| Abstract: |
Women’s participation in higher education has expanded, yet formal inclusion does not necessarily reveal how academic labour is distributed, recognised, and converted into career advantage. This qualitative study examines gendered role multiplicity and invisible academic labour among seven women faculty members with academic and administrative leadership experience in a central-university setting in India. Semi-structured interview narratives were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis, informed by Acker’s theory of gendered organisations and scholarship on academic housework and emotional labour. Four themes were identified: the expansion of academic roles beyond teaching and research; gendered emotional labour and negotiated authority; temporal compression and the hidden costs of overlapping responsibilities; and unequal access to networks, support, and institutional resources. The findings show that administrative and relational work is not uniformly disadvantageous. Some responsibilities generate visibility, institutional trust, and leadership capital, whereas others are necessary to institutional functioning but weakly recognised. The analysis therefore distinguishes workload from the institutional value of work. Three concepts are developed from the findings: recognition deficit, temporal compression, and career convertibility. The paper further treats cumulative academic time disadvantage (CATD) as a sensitising concept rather than a predetermined outcome: repeated low-recognition responsibilities may constrain career-enhancing time, but their effects are mediated by autonomy, disciplinary culture, social capital, and family support. The study shifts the sociological analysis of women’s academic careers beyond the work–life balance binary toward the everyday organisation and valuation of labour through which universities reproduce gendered inequalities. |
