Leaky pipeline : women lost in the academic system, evidence from Turkey

Abstract EN

Gender inequalities that exist in a society have an important role to hinder women to utilize their educational rights because they impinge on education.

Though education system founded on equality principle, there are confidential messages about women and men are not equal.

This kind of messages negatively affects women to take part senior-levels in the academic system.

Leaky pipeline metaphor, is described as keeping out of women in the hierarchy of academic system, is specially used for women on their academic career trajectories (Women and Men in Higher Education, 2008).The purpose of this research is to make clear the main factors that prevent female academicians to undertake managerial tasks in Turkey.

Qualitative research approach was used in this study.

The data were collected using a semi-structured interview consisting of open-ended questions.

The participants of this study were five volunteer female-academicians from social sciences departments such as philosophy, sociology, history, geography and educational sciences from Cankiri Karatekin University.

The collected data were analysed by using content analysis.According to the anticipated findings of this study are those; there are some indistinguishable factors that prevent the assignment of female-academicians to the managerial tasks such as the roles of women in the society, gender inequalities, and childrearing methods of families.

Women are rarely included in the managerial tasks since the norms and values of Turkish society require and demand women to dedicate themselves to their family and children.

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