April and the Promotion Committee

The only female member of a promotion committee struggles to prove that a fellow female faculty member in the department is worthy of promotion to a full professorship.

The case can be used to help develop career skills that may be useful to achieving long-term success, such as:

• Building your professional support network
• Communicating your impacts
• Becoming a change agent in your organization
• Negotiating Employment Conditions
• Understanding Meritocratic ideologies

Upon completion of this case, students will be able to:

• Recognize workplace gender biases related to career advancement.
• Understand sexism and so-called benevolent sexism as concepts;
• Identify strategies for building one’s professional support network for career advancement.
• Identify strategies for communicating one’s impacts and accomplishments.
• Recognize who your allies are in the workplace, and recognize who is not.

• Becoming a change agent in your organization (Understanding Weed-out culture, Old-Boys Networks and Cloning)
• Building your professional support network for career resilience
• Communicating your impacts
• Forming alliances with other women
• Meritocratic ideologies
• Negotiating employment conditions