ORGANIZATIONAL INFLUENCES ON THE GENDER COMPOSITION OF ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATORS: A CROSS-UNIVERSITY COMPARISON OF DEPARTMENT HEADS (SOCIAL STRATIFICATION, WOMEN)

Increasingly researchers have found that gender has a significant impact on the occupation and income attainment processes. This study examines factors affecting the gender composition of one of the more traditionally male-dominated professions, that of higher education administration. It focuses on departmental headship positions in six academic disciplines which have a recent history of hiring a mix of men and women in the faculty ranks from which heads are selected. These disciplines are English, history, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology. In contrast to the more traditional approach which attributes sex differentials to the personal characteristics of individuals, this research examines the characteristics of employing organizations as factors affecting the gender composition of the workforce. Specifically, a political economy model provides the underlying framework for the analysis. Utilizing a national sample of large colleges and universities, the extent to which eleven selected organization characteristics affected the probability of a woman being employed as an academic department head in the humanities and the social sciences is examined. Multiple regression analysis indicates that the higher the amount of university slack resources, the more formalized the employment procedures, the more centralized the employment decision making process, the larger the proportion of women already employed on the faculty, the greater the university\u27s dependence on federal funding and the fewer the number of AA/EEO compliance agency reviews occurring at the university are significant determinants of the probability of there being a female department head in the humanities and social sciences