The Journeys in World Politics workshops provide mentoring for young female political scientists in the area of international relations. The three-day workshops include research presentations by junior scholars and extensive feedback from discussants, oral autobiographies by senior scholars, and career and gender discussion sessions (e.g., networking, balancing family and work, women in the classroom, negotiations). The motivation for the workshops stems from research showing the benefits of mentoring, especially for women in political science and academia more broadly.
A variety of studies have evaluated the status of women in political science over the past 30 years. Several indicators -- differences in salaries, differences in publication rates in the top political science journals, differences in publication rates in books and edited volumes, differences in placement at research versus teaching institutions, differences in satisfaction with graduate school training, and increasing attrition rates for female scholars at all academic levels -- reveal a significant gender gap in the field. While recent studies show some decline in this gender gap, the under-representation of female scholars at top research institutions and high rank levels is still highly problematic. Proactive solutions to these structural problems have been evaluated, and active mentoring and the creation of friendly and nurturing academic environments are among the most promising avenues for change. Factors that promote job success for male graduate students in political science, such as the rank of PhD program or adequate job placement services, do not have an apparent effect upon the success rate of female graduate students on the job market. In fact, the only significant predictor for a female candidate is a healthy mentoring relationship with an academic advisor.
The Journeys in World Politics program applies this knowledge by providing mentoring and networking opportunities for young female scholars. In particular, this project implements recommendations of the American Political Science Association's 2004 workshop on women's advancement in political science, which was also funding by NSF. In essence, the workshops broaden the benefits of and opportunities for mentoring for female PhD success beyond their home departments. The PIs will also collect more systematic data to evaluate the impact of mentoring programs on long-term success rates (e.g., time to completion of PhD, number of publications, employment in academia, tenure) for female PhD candidates in political science.
Diversity is an important issue in the academic community. This project is proactive in its efforts to improve diversity and in its efforts to track the success of these efforts. It focuses on an area of political science research, the study of international relations, that has been male-dominated historically; although, the success of the proposed mentoring program can be generalized to implications for efforts to advance gender and racial diversity in political science and other academic disciplines.
