The first cross-cultural analysis of the differences in career trajectories and experiences between a senior group of women academics and a younger group who are at early and mid-career stages. Major themes in the autobiographical stories of these women were national context; organisational context; family, class and location; and agency.

Are today's young adults gender rebels or returning to tradition? In Where the Millennials Will Take Us, Barbara J. Risman reveals the diverse strategies youth use to negotiate the ongoing gender revolution. Using her theory of gender as a social structure, Risman analyzes life history interviews with a diverse set of Millennials to probe how they understand gender and how they might change it. Some are true believers that men and women are essentially different and should be so. Others are innovators, defying stereotypes and rejecting sexist ideologies and organizational practices. Perhaps new to this generation are gender rebels who reject sex categories, often refusing to present their bodies within them and sometimes claiming genderqueer identities. And finally, many youths today are simply confused by all the changes swirling around them. As a new generation contends with unsettled gender norms and expectations, Risman reminds us that gender is much more than an identity; it also shapes expectations in everyday life, and structures the organization of workplaces, politics, and, ideology. To pursue change only in individual lives, Risman argues, risks the opportunity to eradicate both gender inequality and gender as a primary category that organizes social life.

Surviving or Thriving? The State of Parenthood in the Academy -- Thesis Baby : Getting Student-Parents the Support they Need -- How to Scale the Ladders While Sidestepping the Chutes : On Parenting without the Security of Tenure -- The Elusive Work-Life Balance : Daily Challenges in Academic Parenting -- Doctor, Parent : Recognizing the Range of Experiences -- Sick and Tired : The Physical Toll of Parenthood -- Love, Loss, and Longing : Fertility Struggles, Adoption, Miscarriage, and Infant/Child Loss -- Express Yourself : Breastfeeding and Lactation in the Ivory Tower -- Looking Back, Moving Forward : Conversation Starters for a More Inclusive Academic Environment.

Women and Leadership in Higher Education is the first volume in a new series of books (Women and Leadership: Research, Theory, and Practice) that will be published in upcoming years to inform leadership scholars and practitioners. This book links theory, research, and practice of women’s leadership in various higher education contexts and offers suggestions for future leadership development strategies. This volume focuses on the field of higher education, particularly within the context of the United States—a sector that serves a majority of students at all degree levels who are women, yet lacks parity by women in senior leadership roles. The book’s fifteen chapters present both hard facts regarding the current demographic realities within higher education and fresh thinking about how progress can and must be made in order for U.S. higher education to benefit from the perspectives of women at the senior leadership table. The book’s opening section provides data and analysis in addressing “The State of Women and Leadership in Higher Education”; the second section offers descriptions of three effective models for women’s leadership development at the national and institutional levels; the third section draws from recent research to present “Women’s Experiences and Contributions in Higher Education Leadership.” The book concludes with five shorter chapters written by current and former college and university presidents who offer “Lessons from the Trenches” for the benefit of those who follow. In short, the thesis of the book is that our world is changing; higher education collectively, as well as institutions of all types, must change. Bringing more women into leadership is critical to the goal of moving our society and world forward in healthier ways.

Encyclopedic review about gender and its impact on American higher education across historical and cultural contexts. The contributors describe the ways in which gender is embedded in the educational practices, curriculum, institutional structures and governance of colleges and universities. Topics included are: institutional diversity; academic majors and programs; extracurricular organizations such as sororities, fraternities and women's centers; affirmative action and other higher educational policies; and theories that have been used to analyze and explain the ways in which gender in academe is constructed.

As her family traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852, Mary Ellen Todd taught herself to crack the ox whip. Though gender roles often blurred on the trail, families quickly tried to re-establish separate roles for men and women once they had staked their claims. For Mary Ellen Todd, who found a “secret joy in having the power to set things moving,” this meant trading in the ox whip for the more feminine butter churn. In Gender and Generation on the Far Western Frontier, Cynthia Culver Prescott expertly explores the shifting gender roles and ideologies that countless Anglo-American settlers struggled with in Oregon’s Willamette Valley between 1845 and 1900. Drawing on traditional social history sources as well as divorce records, married women’s property records, period photographs, and material culture, Prescott reveals that Oregon settlers pursued a moving target of middle-class identity in the second half of the nineteenth century. Prescott traces long-term ideological changes, arguing that favorable farming conditions enabled Oregon families to progress from accepting flexible frontier roles to participating in a national consumer culture in only one generation. As settlers’ children came of age, participation in this new culture of consumption and refined leisure became the marker of the middle class. Middle-class culture shifted from the first generation’s emphasis on genteel behavior to a newer genteel consumption. This absorbing volume reveals the shifting boundaries of traditional women’s spheres, the complicated relationships between fathers and sons, and the second generation’s struggle to balance their parents’ ideology with a changing national sense of class consciousness.

Higher education researchers Martin Finkelstein, Robert Seal, and Jack Schuster focus on the changing face of American academe, as women, foreign-born, and minority scholars enter the professorate in large numbers. Considering this trend, the authors argue that the next generation will usher in an era of dramatic changes and that the long-term implications of these changes will be profound. 7 illustrations.