Career Development and Progression of Early Career Academics in Political Science: A Gendered Perspective
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| Author | Shardia Briscoe-Palmer,Kate Mattocks |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920925664 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Gender in the Profession |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920925664
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(1) 42 –57
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920925664
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Career Development and
Progression of Early Career
Academics in Political
Science: A Gendered
Perspective
Shardia Briscoe-Palmer1
and Kate Mattocks2
Abstract
In this article, we examine the career development and progression of Early Career Academics
in the discipline of political science in the UK. The primary focus is to explore whether and to
what extent career development is gendered. With data from a survey of Early Career Academics
as well as semi-structured interviews, the article shares personal experiences of professional
development, exposing the challenges women in the profession face, including the gendered aspects
of networking and mentoring, as well as broader issues of isolation, exclusion, and discrimination.
These challenges are compounded by the structural contexts of UK Higher Education.
Keywords
professional development, mentoring, networking, inclusion, early career academic
Accepted: 21 April 2020
Introduction
This article discusses the career development and progression of Early Career Academics
(ECAs) in the discipline of political science1 in the UK, with a focus on whether and to
what extent these experiences are gendered. The main aim of this research is to under-
stand ECAs’ experiences of acquiring skills and competences necessary for an academic
career, including skills-based training, mentoring and networking, as well as their more
general experiences of navigating university and academic life.2 The article, therefore,
links literature on career-building and progression, gender and academia, and gender in
1 Leicester Media School, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
2School of Politics, Philosophy, Language, & Communication Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Corresponding author:
Shardia Briscoe-Palmer, Leicester Media School, Faculty and Computing, Engineering and Media, De
Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK.
Email: shardia.briscoe-palmer@dmu.ac.uk
925664PSW0010.1177/1478929920925664Political Studies ReviewBriscoe-Palmer and Mattocks
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Briscoe-Palmer and Mattocks 43
political science. To date, no research so far has explored how people build careers in the
discipline of political science in the UK.
A growing amount of research has demonstrated that women are marginalized in polit-
ical science across the globe (Allen and Savigny, 2016; Atchison, 2018). In the UK, while
men and women are relatively equally represented at the undergraduate and masters lev-
els, just over one-third of academics working in the discipline are women (Pflaeger Young
et al., 2020). Moreover, women are generally concentrated at the bottom ranks of the
profession; at the professorial level, the profession is 85% men (Allen and Savigny,
2016). Research has shown that in the social sciences and humanities, women often leave
the field after the doctorate, compared to science, technology, engineering, and mathe-
matics (STEM) subjects where the most common time is after the completion of a post-
doc (Cidlinská, 2019). Where, why, and how are women in political science ‘getting
stuck’ in the career pipeline? Or is it something more general about the discipline that is
putting them off? Allen and Savigny (2016: 998) argue that ‘institutional practices and
cultures, as well as the words and labels that underpin them, structurally disadvantage
women political scientists’. Examples include the pervasiveness of ‘boys’ networks’ in
the discipline, the barriers women face due to childcare responsibilities, and sexist cul-
tures in academia.
This research contributes to the literatures on academic labour and Higher Education
(HE) in the UK, as well as to the discipline of political science itself. Who the discipline
is composed of is a political matter; it is directly related to its relevance for society
more broadly (Briscoe-Palmer and Mattocks, 2020). Recent calls to diversify political
science in the UK (Emejulu, 2019) reflect crucial questions about power and represen-
tation. Moreover, research from the gender and organizations literature has shown a
need to continue to highlight structural inequalities in the face of a strong narrative of
individualism – the idea that ‘one makes one’s own destiny’ (Gill et al., 2017; Nash and
Moore, 2019). The difference in progression is not a case of ‘fixing women’ (and other
marginalized groups), but fixing the system (Cidlinská, 2019).
Existing research confirms that career development and progression are experienced
differently by different groups (Bhopal, 2018; Mattocks and Briscoe-Palmer, 2016).
Delving into the experiences of those at the start of their career is necessary to deter-
mine what happens at this critical stage of skill acquisition and career-building. To
understand the experiences of ECAs – individuals in both the doctoral and 5 years
postdoctoral stages – in more depth, we employ a mixed-methods approach consisting
of a survey alongside in-depth interviews. ECAs face distinct challenges relating to
precarity, the competitiveness of the job market, and the need to accrue a number of
skills and experiences in a short amount of time. An examination of a job advertisement
for a Lectureship in Politics at the time of writing in December 2018 lists 14 essential
requirements, ranging from ‘excellent, high-quality publications in top journals’, to ‘a
track-record in grant-funded research’, to ‘experience of, and flair for administration
and management’. Vitae, a UK non-profit organization devoted to supporting research-
ers’ career development, lists the following requirements to ‘increase your chance of
succeeding in academia’:
a good publications record, experience of teaching, administration, supervision experience,
knowledge of funding opportunities, and ideally evidence of successful funding applications.
Experience of professional networking to raise your profile and, increasingly, entrepreneurship
or knowledge transfer experience will also be advantageous (Vitae, 2019).
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