Career Development Of Chinese Academic Women

Academic profession has faced a great change while higher education has been experiencing expansion, internationalization, an emphasis of relevance and deterioration of finance. In this case, what is the status quo of women in Chinese academic profession? Admittedly, the sum of female faculty has become bigger, and female faculty has constituted an important part of faculty members. At the same time, however, some female faculties, whose research can hardly be recognized by male colleagues, neither get a great amount of research grant nor are promoted as quickly as male. It seems that some impediments have hampered female faculty from moving upwards. Foreign researchers have defined this phenomenon as a"glass ceiling". The"glass ceiling"has vividly revealed an invisible and powerful impediment that female faculty encounters in promotion. Thus female faculty can not move into higher ranks of organization. This thesis use the concept of"glass ceiling"from professional research of sociology for reference, and wonder whether women in Chinese academic profession face a"glass ceiling"or not. Furthermore, how dose the"glass ceiling"take shape in Chinese academic profession? What phenomena represent a"glass ceiling"? And how does female faculty crack the"glass ceiling"to get further advancement?In order to answer these questions, this thesis choose data from 7 higher institutions, based on questionnaires of June, 2007 from China study in the international project"Changing Academic Profession: International Perspective", which is carried out by experts in higher education from 21 countries. Then this thesis has made the following conclusions through data analysis and gender comparison.Indeed, there is a"glass ceiling"in Chinese academic profession. A gender inequity of promotion caused by the existing"glass ceiling", which is gradually apparent with the process of career development, is more evident in higher ranks of career ladder. In addition, women are encountered with a series of impediments, interweaving and accruing in the process of academic career development. More specifically, these impediments can be summarized as 11 dimensions and 3 levels, which are individual, group, organizational level. All of them have influenced the process of women's academic careers, and decided their career strategies.Then this thesis puts forward several individual and organizational strategies to crack the"glass ceiling". Individual strategies for female faculties include: making a personal plan of career development; improving one's professional, mental and physical quality; seeking for external support. Organizational strategies for higher institutions include: listening to the voice of women when academic community searches for truth and constructs a discipline system; attaching importance to organizational career management in order to realize the institutional and organizational equity; making up a flexible human resources management.Finally this thesis points out that not only is there a"glass ceiling"in academia, but also its existence hides in an outer garment of equity and freedom, thus much more invisible than other"glass ceiling"in industry. Additionally, the"glass ceiling"in academia causes a huge waste of female intelligence and human resources. However, we are still trying hard to conduct reforms. Although realizing gender equity is a long and hard journey in every field of society including academia, we should understand every little movement will push it forward to final target.