Some argue that women prefer part-time employment, but the evidence does not support that proposition. The survey would, however, support the argument that a lesser proportion of women than men have the advanced degrees necessary for more advanced appointments. Part-time and community college faculty are both disproportionately more likely to be women and less likely to have advanced degrees. They also include the tendency of community colleges to hire faculty without advanced degrees, even when candidates with advanced degrees are available. Any comprehensive explanation of why women are more likely than men to accept less attractive professional opportunities must in the end recognize the social practices that differentiate the market situation of women and men.
Women are often less mobile and have fewer professional alternatives outside the academy.
They are also far more often constrained by child-rearing responsibilities than men and more likely to bear the burden imposed by the lack of adequate and affordable child care. As long as society imposes these relative disadvantages on women, universities can successfully offer women terms of employment that would not be acceptable to similar numbers of similarly qualified men. However, as alternative opportunities for women increase, either the terms of employment must improve or the quality of recruits, male and female, will decline. Accordingly, even to the extent that disparities between male and female appointments are attributable to an overall decline in the terms of academic employment over the previous twenty-five years, continuation of this decline does not augur well for women, men, or the profession. Ernst Benjamin is AAUP director of research.