--- breaking the silence ---Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence
© Roberta-Anne Kerlin, 1997
CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The doctoral experiences described by the women in this study are both compelling and complex. During the early stages of my correspondence with the women a singular impression began to emerge that ultimately influenced the findings in an important way. Much of what the women described related not to the substantive areas of their research but to the changing nature of their self-concepts, their identities and the relationships they had with others. As might be expected the women wrote extensively about relationships with their doctoral advisors. However, just as often they wrote about relationships with others who were not directly connected with their programs -- with partners, parents, friends - past and present, co-workers and former teachers. Through the women's descriptions of the complex interaction of personal, social and institutional factors that influenced their progress, the construct of relationship -- relationship with self and other -- emerged as central to understanding the meaning these women attached to their doctoral experiences. It is this construct of relationship that explains much of the variation among factors that enhanced and/or impeded their degree progress and may be central to understanding a potentially critical influence on women's doctoral persistence. For these women the decision to pursue a doctorate represented a life-shaping event that left a permanent mark on their lives. This decision, with its multifarious implications, became a focal point of reflection for the women both during their programs and at different points throughout their writing about their doctoral experiences. It was a decision that shaped and reshaped their identities and their relationships with others.
Personal and Social Factors Influencing Women's Progress
In this study academic self-concept, gender, age and class emerged as important factors that influenced women's decisions to pursue the doctorate and shaped their subsequent doctoral experiences.
Academic Self-Concept
The academic self-concepts women held prior to commencing doctoral studies were important influences on their doctoral experiences. Both Camila and Helen were confident about their academic abilities. Sarah and Maggie struggled with self-confidence about their academic abilities and their fear of failure more than other women in the study. This factor made it difficult for them to develop images of themselves as emerging scholars and was a primary struggle for Maggie throughout the course work phase of her program. For Sarah, the absence of any ongoing feedback from her advisor about her progress lasted right up to the day of her final defense and was central to her inability to see herself as an academic or a scholar. When Zoe entered graduate school she was initially confident about her academic abilities until she began to compare her own accomplishments with those of her peers. However, unlike Sarah or Maggie, Zoe benefited from a high degree of structure, task focus, regular feedback and encouragement from her advisor all of which were important influences on her self-image as an emerging scholar. Denise also experienced a crisis of self-confidence during her first year in pro-seminar when she questioned her writing ability and her preparedness for doctoral level work. It was an occasion when she seriously contemplated leaving academe. With her partner's help she eventually came to see the task before her as manageable but the self-doubt and pressure Denise experienced was enormous.
Gender
Gender played an important role in some of the women's perceptions of their experiences in two different ways. It not only influenced women's self-image but it was a factor that some of the women believed had influenced faculty perceptions of them as academics. For Sarah, being female had a counter-intuitive effect on her motivation to persist. Growing up female and being told repeatedly that she couldn't or wouldn't do well simply because she was female had the effect of strengthening her motivation to prove her abilities both to herself and to others. This counter-intuitive effect of gender also had a similar effect in strengthening Tracy and Zoe's motivation to finish. However, in both their experiences another effect of gender was also apparent. Both women grew up in families that placed strong expectations on them to marry and to have children. Their role expectations and identities as women were well established long before they even began to think of themselves as academics. Tracy and Zoe had both grown up amidst expectations that placed primary importance on their identities as women and mothers. To be seen and accepted as serious scholars in the academic milieu, where motherhood has a negative status, required them to make a cognitive shift in which one's primary identity as a woman was displaced with a newly emerging identity as a scholar. This identity shift gave rise to internal conflict and was manifested in the strained and sometimes estranged relations the women experienced with their families. It was often just as difficult for the women's parents and partners to understand and reconcile these changes as it was for the women themselves. This reshaping of their identities in a way that devalued this fundamental aspect of who they were contributed significantly to the ambivalence the women felt toward academe as an institution. The fact that Zoe was committed to her children and had no intention of being quiet about it was a factor that often left her feeling as though her work wasn't being taken very seriously. She believed this was a factor that manifested itself in fewer opportunities to co-publish articles with faculty and in reduced access to fellowships. Zoe experienced a bias among some faculty in her department that mothers couldn't be scholars, and even if they could, the demands of scholarship were thought to be incompatible with motherhood. It seemed to Zoe that younger colleagues whose sole commitment focused on academe received more serious attention from the faculty.
Age
The women's perceptions of the influence their age had on their doctoral experiences varied. Helen saw her age and the life experience that comes with being older as a factor that would enhance her doctoral experiences. Furthermore, she chose a program in which faculty also perceived her age and experience as an advantage and not a threat. Zoe had a different experience. She recognized the non-traditional path she had taken in entering her doctoral program at age 38, but unlike Helen, she found some of the faculty in her department were not inclined to view her age as a strength. This was another factor that contributed to the feeling that she didn't belong and that her academic work wasn't being taken seriously.
Health Factors
Among the significant findings in this study was the overall impact of the doctoral experience on the women's physical and mental health. Stress and health related illnesses were important indicators of the quality of the women's doctoral experience. At one time or another all the women had dreams, images and/or thoughts about withdrawing from their programs. Three women, Tracy, Maggie and Zoe, experienced episodes of depression that were serious enough to seek medical support in the form of medication and/or counselling. Sarah also experienced serious depression although she did not seek medical support. The women wrote repeatedly about long hours of overwork, exhaustion, isolation, weight loss from stress and anxiety, weight gain from inactivity, disturbed sleep patterns -- all characteristics more closely resembling induction into a cult than a transformative induction into an academic culture that values learning and scholarship. Most of the stress these women experienced resulted from either diminished and/or dysfunctional communication patterns in relationships that were important to them. These kinds of relationships were a central influence that significantly diminished the women's capacity to complete degree tasks.
Financial Status
Issues related to finances had a significant impact on the doctoral experiences of six women in this study. Only one woman, Helen, experienced a sense of financial security because of the seniority her husband held in his own faculty position. In contrast, Maggie worked full-time and was the primary bread winner in her family throughout much of her early doctoral work. The remaining six women worked part-time, holding either teaching or research assistantships during their programs. Two women, Sarah and Denise, held full-time positions as they finished writing the final chapters of their dissertations. For the women in this study employment during doctoral studies restricted the time they otherwise would have had to devote to course work, research and writing and thus employment, even part-time, had the effect of slowing their progress. Balancing the demands of part-time employment with doctoral study was a significant drain on the women's energy levels so that even when they did have some unscheduled time to work on their research they often felt too exhausted and had to push themselves, frequently going without much needed sleep, to accomplish the goals they had set for themselves. This factor added significantly to their stress levels.The financial benefits of both teaching and research assistantships, when these were available, were significant in terms of enabling the women to complete their degrees. Without this benefit most of the women would have been hard pressed to even contemplate pursuit of the doctorate. For some of the women there were other benefits to holding assistantships. Those who held assistantships in their departments felt more integrated into their programs than those who worked outside the department and they benefited from the opportunities to gain experience teaching. However, two negative aspects of assistantships emerged in the study. One factor related to the non-academic related tasks and inappropriate demands made by assistantship supervisors. A second factor was the low pay that came with the assistantships and forced some of the women into a prolonged state of poverty. The low pay seemed to symbolize the general lack of support for and commitment to doctoral students in the program and left them feeling as if their efforts were unappreciated by faculty. Two women noted that, especially among older or more established faculty, there seemed to be little recognition or appreciation of the impact that changing economic conditions have had on graduate students' lives. Financial status, as reflected by the qualitatively different awards -- fellowships versus assistantships -- was also a factor that affected relationships among doctoral students in the same department. Students who received fellowships without the obligatory work requirement were sometimes seen as privileged and this had the potential to create strained relations among the students. All the women in this study with the exception of Helen felt that issues related to finances added considerable stress to their doctoral experiences.
Family Issues
This study found that family issues had a significant influence on the women's doctoral experiences; conversely, issues associated with pursuit of the doctorate were also found to have a significant impact on the women's family relationships.Relationships within the women's childhood families impacted indirectly on the women's experiences. The women's position and role within the family and the nature of the relationships they had with their parents set the stage and provided important contextual perspectives for the women's subsequent doctoral experiences. In many ways these childhood family contexts shaped the women's self-concepts, the beliefs they held about themselves, the views they held about conventional roles assigned to women in our society, their perceptions and views of academe itself and their ability to situate themselves as academic scholars.
The women pursued scholarly work as a path to personal growth and to broaden their intellectual worlds beyond those in which they had grown up. For some this path also represented an escape from the poverty and dysfunction experienced in the childhood family and these women in particular experienced an intense sense of disillusionment when they encountered a highly political environment in academe with its own issues relating to dysfunctional patterns of communication, support and trust.
Five of the women in the study were first generation college graduates. Going to college, and in particular pursuit of the doctorate, was sometimes perceived by the women themselves as a rebellious act and given their backgrounds it was not something their families had expected or anticipated. The women's choices with respect to their roles as women and scholars were often in conflict, or at least not well understood by the women's families, particularly their mothers who were sometimes less likely than fathers to understand or be encouraging of their daughters' academic aspirations.
Stresses associated with completing the doctorate contributed significantly to difficulties the women encountered in the relationships they had with partners and spouses. All but two women in the study experienced significant discord in the relationships with their partners. Four women separated from their partners or spouses at some point during their studies because of discord in the relationship; for three of those women deterioration of the relationship went beyond the point of reconciliation. It may not be insignificant that the two women who experienced the least difficulty in these relationships lived apart from their partners for extended periods while completing their doctorates.
Isolation from one's adult family, one's partner and/or children, was a factor that added significant strain to the lives of both the families and the women themselves as the focus of their studies intensified. Previous patterns within these relationships were altered as the women shifted priorities from family to academe. It was often difficult for the women to make this shift, putting their own academic needs before those of their families, and the women experienced considerable strain as they attempted to balance academic demands with traditional patterns of behaviour they had in these relationships. This need to balance both personal and academic lives was a significant issue for the women -- one that influenced their doctoral experiences from the beginning, even influencing their choice of institution and/or program.
The demands the doctorate placed on the women's time, especially as the focus of their research intensified as they progressed, was little understood by their families. Family members' interest in and support of the women's goals often seemed lacking just when the women needed it most. Similarly, it seemed to the women that the demands of family life were given little importance in academe and the women often felt caught between these two very different worlds. The women with family commitments often felt as though they were taken less seriously in academic circles than were their single colleagues. Significant family events such as the death of a parent and the breakup of a partnership added considerable stress to the demands on their lives.
Class/Cultural Identity
For five of the seven women in this study class issues were a significant influence on their willingness to internalize images of themselves as scholars. Tracy, Camila, Denise, Zoe and Helen grew up with strong roots in working class culture. For Zoe, the transformation of an identity rooted in poverty was a difficult process. Growing up, she had not only believed that she was less, she believed that she would always be less and in academic circles this left her feeling like a fish out of water. Among the working class families of these women there was at best, little appreciation, and at worst, outright disdain for intellectual scholarship. The differences between the middle-class values of the university and the working class worlds they had grown up in sometimes made it difficult for the women to negotiate the cacophony they experienced in living between these two worlds.All the women in the study were the first in their families to pursue a doctorate and, with the exception of Camila and Sarah, all were first generation college graduates. Unlike those who grow up in families where other family members have pursued a graduate degree, these women lacked the benefit of vicarious exposure to a graduate research culture. This may have had an important influence on some women's choice of institution and/or program and advisor for reasons that were other than academic. The lack of vicarious knowledge of the doctorate as either an academic or a political process also may have been a contributing factor to the idealized preconceptions some women had of the doctorate as a 'great big coffee shop in the sky.' Most had little idea of what to expect from the experience. For some, pursuit of the doctorate seemed like an insurmountable challenge, like a mountain to be climbed or an obstacle to be overcome, and in the context of their backgrounds their unorthodox choice to pursue a Ph.D. was one they had to negotiate and renegotiate, not only within themselves, but with members of their families. For some like Tracy this may have had a counter-intuitive effect of reinforcing the resolve to persist, but in most instances this lack of prior knowledge of the political and academic aspects of doctoral study was more of a handicap than not.
A number of institutional factors including program status, department climate, department policies and practices and advisor/advisee relationships were also found to be important influences on these women's doctoral experiences.
Institutional Factors Influencing Women's Progress
Program Status
For some women, status in their programs was a factor they thought influenced their progress as well as faculty perceptions of their commitment to scholarship. Full- versus part-time enrollment, employment status and whether the women commuted long distance to their programs were all factors related to program status. Initial enrollment as a part-time student was a factor that may have contributed to Sarah being left out of the departmental information loop when others who were full-time students were notified about the orientation for new students. This also meant she didn't make the contacts with other students 'in the know' who might have cued her about course selection strategies that were known informally by students but not articulated in university or department guidelines. Maggie's part-time enrollment throughout her program has had a long term effect of wearing her down. Balancing the demands of her multiple roles as scholar, mother and breadwinner has been an unrelenting drain on her energy -- a factor that has taken much of the joy out of the day-to-day pursuit of the doctorate. Zoe believed her status as a commuter student, combined with her outspoken commitment to her children was a factor along with her age that shaped some faculty members' beliefs that she was less committed to scholarship than her younger colleagues. She felt her commuter status reinforced some faculty attitudes that women need not be taken seriously as scholars.
Department Climate
The climate is one of the prime indicators of [an organization's] health .... If you visit a house you've never been in before, you're picking up ideas and feelings about what kind of people live there. This intangible feeling or tone is climate, which endures over time and influences the behavior of people. An organization's climate is defined by the perceptions of its members, no matter what the facts are .... In trying to build a particular climate, you must look at the total organization and see its personality (Mulder and Heimer, 1996).Department climate was an important factor that influenced women's degree progress. Relationships with faculty and peers during the course work phase of the program, through to candidacy were primary indicators of department climate. "Trust," "fairness," "supportive," "encouraging," "competitive," "close-minded," "conservative," "overwork," "behaviours and practices that did not always serve the best interests of the students," "pretense," "egotism," friction," paranoia," "intimidating," "punishing," "subservience" and "unfriendly" were some of the descriptors used by the women in writing about the climate in their departments. It is worthy of note that one woman described the climate in her department, not by its virtues, but by the lack of extreme and harmful effects it had on her -- as if, in the absence of a more nurturing climate, this was the best she could expect or hope for.
Trust, a collegial atmosphere and being taken seriously as emerging scholars were central indicators of a healthy departmental climate. For some of the women peer support networks filled an important void in their doctoral experiences and in some instances provided a refuge for students in which they could revitalize their forward momentum. For the women who either worked outside the department or commuted, the lack of opportunity to socialize with colleagues and/or faculty was a factor that seriously detracted from some of these women's doctoral experiences.
The kind of climate the women described as enhancing their degree progress was one in which they had frequent opportunities to engage in stimulating conversation with faculty and colleagues who were able to challenge and extend their thinking without competing to 'one-up' the other or resorting to intimidating, adversarial tactics that put others on the defensive. The women sought genuine intellectual engagement of their ideas and they felt supported and encouraged when professors took the women's ideas seriously, were sufficiently confident about their own abilities and didn't feel threatened by the expression of students' ideas that differed from the mainstream. Rather than presenting knowledge as something that was subject to challenge these women described the desire for a process in which knowledge was explored and allowed to emerge through reflective conversation. More often than not, however, the women in this study were disappointed by the absence of this kind of "connected dialogue" between students and faculty in their programs.
A supportive climate for students was one in which faculty were able to set aside individual differences and personal agendas and focus on the needs of the student without resorting to tactics of intimidation. The climate, whether it was adversarial and competitive or collegial and growth oriented was a central indicator of the overall well being of the department and may well be an important indicator of the quality of doctoral experience that future students could expect.
Department Policies and Practices
A number of factors related to departmental policies and practices sometimes had the effect of leaving the women in the dark and uninformed about various aspects of their programs. Most often these factors centered around admission practices, program requirements and/or expectations and candidacy exams. It is worthy of note that two women, Denise and Helen, experienced difficulty with regard to the paucity of accurate and available information about language requirements for degrees. In both cases it was only after-the-fact that they discovered alternative and more appealing options for fulfilling these language requirements. In Denise's case not having access to this important information in a timely way was a contributing factor to her premature departure from the seminary. This left her with a lot of fear and baggage around language that she carried into her doctoral program. In Helen's case it influenced her choice at the time not to pursue a doctorate at one institution.or What You Don't Specifically Ask, They Won't Tell YouBoth Zoe and Denise found the way their respective departments represented their programs and course offerings to prospective students to be misleading. This caused these women a good deal of consternation. Only after admission did Zoe discover that certain courses she had identified as central to her program were not available. This left her scrambling to put together a program that coincided with her interests. Denise too, felt she'd researched potential doctoral programs very carefully and she knew that in most doctoral programs the regulations stated in the calendar at admission are binding on students. However, she found the university calendar and departmental requirements were not the same and when her department revised their guidelines the method of preliminary examination "had totally changed." Although Denise found the new approach to exams made a lot of sense she felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under her -- as if yet another obstacle had been placed in her path. She had made what she thought was an informed decision based on materials the department provided, only to discover after-the-fact that information about ongoing changes had been withheld. Unnecessary obstacles were also part of Sarah's experience. She was required to take the GRE as part of the admission process and then admitted to the program the day following the exam, long before results could possibly have been tabulated, let alone be used in consideration of her application for admission.
Sarah and Zoe in particular expressed concern about the general lack of information and guidance in charting their programs. Sometimes this resulted in non-strategic decisions and/or choices that had less than favourable outcomes. The failure of a department to provide students with critical information was also a factor for Denise who had been encouraged to apply for a student assistantship but discovered only when she approached her preliminary exams that the department had stopped all hiring a year earlier.
The lack of clarity surrounding performance expectations and evaluation in the women's classes and their qualifying exams was also a factor that added stress and uncertainty to some of the women's experiences.
Most of the women experienced uncertainty in negotiating specific tasks of the doctorate such as appropriate strategies for approaching candidacy exams, deciding what constituted important and/or significant research questions and developing research proposals. Two of the important subtasks in developing a research proposal include focusing on what constitutes an appropriate conceptual framework for a study and framing the epistemological, ontological and methodological foundations of one's research. In some cases the women were able to develop the knowledge and skills to integrate these perspectives into their own research through readings and formal course work. For some kinds of tasks such as preparing oral presentations or learning how to write and submit papers to refereed journals, no formal instruction was provided. In its absence the women sought help from their advisors or other committee members or, worse, they were left to discover these things on their own. Swimming around in a sea of uncertainty without specific strategies or advice from experienced scholars to guide them sometimes left the women feeling stuck and they were often quick to attribute this to their own shortcomings.
Departmental policies vary in complexity and specificity. Highly detailed policies may lead to rigid and inflexible practices that provide little room for considering individual student needs; as such, highly structured policies may better serve to protect faculty needs than those of students. In contrast, loosely structured policies while providing more room for individual interpretation that better serves the needs of students may have the unintended effect of creating perceptions of unequal treatment or unfair application of the policies. A careful balance between these two extremes, shaped by open discussion that includes student input may serve departments well.
Advisor/Advisee Relationships
Of central influence in all the women's doctoral experiences were the relationships they had with their advisors. Women in this study chose their advisors for a variety of reasons. Four women chose advisors because of expertise in their respective fields of study. However, other factors such as rapport and a shared interest in research methodology were also important. Not only was the advisor/advisee relationship the most influential relationship the women had in the department while pursuing the doctorate but relational issues of trust, power, authority and control in these relationships were central factors that either enhanced or diminished women's progress in significant ways.Of the seven women in this study only Sarah had a male advisor. Three women, Denise, Zoe and Helen, had relationships with their advisors they described as collegial and supportive. These relationships were central to enhancing the women's experiences and facilitating their progress. For these three women there seemed to be a close match in the advisor/advisee relationship between conceptions and uses of power and the degree of structure and involvement the women needed with their advisors to facilitate degree progress in a way that was satisfying and meaningful to them. On the other hand, Tracy, Camila and Maggie had significantly less collegial and supportive relationships with their advisors.
The central difference between the experiences of these two groups of women centered around the women's ability to negotiate the structural imbalance of power in the advisor/advisee relationship. The fact that Tracy, Camila and Maggie had female advisors did not seem to protect them from feeling as though they were victims of the power differences in their advisor/advisee relationships. Tracy had to maintain a safe emotional distance from her advisor for fear that her emotions might be seen as a weakness and used against her. Camila's advisor also asserted control and power in their relationship in ways that often served her own needs more than Camila's. Maggie's relationship with her advisor symbolized the ultimate breach of trust in the advisor/advisee relationship and Maggie felt powerless to address the issue. There were no institutional structures in place that could possibly protect Maggie from her advisor's use of power to serve her own ends. Maggie felt that even speaking with her advisor about her concerns would have jeopardized her position completely.
Without appropriate institutional structures or systems of accountability to protect students who face these kinds of circumstances the advisor/advisee relationship rests solely and squarely on trust alone. When this trust is violated students often have little recourse but to leave their programs or to submit and remain silent. It is this ultimate breach of trust within the advisor/advisors relationship that many doctoral students fear. It was clear from the opinions voiced by women in this study that students know only too well how they can be victimized by the uncontrolled abuses of power by tenured professors in the academy. Power, as the institutional use of one's authority to maintain a one-up position in relation to the student, rather than gender, was a central factor than diminished the quality of these three women's doctoral experiences and seriously impeded their progress.
The ability of three women in this study to successfully negotiate the structural differences of power in the advisor/advisee relationship was due not only to their own interpersonal skills but to their advisors' willingness to assume collegial relationships with their students.
It is unlikely that any doctoral student, be they male or female, is able to assume a role of junior colleague unless the advisor is also willing to assume a collegial relationship with the student. For female advisees who want to work with male advisors this may present a double-bind. The male advisor must not only be willing to enter into a collegial relationship with the student; he must also be willing to do so with a woman. Because we live in a culture that historically has assigned more power, prestige and privilege to males than females, it may be just as difficult for male advisors to negotiate a collegial advisor/advisee relationship as it is for female advisees. The shortage of female advisors in the academy is a recurring theme throughout the literature on advisor/advisee relationships. Women's need for a collegial advisor/advisee relationship in which they may be less likely to place themselves in a deferential position in relation to men may be a significant reason for seeking female advisors. However, as the findings in this study illustrate gender may not always be the prime indicator of whether or not advisors are willing to assume collegial relationships with students. Sarah's advisor who was male did not use his power/positional authority to intimidate or create distance in their relationship. Tracy, Camila and Maggie had female advisors and based on their experiences female advisors may be just as likely as men to use their power to serve their own private agendas rather than the needs of students. For Tracy, Maggie and Camila the structural imbalance of power embedded in the advisor/advisee relationship, rather than gender, was a significant factor that diminished the quality of their doctoral experiences and at critical times seriously impeded their progress.
As the women in this study wrote about the relationships they had with their advisors they described different ways in which advisors related to students and used their power either to serve their own agendas and/or to serve the needs of students. Six styles of advising emerged from their descriptions and are summarized below.Advisory Styles
The above taxonomy represents the dominant advisory styles that emerged from the women's descriptions of their advisor/advisee relationships and illustrates the variety of ways in which advisors can use power within these relationships. It is important to note that some of the women, in particular, Camila and Tracy, described advisory styles which at different times in the relationship shifted from one style to another or crossed over the above categories.The Uninvolved Advisor
Often too busy with own agendas to even notice the students unless they happen to share similar research interests; gives low priority to involvement with or supervision of students' work/progress; is often unavailable or too busy to meet with students; provides little guidance; students are left on their own to learn by trial and error.
The Laissez-faire/Hands Off Advisor
Provides little constructive feedback to students; quick to provide critical feedback; may have an open door policy for meeting with students but assumes the responsibility/initiative belongs entirely with the student; may be reluctant to engage in substantive dialogue with students about their work.
The Negotiator
Helps students to discover their own relationship to research; engages in mutual negotiation with students; balances guidance and direction with students' expressed needs; allows students to take the lead and is willing to provide guidance when needed; uses power and authority to benefit the students; gives constructive feedback.
The Proactive Advisor
Very similar to the negotiator but takes more of a leadership role; meets regularly with students to set/negotiate goals and timelines; expresses clear performance guidelines; gives constructive feedback; uses power and authority to benefit the students.
The Symbiotic Advisory Style
Often uses power and authority to benefit students but may be more authoritative and demanding than the proactive advisor; will also use power and authority to get something he/she needs from the student; may be moody and/or unpredictable; may be hostile and/or vindictive toward students.
The Autocratic Advisor
Consistently authoritative; often demanding; tends to use power and authority for personal benefit; may want to shape the student in his/her own image or use students to serve a personal agenda; student needs play a secondary role to advisor's needs or may not enter into the picture at all.
Some of the above styles are clearly more or less desirable than others. None of the women in this study would have found it easy or pleasant to work with advisors whose styles were characteristic of autocratic, symbiotic or uninvolved advisors. It is one thing for students to learn from mistakes and to overcome the normal obstacles along the doctoral path; it is quite another matter to overcome obstacles that are placed either intentionally or thoughtlessly in one's path. In some of these women's experiences it seems the advisor/advisee relationship was sometimes such an obstacle. The critical personal, social and institutional factors that emerged in this study as influencing women's degree progress are summarized in Table 19.
Table 19
Summary of Factors Influencing Women's Degree Progress
Personal & Social Factors Institutional Factors Academic Self-concept Gender
Age
Health Factors
Financial Status
Family Status
Class/Cultural Identity
Program Status: Department Climate:
- part/full-time enrollment
- employment, on or off campus
- commuter student
Department Policies and Practices:
- faculty relations that are competitive or intimidating vs. stimulating and challenging
- collegial support networks
Advisor/Advisee relationship
- inaccurate/incomplete representation of programs and requirements
- inadequate program advisement
- inadequate advisement on strategies for completing tasks specific to the doctorate
- lack of clarity re performance expectations
- policies that are weak or overly rigid
- power, authority, control, trust, accountability
- match between advisory style and student needs for advisement
Relationships were central to both the successes and the stresses the women experienced in pursuit of the doctorate. For the women in this study induction into academic culture reflected a transformation of one's identity which, through human interaction and relationship, connected the personal self with a newly emerging academic self. Their relationships served as the primary conduit through which they negotiated this transformation.
Transformation of Self The nature of this transformative experience -- the extent to which the personal self is estranged from, or honored and respected, in the process of reconstructing one's identity as an emerging scholar -- was central to the women's persistence. This transformative quality of the doctoral experience reflects a woman's ability to locate an emerging identity within the academic culture -- the ability to see oneself as being good enough to measure up to the requirements of the degree (the terms and conditions under which one is permitted to fit) -- and the willingness to locate an emerging identity within the academic culture -- a balancing of the associated rewards and costs.
Women in this study were sometimes unable, but more often unwilling, to locate their emerging identities within the prevailing academic culture, a factor that sometimes slowed degree progress and often significantly influenced the quality of their doctoral experiences. This was reflected through an on-going, inner process of negotiation in which the women continuously examined and re-examined who they were and who they were becoming as a result of their experiences. Their willingness to participate, contribute to, or perpetuate a system they saw as concerned more with the politics of education than with genuine concern for learning and scholarship -- a system they saw as uncaring, lacking collegiality and, in many instances, harmful to their physical and spiritual well being -- contributed significantly to their sense of disillusionment with academe.
i feel as if the "me" was eroded rather than allowed to emerge in all it could have been.The women in this study were eager to push, but not test, their own personal limits. They described numerous situations and experiences that contributed to their sense of disillusionment with academe including attitudes about intelligence and knowledge and academe as a repressive and competitive enterprise in which neither multiplicity nor values that differed from the mainstream were honoured. They cited examples in which women faculty who served as role models were denied tenure and/or treated badly in academe. They described both their fear and unwillingness to submit to, or seek validation from a system in which, ultimately, they would be judged by unknown standards. They were reluctant to submit to a process or to be transformed into the kind of person who puts a private agenda first and the needs of the larger academic community, including students, last. This disillusionment with academe, as an unanticipated outcome of the doctoral experience, was a factor central to the women's willingness to locate an emerging identity within the academic culture and to the transformation of self each woman experienced. This sense of disillusionment with academe is not limited to the women in this study. It is an unanticipated outcome that may be far more wide spread among doctoral students and women in particular than those in higher education realize (see Chapter 1, page 1 and Appendix H.)
What can we learn from these women's experiences that informs our understanding of factors that may influence women's doctoral persistence?
Elements of a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence
- A unique combination of personal, social and institutional factors shape women's perceptions of their doctoral experience.
The unique interaction of personal and social factors (including academic self-concept, gender, age, health, finances, family status and class/cultural identity) and institutional factors (including program status, department climate, department policies and practices, advisor/advisee relationships) were central in shaping women's perceptions of their doctoral experiences. If we are to deepen our understanding of women's doctoral persistence, faculty, departments, researchers and students themselves must examine more closely the ways in which each one of these personal and institutional factors shape the doctoral experience.
- Department climate was an important factor that influenced women's doctoral experiences.
Department climate was reflected in the perceptions of the women doctoral students. The way in which departments present their programs to prospective students and the degree to which information about program requirements and expectations (student handbooks and program orientations) were made accessible to students were important factors that influenced students' perceptions of department climate. This may be particularly important for students who are first generation college graduates and have little prior exposure to graduate research culture.
Relationships with faculty and peers were primary indicators of department climate. A supportive climate and "connected dialogue" among students and faculty were central to maintaining a department climate that enhanced women's doctoral experiences. Student and faculty perceptions of the department climate may differ greatly, in part, because of the structural differences in power between these two groups. A department in which policies and practices were used to benefit students was more likely to create a climate that enhanced women's doctoral experiences.
- Relationships with others in and out of academe were the conduit through which women negotiated the various demands associated with completing the doctorate. These relationships were a central influence on these women's doctoral experiences.
The tasks associated with completing the doctorate were negotiated through women's relationships with others. In negotiating these tasks, relationships with those in and outside academe were a significant factor that enhanced and/or diminished women's abilities to complete doctoral tasks. The demands of the doctorate diminished women's opportunity to maintain relationships with family and friends at the same pre-doctoral level of intensity, frequency and/or duration. These pre-existing relationships were renegotiated within new limits and boundaries. New relationships with academic peers, faculty and advisors were also negotiated and sometimes complemented and/or replaced pre-existing relationships, even if temporarily. Isolation -- the reduced time available to attend to important relationships in their lives was experienced by the women as a significant loss which negatively influenced the quality of their doctoral experiences and caused them to question and reexamine their values and goals.
- Through relationships with others woman doctoral students engaged in an ongoing negotiation and renegotiation of their self-images as individuals and as emerging scholars. This was a transformational process that was central to the women's doctoral experiences.
Self-knowledge is an essential part of the doctoral experience for many women. This self-knowledge reflects an ongoing negotiation and renegotiation of who one is and who one is becoming which occurs to a large degree in the context of one's relationships with others. For some women, the need to "process" their experiences with others is central to developing this self-knowledge. Doctoral support groups can provide an important means for processing one's experiences and developing self-knowledge and can be invaluable to women doctoral students. In the absence of a good match within the advisor/advisee relationship, such support groups may be a critical factor in a student's progress.
- Women doctoral students who come from working class backgrounds may be more likely than those from middle or upper class backgrounds to experience difficulty negotiating their identities as scholars.
Doctoral students who come from working class backgrounds may be less likely to receive encouragement and support for academic pursuits from their childhood families. Because self-knowledge is central to the doctoral experience for many women, some women doctoral students may be more likely to experience difficulty bridging differences between the value systems reflected in their working class backgrounds and the culture of the university.
- Relationships that enhance or diminish one's self-image as a person or as an emerging scholar have an important influence on women's ability and/or willingness to identify with the culture of academe and thus to see themselves as emerging scholars.
The quality of the relationships the women in this study encountered in the day to day events associated with completing the doctorate had an important influence on their ability to see themselves as emerging scholars. The women's observations and perceptions of the relationships and interactions among faculty and/or students, particularly those relationships and interactions that were seen to be injurious or disrespectful, had an important influence on women's ability to identify with the culture of academe and thus to see themselves as emerging scholars.
- The advisor/advisee relationship was a central influencing factor in women's degree progress. A good match between advisory style and students' individual needs around advisement may be central to time to degree and completion rates.
Finding the "right" advisor was critical to degree completion. A good match between student and advisory styles with respect to the task and interpersonal dimensions of the advisor/advisee relationship may be even more important than a close match between an advisor's area of expertise and a student's research focus. Compatibility with respect to one's research paradigm or genre may also be more important in facilitating completion than closely matched interest in a particular subject.
Access to one's advisor and to appropriate feedback enhanced student progress. Among some women doctoral students there was a critical need for open communication with respect to both the task and relational dimensions of the advisor/advisee relationship. The willingness of advisors to engage these aspects of the relationship may be central to the success of some women doctoral students and may be characteristic of faculty who are perceived by women doctoral students as effective role models.
The women were less likely to encounter roadblocks to completion when matched with faculty who used institutional power and authority to benefit students and the larger common good rather than their own personal agendas. Having an advisor who was female was no guarantee that women doctoral students would be less likely to experience inappropriate uses of power at the hands of the advisor. In this regard, the way advisors used their power and authority and managed conflict was more important than gender with respect to the quality of the advisor/advisee relationship. The degree of support and trust and/or vulnerability a student experiences within the advisor/advisee relationship may be an important factor that can enhance or diminish the quality of the doctoral experience and influence time to degree.
- Women who experience negative issues around relationships, particularly advisor/advisee relationships, may progress more slowly and experience longer times to completion. In turn, longer times to completion may impact negatively on students' likelihood of completion.
For women doctoral students the challenges associated with negotiating various tasks, issues, disagreements and points of conflict within advisor/advisee relationships were made more difficult when advisors used the structural imbalance of power extant within these relationships to reinforce a one-up/one-down relationship. The women in this study whose advisors encouraged and supported the women's efforts and worked to diminish the importance of the structural imbalance of power were less likely to encounter severe and/or negative conflicts with their advisors.
All the women in this study periodically entertained thoughts about withdrawing from their programs -- thoughts that were connected to their identities as emerging scholars. Women who had more collegial relationships with their advisors were more easily able to come to terms with these experiences, move beyond them and refocus their energies toward the tasks at hand. Where negative issues and events occurred in the context of the advisor/advisee relationship and remained unresolved, the women were less likely to successfully negotiate the transformation of their identities as emerging scholars. Women who experience negative issues around relationships, particularly advisor/advisee relationships, may be less likely to complete the doctorate.
- Critical events in women's personal, professional and/or academic life shape their perceptions and experiences and may be the ultimate determinants of whether or not they finish.
Critical events such as the death of a family member, ongoing harassment in one's professional life, or the betrayal of trust in the advisor/advisee relationship may be of sufficient significance as to cause women to reprioritize their values and goals and to consider withdrawing from their programs.
Hidden rules associated with completing the doctorate -- discrepancies between student and faculty understandings of the task and relational dimensions of the process -- can significantly influence students' doctoral experiences. When such discrepancies in understanding occur students may be more likely to interpret these experiences as turning points or critical events.
- The accumulative effect of isolation and exhaustion significantly diminish the quality of women's doctoral experiences.
The accumulative effect of isolation and exhaustion was a factor in this study that significantly diminished the quality of the women's doctoral experiences. It also diminished the women's capacity to deal more constructively with critical events that occurred during their programs. Women who experience this gradual kind of wearing down may be more likely either to give serious consideration to withdrawing from their programs or to experience depression as a result of the doctoral experience.
- It may be that for women relationship issues are the primary determinant of progress -- both time to degree and completion rates.
Issues round relationships, both in and out of academe, are central to women's doctoral experiences. The quality of the advisor/advisee relationship is particularly significant. For women, successful resolution of relationship issues may be a critical determinant of both time to degree and completion rates. However, it would be inappropriate to assume that the responsibility to resolve such issues belongs solely to women doctoral students. It is faculty who create the climate in the department and these relationships are as much the responsibility of faculty and the institution as a whole as they are the responsibility of the women.
This study examined the personal accounts of seven women doctoral candidates over a 12 month period in an effort to understand the meanings these women attach to events that occurred in the context of pursuing the Ph.D. Two trends in doctoral education, increased time to degree and increased rates of attrition from doctoral programs, have given researchers cause to be concerned about factors that influence doctoral persistence at various stages of degree progress. Among the limitations of much of the current research on doctoral persistence has been the fact that the findings reflect researchers' understandings of the factors influencing persistence. This study addressed this limitation by focusing on the understandings that women doctoral candidates, rather than researchers, attributed to their experiences.
Implications and Conceptual Contributions of this Study Doctoral persistence cannot be characterized as a solitary event; nor can it be attributed to a singular cause. Rather it is a process characterized by a complex interaction of factors that vary from one individual to the next. An important contribution of this study has been the opportunity to dialogue with the study participants in the privacy of their own milieux over an extended period of time and thus to move beyond what Jacks, Chubin, Porter and Connolly (1983) referred to as 'stock explanations' of students' experiences. The in-depth focus of this study and the rich detail in these women's stories has provided a unique window through which we have been able to learn about and experience vicariously the meanings women attach to their doctoral experiences. It is through their stories that we have begun to uncover some of the more subtle and complex interactions among the factors influencing persistence.
Many studies on graduate education have identified individual behaviours that may slow or inhibit degree progress. Hanson (1992), for example, identified in the literature a number of "internal" barriers to women's degree progress such as perfectionism, procrastination and compulsiveness. Among the important conceptual contributions this study makes is to reveal, through the meanings these women attributed to their doctoral experiences, the complex interaction of personal and institutional factors that influence persistence. This is significant because it necessitates a shift in our understanding of student behaviours which the literature has labelled as "internal" barriers to degree progress, an interpretation which has the effect of blaming the victim. Rather than interpreting student behaviours as problems per se we can see through these women's experiences that these "internal" barriers must be understood as symptoms of a much more complex interaction of personal and institutional factors that influence persistence.
In this study the emergence of the construct of "academic self-concept" provides an important context for understanding individual behaviours of students. Without such a context labels like perfectionism, procrastination and compulsiveness do little to explain or enhance our understanding about why such behaviour might be manifested and therefore what strategies might best be used to address them. When such behaviours are understood in the context of a student's life history, in the context of one's upbringing and educational history -- the context from which the academic self-concept has emerged -- we are better able to understand students' responses to particular events and the difficulties they experience in both the relational and task dimensions associated with completing the doctorate.
Further, the interaction of two constructs, academic self-concept and departmental climate (as reflected in departmental policies and day-to-day practices and whether or not students have a clear understanding of the tasks associated with completing the doctorate), does much to explain the meanings doctoral students attribute to their experiences -- to the various interactions and relationships within their departments. Tinto (1993, p. 235) stated that "events are continually being shaped by past events and, to some degree, molded by the anticipation of future events." Not only does much of the literature on graduate education fail to take into consideration the influence of students' understandings about their backgrounds and prior experiences before entering graduate school, particularly as it relates to academic self-concept, but based on my own knowledge of other students' graduate experiences acquired through online discussion groups like GradTalk and DocTalk, it is a rare graduate program that places any value or importance on understanding the personal contexts and understandings students bring to their programs. If, as this study has illustrated, self-knowledge is central to the transformational nature of the doctoral experience for many women it may be critical, not only for women to reflect on and to explore the evolution of their own academic self-concepts throughout the doctoral experience, but it may be equally critical for faculties and departments to acknowledge, encourage and support processes that would promote these kinds of learning opportunities.
Understanding this complex interaction of personal and institutional factors that influence persistence through juxtaposition of the constructs of academic self-concept and departmental climate has important implications for thinking about extant models of doctoral degree progress. In the model tested by Girves and Wemmerus (1988, see Figure 3) it was found that grades were not a meaningful predictor of doctoral degree progress, because, they hypothesized, doctoral students come from an already highly selective pool of applicants. They suggested that scholarly activities such as performance on qualifying exams and the ability to conduct independent research might be more influential on degree progress. However, in view of the findings from my own research with respect to the interaction of academic self-concept and departmental climate (policy and practices) a singular focus on student-centered variables serves only to limit our understanding of degree progress. Using the example of exam performance provided by Girves and Wemmerus to further this point, we know that students develop academic self-concepts long before they enter graduate school. We also know that performance anxiety can be a significant factor in students' academic self-concepts. When students' futures are dependent on exam results the stakes are high and the anxiety students experience can be tremendous. Faculty attitudes and department practices can have an important influence on students' academic performance and self-concepts through interactions that either elevate students' anxiety levels or support students and promote confidence building as they develop the necessary skills to complete such scholarly tasks. It is, therefore, critical that models of degree progress reflect this complex interaction of personal and institutional factors and not place the onus of responsibility for degree progress solely on the shoulders of students.
Departments and faculties have a strong role to play in this regard. Gender and age bias and bias toward full-- versus part-time enrollment and women with families is alive and well in the academy and although not all women experience these more blatant kinds of bias, all the women in this study did develop a heightened awareness of and distaste for the political aspects of pursuing a doctorate. Department and faculty attitudes toward students vary tremendously across departments and institutions. Policies and practices that actively promote a competitive, one-up/one-down ethic may provide less desirable learning environments for women who place a high value on self-knowledge and personal growth as part of the doctoral experience. Prospective doctoral students would be well advised to familiarize themselves with the departmental policies, practices and power relationships in institutions where they are considering doctoral study by talking with other doctoral students who are at different stages of their degrees.
Several studies in much of the recent literature on doctoral education (Braun, 1990; Hanson, 1992; Heinrich, 1991, 1995; Jacks, Chubin, Porter and Connolly, 1983; Nerad and Cerny, 1993; Tinto, 1993; Tluczek, 1995), identified the importance of advisor/advisee relationship as a central influencing factor in the doctoral experience. Findings from this study suggest that the advisor/advisee relationship may be the most influential relationship women have in their program while pursuing the doctorate. While recognizing, as Tinto suggested, that the advisory role may be particularly critical during the final writing stage of the doctorate, findings from my own research would suggest that the quality of the advisor/advisee relationship is critical to student success and continued persistence regardless of one's stage in the program.
Many researchers including Braun (1990), Breslauer and Gordon (1989), and Heinrich (1991; 1995) have examined gender issues in the advisor/advisee relationship. Braun found that having a same-sex mentor was far more important to women than to men. However, findings from this study would suggest that gender in the advisor/advisee relationship may be less important than the nature of the relationship itself, in particular, the way faculty use power within the relationship. Some advisory practices reflect a clear abuse of power that, regardless of the stage students are at in their programs, is a negative influence on motivation and persistence. Until institutions recognize this and provide safeguards to protect students from the potential harmful effects of this imbalance of power such abuses undoubtedly will continue. Women doctoral students in search of advisors are likely better served by observing and studying the ways in which faculty use power in their relationships with colleagues and students than by choosing advisors primarily on the basis of gender.
Heinrich's (1991) typology of mentoring or advising styles identified masculine, feminine and androgynous approaches to advising and suggested that an androgynous approach was of greatest benefit to women advisees. Advisors' sensitive use of power in the advisor/advisee relationship was central not only to Heinrich's model but to the findings in this study. However, rather than cast advising into a model in which "one-style-fits-all" this study identified a variety of ways in which faculty used power within the advisor/advisee relationship. It would be overly simplistic to assume that such a taxonomy might reflect the full range of possible advisory styles or that an individual advisor's style could be characterized solely by a single category within the taxonomy. It is also important to acknowledge that no relationship, especially those in which there are structural power differences, is problem-free or without its challenges. If, as this study would suggest, a close match between students' needs with respect to the task and relational dimensions of the relationship is central to degree progress, doctoral students in search of advisors may do well to examine closely their own needs around both task and relational dimensions of the advisor/advisee relationship and choose advisors whose predominant style most closely matches their needs.
Stress, mental and emotional fatigue and depression emerged in this study as critical factors in these women's doctoral experiences. These findings were not significantly different from those of other research studies. However, unlike other studies that have tended to view health issues as the failure of the individual student to adjust to the demands of doctoral study, for example the inability to effectively manage one's time, this study illustrated clearly how dysfunctional relationships among students and faculty, reflected in the department climate, contributed significantly to much of the stress the women experienced in their programs. This would suggest that stress and health related issues women encounter in their programs might better be understood as symptoms of a more complex interaction of factors rather than as shortcomings of the individual student. Departments need to take heed of this and develop strategies to ensure that substantive issues, rather than the politics of knowledge production, command the highest priority for both faculty and students.
The Ph.D. symbolizes the highest level of achievement in North American educational systems. As students climb each rung of the academic ladder, increasingly they are expected to be self-directed, independent learners and by the time they approach the doctorate they are expected to know the rules of the game. Pursuit of the Ph.D., however, is characterized by tasks, processes and experiences that are unique to particular fields of study, to institutions, to departments and to individuals. Not only must students define and demonstrate mastery of a very specific body of knowledge, they must also learn and master the sometimes hidden rules that govern the process. Tradition dictates that faculty will lead students safely along this path, but it is a responsibility with few guidelines, controls or rewards to frame the process. When it works well everyone wins. However, for many, academe has become a hostile environment in which the intellect is treated like some sort of appendage detached from the self. When words like "loneliness," "isolation," "exhaustion," "stress," "anxiety," "hazing," "ridicule," "sexual harassment," "benign neglect" and even "abuse" are central to women's descriptions of their doctoral experiences we need to ask what it is that is being taught in the academy. There has been an assumption in academe that the best and brightest among us will survive. However, for many women, the question is not whether we can survive; rather it is whether we are willing to persist to completion when we experience conditions in the academy that are injurious to our emotional, intellectual and physical well being. A system that is injurious to its progeny endangers the very foundation upon which it rests and ultimately gambles with its own future. If women are to thrive in the academy then the politics of knowledge production must give way