Investigating the Glass Ceiling in Italian Academia. Women's Strategies and Barriers to Career Advancement

The underrepresentation of women in academia at the top levels, the so-called "glass ceil-ing phenomenon", is still an issue also in Italian universities. Women, in fact, remain sig-nificantly underrepresented especially in full professorships and leadership positions, with only slightly changes over the years. Using 46 semi-structured interviews with 31 female associate professors and 15 female members of the departmental governance working in 4 Italian universities, the article explores this phenomenon looking at two aspects. On one side, it explores the barriers to access to full professorships and managerial positions in Ital-ian academy, in particular the motherhood penalty, the gendered allocations of activities and the gendered construction of leadership. On the other, the essay looks at the individ-ual strategies implemented by women to overcome or to cope with them. The analysis shows the interdependence between structural and cultural barriers and the alleged indi-vidual self-selective strategies of women.