Gender Work Organization - 2018 - Sattari - Gender in Academic STEM A Focus On Men Faculty

Received: 4 January 2017 Revised: 18 December 2017 Accepted: 6 February 2018
DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12249
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Gender in academic STEM: A focus on men faculty

Negin Sattari | Rebecca L. Sandefur
Department of Sociology, University of Illinois

at Urbana‐Champaign In this study, we explore how men faculty understand the
Correspondence role of gender in shaping faculty experiences in academic
Negin Sattari, Department of Sociology,
University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
3059 Lincoln Hall, 702 S Wright St., Urbana‐ and how they position themselves in relation to inequalities
Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Email: nsatta2@illinois.edu disfavouring women. Our data reveal diversity among men
in their understandings regarding challenges facing women
in STEM. The majority of our participants revealed gender‐
blind perspectives and argued that the egalitarian structure
of academia does not allow gender to impact attainments in
STEM in any significant way. However, a considerable num-
ber of them felt privileged compared to women and
described subtle ways in which gender shapes opportuni-
ties. Our findings show the important implications of men's
sensitivity to gender in the ways they perform their profes-
sional roles as, for example, mentors, colleagues and
teachers in relation to women in STEM. They further call
for attention to men's perceptions of gender issues when
designing institutional interventions for improving women's
conditions in STEM.
KEYWORDS
academia, gender inequality, gender segregation, masculinity, STEM
1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N
Since the 1960s, women have made substantial inroads into many historically male‐dominated occupations (England,
2010). But some fields remain relatively closed to women. Among the most notable of these are academic science,
technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields. According to a 2013 survey of doctoral recipients
(National Science Foundation, 2014), in science and engineering fields, more than 88 per cent of full professors,
80 per cent of associate professors and 72 per cent of assistant professors are men.1 Most research exploring this
persistent absence of women in STEM fields has focused on barriers to women's advancement created by workplace
policies and practices, and on women's experiences and perspectives in these fields. Yet the male‐dominated nature
of these fields means that men's perceptions of women's challenges and gender issues are integral to both these
158 © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gwao Gender Work Organ. 2019;26:158–179.
SATTARI AND SANDEFUR 159
policies and practices and to the experiences of their female colleagues. A full understanding of how gender operates
in shaping and preserving gender inequalities in these fields thus requires an understanding of men's perspectives on
gender issues. The present study explores men's perceptions of challenges facing women in academic STEM fields
and the ways they position themselves in relation to these issues.
Women's underrepresentation in academic STEM is well‐documented, as is the fact that gender gaps become
wider at higher educational levels and academic ranks (Blickenstaff, 2005; Cronin & Roger, 1999). The focus of contem-
porary research into the persistent gender imbalance has shifted from individual‐focused approaches that are centred
on women's competency, interests and choices (Benbow & Stanley, 1983; Diekman, Brown, Johnston, & Clark, 2010;
see also Spelke, 2005) to barriers blocking women's advancement in these fields (e.g., Bendl & Schmidt, 2010; Dunham,
Weathers, Hoo, & Heintz, 2012; Elliott, 2008; Mack, Johnson, Woodson, Henkin, & Dee, 2010; Tyson & Borman, 2010;
Wright et al., 2004). The new generation of studies seeks to identify the institutional characteristics of academic STEM
that make them unfriendly to women (Bird, 2011; Francis et al., 2017). It is now well documented in the literature that
women in academic STEM face challenges including teaching and service overload (Toutkoushian & Bellas, 1999;
Valian, 2004); devaluation of their research (Frehill, Javurek‐Humig, & Jeser‐Cannavale, 2006); poor mentoring and
insufficient role modelling (Dunham et al., 2012; Mack et al., 2010; Tyson & Borman, 2010); high visibility and
misogynic stereotyping (Tyson & Borman, 2010); exclusion from informal networks and fewer opportunities for collab-
orations (Gaughan & Bozeman, 2016; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, & Tamkins, 2004; Tyson & Borman, 2010); and tensions
between career and family (Baker, 2010; Mason & Goulden, 2002; O'Laughlin & Bischoff, 2005; Rosser, 2004).
While this new generation of research into the institutional barriers faced by women faculty represent an
advance over previous research, the picture revealed of women's experience is still incomplete: only a few studies
extend their focus beyond the experience of women to consider men's experience (e.g., Bird, 2011; Cech &
Blair‐Loy, 2014; Lynch & Nowosenetz, 2009; Rhoads & Gu, 2012). Due to men being so heavily predominant at every
level in STEM fields, any significant change in STEM departments that is meant to improve women's situation cannot be
made without their contribution. Therefore, it is crucial to explore how men understand existing gender inequalities in
STEM; and how these understandings may contribute to the persistence or fading of gender inequalities.
As Duncanson (2015) has argued, achieving gender equality requires that ‘men be encouraged not so much to
change their ways as to change the way in which they negotiate their identities in relation to others’ (p. 233). In this
work, we explore different ways in which men relate themselves to the issues facing women in academic STEM. As
we will discuss, participants positioned themselves in relation to women's challenges and the gendered system that
creates them in meaningfully different ways. Some ‘gendered’ while others ‘un‐gendered’ their own professional
experiences by observing or refuting systemic challenges facing women in STEM fields. We argue, gender‐sensitive
perspectives on issues facing women can serve as one mechanism for alleviating gender inequalities by encouraging
men to engage in voluntary, day‐to‐day practices — or as we term it, an attached positionality among men — for cre-
ating better conditions for women in STEM. In what follows, we will first review the previous research on men in aca-
demic STEM and construction of masculinity in this context. We will then discuss our methodology and then our
findings. Finally, we will discuss the analytical and practical implications of the findings and conclude.
2 | M E N A N D G E N D E R E D ST RU C T U R E S OF A C A D E M I C ST E M : A T T I T U D E S
AND EXPERIENCES
In the vast literature on gender inequalities in academic STEM, few studies have focused on faculty attitudes towards
challenges facing women (Ecklund, Lincoln, & Tansey, 2012), and even fewer have focused specifically on men's atti-
tudes. Available studies that have included men in their analysis are in agreement that men are less likely than women
to recognize systemic barriers against women's advancement in STEM (Bird, 2011; Ecklund et al., 2012; Rhoads &
Gu, 2012). These studies find that men typically see women's challenges as outcomes of women's personal situations
and preferences rather than of institutional arrangements (Rhoads & Gu, 2012). In Bird's (2011) study of awareness
160 SATTARI AND SANDEFUR
about systematic gender inequalities among faculty members and administrators in a research university in the
United States, male participants revealed less awareness of and sensitivity to ‘incongruous, gendered bureaucratic
structures’ of universities that create systematic barriers to women's advancement in STEM. In their study of
scientists' explanations of gender imbalance in science in 30 top US graduate programmes, Ecklund et al. (2012) also
found that men are more likely than women to provide person‐centred understandings of women's persistent under-
representation in science, such as natural sex differences and women's family‐oriented choices as opposed to struc-
tural explanations such as institutional discrimination.
At the same time, the findings of these studies indicate that the diversity in men's experiences with and percep-
tions of gender inequalities cannot be ignored (Bird, 2011; Ecklund et al., 2012; Rhoads & Gu, 2012). Ecklund et al.
(2012) reveal that the differences between men's and women's attitudes cannot be simplified to a dichotomy of indi-
vidualistic versus structural explanations. Men and women approached the issue in multiple ways, with both groups
drawing on both individualist and structural explanations, though women were more likely to describe systematic dis-
crimination. Similarly, Bird's (2011) study of academic STEM, found that men varied in the degree to which they rec-
ognized gendered structures in universities.
Some scholars have shown that men in racial and ethnic minority groups (Wingfield, 2013) and those with more
family responsibilities (Cech & Blair‐Loy, 2014; Damaske, Ecklund, Lincoln, & White, 2014) are exposed to issues sim-
ilar to those facing women and are consequently more empathetic about challenges women face. Cech and Blair‐Loy
(2014) have shown that fathers of young children in STEM departments suffer from ‘flexibility stigma' — stigmatiza-
tion of individuals whose working style is highly impacted by their family conditions — as much as mothers in similar
situations do. These studies show that a range of factors affect men's and women's experiences with and perceptions
of gendered structures of academic STEM. While in much of the current literature, women's underrepresentation in
STEM is explored in studies that either focus exclusively on women or on women in comparison with men (Damaske
et al., 2014), the present study focuses on men and how they evaluate women's situation as compared to their own.
In addition to investigating the challenges that gendered structures of academic STEM create for women and, to
some extent, for men, it is important to ask how gender inequalities are integral to the ways in which people con-
struct their positionalities in relation to these issues and negotiate their professional identities (Lynch & Nowosenetz,
2009). We conceptualize gender as a master status (West, 1984) and background omnivorous identity (Ridgeway,
1991, 2009). Gender is integrated into the way we manage our interactions, decisions, judgements and actions in
day‐to‐day performances and no social context can be fully understood without consideration of gender dynamics.
Scholars like West, Zimmerman, Garfinkel and Goffman have argued that gender is an interactional construction that
is ‘done’, ‘accomplished’ and ‘performed’ through every action that engages negotiation of identity and presentation
of self (Garfinkel, 1976; Goffman, 1976; West & Zimmerman, 1987); therefore, it cannot be removed from any inter-
actional or structural setting (Ridgeway, 1991, 2009).
Current policies and practices for addressing inequalities against women mainly focus on illegal acts and explicit
forms of discrimination at structural levels; such policies often create a surface neutrality towards gender without
exposing the nuances of how it operates in preserving inequalities (Bird, 2011). Our findings show how gender‐blind
perceptions among male faculty are sustained by their belief in gender neutrality as a characteristic of meritocracy in
academic science. Such assumptions and beliefs overlook the prevalence of gender in everyday actions, and encour-
age forms of masculinity that consider gender neutrality as a sign of progressiveness and egalitarianism, as our find-
ings show in this study. In the next section, we narrow our focus on how men are impacted by constructions of
gender by reviewing the previous research on masculinity in general and in academic STEM in particular.
3 | M E N A N D C O N S T R U C T I O N O F M A S C U L I N I T Y I N A C A D E M I C ST E M
Research on men and masculinities has explored the ways that the social construction of masculinity shapes men's
experiences and identities (Anderson, 2005, 2008; Cha & Thebaud, 2009; Cooper, 2000; Damaske et al., 2014;
Duncanson, 2015), and maintains gender inequality in a range of different contexts such as the workplace and the
household (Barrett, 1996; Lamont, 2015; Stern, Clarfelt, & Buikema, 2015; Stobbe, 2005; Sukhu, 2013). As Connell
(1995) has observed, masculinity is not a uniform construct. Within masculinity itself, there exists a power hierarchy
with hegemonic masculinity at the top and subordinated masculinities beneath it (Carrigan, Connell, & Lee, 1985).
How masculinity is constructed is contingent upon the institutional context, and different forms of masculinity can
become hegemonic under different historical and cultural conditions. Hegemonic masculinity is not the normal but
the normative construct; it is ‘the most honored way of being a man’ even if not successfully achieved by the majority
of men. Enactment of hegemonic masculinity is not pressed through force as much as through consent (Connell &
Messerschmidt, 2005). As the most acceptable form of manhood, hegemonic masculinity is internalized through
cultural and institutional processes rather than being imposed upon men.
In the new economy, according to some scholars, hegemonic masculinity serves as a control mechanism that insti-
tutions rely upon to maximize their outcomes. For example, in high‐tech corporations, Cooper (2000) shows that tech-
nical skills, brilliance, enthusiasm towards work and working long hours constitute the main elements of masculinity as
constructed in these contexts; to have these features not only signals men's competency at their work, but also their
competency in fulfilling their identities as men. Similarly, in academic science where the ideal worker has a career‐
centred life (Bailyn, 2003; Fox, Fonseca, & Bao, 2011), working long hours and uninterrupted devotion to work is for
men how masculinity is accomplished (Damaske et al., 2014). At the same time, especially in professional settings and
among educated men, ‘inclusive’ and ‘egalitarian’ masculinities, which are centred on respect for women's equal rights,
rejection of homophobia and willingness to engage in household responsibilities, are becoming more and more preva-
lent (Anderson, 2005, 2008; Cooper, 2000; Damaske et al., 2014; Lamont, 2015). A minority of men in such contexts
sacrifice themselves to fulfil both their family and career roles; to be a ‘modern’ husband, a ‘super dad’ (Cooper,
2000) and a devoted professional. The majority, however, do not fully enact their egalitarian, modern ideologies. These,
as Damaske et al. (2014) call them, are traditional and neo‐traditional men who, at different levels, prioritize work over
family responsibilities. In professional settings such as academic STEM, a version of hegemonic masculinity is accom-
plished through a work‐centred professional identity and lifestyle. In these contexts, egalitarian gender ideologies are
promoted but men, themselves, must determine how to reconcile their own accomplishment of masculinity with gen-
der‐equalizing ideologies. When men subscribe to hegemonic masculinity in this context, doing so does not entail the
explicit suppression of women; however, it may diminish men's ability to engage in equalizing gender relations and
contribute to eliminating inequalities against women. It also may cause individuals to conceal their biases and thus ren-
der mechanisms of inequality more invisible while promoting an illusion of equality (de Boise, 2015; Duncanson, 2015).
While a burgeoning body of research has addressed the construction of masculinity in professional settings, it is
studied in relation to men's own working and family conditions. In academic STEM, in particular, as much as women's
challenges are explored and discussed in great detail in the current literature, it is not clear how these issues shape
men's understandings of the role of gender in their professional experiences. Understanding this is important for any
attempts to reduce inequalities in STEM. Due to men being so numerically dominant in STEM fields, gender equality
in these fields cannot be achieved without men's contribution. Connell's theory of masculinities recognizes the
possibility of a version of ‘positive’ hegemonic masculinity centred around respect, inclusiveness and equality
(Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005; Duncanson, 2015). Our findings in this study show that gender‐sensitive under-
standings promote emergence of such forms of masculinity in the context of academic STEM. Recognizing the subtle
ways in which gender operates to disadvantage women, encourages many men to engage in day‐to‐day practices for
creating better conditions for women in STEM.
4 | METHODS
This study relies on an inductive approach, using semi‐structured in‐depth interviews as its method, to explore men's
understanding of the role of gender in shaping professional experiences in academic STEM. The first author
conducted interviews with a total of 30 male faculty in STEM departments of two universities in the Midwest region
of the United States. Both tenured and junior tenure‐track faculty were among the respondents. The first university
was a mid‐sized, primarily teaching‐oriented public university, while the second was a large, research‐oriented public
institution; the universities are referred to as ‘A' and ‘B', respectively. In‐depth interviews are valuable for eliciting
individuals' interpretations of social processes and their experiences with them (Lofland, Snow, Anderson, & Lofland,
2005; Seidman, 2005; Weiss, 1995). They create a condition for the researcher to delve into participants' perceptions
and experiences through focused questions and for the participants to educate the researcher about parts of their
lives (Charmaz, 2014).
What some scholars term ‘diversity rhetoric’ is deeply integrated into the institutional policies and practices in
the United States especially in higher education (see Berrey, 2011; Herring & Henderson, 2012). Accordingly, our
study design was based on the assumption that our participants were at least broadly aware of debates about the
challenges facing women and minorities in higher education, and STEM in particular. Both universities mandated
inclusion and diversity training for their faculty and were engaged in initiatives for improving women's representation
in their STEM departments. Many of our participants had served on diversity committees and revealed awareness
about the gender debate in STEM. Since in‐depth interviews are suitable for learning about how events are
interpreted by individuals (Weiss, 1995), we applied them to understand how men faculty perceive and position
themselves in relation to the gender debate.
To recruit participants at each university, the first author sent out a mass email to male faculty members in STEM
departments inviting them to participate in a study about men's perception of women's situation in STEM. After
recruiting an initial group of participants at each university, she expanded the sample through snowball sampling
by asking current participants, some STEM graduate students and postdoctoral scholars for suggestions. The final
sample included 8 assistant, 4 associate and 18 full professors. Of the 30 participants, 28 were married, 19 had work-
ing spouses (8 with academic careers) and 27 had children. The participants' time at the universities ranged from less
than one to nearly 30 years. Twelve of the participants were international and the rest were from the United States.
Among US‐born participants, most were white and one was African American. Our sample, therefore, includes men at
various career stages, with differing lengths of tenure at their institutions. It represents people in a range of different
family statuses, providing a range of bases of personal experience to inform participant's views about women in
STEM. This is important because, as previous literature reveals, men faculty differ in the ways they experience and
understand different aspects of academia's institutional culture due to differences in personal and family conditions
(Cech & Blair‐Loy, 2014; Damaske et al., 2014; Ecklund et al., 2012; Wingfield, 2013). The first round of interviews
was conducted at university A during 2012–2013 and the second round at university B during the 2015–2016
academic year, both by the first author.
Interviews were conducted face‐to‐face and lasted between 20 and 90 minutes. Twenty‐seven of the interviews
were tape recorded with participants' consent; for the other three, the first author took detailed notes. The
interviews explored three main topics: (i) participants' background in the university and the department; (ii) their
experiences and attitudes regarding departmental networks, resource allocation, advancement, departmental deci-
sion‐making processes and work–life balance; and (iii) their attitudes and positionalities towards women's situation
and gender inequity at departmental and university levels. This third area is the principal focus of this article. It
was explored with specific questions such as, To what extent and in what ways do you think your experiences in your
academic career would be different were you a female? How do you understand the gender imbalance in academic STEM
in general? What are your perceptions of your university's and your department's attempts for improving women's repre-
sentation on STEM faculty?
Interviews were transcribed and then analysed using content analysis. Content analysis involves the systematic
process of ‘coding and identifying themes or patterns’ for ‘describing the meaning of qualitative data' (Cho & Lee,
2014, p. 3). It is a useful technique for exploring how social issues are interpreted by individuals exposed to them
(Hsieh & Shannon, 2005; Krippendorff, 2012). Our data analysis revolved around two main foci: (i) whether or not
our participants viewed gender as something that matters in shaping individual experiences in STEM; and (ii) whether
and how they saw gender (in) equality as an issue that concerns them personally (as opposed to being the responsi-
bility of other people or of the university).
The categories that we will discuss in the next section emerged from a two‐step coding process. The first step
involved an in‐depth, line‐by‐line, reading of transcripts to identify the major themes and develop the initial set of
codes. The second step involved categorizing participants into different groups based on their views and
positionalities in relation to gender issues. In this step, we paid close attention to the types of personal experiences
and narratives that participants shared to demonstrate their views on gender issues. We viewed these experiences
and narratives as means used by participants to demonstrate specific views and construct particular positions in rela-
tion to women's issues (Damaske et al., 2014).
After the analysis of the interviews at both universities, the categories that emerged were compared. Analysis of
the interviews of participants at both universities revealed the same categories of description and experience,
although there were differences between the prevalence of categories. For example, only one participant at univer-
sity ‘A' represented our category of ‘as a man I am privileged’, but interviews at university ‘B' found nine more par-
ticipants who revealed this form of understanding.
5 | FINDINGS
Men experience and understand social life in diverse ways (Connell, 1995; Duncanson, 2015; Schrock & Schwalbe,
2009). Our analysis here shows a great diversity among men in their understandings of women's situation in aca-
demic STEM. In the first part of this section, we will discuss the three broad categories of men's perceptions of gen-
der issues that we came across in our analysis. The first group of participants that we will discuss below, did not see
gender as an impacting factor on their own and others' experiences in academic STEM. They described gender‐blind
understandings of the situation facing STEM academics. Drawing on person‐centred descriptions, this group viewed
men's and women's advancement in academic STEM as outcomes of individual decisions and performance. We will
discuss this perception under ‘we all may struggle regardless of gender’. The next two categories of participants
described awareness and sensitivity towards the importance of gender in shaping faculty professional advancement
in STEM. They felt privileged by their gender and believed that women faculty deal with more challenges than them.
There were, however, differences between the ways men in these two categories described their gender‐sensitive
understandings. For participants in the first category, particular career challenges facing them stimulated sympathy
with women, whom they viewed as disadvantaged in dealing with similar conditions. This is the category which
we call ‘we all struggle but women do more’. Participants in the second category underscored the role of their gender
in achieving satisfactory experiences without making references to any personal struggle. This is the category that we
call ‘as a man, I am privileged’.
In the second part of this section, we will highlight the importance of paying attention to men's perceptions of
women's issues in STEM by showing how gender‐sensitive perspectives can foster men's engagement in voluntary,
day‐to‐day practices for creating better conditions for women in STEM. Many of our participants with gender‐sen-
sitive perceptions described inequalities against women as a personal concern and an issue they personally aspired
to help resolve. We use the term ‘attached positionality’ to refer to this personal‐level engagement in gender issues
among men and suggest how it may serve as an alternative mechanism for improving women's conditions.
5.1 | Men's perceptions of gender in STEM

5.1.1 | We all may struggle regardless of gender
Our first group of participants reflects gender‐blind views on women's status in academic STEM. Gender‐blind views
did not take into account the impact of gender on the ways STEM faculty experience their careers. Participants with
gender‐blind perceptions did not see themselves as advantaged compared to women.
Academia is often described as based on values including freedom, meritocracy, egalitarianism and equality
(Currie, Thiele, & Harris, 2002, p. 29; Hutchison & Jenkins, 2013). Although a large body of research in social sciences
shows how, in practice, universities diverge from those values and the different ways in which they contribute to per-
petuation of inequalities and marginalization (Bailyn, 2003; Bird, 2011; Kašić, 2016; Knipfer, Shaughnessy, Hentschel,
& Schmid, 2017; Wilson, Marks, Noone, & Hamilton‐Mackenzie, 2010), STEM faculty in this group embraced a
traditional ethos about academia. In their view, the structure of higher education did not allow for individual charac-
teristics like gender to become influential for one's opportunities. As one associate professor from university ‘A'
pointed out:
When you get to this level, there is no male there is no female. Everybody is smart, everybody is aware and
knows what is going on. You cannot take advantage of one person because she is female. Everybody is on
the same level … I have seen incidences where there is a clash between a man and a woman but it is not
because she is a woman; I think it is just whatever their issues is.
While gender‐sensitive views, which we will discuss in the next two sections, entailed structure‐based explana-
tions for incidences of challenges facing women, the gender‐blind framework led to individualistic understandings of
such issues. About work–life balance, a professor at university ‘B' who was married to a STEM academic and raising
two kids mentioned:
At some point you evaluate your life as an integral of everything else. You cannot be excellent in
everything! We have to evaluate what WE measure as success. Of course if somebody has a kid, the
burden falls more on the woman than man no matter how the society is. So things are going to be
difficult. But that is the metric of success! I think it is individualistic, people decide on what they want
to do.
Arguments like this one heavily borrowed from the person‐centred narratives of ‘free choice’ which absolve institu-
tions of the responsibility to create a culture where family life is recognized and accommodated. While men in this
group agreed that family exposes women to more responsibilities than men, they viewed an academic career as a
suitable fit for those responsibilities, particularly due to the flexibility it offers. As a professor at university ‘A'
mentioned:
Women have more responsibilities at home and the same responsibilities here. But as a faculty the
flexibility in your time can let you to do what you want to do. There is no barrier for the women to do
the jobs that they are supposed to do.
Another participant, a professor at university ‘B', emphasized the adequacy of current accommodations offered
to women faculty during and after childbirth:
We have allowed roll back of tenure clocks and the flexibility of hours works in favor of people trying to
balance work and family. Some women faculty would concede that their professional productivity is not
as high as they wish because of some choices in the work–life balance but I think it is simply the reality
of trying to do a lot with only 24 hours a day.
Gender‐blind narratives as reflected in the quotes above were fed by participants' belief in individuals' capability
to reconcile personal and professional lives owing to the flexibility of the academic structure. These arguments con-
trast with research findings, which suggest that flexibility itself can create unique challenges for academics. Cech and
Blair‐Loy (2014), for example, show that those faculty who do rely on the flexible structure to accommodate their
family needs are stigmatized within the academic environment and report lower levels of job satisfaction. Rafnsdóttir
and Heijstra (2013) add that the outcome of flexibility in academia for faculty is heavily gendered as it increases the
expectations from female academics to manage both work and family and in a way reproduces traditional gender
norms at home.
The gender‐blind views expressed by these men often reflected gender essentialism, beliefs that there are
natural and innate differences between men and women (Levanon & Grusky, 2016). These participants saw the
biological and psychological gender differences as justifying the differences between the ways men and women fac-
ulty experience an academic career in STEM. To illustrate, some described their wives' voluntary decisions to resign
from their jobs after childbirth as revealing gender differences in life preferences. An assistant professor at university
‘A' mentioned:
When we had our first son, thankfully, she could quit and stop her career for ten years […] and she is very
pleased by the decision she made to stay home.
Drawing on the rhetoric of ‘free choice’, participants in this group took for granted what they perceived as
women's innate preference to prioritize family over work without commenting on the relational nature of this
pattern, through which women's reproductive and caregiving work benefit men in heterosexual relationships.
Gender‐blind perspectives also emerged when these participants discussed their views on the roots of gender
imbalance among STEM faculty. Drawing on the ‘pipeline’ approach (Blickenstaff, 2005; Kulis, Sicotte, & Collins,
2002), which attributes women's underrepresentation at higher academic ranks in STEM to the weak flow of girls
into these fields from early ages, participants perceived conditions facing women after becoming faculty members
as fair and equal. Some of them pointed out the inevitability of gender imbalance in STEM due to girls' choices
not to pursue these majors and their lack of interest in masculine fields. Revealing an essentialist perception, an
assistant professor at university ‘A' argued:
There are definitely different preferences between men and women for the kinds of things they want to do
and enjoy doing. It is not just cultural pressure. [When you take your car to an auto‐shop], usually every
single person there turning nuts and bolts is a male. In the same way, most girls do sort of girl stuff.
Gender‐blind views entailed support for gender neutrality in university policies and practices. Except for policies that
particularly supported women's reproductive role such as maternity leave, participants in this group refuted the need
for further efforts that aim to bring gender back to the conversation. Such perceptions were mainly fed by what
Jenkins (2013) calls ‘post‐discrimination’ rhetoric according to which, ‘overt discrimination [is] supposedly countered
by well‐regulated systems […] in academy’: the ‘imagination’ that ‘institutional arrangements’ in academia have
become fair (p. 81). When asked about his thoughts on diversity training that aims to increase sensitivity towards
issues of women and minorities, a professor from university ‘B' commented:
I think we do not need to worry about it anymore, that is a very old discussion to me. The point is clear!
and the proof is in attitudes and behavior of the department […] There is anachronisms of all things that
somebody said something offensive to a woman or told a sexist joke or hung up a calendar that was nudie
calendar; these things are just age gone by. So I think as far as professionalism and openness to gender
balance and gender equity goes, this is the state of affairs today!
He reported ‘a sense of impatience with any movement that suggests we need gender training’. Post‐discrimina-
tion views promoted the belief among participants of this group that university and departments were working suc-
cessfully to ensure that women were not disadvantaged in appointment and promotion. Some participants in this
group saw extra support for women faculty as inconsistent with anti‐discrimination law and policy. One professor
from university ‘B' mentioned:
Things like start up money can make an enormous difference in your career. [ … ] When I moved here they
gave my [female colleague] hundreds of thousands dollars to start her lab and gave me essentially nothing.
[…] I was kind of resentful! frankly! I felt like I have to be basically a super human to do the same thing here
[…] and it took me a long time, not just emotionally but in terms of setting the lab and getting the research
program going, to catch up.
This participant had found the department ‘upfront’ about their tendency to devote more resources to attract
‘prominent female candidates’ in order to improve the gender balance in the department. However, he strongly
believed that ‘disparities between the ways men and women are treated’ will cause resentment among men faculty.
Participants from this group situated themselves outside a gendered system that impacts men and women in dif-
ferent ways. By dissociating gender from what they understood as an equitable and fair professional context, these
participants ‘un‐gendered’ women and themselves, advocating liberal subjects capable of achieving personal goals
through individual devotion. In several cases, these participants naturalized gender differences by commenting on
women's innate preference to prioritize family over work or the lack of women with strong interest in STEM fields.
At the same time, they expressed a strong belief in gender blindness as an essential element of academic egalitarian-
ism. All participants in this group were married and, except for one, all had children. Three were married to academics;
six had wives with jobs outside academia; and four were the only breadwinners.
5.1.2 | We all struggle but women do more

Our second category of participants referenced challenges that they themselves faced throughout their careers as
means of explaining their views on issues facing women. Participants in this group described themselves as having
encountered difficulties that they understood as beyond their individual control and that could have been mitigated
through institutional accommodations. However, they still felt advantaged by being men, describing women as facing
additional challenges as a result of the masculine culture of STEM. For example, they described experiences of mar-
ginalization and others' devaluation of their research. As an associate professor at university ‘A' recounted:
Every time I bring up an idea, I get comments back that let me know that the idea was thought of as insane.
It would be better if there were more dialogue; if ideas were talked about without just being rejected either
because I am not in political favor in the department or my [research area] is different from others.
This same participant described the situation as more difficult for women in an environment which he described as
‘competitive’, ‘backstabbing’, ‘dishonest’, ‘disrespectful’ and ‘hyper‐masculine’. Three of the female faculty in his
department had left, a fact that he frequently referred to as an ‘embarrassment’ and the result of discriminatory
behaviours towards women:
It is always questioning the research! In one case I heard a senior faculty member say: ‘well we have to
tenure this person because she is female but her research is just crap!’ [and I thought:] No! you think
her research is crap because I can point to other people in the department who are doing worse
research but they are men therefore you are not picking on them! because [you] do not apply the same
standards to the men.
These participants also brought up the issue of work–life tension as a challenge with more negative impacts on
women than men in academic STEM. Egalitarian division of labour between some of these participants and their
spouses in the household served as a trigger for recognizing the insensitivity of the policies and culture of their home
institutions towards family life. They viewed the ‘all‐consuming’ nature of academic careers a burden to those men
who want to be equally engaged in family responsibilities. A professor from university ‘A' who was married to an aca-
demic and raising one child at the time of our interview, emphasized his conscious decision not to start a family until
after being tenured. He felt marginalized within the academic culture, which in his view, discourages men from
fulfilling their responsibilities at home:
The culture basically expects men to balance their life towards work […] But I do not think that should be
the case based on gender. [Everyone] should be recognized for having important function in family.
He believed that universities' lack of recognition about faculty's life outside work translates into more pressure on
women, since it is less possible for them to prioritize work over family:
[The] university [must] provide leadership in telling both male and female faculty that if there is a family
situation, treat it with respect and attend to it! [It must] provide the same support for men and women
so men do not feel that they should put work above family and women to sacrifice work for family.
Family responsibilities for men were not limited to childcare and household chores though. These participants
brought up other forms of unconventional family situations which had exposed them to work–family tensions.
One participant from university ‘B' used the example of his experience as the primary caregiver of his parent to show
how diverse living conditions are not reflected in university policies and culture, and how the field can be ‘unfair’ to
women. This participant was from a South Asian country where, he argued, men are culturally expected to take care
of their elderly parents despite the ‘western’ context:
I take 5 hours off every day because I take care of my mom. This would not be an expectation from a
western man because his mom would not be staying at [his] home but at a nursing home […]. I have
been dealing with this for the last 5 years. At the beginning I could say, I am missing this
meeting because of my situation but I soon realized that people think: ‘oh come on! You are giving the
same excuse over and over again.’ So I do not say this anymore and it is getting harder and harder.
Recognizing women's disproportionate share of family responsibilities and reproductive role, he emphasized how this
insensitivity towards personal life in academia imposes even more pressure on women:
If you are a woman, you cannot have children, because that is one year off lost […]. In academics if
you take one year off, in real sense, you are out of the business; you are way behind, people have
lost you.
Participants also pointed out the subtle ways through which the structure of academia perpetuates work‐centred life-
styles among all. One professor from university ‘B' discussed how ‘the system gets back to’ faculty if they choose
family‐centred lives:
Getting tenure is very challenging. Before that it is very difficult to have a fair balance between family
and work. But even after tenure, you are getting that mode of mindset that there is always one
more paper to write, one more grant to get. You probably can choose to [take it easier] but then the
system eliminates you; you will be ostracized. Of course your promotion will never happen from
associate to full.
About the particular impacts of this structure on women, he added:
The condition is, by default, harder for women […] as in a capitalist system, it is the product that matters
and it is up to individuals to manage their personal problems.
As we have shown, men faculty in this category applied gender‐sensitive frameworks to articulate their attitudes
towards the situation of women in academic STEM. Drawing on gender‐sensitive narratives and by describing expe-
riences with gendered structures of their institutions, these participants negotiated professional identities that were
uncomfortable with and critical of structures at both university and departmental levels that put women in disadvan-
taged positions compared to men. Although they believed that some challenges of academic careers are common
between men and women, they refuted gender‐neutral approaches that they saw as overlooking the realities of
women's conditions. As one professor from university ‘B' commented:
There's got to be something that is harder in addition to all the pressure that [any faculty experience]
regardless of gender. There are additional factors that cause female faculty to carry more burden than
male faculty. Somehow we have to compensate for that. We cannot just say that well, we are going to
be gender neutral! Gender neutral means basically you are ignoring those factors! Those are serious
issues and need serious considerations! You cannot be gender blind!
This group presents a perspective that focuses on some aspects of institutional settings as engines of inequality.
Central to this perspective is a recognition of gender as a significant factor in determining the nature and severity of
the challenges one faces. When these participants described their own challenges, they recognized their privileges
compared to their female colleagues. For those who were married to women with demanding jobs, equal engagement
in household tasks with their wives had exposed them to work–life conflicts and made them recognize women's more
difficult situation in dealing with these issues. Those who were enjoying more flexibility with family tasks, referred to
other issues including marginalization and competitiveness of the culture in academic STEM to elaborate on their
views on inequalities against women. Almost all of the participants in this group were married with children in the
household. Two were married to women in academia, one inside and one outside the STEM fields; one was the sole
breadwinner of his family and the rest had wives with jobs outside academia. One professor in this group was
divorced with two children.
5.1.3 | As a man, I am privileged

Similar to the previous group, participants of our third group also identified privileges of being men. Unlike the sec-
ond group though, they did not refer to any major personal challenges in their career while articulating their views
on gender issues in STEM. When asked if being female under similar conditions would make a difference in their
experiences, they all believed that they would not be where they are without enjoying the privileges of being a
man. By frequently commenting on specific difficulties that women STEM faculty face, these men celebrated their
own privileges while simultaneously raising concerns about the ‘unprivileged others’ (in this case women). This is a
meaningfully different position than the second group who, to various degrees, described themselves as dealing
with challenges that women face. About the work–life conflict, one assistant professor from university ‘B'
mentioned:
It is not easy to be a female in academia […] My Ph.D. advisor was a woman. She is now 40 and having her
first child. Because [as a woman] you have to decide between your family and your career. [The] condition
is definitely more difficult for women and I think school should definitely be doing a better of a job. They
could really make it easier for young women to decide to both have family and career. For men it is a lot
easier obviously. You can have a wife that stays at home.
About the same issue, a professor at university ‘B' who was married to a female professor in his department added
the impacts of cultural expectations from women:
I think it is totally asymmetric. There is a lot more expectations from women to spend more time at home
[than men].
Comparing his situation with his wife, he admitted that she was the one who bore the burden of family responsibil-
ities the most. Participants in this group also viewed their access to the all‐men networks in their academic
communities as an exclusive privilege. They viewed these networks as essential to their advancement and success
in STEM. One professor from university ‘B' viewed this as even more burdensome to women than their family
responsibilities. Thinking about a hypothetical situation where his wife, a current ‘home maker’, was a STEM
professor instead of him, he argued:
As a man, I had many advantages in terms of networking: the good ol’ boys network! I know it exists! I am
even a part of it! I do not try to contribute it! I think my wife and I could be reversed in a sense that I think I
could be a stay home father, but for a woman to be successful in academic engineering, it takes an
aggressive personality! Because it is a part of this culture. I do not have any illusions that I have had
certain advantages because of being a male.
Even without the burden of family, this participant believed that the masculine culture of STEM puts specific bur-
dens in the way of women's success by marginalizing them; an issue that he described as being in favour of his
professional interests as a man. About exclusion, a professor form university ‘A' argued women's professional per-
formance is negatively impacted by informal circulation of institutional information among men. He provided the
following example:
One time I was on my way to our department meeting and at the time the chair of the department was a
woman. I stopped in the restroom right before the meeting and it happened to be next to me the associate
dean of the school who gave me some news and information. So I went to the meeting and shared this; the
chair wondered: ‘how did you find this out?! I am the chair of the department! I should have known this!’
[I thought] you just do not hang out in the right restroom!
So even for women in higher positions, this participant viewed the playing field as uneven due to their exclusion from
all‐male networks. He expressed a high level of satisfaction from being involved in an informal network of ‘like‐
minded’ men, which he viewed as the reason for being ‘very successful in [his] scholarship’. At the same time he
was able to see how women's lack of access to such relations is consequential for their professional performance:
The reality is yes we have meetings but a lot of work just gets done because you bumped in to somebody or
you went out to lunch with them and if you are not part of that relationship it makes it much more difficult
to develop the collaboration that you need to be successful.
Implicit biases against women constituted another problem that participants in this group felt secure from. About
the influences of such biases on the recruitment process one professor at university ‘B' observed:
When we have a male candidate, we are not thinking in the back of our minds that oh boy! this guy will be
gone for nine months or so … but I am certain that is a thought that crosses everyone's mind when we are
interacting with a female candidate.
An assistant professor from the same university added that as teachers, young female faculty are under more scrutiny
compared to men; students are more likely to raise questions and ‘give attitudes’ in their classes because the norma-
tive ‘depiction of a STEM professor in students’ mind is a male’. Another professor from university ‘B' pointed out the
different ways that ‘competitive’ behavioural styles are interpreted between men and women with the former being
seen as ‘assertive’ while the latter as ‘aggressive’.
Men in this group situated themselves inside a gendered system, which entails gender‐based inequalities
between individual opportunities; a system that channels men's and women's individual efforts into different out-
comes and accomplishments. Faculty advancement, to them, was not merely tied to individual devotion and was
bounded by gendered structures of university and department. This understanding of gender led to constant ‘gender-
ing’ of situations that they discussed during the interview and recognition of their own privileges. As one professor at
university ‘B' pointed out:
I am a white male so I am on the lucky end of the stick as far as how things have been going for the last
50 years.
As with the second group, all men but one in this group were married, and all of the married men but one had children
in the household. Three were married to academic women, three had wives with part‐time or full‐time jobs outside
academia and three were the only breadwinners of the family. In the next section, we will show the important impli-
cations of gender‐sensitive, as opposed to gender‐blind, perceptions for the way men perform their professional roles
in relation to women.
5.2 | Why care about men's perceptions of gender in STEM?

Current research on masculinities reveals the inaccuracy of cultural representations that homogenize all men as sup-
pressive and negligent of women's rights (Lamont, 2015). In today's world, many men, especially professionals, middle
and upper class, draw on gender egalitarianism to form and negotiate progressive and inclusive masculine identities
(Anderson, 2005, 2008; Lamont, 2015). However, these egalitarian beliefs among men do not necessarily translate
into practices that remove discrimination against women (Pyke, 1996). For men in academic STEM, our analysis
shows that those with different perspectives support gender equality as a value in itself. However, not all of them
view the current status of academia in the United States as unfair to women. The first step for men to contribute
to gender equality — especially in contexts like academia where gender functions in such subtle ways — is to recog-
nize its role as a source of inequality. An important implication of our findings about men's understandings of gender
is the different consequences of gender‐sensitive versus gender‐blind understandings for the ways men perform
their roles as colleagues, teachers or mentors of women in STEM. Those participants who viewed gender inequalities
in STEM as a personal concern and felt attached to address it as a social problem, were among the ones with gender‐
sensitive views. Participants with gender‐blind views, on the contrary, revealed a sense of detachment from whatever
institutional or personal factors that make it more difficult for women to pursue academic careers in STEM.
Participants who revealed an attached positionality described personal efforts to create a better environment for
women both as students and faculty. One professor from university ‘A' expressed frustration with the ‘US culture’
which, in his view, discourages female undergraduates in STEM to pursue graduate studies. He recounted one of
his efforts for ‘neutralizing’ the cultural biases that, to him, demotivate girls to advance in STEM fields:
I had a very good sophomore female student who came to me and said: [I really like my major but don't
think I need a master]. She was not seeing herself going through the master's program even with her
good grades and interests. I linked her with a female friend of mine who has a master's and works as
the vice president of a [prestigious] company. [I asked her to] mentor my student and tell her the
importance of a master's for one's career.
Participants with attached positionalities also described efforts to be good role models for female students in
their male‐dominated departments. One associate professor at university ‘A', for example, emphasized the
importance of the image that faculty represent to female students. Recognizing that as a ‘[middle aged] white guy’
he ‘automatically’ feeds the stereotypes of STEM academics, he discussed his efforts for disturbing other elements
of such stereotypes:
I try very hard to be a role model for all students. I am making a conscious effort to go home earlier so
maybe project a better career. I try to keep a friendly, happy attitude to best of my ability; I do my best
to be passionate about [science]; I do my best to listen to [students' issues].
Similarly, another professor at this university raised concern about men's limitations in serving as a role model for
female students. To compensate for some of these limitations he mentioned:
I try to be open about certain elements of my family life with students. They all know my wife is science
academic. So they know I not only support women in STEM but also I have married one. There is a
difference I think.
Participants with attached positionalities revealed a sense of responsible ‘we’ for removing barriers to women in
STEM. This was manifested in the self‐inclusive tone they used to discuss their views on gender issues. About the
need for attracting more women faculty to his department, for example, a professor at university ‘A' mentioned:
We should recognize [improving women's representation] as a priority so we can structure start‐up

packages and offers to attract them. I think until we get some women in tenure track and preferably
eventually tenured, until we get a core group, it is going to be difficult to diversify. I think we need to
start by recognizing the importance of bringing those different points of view to the faculty and students.
Attached positionality among men also entailed engagement in promoting better working conditions for their female
colleagues. This is particularly important because in many cases, diversity initiatives create motivations for
departments to recruit more women, but not necessarily to retain them. As one associate professor at university ‘B'
explained, the STEM community ‘does not like the ugly job of asking why someone bails out of the program?’ because
of their fear ‘to look under that rug, which might show some unpleasant facts’ about gender bias and discrimination.
These participants argued that, given the shortage of formal supports for women in dealing with the challenges of
early years, male faculty, as the dominant group, should create a welcoming and supportive atmosphere especially
when serving as women's mentors. As a professor at university ‘B' pointed out, after recruitment:
The harsh realities are not gone. These women who have come need to be here 12 hours a day otherwise
they would not get tenure.
This participant went on to describe how he worked to change those harsh realities:
In fact, I am the mentor of one of them. I am very proud because she came last year [and won] a career
award which is extremely competitive. [She did not want to apply in her first year]! I said no! you have to
apply! and we worked really hard on it, and she got it! […] I said YES! YES! this is how we create examples!
She is the only one I know who got this award with first try! So they are not less competent and this wrong
perception must be taken care of by having more of them.
In addition to the impacts that an attached positionality may make on how men mentor women faculty, it can
also make them more cautious about the subtle mechanisms that contribute to gender inequality. For example, an
associate professor at university ‘B' recited one of his experiences, as the chair of a programme committee, which
had revealed to him the complexities of designing effective initiatives for improving women's working conditions.
It was related to a time when the committee had been looking to raise women's representation on programme com-
mittees above the total percentage of women faculty in the department as a ‘tacit acknowledgement’ of the need to
put women's voice front and centre:
We had a really interesting conversation where we faced a lot of resistance from female committee
members. It was because we were essentially asking them to double their service load to be on twice as
many committees to deal with the fact. That is a dilemma! On one hand you want to encourage more
women to the field. At the same time, you cannot ask [female colleagues] to do more. I certainly think
that we need more open dialogue about these things. It is hard to tease out these issues; you think you
are doing the right thing but all of a sudden you realize maybe I am doing more harm than good.
Attached positionality among men, therefore, may serve as a support system for women and a monitoring mechanism
that calls out incidents of unfair treatment. This contrasts sharply with the gender‐neutral approach that
participants with gender‐blind perspectives supported. While these men did not reject the value of gender equality,
they did not see a personal need to engage in practices to promote it. As we pointed out in our discussion of gender‐
blind views, these men problematized approaches creating any form of positive consideration in favour of women.
As one professor at university ‘A' argued:
I think diversity is very important but it should be attained naturally; not something that the departments
or others force on it.
The differences between the types of attitudes and professional performances that gender‐sensitive versus gen-
der‐blind perspectives can promote among men highlights the importance of paying attention to men's views when
designing initiatives for creating gender equality in STEM. Men's perceptions of gender issues, as our findings in this
section showed, have consequences for women's conditions in STEM in terms of interpersonal relations with male
colleagues, opportunities for advancement, quality of mentoring and the overall institutional culture. As other
scholars have observed (Anderson, 2005, 2008; Cooper, 2000; Damaske et al., 2014; Lamont, 2015), egalitarian
and inclusive forms of masculinity are becoming more and more prevalent in contemporary cultural and social
settings. Homophobia, anti‐femininity and violence, which once overwhelmingly shaped hegemonic masculinity
(Connell, 1995), are being replaced by expressions of inclusive values (Anderson, 2005) that entail more respect for
gender equality among men (Lamont, 2015). The attached positionality that we discovered can be understood as an
important part of the process through which, men negotiate egalitarian and inclusive masculine identities; a
positionality that was informed by men's gender‐sensitive understandings of academic careers in STEM. In the next
section, we will further discuss the implications of our findings for thinking about gender issues in STEM and, more
importantly, designing policies for removing gender inequalities.
6 | D I S C U S S I O N A N D CO N C L U SI O N
Studies of gender inequities in academic STEM have predominantly focused on challenges facing women as a minor-
ity group. Only a few scholars have discussed how gender impacts men's experiences (Cooper, 2000; Damaske et al.,
2014; Duncanson, 2015), and these studies have considered men's experiences only in relation to their own working
and living conditions. In this study, we have explored how gender operates in shaping men's perspectives and
positionalities in relation to women's issues. Our findings shed light on the diversity among men, in this case, in their
understandings of gender in the context of academic STEM and positionalities in relation to inequalities between
men and women.
The first group of participants expressed gender‐blind views on the challenging aspects of academic careers in
STEM and developed person‐centred descriptions for particular issues facing women, particularly challenges of
work–life balance. The second group of participants, in contrast, believed that women are subjected to more
challenges in an academic career in STEM than men. They described their views by making references to challenges
they themselves were going through, arguing that if as men in a male‐dominated environment they were facing those
issues, the situation must be even more burdensome for women. The third group also described gender as an impor-
tant factor in shaping experiences and opportunities in academic STEM, but, unlike the second group, by making ref-
erences to their privileges as men. Both of these groups thus revealed gender‐sensitive perceptions. Our findings also
revealed the important implications of gender‐sensitive, as opposed to gender‐blind, understandings in the ways men
perform their professional roles in relation to women on a day‐to‐day basis. Many of our participants with gender‐
sensitive views described how they were engaged, on a personal level, in creating better conditions for women in
STEM either as their students or colleagues; a positionality that we called attached.
Gender is a background, omnivorous identity that is central to beliefs about one's own and others' status in terms
of competency, honour, respect and esteem. Behind the institutionally defined roles in different contexts, ‘as a
background identity gender typically acts to bias in gendered directions the performance of behaviors undertaken
in the name of more concrete, foregrounded organizational roles or identities’ (Ridgeway, 2009, p. 152). Gender can-
not be eliminated from any social context; even with gender‐neutral policies at institutional levels, gender is con-
structed and reconstructed at the level of interpersonal interactions. Therefore, any attempt to create an
environment that seeks to reduce gender‐based inequalities cannot be successful by trying to remove gender
through neutral policies and encouraging a neutral culture; rather, equalizing attempts must account for the ways
gender informs and directs day‐to‐day interpersonal interactions. Such efforts must pay close attention to the ways
institutional policies and practices for promoting gender equality are interpreted and understood by individuals
(Charles, 2014). After all, individuals' understandings of gender issues in any institutional context inform their actions
in relation to those issues.
As our findings show, within the same institutional context, men differed in the ways they understood and acted
towards gender issues. This means that first, men are not always beneficiaries of the gendered structures of academic
STEM and second, formal practices, such as training put forward by universities and STEM departments to promote
gender diversity, do not necessarily raise sensitivity towards gender inequality among all men. The shortcomings of
these programmes, as we showed in the previous section, were attested by our participants with gender‐sensitive
perceptions as well. Therefore, policies and practices that seek to contribute to gender equality must attend to the
ways gender issues are understood by men, as the majority group, to avoid buttressing gender‐blind views. Perhaps
these programmes must put the necessity of men's sensitivity towards gender issues in their day‐to‐day professional
interactions front and centre rather than encouraging gender neutrality as a sign of professionalism.
In addition to mechanisms for preventing implicit forms of inequalities, new sets of interventions are needed to
create a collaborative environment for removing barriers to women not only at institutional, but also at interactional
levels. The first step to create such an environment would be a collective recognition that women face different bar-
riers than men to advance in academic STEM. Despite years of research documenting this (e.g., Dunham et al., 2012;
Frehill et al., 2006; Toutkoushian & Bellas, 1999; Tyson & Borman, 2010; Valian, 2004) and increased attention to
improving women's representation in STEM fields, nearly half of our informants revealed gender‐blind perspectives:
they believed that the current setting in academia does not allow discrimination based on gender. This ‘post‐discrim-
ination view of inequality’ (Jenkins, 2013, p. 81), which perceives formal recognition of personal characteristics in pol-
icy design as a flaw to meritocracy in academia, is not efficiently targeted by common diversity training and
programmes (Bird, 2011). Our participants who revealed gender‐sensitive views, argued that these conventional
institutional practices render individual biases invisible without removing them. As an associate professor from uni-
versity ‘A' mentioned, ‘a whole lot of mandatory awareness and training’ around gender equality issues causes people
to hide their real attitudes while ‘on the foreground’ they act gender neutral.
Gender‐blind views — that presume gender neutrality as a way to ensure equality — could be understood as
buttressing a hegemonic perspective which overlooks others' disadvantages. As Connell and Messerschmidt (2005)
argue, when gender hierarchies and explicit gender discrimination are abandoned, it is possible that more ‘human’
and less ‘oppressive’ forms of masculinity become hegemonic. In the case of academic STEM, a belief in gender neu-
trality as a meritocratic value and its institutionalization through polices and university culture decreases overt dis-
criminations against women. As a side effect, however, it makes gender an irrelevant issue to academic context
and leads to gender‐blind perceptions. This, as Bailyn (2003) argues, disproportionately disadvantages women
because many of the challenges they face are caused by ‘subtle gendered dynamics’ rather than overt discrimination.
When it is assumed that culture, structures and policies are gender neutral it is more challenging to uncover the sub-
tle gendered structures that disadvantage women.
It is also important to note that some men too are impacted by these gendered structures, as our findings
revealed. Our analysis of the first and second groups of participants provided numerous examples of men's challenges
in dealing with the demanding nature of academic STEM careers. Although characteristics associated with successful
academic performance and hegemonic masculinity coincide to a great extent (Currie et al., 2002; Wedgwood, 2009),
it is not the case that all men are unquestionable beneficiaries of this system. Masculinity, as some scholars have
argued, serves as a control mechanism for improving productivity in professional settings, including STEM. To live
a work‐centred life in such contexts hints not only to being a good professional but also subscribing to normative
images of masculinity (Cooper, 2000; Damaske et al., 2014). In such a context, for those men who desire to make
a balance between their career and personal life, the current structure of the academy does not provide sufficient
support either (Damaske et al., 2014). But as our findings revealed, even some of those men attributed the manifes-
tations of work–life tension in their own and women's experiences to individuals' life choices rather than structural
factors. This perspective again signals to a deep‐rooted belief in neutrality towards personal characteristics as the
best inroad to meritocracy and fairness among many academics.
In their study of how men scientists handle tensions between work and family demands, Damaske et al. (2014)
identify four typologies of men: forgoing childrearing, egalitarian partners, neo‐traditional dual earners and traditional
breadwinners. Their first category represented men who avoided marrying or having children in their marriage to stay
committed to their career advancement; egalitarian men were those married to academic women and sought to be
equally involved in household responsibilities; those in neo‐traditional dual earner relations were primary breadwin-
ners of the family and were less engaged in family responsibilities although their wives worked outside the home as
well; traditional men were the only breadwinners of the family and their lives were centred around their career rather
than family responsibilities.
The different categories revealed in our study cut across all four kinds of men in Damaske et al.’s typology. Fam-
ily arrangements and gender dynamics of labour division in the household, therefore, cannot alone explain why some
men reveal more sensitivity and attachment towards gender issues in STEM. Traditional and neo‐traditional gender
roles at home do not necessarily translate into traditional gender ideologies at work — in the same way that progres-
sive gender ideologies at home may not entail sensitivity towards gender issues in academic STEM. This inconsistent
translation, in fact, constitutes an important implication of our findings in this study, as it signals to the subtlety of the
ways gender operates in the context of academic STEM. Even when men recognize the gendered structure of family
and engage in equalizing practices at home, they do not necessarily see how similar mechanisms sustain gender‐
based inequalities at work. In some cases, men who take equal responsibilities as their partners at home expect
universities and their departments to recognize men's and women's family life in the same ways; this serves as a
mechanism for gender‐blind perceptions. At the same time, those men who benefit from family‐oriented partners
who secure them from work–life tensions can become sensitive to patterns of inequality at work by recognizing this
as a privilege that their female colleagues are less likely to enjoy.
Therefore, efforts for promoting gender sensitivity in academic STEM need to take into account the specificities
of how gender operates in this context. A mere focus on laws and regulations that inform faculty about illegal prac-
tices and the legislative protections offered to subjects of discriminatory behaviours will not fully address the subtle
ways in which gender inequalities are reproduced on a day‐to‐day basis (Bird, 2011). As Kalev, Dobbin, and
Kelly (2006) have shown, among organizational actions for improving diversity and reducing burdens to minorities,
the most successful are the ones that promote a sense of ‘organizational responsibility’ for diversity. This involves
setting up goals and practices that hold institutions accountable for diversity as a valuable goal in and of itself. de
Vries and van den Brink (2016) show that ‘development of individuals’ to become the agents of change in organiza-
tions is more effective than interventions that seek ‘immediately apparent structural changes’ to address gender
inequalities. Our findings here show how men's sensitivity towards gender imbalance in STEM and its consequent
challenges for women can raise a sense of responsibility among them to engage in voluntary, day‐to‐day actions
for improving women's conditions and become agents of change in their departments.
Our findings also support Bird's (2011) findings from a study of a training workshop meant to increase awareness
about gendered structures of academic STEM among men and women faculty. Bird (2011) observed that only after
an in‐depth discussion with female colleagues and the training team on incidences of gender inequalities, were a few
male participants able to see how gender might be embedded in the university structures. Bird (2011) argues:
further discussions and training of faculty and department heads regarding the many elements that
comprise incongruous, gendered bureaucratic structures in academia and the barriers they create
[…] unsettle accepted knowledge about the normative practices of university (p. 224).
While gender socialization is beyond universities' and departmental control, open conversations regarding gender
inequity, its incidences and consequences can be organized and facilitated. Men comprise the majority of faculty in
STEM departments and are the main agents of cultural production. Unless they see how university‐wide and depart-
mental policies create gendered impacts and outcomes, they will not see barriers to women's advancement and con-
tribute to removing them in meaningful ways.
Our findings also highlight the importance of an open and ongoing dialogue with men faculty to bring to the sur-
face gender as an effective factor on professional experiences. Institutional interventions for removing gender
inequality will only be effective if individuals perform those alternatives at interactional levels. Some of the interven-
tions, as our informants argued, enforce enactment of gender neutrality without addressing the background biases
that persist. In this sense, an alternative discourse for surfacing gender as something that ‘matters in current reality’
and not something that ‘should not matter’, would address insensitivities and the distracting gender neutrality.
Shifting the focus from women and their issues to gender and how it is understood allows us to see both structural
and interactional dimensions of gender inequality in STEM and thus address it at the appropriate levels. For example,
when institutions consider specific accommodations for women such as paid leave or schedule flexibilities they
should also consider how these changes are viewed by men. The way men understand such gender‐specific accom-
modations impacts their views towards their female colleagues and thus their interactions with them. In a lack of
clear communication with men about why some policies are put in place to specifically support women, they may lead
to resentment among men as our participants with gender‐blind perspectives agreed. A majority of our participants
who revealed gender‐sensitive perception had some form of personal engagement with the puzzle of gender imbal-
ance and women's challenges in STEM including: experience with administrative positions with responsibilities to
improve gender diversity among students and faculty; being married to women who also worked in academic STEM
or having daughters majored in STEM; witnessing how their daughters lost interest in STEM during middle and high
school; or simply having frequent conversations with female friends, colleagues or students in STEM about their
concerns and challenges. It was only through these personal exposures that they could see the necessity of specific
support for women.
To sum up, men's voices regarding gender issues in STEM must be taken into account if gender equality is to be
achieved in these fields. Their understandings of these issues not only inform the way they play their professional
roles in relation to women, but also shapes the way they perceive academia as a whole. As we previously mentioned,
a very limited number of studies have paid particular attention to men in the same way we did in this work. Consid-
ering the scarce body of research on this topic, this work offers valuable insights for making changes in current
culture in STEM disciplines. It also offers a frame to think about perceptions and positionality of men faculty in rela-
tion to gender inequity.
Our findings and discussions, however, remain open to further research in the future. One strength of this
study is that it relies on findings from two different institutional settings, one teaching and one research‐ori-
ented university. The emerging themes from our interviews in both universities were the same; the distribution
of participants into categories, however, was different. For example, only 1 (out of 12) participant in university
‘A' fitted into our category of ‘as a man, I am privileged’ compared to 9 (out of 18) participants in university ‘B'.
One possible explanation is that university ‘B' was a higher rank university in STEM fields and there was more
institutional focus on gender diversity due to its utility in improving programmes' ranking. Therefore, participants
from university ‘B' were more exposed to discussions surrounding these issues and revealed more familiarity
with the gendered structures of academic STEM. However, it is also possible that the reason these participants
at university ‘B' accepted to participate in our study was their sensitivity to gender inequality and their willing-
ness to share their perspectives. Further studies using quantitative methodologies are required for testing these
theoretical speculations.
Finally, we should emphasize that it is difficult, if not impossible, to create clear categories of men based on the
differences in their views on women. We discussed broad categories to provide analytical views of the types of per-
spectives we came across in our interviews. Certainly, some respondents expressed the view that participated in
more than one category, and not all participants provided concise explanations of their own and women's situation
in STEM departments. Our typologies in this article were created based on the narratives shared by our 30 partici-
pants in the interviews. Spoken language is not always based on a coherent and consistent discourse and often com-
poses intermingling discursive positions. In this sense, we did not expect each interview to express exclusively one
type of perception. However, the narratives provided by participants demonstrated three overarching understand-
ings of gender issues among men in STEM. The great sensitivity that some men in our study demonstrated towards
inequalities against women and their attached positionality for removing them is promising for gender equity, as it
supports interventions for expanding this sensitivity to all academics. We see this as the most important contribution
of this study and encourage further research to explore the types of interventions that can best encourage gender‐
sensitive and attached positionality among faculty in STEM departments.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Cynthia Buckley for her insightful feedback on the earlier drafts of this manuscript.
DECLARATION OF C ONFLICTING INTERES T
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this
article.
ENDNOTE
1
Life and social sciences are excluded.
ORCID
Negin Sattari http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2478-9320
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Negin Sattari is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana‐Champaign. Her research focuses on
women's work and employment in both developing and developed contexts. She particularly explores barriers
facing women in male‐dominated professions and how they can be removed.
Rebecca L. Sandefur is Associate Professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Illinois Urbana‐Champaign
and Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. Sandefur's research focuses on inequality, particularly as it
relates to law. Her scholarship includes investigations of work and inequality in professional occupations, the rel-
ative efficacy and sustainability of human and technological models of professional services delivery and studies
of ordinary people's experiences with common problems that could bring them into contact with the civil justice
system.
How to cite this article: Sattari N, Sandefur RL. Gender in academic STEM: A focus on men faculty. Gender
Work Organ. 2019;26:158–179. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12249

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Received: 4 January 2017 Revised: 18 December 2017 Accepted: 6 February 2018

Gender in academic STEM: A focus on men faculty

Department of Sociology, University of Illinois

academia, gender inequality, gender segregation, masculinity, STEM

5.1 | Men's perceptions of gender in STEM

5.1.2 | We all struggle but women do more

About the particular impacts of this structure on women, he added:

5.1.3 | As a man, I am privileged

5.2 | Why care about men's perceptions of gender in STEM?

We should recognize [improving women's representation] as a priority so we can structure start‐up

DECLARATION OF C ONFLICTING INTERES T

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