How Sisters Do It for Themselves - The Impact of Professional Development Programs for Women

Despite the progress of the women's movement in the 1970's and legal victories in the 1980's and 1990's women in higher education still have not achieved parity in the number of faculty and administrative positions held nor in compensation earned. Academia addressed this problem by creating various professional development programs for women. While these programs provided opportunities for women to collaborate and network they assumed that the problem that needed to be fixed was that women were not qualified for advancement- academia failed to consider that the real barriers to gender parity were institutionalized cultural assumptions. This study examined how having both a professional development program designed to promote women's leadership as well as a progressive culture that encouraged women to advance may or may not create the critical mass needed to overcome the barriers to change. The specific research question asked was how does a professional development program for women shape the culture for women? This book is addressed to higher education administrators researchers of organizational theory and professional development and of course specifically for women.