Gender differences and inequalities in the Brazilian academic careers

Even though PhDs are being largely awarded to women, recent international research has shown that women academics do not get as high in their careers as fast as their male counterparts. While sociologists in the United States and in Europe have examined this issue, in Brazil very few data is available about it. With two recent waves of expansion of higher education (in the 70’s and in the 90’s), there are more women than ever among students and professors of universities and colleges in the country. However, when we look at the biggest research universities, women represent only a little more than 35% of professors, unequally distributed in different areas. This research investigates what kind of inequalities, if any, women academics in Brazil go through and how would these be the result of gendered family responsibilities. Through a calculation of chances men and women professors have of being Full Professors in the research university taken as this research’s case, I found no significant systematic disadvantage for women, nor any relationship between their chances to be Full Professors and the fact that they are more or less surrounded by other women in their work environment. I took, then, 4 areas of knowledge with different gender patterns for chances of being Full Professors and ran a Multiple Correspondence Analysis on their professors careers’ data. I checked if there was any significant differences between male and female career types. At the end I interviewed male and female professors in order to get more specific information about their family lives. Crossing methods and kinds of data allowed me to develop a more complex idea of what goes on in the Brazilian academic career concerning gender differences and inequalities and which aspects of it are different or similar to the cases of developed countries.