To Be a Woman, To Be an Academician?: That’s the Question

Femininity and masculinity are the outcomes of a social reproduction rather than a biological one. It is possible to see the traces of this social reproduction in issues as to the positioning of the woman in the social life, working life, and domestic labor. The structure that works against the woman with regard to the domestic division of labor, also affects the working life of the woman, in this context, the gender- based pressures experienced by women in the academia constitute the subject matter of this study. It is the main purpose of this study to reveal the role conflicts of women in academic life through gender in general; and through motherhood, in particular. I have drawn upon Walby’s patriarchal theory and Acker’s theory of gendered organisation to achieve this aim. I carried out in-depth interviews with six female academicians from various departments of the Faculty of Letters at Ege University, a long- established university in a professional sense of belonging has been developed and my experience about femininity has been shaped. In accordance with the feminist methodology, I descriptively analyzed their gender-based experiences throughout their academic careers. The findings of the field research indicated that the women may well encounter with masculine domination even in academia, which is expected to be relatively democratic throughout the whole process in which they entered to the academia, they pursued their academic careers, they got married and they had children.