Gender Segregation among College and University Employees

This article examines the gender composition and degree of job segregation among current and recently hired employees in U.S. four-year colleges and universities. Aggregate-level patterns of women's representation by job category are discussed, and a contextual analysis identifies the level of gender segregation according to organizational conditions and institutional characteristics. The results indicate that the gender composition of an institution's employees is more balanced and men and women are less segregated into different jobs when institutions have a relatively high proportion of women students and women administrators, less emphasis on research, more reliance on federal revenue sources, and smaller endowed sources of revenue. Geographic factors seem to have stronger influences on the gender composition of nonprofessional than of faculty positions. Implications for models of discriminatory processes and for the status of women workers in colleges and universities are discussed.