Academic careers in Spanish geography: A gender perspective

The aim of this article is to study the experiences of women's and men's professional careers within Spanish Geography departments, a professional space that is becoming increasingly competitive and masculine. Within this context, the presence of female geographers is decreasing in relative numbers and their professional status is not improving. The research project was carried out with quantitative and qualitative methods, though in this article we mainly include the qualitative data and the quantitative data are only used to provide a general context. This qualitative analysis was based on in-depth semi-structured interviews to faculty staff of several Geography Departments. These interviews reveal the reasons given by the staff to explain the prevalent masculine model in academic Geography and the resulting power relations that affect professional recognition and self-esteem. In this way, the gendered bias in the assessment of academic achievements leads to a masculine model of the academic career.