New Habitus in Established Power Structures? Gender-Specific Coping Strategies in Science and Scholarship

Abstract

The university can only remain an attractive work place if junior scholars are granted a fair chance, this in addition to the demand for internationalization of research and increased ability for innovation. In this venture, the assumption of equality should not be forgotten, as Ulrich Vogel and Christiana Hinz’s study shows. As the authors illustrate through a qualitative and a quantitative study of professors’ professional development in the social sciences and mathematics, the professional situation of scholars in Germany is still marked by the repeated lower placement of women: female scholars concentrate, particularly in the humanities and the social sciences, on the lower positions in the hierarchy, on temporary positions, and on part time positions. Both partial studies pursue particularly the question as to which coping strategies women and men in careers in higher education choose and how this affects the distribution of work among the sexes.