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This research explores whether gender affects faculty satisfaction with opportunity for advancement in rank at two elite liberal arts colleges in the United States.

We analyze survey data from associate and full professors to identify predictors of satisfaction with advancement. Focus group and interview data supplement our interpretations of regression results.

The two colleges differ in the impact of gender, rank, perceptions of the full professor promotion process, and quality of department relationships on satisfaction with advancement. At one college, there is no gender difference, while at the other, women are less satisfied than men. The effect of gender at this college is fully mediated by department relationship quality.

This cross-sectional study was conducted at only two colleges. Interpretations of the quantitative results are inductively generated and not tested in the analysis.

We make recommendations to improve processes and pathways for promotion that recognize the role of department climates in fostering or hindering career progression. Gender may be less salient in contexts in which associate professors have positive department relationships and in which promotion criteria value their administrative service and other institutional contributions sufficiently.

Previous research about promotion to full professor has focused on research universities while we examine the issue at liberal arts colleges, institutions that emphasize undergraduate study.

This introduction sets forth the main themes of the volume, reviews the methods employed by the contributors, and demonstrates the relationships among the chapters.

Each of the chapters demonstrates the gendered nature of the academy and some of the ways in which women, especially women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, are disadvantaged. None of them provides complete catalogues of the issues confronting women and none reach definitive conclusions regarding the ways and means of transforming the academy. Additional research and experimentation will be required.

The gender transformation of the academy holds the promise of more opportunities for women, especially but not only in STEM disciplines and higher administration, and greater probability of balance between work and personal life for all.

The chapter serves as an overall introduction to the volume and the subject matter more generally.

Purpose/approach – This introduction sets forth the main themes of the volume, reviews the methods employed by its contributors, and demonstrates the relationships among the chapters.

Research implications – The introduction demonstrates the ways gender research engages topics of current social, economic, and political importance and the ways in which focus on these topics advances an intersectional approach to gender research.

Practical and social implications – Drawing on each of the chapters, the authors point to the ways in which the global movement of people, media, and ideas foster changes in self-concepts, behavior, and social policy.

Value of the chapter – The essay serves as an overall introduction to the volume.

Purpose – This research examined the effects of gender, home demands, and work demands on work–family conflict (WFC) for faculty at two liberal arts colleges.

Methodology – A work climate survey was sent to the entire population of 341 tenured and tenure-track faculty at two small highly selective private liberal arts colleges, one formerly all male and the other formerly all female. The response rate was 70%, yielding 237 respondents. Faculty were compared by gender using t-tests and by gender and discipline using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Multiple regression was used to examine factors contributing to faculty WFC.

Findings – Gender, rank, and department climate were significantly associated with WFC. In contrast, caregiving responsibilities, college of employment, and discipline did not have significant relationships with WFC. Controlling for caregiving, employment at a formerly all-male college, working in a STEM discipline, and department climate did not reduce the effect of gender on WFC. Women faculty reported more WFC than their male counterparts, while full professors reported less than their junior colleagues. Good department climate overall as well as high scores on all three subscales individually (affective, instrumental, and cognitive) reduced WFC.

Research limitations – This research project is a cross-sectional, observational study, which limits the interpretation of direction of effect in most cases.

Practical implications – Results suggest that more supportive department climates could reduce WFC for faculty struggling to balance their personal and professional lives.

On the occasion of the publication of the 20th volume of the Advances in Gender Research series, this chapter reviews the series goals and previous volumes and introduces the themes and chapters of the current one.

The chapter shows both continuity and change in approaches to theories, research methods, pedagogy, and praxis in gender studies.

Newer approaches, gender-centered, intersectional and global, offer a critique of older ways of gathering and understanding data, ways that respond to and are impacted by social change.

The chapter and the volume are intended to encourage further advances in gender research.

Facing a high birth rate, a falling mortality rate, and inconsistent policies on family planning from the 1950s to the early 1970s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched its widely known one‐child policy in 1979. The intention was to restrict population growth by reducing fertility through family planning and thereby to conserve the nation's resources to advance economic development. The effectiveness of the one‐child policy has varied greatly because policy regulations are differentially carried out by officials of provinces, municipalities, counties, communes, and minority regions. Generally speaking, the state policy has had greater acceptance in urban areas but is far less rigidly enforced by local officials in rural areas and for certain national minorities, which can have a second child under certain circumstances (Chow and Chen, 1994).

The purpose of this paper is to explore the most common general metaphors for women’s leadership: the glass ceiling, sticky floor and the labyrinth. The authors discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these metaphors for characterizing women’s current situation as leaders.

In addition to reviewing the literature on the status of women leaders, the authors also discuss recent research on the power of metaphor to illustrate concepts and influence social judgments.

The authors conclude that the labyrinth is the most useful metaphor for women leaders, because although there has been slow steady improvement in women’s access to leadership, women continue to face challenges that men do not face: gender stereotypes that depict women as unsuited to leadership, discrimination in pay and promotion, lack of access to powerful mentors and networks and greater responsibility for childcare and other domestic responsibilities.

Although the glass ceiling metaphor implies that women face obstacles once they have risen to very high levels of leadership and the sticky floor metaphor implies that women are prevented from any advancement beyond entry level, the labyrinth reflects the myriad obstacles that women face throughout their careers.

The labyrinth metaphor not only acknowledges these challenges but also suggests that women can advance to very high levels of leadership.