Reasons for Gendered U.S. Faculty Departures Across Disciplines and Institutions

Women faculty experience academia differently from men in many ways, which can lead them to consider leaving their positions. Using a large-scale survey of both current and former tenure-track and tenured faculty, representing nearly all U.S. PhD-granting institutions and 29 disciplines, we investigate which aspects of the academic workplace are (i) most gendered and (ii) most relevant to faculty retention patterns. Analyzing 6,615 free-text responses from respondents reveals that feeling devalued at work, both in formal evaluations and informal interactions, is the topic where women and men’s reported experiences diverge the most when given the opportunity to discuss anything that needed to be different about their jobs—a pattern that holds for nearly 300 institutions and across both STEM and non-STEM fields, and was particularly strong for women of color and tenured women. This is in contrast to most existing gender-based interventions in academia that target work-life balance. Further, devaluation is the most influential factor in gendered departures, accounting for the majority of the gender gap in both considering leaving (current faculty) and leaving (former faculty). Finally, illustrative quotations contextualize gender-based devaluation in academia. Together, these results provide new evidence for the long-known gender gap in faculty retention, illuminating how gendered and racialized dynamics in the workplace cross disciplines and institutions and directly influence gendered and racialized decisions to leave academia.