Voices of Academic Women on Feminine Gender Scripts

The purpose of this study was to enlarge on knowledge about tenured academic women derived from accounts of their experiences sought through a series of interviews. Eight women in one school in a large Southern state university in the United States were studied. The study uses the concept of gender scripts drawing out the issues of inequality, discrimination and the politics of gender as they pertain to a group of tenured academic women. Findings include the valuing of so‐called male attributes in academe, the problem of the women's distrust of other academic women and the existence of subtle and not so subtle boundaries between men and women academics. The women's successful strategies for dealing with the problems encountered in a male‐dominated university are explored.