IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i11p6255-d567222.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Barriers to Career Progression in the Higher Education Sector: Perceptions of Australian Academics

Author

Listed:
  • Tehmina Khan

    (School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, College of Business and Law, RMIT University, Melbourne 3000, Australia)

  • Pavithra Siriwardhane

    (School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, College of Business and Law, RMIT University, Melbourne 3000, Australia)

Abstract

There are multiple factors that can potentially impact the career progression of academics to professoriate level (referred to as levels D and E in Australia). This research provides a detailed understanding of critical factors (by gender) that negatively influence career progressions. Perceptions of factors that influence career progressions have been found to be more pronounced amongst female academics in STEMM and business disciplines. The conventional view of family commitments as being a hindrance to career progression has not been supported in our data. On the contrary, it is the organizational factors that would appear to be prevalent at an institutional level that seems to be significant barriers to the career progression. Particularly for female academics’ progression to levels D and E. The most prominent factors identified through confirmatory factor analysis conducted in the study are workloads and a lack of resources to undertake research and to generate research performance, which is a critical impacting factor for career progression to professoriate levels. These factors have been exacerbated by COVID-19.

Suggested Citation

  • Tehmina Khan & Pavithra Siriwardhane, 2021. "Barriers to Career Progression in the Higher Education Sector: Perceptions of Australian Academics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-19, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:11:p:6255-:d:567222
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/6255/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/6255/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elizabeth A. Corley, 2005. "How Do Career Strategies, Gender, and Work Environment Affect Faculty Productivity Levels in University‐Based Science Centers?1," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 22(5), pages 637-655, September.
    2. Debra A. Barbezat, 2006. "Gender Differences in Research Patterns Among PhD Economists," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 359-375, July.
    3. Sharon Bell, 2010. "Women in science: The persistence of gender in Australia," Higher Education Management and Policy, OECD Publishing, vol. 22(1), pages 1-19.
    4. Noriko Amano-Patiño & Elisa Faraglia & Chryssi Giannitsarou & Zeina Hasna, 2020. "Who is doing new research in the time of COVID-19? Not the female economists," Vox eBook Chapters, in: Sebastian Galliani & Ugo Panizza (ed.), Publishing and Measuring Success in Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 137-142, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abdulwahab Mujalli & Tehmina Khan & Ahmed Almgrashi, 2022. "University Accounting Students and Faculty Members Using the Blackboard Platform during COVID-19; Proposed Modification of the UTAUT Model and an Empirical Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-18, February.
    2. Blessing Kanyumba & Melanie Lourens, 2022. "Career development for female academics in Australian and South African universities: An integrative review," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 11(2), pages 391-401, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. M. Teresa Antonio-García & Irene López-Navarro & Jesús Rey-Rocha, 2014. "Determinants of success for biomedical researchers: a perception-based study in a health science research environment," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(3), pages 1747-1779, December.
    2. John P. Conley & Ali Sina Önder & Benno Torgler, 2016. "Are all economics graduate cohorts created equal? Gender, job openings, and research productivity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(2), pages 937-958, August.
    3. Verónica Amarante & Marisa Bucheli & María Inés Moraes & Tatiana Pérez, 2021. "Women in Research in Economics in Uruguay," Revista Cuadernos de Economia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID, vol. 40(84), pages 763-790, October.
    4. Constantin Bürgi & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2022. "The influence of Covid-19 on publications in economics: bibliometric evidence from five working paper series," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5175-5189, September.
    5. Ruomeng Cui & Hao Ding & Feng Zhu, 2020. "Gender Inequality in Research Productivity During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Papers 2006.10194, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2021.
    6. Marta Peña & Noelia Olmedo-Torre & Olga Alcaraz & Juan A. Chavez-Dominguez & José López & Luis Eduardo Mujica, 2022. "Impact of the Pandemic on the Teaching and Research Staff at a Technological University in Spain: Deepening the Gender Gap," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(11), pages 1-26, May.
    7. Laura C. Blanco, 2022. "Diferenciales salariales de género y sus determinantes para el personal académico en propiedad en la Universidad de Costa Rica. (Gender wage differentials and its determinants for tenured academics at," Working Papers 202204, Universidad de Costa Rica, revised May 2022.
    8. Benedetto Torrisi, 2014. "A multidimensional approach to academic productivity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 99(3), pages 755-783, June.
    9. Zachary Ferrara & Carlos J. Asarta, 2023. "The Lived Experiences of Top Women Contributors to Leading Economic Education Journals," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 68(1), pages 110-125, March.
    10. John P. Conley & Ali Sina Önder & Benno Torgler, 2012. "Are all High-Skilled Cohorts Created Equal? Unemployment, Gender, and Research Productivity," Working Papers 2012.86, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    11. Schuetzenmeister, Falk, 2010. "University Research Management: An Exploratory Literature Review," Institute of European Studies, Working Paper Series qt77p3j2hr, Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley.
    12. Colleen Manchester & Debra Barbezat, 2013. "The Effect of Time Use in Explaining Male–Female Productivity Differences Among Economists," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 53-77, January.
    13. Liu, Meijun & Zhang, Ning & Hu, Xiao & Jaiswal, Ajay & Xu, Jian & Chen, Hong & Ding, Ying & Bu, Yi, 2022. "Further divided gender gaps in research productivity and collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from coronavirus-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    14. Sabharwal, Meghna & Hu, Qian, 2013. "Participation in university-based research centers: Is it helping or hurting researchers?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 1301-1311.
    15. Ali Uyar & Khalil Nimer & Cemil Kuzey, 2023. "Education quality, internet access in schools, and research performance in management and accounting domains: a cross-country investigation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(10), pages 5441-5475, October.
    16. Gamage, Danula K. & Sevilla, Almudena & Smith, Sarah, 2020. "Women in Economics: A UK Perspective," IZA Discussion Papers 13477, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Araújo, Tanya & Fontainha, Elsa, 2017. "The specific shapes of gender imbalance in scientific authorships: A network approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 88-102.
    18. Ann L. Owen, 2011. "Student Characteristics, Behavior, and Performance in Economics Classes," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 32, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Loredana Manasia & Diana Popa & Gratiela Ianos, 2022. "Anatomy of Research Performance from a Bottom-Up Approach: Examination of Researchers’ Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-31, February.
    20. Zahra Murad & Charitini Stavropoulou & Graham Cookson, 2019. "Incentives and gender in a multi-task setting: An experimental study with real-effort tasks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-18, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:11:p:6255-:d:567222. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.