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Analyzing national statistical 2007 data from the U.S. Department of Education, this chapter examines the current status and trends concerning Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) women in higher education by looking at their presence at key levels of the higher education pipeline. It considers their representation as doctoral degree holders, assistant professors, tenured professors, and college/university presidents. The findings demonstrate that AAPI women are underrepresented as faculty in contrast to the large and growing numbers of AAPI women students who make up the talent pool to the professoriate. Moreover, despite the in-roads AAPI women have made as faculty members, race and gender disparities still persist and grow as the rank increases. AAPI female faculty representation stalls very early on in the pipeline, namely, in being hired and at tenure, and continues to shrink as the pipeline advances. AAPI male and white female faculty may also face barriers to the top, but Asian American women faculty may experience them sooner. Consequently, the numbers of AAPI women full professors are small and as campus presidents they are miniscule. However, for white men, their representation increases as the pipeline advances.

The purpose of this study was to explore the cultural and structural conditions that influence male and female physicians’ career choices and career expectations. Although women constitute 59 percent of the physicians and 55 percent of the specialists in Finland in 2014, the rate of women in oto-rhino-laryngology (38 percent) was one of the lowest among the specialties. The data consist of semi-structured interviews with young physicians (N = 19), who have entered a career in oto-rhino-laryngology (ORL) in Finland.

The results point to three features which characterize the career pattern in the specialty. First, the specialty is not one that draws students to medicine per se but rather one that is chosen during medical training. The decision to specialize in ORL was by many respondents framed as a “coincidence,” while others were attracted by the diverse character of the specialty. Second, the skills needed for being a “good” practitioner were defined as handiness, courage, and social skills, but these were not defined in a gendered way. Third, the career prospects for women within the specialty were defined by a neutralizing or a gendering framework. The neutralizing framework was represented by the pipeline argument which suggests that there is a temporary time lag in women’s representation in higher positions and that women are advancing steadily in the academic and administrative pipeline. The gendering framework pointed to the male ethos of the surgical tasks in the specialty as a barrier for women’s advancement in those areas. This chapter concludes that the pipeline view belittles existing gender inequalities in men’s and women’s medical careers and views gender differences as temporary maladjustments rather than inherent features of gendered organizations.

This paper aims to explore the complexity of the “leaky pipeline” of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) in the intriguing contexts where there are a high number of STEM graduates but a low number of women working in these fields.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with eight STEM “leavers” and eight “persisters” in Turkey to understand the multi-level influences on their career paths.

The behavioural ecological model is applied to enrich the understanding of women’s attrition from STEM. The authors found a complex system of actors, relationships and influences that impact the negotiations of women’s felt misfit/love of their STEM career and changing self-actualisation.

The authors highlight that social marketers should consider the complex influences on even the most individualistic-looking decisions to produce systemic change.

This paper deepens the use of the behavioural ecological model in the ways that the layers of motivator and demotivator influences interact with women’s internal negotiations of career choice. The paper integrates classic theories (self-actualisation (Maslow, 1943) and two-factor model (Herzberg et al., 1959)) within systems social marketing.

The purpose of this study is to broaden an understanding of women's perceptions regarding advancement potential/barriers to success in upper echelon corporate roles in the S&P 500 in connection with understanding 21st-century family dynamics, rather than addressing gender in isolation.

Data collection in this study is based on semi-structured phone interviews with 13 women who have been identified by organizational leadership in an S&P 500 company as having high advancement potential. The results are evaluated using interpretive phenomenological analysis.

Participants' responses support existing research showing that women feel more responsible than their male counterparts for subordinating their career prospects to those of their male partners. Further, participants express that work–life and work–family balance constitute problematic barriers to advancement and often lead them to “choose” to slow-track career advancement and to avoid advancement opportunities. This choice narrative propagates women's perceptions that barriers to advancement are self-imposed. Participants viewed the extreme work model as inevitable in upper-echelon corporate roles, signaling the need for an increased understanding of how a broad definition of familial roles and work culture – rather than gendered issues in isolation – affect advancement opportunities in a 21st-century workforce.

Current organizational diversity initiatives have focused too myopically on gender. For organizations to create a more inclusive model for success at the upper echelons, it is essential to broaden organizational initiatives to address 21st-century employees rather than gendered programs. Organizations can endeavor to implement more effective models that enable two partners in a home with dependent children to advance, and all employees, even top leaders, to balance current definitions of work–life in several ways discussed.

The findings of this study are significant, in that they move toward addressing a gap in knowledge concerning women's perspectives on the changing family paradigm, extreme work culture and an expanded understanding of work–life balance. This reconceptualization can help mitigate gendered research and organizational programs that reinforce entrenched binaries, and instead enable organizations to implement more effective initiatives to improve advancement opportunities.

The skillsets of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates are widely recognised to be important for economic prosperity. At the same time, it is broadly accepted that in England there is a need to increase the number of people studying STEM degree courses and working in STEM. However, despite decades of interventions post-16, STEM participation rates remain lower than projected requirements. Some research reports suggest a lack of positive attitudes towards these subjects and aspirations amongst some social groups. As these debates continue, official reports such as those released by the Department for Education show these patterns from the labour market and higher education (HE) extend to both attainment and participation in science and math in school.

In this paper, the authors summarise the authors' findings from the analysis of official reports, policy documents and major research reports focussing on attainment in school science and math and post-compulsory STEM participation.

The authors identify the problematic ways in which STEM subject choices are made across the student life cycle and then discuss how the leaky pipeline metaphor can be ambiguous and needs to be used with caution.

Some aspects identified here warrant further research and will be of particular interest to researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

In this new report, the authors identify the problematic ways in which STEM subject choices are made across the student life cycle in England and then discuss how the leaky pipeline metaphor can be ambiguous and needs to be used with caution.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how students perceive their future careers and how university has prepared them to enter the global labor market; student perceptions regarding benefits vs associated costs of pursuing higher education (HE) on employability and earnings; and the anticipated barriers and how to overcome these in pursuit of career sustainability within a career ecosystem.

The authors adopted a qualitative method using semi-structured interviews on a small sample of 38 final year students from a UK university who were also participants in an earlier two-wave quantitative survey, which was conducted with 387 penultimate and final year undergraduates from the same UK-based University.

Findings revealed that undergraduates perceive their investment in HE to offer a net financial gain; however, this is narrowing due to increased tuition fees, associated student debt and interest payments eroding earning premiums. As undergraduates progress, they feel more employable from a personal perspective, but less employable from a market perspective due to competition for graduate jobs and the cost/benefit conflict of resources.

The authors provide nine opportunities for enhancing the employability of graduates collaborating with graduate employers, providing a timely contribution to the social, political and economic debate on the funding of HE.

The authors advance career theory via the new perspective of Career Ecosystem Theory by: explaining student career perceptions in terms of how university has prepared them for the global labor market; exploring the perceived costs vs benefits of pursuing HE in relation to employability; suggesting a two-dimensional model of personal and market factors of employability; providing a model of careers advice from employers and universities for supporting students’ careers; and offering policy implications in relation to the future funding of HE and employability of future graduates.

The purpose of this conceptual paper was to investigate the contribution of the “Pipeline”, as a metaphor for building theory about Women-on-Boards (WoB) in the Arab world.

Narratives about women's progress in Arab countries were collected from a range of sources and content was analysed to identify emergent themes about pipeline.

Themes were identified of the pipeline metaphor that explained phenomena and generated solutions to employ, retain and advance women to board directorships; from higher education (“bulging”/“bursting” pipeline) through employment (“leaking” pipeline) to boardroom (“blocked” pipeline).

Generalisation of these study results is limited by geographical context of this research. An implication is for further international studies on metaphor identification for women's progress.

Relevant metaphor-in-use required to generate company policy and praxis towards WoB in the Arab world.

The first academic study to investigate the value of metaphor for effect on women's progress in Arab countries. Novel metaphor identification is proposed to think and see women's experiences in cultural context.

Based on the resource-based theory, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between operational employment levels of gender diversity and business performance over a multi-year period. This study also explores if gender parity moderates this relationship and how gender diversity is directionally developed.

A cross-lagged panel design and path analysis is applied to a global data set of women employees, women managers and women senior executives – in relation to revenue, of over 6,000 companies over the six-year period from 2012 to 2017.

Overall results confirm a positive relationship between women managers and revenue over a multi-year period for all companies. A moderating analysis also finds a positive relationship between total women employees (as well as women managers) and revenue growth of companies headquartered in countries with medium levels of gender parity. The overall and moderating analysis do not find a positive relationship between senior women executives and revenue growth. Longitudinal analysis also finds that the multiple operational levels of gender diversity directionally develop in a mutually cyclical manner.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first diversity and business performance study to use a global data set of multiple operational levels of women employees, managers and senior executives over a multi-year period. This study contributes new perspectives on the positive relationship between women managers and business performance. This study also confirms prior findings of a positive relationship between women employees and business performance in medium gender-parity countries. Finally, this longitudinal study introduces the concept of the gender pipeline of executive advancement along the multiple operational levels of employment and finds that gender diversity is directionally developed in a mutually cyclical, bidirectional pattern.

All gender identity is socialized, but anything gendered feminine is marginalized. In the United States, we live in a patriarchal culture that is bounded by binary gender identity. Up to this point, work on gender and education leadership has remained within the bounds of patriarchy, and thus been confined to binary, hierarchical gender definitions. This study pushes past prior work to advance a more complex and messy understanding of how identity impacts aspiring leaders in their careers. Using Carol Gilligan and Snider (2018) Listening Guide Method, this study of 18 aspiring school leaders of different gender identities, sexual identities, and races focuses on how gender identity and gender performance impact school leaders' career trajectories. A key finding of this study is that women, regardless of race or sexual identity, have difficulty finding mentors while men, regardless of race or sexual identity, are tapped by schools leaders and offered mentoring opportunities. This chapter posits a new framework for mentoring that will lead to more liberatory pipeline structures.

We evaluate the use of metaphors in academic literature on women in academia. Utilizing the work of Husu (2001) and the concept of intersectionality, we explore the ways in which notions of structure and/or agency are reflected in metaphors and the consequences of this.

The research comprised an analysis of 113 articles on women in academia and a subanalysis of 17 articles on women in Political Science published in academic journals between 2004 and 2013.

In the case of metaphors about academic institutions, the most popular metaphors are the glass ceiling, the leaky pipeline, and the old boys’ network, and, in the case of metaphors about women academics, strangers/outsiders and mothers/housekeepers.

Usage of metaphors in the literature analyzed suggests that the literature often now works with a more nuanced conception of the structure/agency problematic than at the time Husu was writing: instead of focusing on either structures or agents in isolation, the literature has begun to look more critically at the interplay between them, although this may not be replicated at a disciplinary level.

We highlight the potential benefits of interdependent metaphors which are able to reflect more fully the structurally situated nature of (female) agency. These metaphors, while recognizing the (multiple and intersecting) structural constraints that women may face both within and outwith the academy, are able to capture more fully the different forms female power and agency can take. Consequently, they contribute both to the politicization of problems that female academics may face and to the stimulation of collective responses for a fairer and better academy.