| dc.description.abstract | This study examines the effects of gender and family status on PhD recipients’ likelihood of attaining tenure-track faculty jobs at U.S. higher education institutions, with a specific focus on mothers who have children during graduate school. This study compares PhD-earning mothers to other groups, including men and women without children and fathers, and it explores individual, institutional, doctoral training, and professional life course variables predicting PhD mothers’ attainment of tenure-track faculty jobs at U.S. higher education institutions within the first eight to thirteen years of obtaining their terminal degrees. Analyzing data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates and the Survey of Doctorate Recipients by the National Science Foundation, this study focuses on PhD recipients who are U.S. citizens and who graduated from U.S. higher education institutions between 2000 and 2005. Understanding whether and how PhD mothers “leak” out of the academic pipeline at the junction between graduate school and the professoriate is essential for higher education institutions, researchers, and policymakers, because doctoral students serve as valuable resources to higher education institutions and ensure continued research and knowledge production. The effects of gender and family status on tenure-track faculty job attainment may also inform our understanding of persistent gender gaps in academia in terms of earning potential, job status, and mobility. This study uses cumulative advantage theory to understand PhD mothers’ accumulation of career-related resources in graduate school and how their accumulation influences their likelihood of attaining tenure-track faculty jobs. This study finds that higher percentages of mothers who had children during graduate school secured tenure-track jobs within the first two years of PhD graduation compared to men and women without children in graduate school, but fewer mothers secured academic jobs at all between 2006 and 2013 compared to other groups. Despite their early successes in attaining tenure-track jobs, mothers were more likely to secure jobs at non-research focused institutions than other groups, and they were more likely to work in non-tenure-track faculty jobs that acted as long-term positions rather than as potential stepping stones to the tenure track. A series of logistic regressions indicate that the individual, institutional, doctoral training, and professional life course factors used in this study partially explain differences in tenure-track attainment for PhD mothers, while a significant portion of the variation in tenure-track employment remains unexplained by observable characteristics. These findings suggest important implications for U.S. higher education institutions regarding female graduate students, the experiences of graduate students who are parents, and the recruitment of mothers into faculty jobs. This study also suggests important implications for future research on graduate students who are mothers. | |
