Women in CJ

Women in CJ

Career path

More and more collegiate women are also getting involved in the typically masculine field of business. The percentage of collegiate freshmen women aspiring to have a business career rose from 2.6% in 1966 to 10.8% in 1988. In 2001, 11.1% of collegiate freshmen women planned on having a business career34. More and more collegiate women are also choosing to be lawyers. The percentage of collegiate freshmen women aspiring to be lawyers rose from .8% in 1966, to 4% in 1996, to 4.1% in 200135. Thus, as in the medical field, the percentage of women entering the traditionally male fields of business and law continues to increase, even though the rate of increase since the late 80s/early 90s has lessened (Dawson & Ronit 2001).

Barriers to Entry

Barriers against professional women have been framed in two different ways, emphasizing two stages at which obstacles might occur: a threshold "beyond which gender no longer matters," and a "glass ceiling of gender specific obstacles to advancement into top positions" In the first, women encounter difficulties advancing in a field but the obstacles fall away once a certain status is attained; in the second There is a particular career level women may attain at which point a blockage occurs to further advancement, e.g. women are blocked from attaining full professorship in science departments at leading universities.The "threshold effect" presumes that women only face barrier in the early stages of their career, while the "glass ceiling" presumes barriers only at the higher levels of careers (Community Coordination for Women's Safety 2002).

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We find, instead that women face barriers to entry and achievement at all stages of the academic ladder. We have identified a series of mechanisms that mitigate against the progress of women in academic careers in science and engineering. First, such extra-academic factors ...