ABSTRACT
The workplace is a natural setting for issues related to gender, envy, and competition to arise. Professions tend to be gender dominated, although this practice is diminishing to some degree. Some disciplines remain predominantly male or female, such as the case with nursing and primary education. Junior faculties, with more equal opportunity, are a more heterogeneous group. This subgroup often co-exists in academic departments with predominantly senior faculty members skewed by a gender imbalance. The gender imbalance exists because it is only recently that women joined the ranks of what were historically male-dominated fields such as medicine, law, and engineering. Women have also been a dominant force in lower-paying professions. These fields often involve care of dependents, and in teaching the arts, social sciences, rather than higher-paying fields such as science and mathematics, where there are greater external rewards and public prestige. In higher education, many women have also lost ground on what has been called the “mommy track.” By taking time off to raise children these women have been derailed from tenure and promotion in institutions where a scholarly record is evaluated within a fixed time frame following doctoral education. Although systems of organization and governance appear overtly democratic, manifestations of envy and competition are invisible and denied. Further, it will be a long time before institutional change, such as part-time options and family leaves for men and women, result from shifting numbers in gender-dominated fields.
