Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1994

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Kathleen Bennett deMarrais

Committee Members

Clinton Allison, Paul Ashdown, Mary Jane Connelly

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe the perceptions of women about their roles and experiences as faculty in a communications college during the period from 1947 to 1992. Participants came from all ranks and all disciplines in communications (advertising, broadcasting or telecommunications, print journalism or public relations). The 14 women chosen for this study participated in one-on-one, semi-structured interviews that lasted approximately 1-1-1/2 hours. The data gained from the interviews was analyzed inductively using a method of "constant comparision" until themes became apparent. This study describes the experiences of these women faculty in communications through their struggles to find their places as professors in academe. Most of the participants began their careers as practitioners in the communications industry. Many of them then returned to graduate school, planning to earn a master's degree in order to be better prepared to return at a higher level as a communications practitioner. While in graduate school, the women in this study found encouragement from the predominantly white, male faculty to consider academe as a possible career choice. The academic life appealed to many of the participants because of their expectations of more free time available to pursue their own interests and better working conditions than they'd found as practitioners. In academe, they expected higher levels of behavior and ethics. Once they became professors, however, the women in this study discovered a feeling of dissonance as they realized that their expectations did not match the realities they encountered. They found their time filled with teaching classes, committees and advising students. As the first or only woman on the faculty, they often felt as outsiders, isolated from the male professoriate. Even when other women began to arrive, these women felt they couldn't call on other women for help. Although overt forms of discrimination seemed to be a thing of the past, they still encountered more subtle forms of discrimination. Those with children report always being seen as mothers first, professors second. Some of the women described being considered teachers and advisers, but not researchers and believed their research was not valued or acknowledged in the same way as their male colleagues. The participants, then, reported finding a world that wasn't built for them and one that would not accommodate them easily. Some women described ways they found around or through the system in order to accomplish their own goals and in the process, began to construct a different model for professor, one built around the female gender rather than the male gender. A model was developed to illustrate the story of women in the communications discipline. It was not an easy fit and required some compromises along the way, including distancing themselves from the feminist label and avoiding research related to gender issues. However, they gained a space for themselves within this discipline, a space that allows exploration for changing the system. In this study, then, the participants have given us a view of how they envision the way academe could be as well as what it's been like for them.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS