by gender. Of the 173 PhD completions in this five-year time span, 117 were women, 55 were men and 1 was gender diverse. In broad terms this is two-thirds women (67.6%) and one-third men (31.8%). This clear gender difference is statistically significant at (x2 = 17.5 on 7df p = 0.014). This result corresponds with findings from a study of New Zealand universities for the same time period which reported the gender ratio of PhD completions in sociology as 63.6% women and 36.4% men (Burns and Rajčan, 2019). The present study focused only on finished PhDs and the attrition rate after commencing candidature may be different for men, women, and gender diverse students. There are several arguments for explaining non-completions of PhD, some related to gender (Ward and Wolf-Wendel, 2004).
The gender proportions of women to men PhD completions ranges from ten out of eleven (91.0%) at the UNSW and Adelaide (87.5%), to below to 50% at Melbourne and UQ, the latter being the only institutions with more men than women completions. The institutional share of the 173 sociology PhD completions in this period ranged from Melbourne (n = 35), Monash (n = 33), to a medium number of completions at Sydney and ANU (n = 24 each), UQ (n = 20), and UWA (n = 18), down to smaller cohorts at UNSW (n = 11) and Adelaide (n = 8). Institutional restructuring has had an impact on the size and disciplinary mix of the academic units (Marshall et al., 2009; personal communication, postgraduate coordinators).
Tables 2 and 3 shift focus to present data beyond the number of student completions to consider the number of outputs per student. Rather than Hatch and Skipper’s (2016) focus on personal productivity, while this is recognised as significant for individuals, it is also understood as institutionally relevant and reflective of current gender patterns in Go8 Australian universities.
The overall result of research output production can be summarised as follows: about 40% or 2 in every 5 student completions achieved no publications during candidacy; over another third of students produced 1–2 outputs (34.1%); a final quarter (25.4%) of students produced 3 or more outputs. In terms of gendered productivity of research outputs, the feature of Table 2 is the maintenance of the numerical proportion of student numbers following through in the ratio of research output activity with statistically insignificant gender difference (x2 = 3.08 on 5df p = 0.69). Only at 4 outputs and more per student for men and women does the consistency of the two-thirds women and one-third men ratio appear to vary, but this was an artefact of small student numbers and when grouped shows no significant statistical difference. If the four-plus category is aggregated the ratio of 15 women to 6 men (n = 21) returns the result closer to the average (71.4% and 28.6%). In making these observations, Table 2 is read horizontally, each line representing the proportion of men and women active at the successive levels of outputs achieved in the left-hand column.
Table 2 shows almost twice the number of women as men students produced zero refereed articles or book chapters during their enrolment. However, because more than two-thirds of these doctoral students are women this difference occludes the data that 4.2% fewer women than men produced no outputs; that is, men were slightly over-represented in the zero research but this was not statistically significant.
In relation to the overall question of actual or possible gender differences in research productivity between men and women sociology PhD candidates, Table 3 takes the data of the previous table and runs the percentages down the columns in order to make an internal comparison within genders rather than across genders. Reading the data in this way pushes analysis of the feminisation of this cohort of the sociology discipline a step further. The question at this juncture is more specifically whether there is a different pattern for women’s research productivity between ‘no outputs’ through to ‘super-producers’ compared to the similar range of low to high productivity for men (we defined super-producers as students who achieved four or more outputs during PhD enrolment). What the table shows, however, is that once again there is a consistent evenness in the research output production of men and women PhD candidates relative to their proportion of this student cohort. In this respect as well then there is no substantial difference in outputs of refereed articles or book chapters between men and women enrolled in sociology PhDs.
As was noted for Table 2, here in Table 3 the small numbers at the highest levels of research productivity fluctuate around this otherwise consistent two-thirds to one-third gender ratio, individual line variations being a simple artefact of low numbers.
Table 4 once again shifts the focus, this time to the quantum of outputs. In contrast to 39.3% of students who produced no research outputs (n = 70), a small number of students produced at the rate of one article per year (3 plus outputs during candidacy), 44 students (25.4%) producing 171 outputs, that is 66.8% of all outputs produced (n = 256). Within this an even smaller group of students, the ‘super-producers’ (n = 21, 12.1%), producing 4 or more outputs during candidacy, achieved 102 outputs, or 39.8% of all outputs. In gender terms the proportion of outputs reflects the two-thirds one-third overall ratio, although women’s productivity was tending to lead that of the male counterparts. The present study confirms in the most recent half-decade of sociology postgraduates the similar pattern of academic research productivity that Ramsden (1994: 1) described for the approximately 800 employed Australian university academic staff he surveyed: ‘[m]ost papers are produced by few academic staff’. Of particular interest in the present study is that Ramsden’s 30-year-old data showed women and men as equally productive when academic rank was controlled for. The present study shows strong consistency between men and women being similarly productive across the spectrum from low to high number of outputs.
It can be asked whether high level of research output is associated with completing thesis by publication (TBP). Most students completed a traditional PhD as chapters in a monograph. However, in the present study 8 of the 21 super-producers (38.1%) – more than one-third – did their theses by publications. In each case they produced three or more publications. There was no significant gender difference completing TBP (x2 = 0.68 on 1df p = 0.41). In total there were 9 TBP in the cohort of 173 completions (5.2%). Most students who did TBP (6 out of 9) achieved four outputs. Of these, five were women PhD candidates. This might be read as saying that there is a gender difference in higher levels of productivity in women’s favour, but as noted earlier the small numbers at high levels of productivity, when aggregated even out gender differences in this dataset.
Table 5 shifts the focus from comparing outputs by gender to analysing gender differences in methods used for PhD research. The most common method used consisted of various qualitative approaches for both men and women, but this was not statistically different (x2 = 9.8 on df3 p = 0.020). Mixed methods combining both qualitative and quantitative methods were the next most common empirical approach used. We note wryly that some students described their theses as ‘mixed methods’ but simply used multiple qualitative approaches rather than an actual mixture of qualitative and quantitative data gathering. The number of quantitative theses contrasts with the large proportion of qualitative work being done. Quantitative theses have dropped to the low of n = 5 (2.9%), with an apparent predominance of women completing four of these five theses. More non-empirical theses (n = 23) were completed by men (n = 13) than women (n = 9) and one gender diverse student. A marked local variation was that 14 of these 23 theses were completed at Melbourne University at the School of Social and Political Sciences, 10 out of 14 being completed by men researchers. Overall our results showed a greater proportion of women used some form of qualitative methods compared to men.
The emphasis on qualitative approaches to data gathering by these PhD students fits a long-term trend. Harley and Wickham (2014: 44–45) summarise Germov and McGee’s 2010 study of methodological preferences in articles in the Journal of Sociology, the flagship Australian publication, over more than half a century, revealing a ‘dramatic trend’. The previous quantitative emphasis had shifted and by:
the 1990s there were almost as many qualitative (24 per cent) as quantitative (27 per cent) articles and in the first decade of the twenty-first century qualitative articles (36 per cent) outstripped quantitative ones (28 per cent). There are no signs of this trend abating.
These authors, along with Collyer (2017: 85), also affirm that from the 1990s ‘[t]he strengthening feminization of the sociological workforce, combined with the institutionalization of cultural studies into the Australian university sector, helped ensure the epistemological domination of qualitative analysis’. Put another way, Harley and Wickham (2014: 44) comment that ‘the turn to qualitative methods and related topical shifts have come hand-in-hand with the feminization of Australian sociology’.
This historical correlation between increased participation of women at all levels sociology and the shift in sociology to qualitative perspectives is not a causal explanation in either direction. It is important, however, to consider each possibility as a provisional hypothesis: that more women led to greater use, uptake and valorising of qualitative methods, on the one hand; alternatively, that reaction against previous generations’ quantitative research helped the shift to qualitative approaches with critical narratives of multiple social processes, and drew women into the field.
Clearly multiple conjunctions between cultural discourses and institutional arrangements were bundled and rebundled, shaping one another. For instance, feminist reaction to banal quantitative research was at least in part because of its male-stream sociological failure (Skeggs, 2008) to question underlying realities of gendered work, career discourses, family–work norms, gendered leadership, in fact every aspect of work and life. Psychology and economics lost capacity to ask difficult and necessary questions by adhering to quantitative narratives, yet sociology gained new voices in the later 20th century. In Bourdieusian terms, women both made that change happen and were structured in the ongoing shifts, a mix of resistance and change.
Other lines of argument are that these societal-cultural changes were not just about gender, but disrupted many complacent certitudes of mid-century western understandings in academia and the general populace. The adjacent rebundling of universalistic modernising narratives that had not previously changed the gendered status quo, shifted to realisation there was no rational argument against women receiving similar educational opportunities and earning the same – even if theoretical and practical outworking of that rebundling has been continuously contested.
Other elements in the conjunction of disciplinary feminisation and qualitative focus in Australian sociology include the emergence of cultural studies. Again it is not possible to fully explain the correlation: does feminisation lead to interest, research activity and theorising the many objects of a cultural studies approach? Or does a cultural studies movement open up spaces for important conversations about the implications of gender from the macro to minutiae in society? The dialectics of change and challenge suggest some of both. Ongoing questions are raised in Beilharz’s suggestion the peak of cultural studies has now passed (Bartmański, 2016).
Australian sociology PhD qualitative focus documented here confirms continuing disciplinary distance from quantitative work, despite the need for both kinds of expertise. The correlation of gender in a qualitative-centric discipline, whatever the causes, has potential disciplinary consequences given policy priorities influenced by quantitative metrics and restricted assumptions about society.
Conclusions
The present study has partially addressed Germov and McGee’s (2005: 380) suggestion that further analysis is needed, such as ‘a review of postgraduate areas of study (thesis topics, theories and methodologies)’. We are confirming that, in this cohort of contemporary PhD sociology completions in Australia, women and men publish at similar rates during their candidacy. We are further specifying that at each of the zero, medium and high production levels in our data there are consistent output rates between men and women. Results presented from Table 1 onwards suggest a stable disciplinary gender composition in Australia consistent with the trend across several decades rather than recent feminisation. This study delineated a present generation of sociology doctoral students within a broader Australian context of changing gender composition across the entire university. It recognised that the discipline of sociology has its own distinct historical sequence reiterated in these results.
The present findings suggest that, beyond detailing the numbers and proportions by gender, more work is needed to further conceptualise ‘cultural feminisation’ (Ünal and Binay, 2017: 4) in the Australian context. For instance, if men and women are equal in their research productivity during their PhD, how should the many cultural influences be understand at this point in time: mentoring, active encouragement for career advancement, or the sense of not being supported, family and childcare responsibilities, and many others?
This study opens up the contemporary importance of well-documented gendered differences in PhD study (e.g. Dever et al., 2008). The literature cited earlier about productivity during and after candidature explored many personal and individual aspects of the doctoral writing experience that could be updated in relation to current emergent PhD student cohorts. Qualitative investigations could more accurately assess current hurdles faced by men and women PhD candidates: What are the experiences of students with zero publications? What are the experiences of students with a higher number of outputs? What are the gendered qualitative differences in life situation and family responsibilities? What are the language impacts for international students? What are the contemporary links between sociology PhD completion and subsequent early career steps in academia and elsewhere?
Australian universities are currently addressing the high proportion of women academics up to senior lecturer levels, but the greater proportion of men academics at professorial ranks is a long-recognised issue. Debates cover resistance to gender change, lag effects of cultural change and unpicking institutionally inscribed gender practices of sponsorship and support (Baker, 2009; Bentley, 2011). The substantial proportion of women completions in sociology in Go8 interdisciplinary schools of social science can be distinguished from gender ratios in other disciplines. This data problematises three areas: first, focusing on all completions, both men and women students as in the present cohort, including those producing no outputs, raises new questions about career trajectories, gender and the quality of both men’s and women’s PhD experience. Second, the large proportion of women completing sociology PhDs in this cohort disrupts tacit career inferences on the basis of publications during candidacy. Similar productivity levels do not necessarily mean women and men have similar employment opportunities or pathways after graduation, or progress at similar rates in work environments. Gendered links between publishing and career are more complex, and changing, than conventional assumptions. Third, this study, in the second decade of a new century, occurs within a corporatised university sector emphasising outputs and under constant pressure to enhance university global rankings.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Associate Professor Peter Petocz from Macquarie University and Professor John Munro from the University of Melbourne for preparation assistance. We also thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier versions of this article. Work on this research benefited from a generous International Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (iMQRES).
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by Macquarie University’ iMQRES scholarship.
