The Australian Research Council (ARC) is responsible for administering Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), Australia’s national research evaluation framework. In the ERA 2015 evaluation round, gender data was collected for the first time. Gender data was used for aggregate reporting and analysis purposes only and to provide a baseline for analysis in future rounds: it was not made available to peer reviewers or Research Evaluation Committees (RECs) and did not form part of the evaluation process. Figures were published at the two-digit Field of Research (FoR) code level.

In 2018 the ARC published data at the four-digit FoR code level revealing figures for individual social science disciplines. The four-digit codes 1608 and 1699 have been aggregated to calculate workforce figures for the discipline of sociology. These figures show that women dominate at all levels and have almost achieved parity (48 per cent) at professorial level (E).

Figure 1. Distribution of academic appointments in sociology in Australia by gender, 2017 (headcount)

Source: Australian Research Council, Gender and the Research Workforce. Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2018.

Prior to 2018 there is limited information on women in the discipline of sociology. GESS researchers had to use data that The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) collects from its membership. Membership forms provide the basis for collection of basic demographic data, and data on employment status has been collected since 2004. In 2004 John Germov and Tara McGee (2005) conducted an analysis of data on TASA’s 635 members. This analysis provided some insight into patterns on the status of women in the discipline. In 2004, 66 per cent of the 419 TASA members for whom there was data on gender were women (Germov & McGee, 2005, p. 366). Around 77 per cent of TASA’s membership were employed in a higher education institution and of women represented 65 per cent of those members. Women were strongly represented throughout the levels thought, as for all disciplines in this study, were represented more at Level A (86 percent) than level E (52 per cent).

In 2016 TASA had 642 members. Of the 566 members that filled out information on sex, 64.8 per cent were women. This database suffered from the same issues raised by Germov and McGee (2005) including missing values. A snapshot of the data collected suggested that women remained strongly represented throughout academia including representing more than two thirds of all staff in levels A, B, C and D but represented 38 per cent of staff in the most prestigious position in the discipline (level E). 

There are, however, significant issues in using this data to understand gender patterns in the discipline, not the least that TASA is a voluntary professional association, which beyond filling out a membership form and paying membership has no registration requirement. Significantly for the analysis is the fact that there are missing values and that for some members items are not valid (see Germov & McGee, 2005, p. 365). The disparity in the percentage of women at Level E in TASA membership data (39 per cent) and the ERA data (48 per cent) makes this difficulty clear.

References

Germov, J., & McGee, T. R. (2005). Australian Sociology: Recent trends and prospects. In J. Germov & T. R. McGee, Histories of Australian Sociology (pp. 355-86). Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd.

TASA. (2016). TASA: Data on membership. The Australian Sociological Association.