The Story Only Few Can Tell: Exploring the Disproportionately Gendered Professoriate in Business Schools

Abstract

In American business schools, the higher the position, the lower the female representation, especially when including additional intersections of identity such as race, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. Our article aims to supplement existing research regarding gender bias and underrepresentation in academia, particularly in business schools. Such research can uncover faculty gender issues, work toward mitigating the existing biases related to diversity and inclusion, and bring a needed voice and discussion for the purpose of moving toward solutions. To build our hypotheses, we provide a literature review regarding academic satisfaction, perceived performance weight–teaching and perceived performance weight–service differences between genders, and gender issues with the academic pipeline to full professor. Next, we utilize data collected from a sample of n = 696 academics from American business schools and find that women faculty have significantly lower academic satisfaction throughout all ranks and institutions. Our results further indicate that there are differences in perceived performance weight–teaching and perceived performance weight–service between female and male academics at the ranks of assistant and full professors at various types of institutions. Last, we offer conclusions and implications, limitations, and future research suggestions that include studies regarding intersectional faculty, academic mobbing and bullying, incivility, and academic satisfaction.