Feathers in the Nest - Establishing a Supportive Environment for Women

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Elsa

This paper examines attitudes and behaviours of women researchers in academia and evaluates how these factors influence successful research outcomes. The findings from exploratory research identify environmental influencers that enhance performance, combining personal variables such as marital status, partner support, age, cultural background, and day-to-day organisation with research-related variables including incentives and the existence of partnerships and groups. These dimensions relate to productivity indicators such as publication submissions and successful research funding applications.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Literature Review

Gender inequalities in academia

Women’s career progression and family responsibilities

Feathers in the Nest: Establishing a Supportive Environment for Women Researchers Nicole Hartley University of Technology Sydney Angela Dobele RMIT University Abstract This paper discusses research examining the attitudes and behaviours of researching women in academia and considers the effect of these factors on successful researching outcomes. The results of this exploratory research highlight in particular, a number of interesting environmental influencers which contribute to enhancing successful work outcomes for academic women researchers. Specifically, personal factors such as, marital status, partner support, age, cultural background and level of organisation (in life) coupled with, research defined factors such as incentive for conducting the research and the existence of research partnerships and/or groups are identified as significant performance influencers. These dimensions appear to facilitate the level of research productivity for women academics based on key performance indicators such as journal/conference paper submissions and successful research funding applications. The potential benefits of this exploratory research are that any correlation between specific self-supporting attitudes or behaviours of successful women academics and effective research outcomes could provide important clues to both emerging and continuing researchers for career development and promotion. Introduction Much of the current research on women in research focuses upon highlighting or measuring barriers to academic success. Past explanations for the lower productivity of female researchers, compared with their male counterparts, include factors such asthe multiple roles adopted by women (mother, partner, friend, care-giver, colleague, academic), gender stereotyping, and what as been regarded as “toxic atmospheres” The Australian Educational Researcher, Volume 36, Number 1, April 2009 •43 NICOLE HARTLEY, ANGELA DOBELE for work which are exacerbated by gender biasing issues such as inequality in pay rates, promotional opportunities, non-flexible workloads (Stark-Adamec, Robinson, & Loutzenhiser 1993; Wilson 2001, 2004; Fodor 2005) . Further research has investigated some of the sacrifices made by women academics, for example, forgoing or postponing having children in order to sustain a successful academic career (Williams 2001; Wilson 2003) . In response to this body of literature, this paper adopted a counter perspective on the climate for women academics by highlighting the positive influences for women in these roles. Specifically, this research seeks to explore the nature of the relationship between research success (measured through research publications and successful research grant applications) and specific techniques to achieve this success. The answers to these questions could provide valuable information to women academics at all levels and foster enhanced performance for women employed within academia. Literature Review Gender inequalities in academia Statistics released by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) within Australia have suggested that the percentage of women in the workforce has risen significantly since the mid 1980’s (Kelly, Bolton, & Harding, 2005) . Specifically, workforce participation rates for women have risen by 11 per cent while the participation rate for men has seen a decline by 3.5 per cent (Kelly et al. , 2005) . This rapid social change has been attributed to higher costs of living, higher divorce ratesand the acceptance of the married career women. Kelly et al. ,(2005) also highlighted that approximately 43 per cent of all new jobs created between 1990 and 2003 went to women with degrees. While these statistics are viewed as a positive move towards equality in the workforce, currently, for many women the workforce is reflecting a different reality (Wilson, 2003, 2004) . It is acknowledged that some areas of employment will continue to sustain

FAQs

How does the paper connect research success to measurable outcomes?

It links research success to measurable indicators including journal or conference paper submissions and successful research funding applications.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Elsa