Investigation of career barriers female academicians providing training in sports are faced with in higher education institutions

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate the career barriers female academicians who provide training in the field of sports are faced with in higher education. Materials and Methods: Sports Sciences and the official web site of YÖK examining the internet pages of the 371 female instructors (163 faculty members and 208 teaching staff) who provide sports education were reached in higher education in Turkey. The research sample is composed of 310 female instructors providing training in sports in higher education. A questionnaire was used to collect the data in the present study. The first part of the questionnaire included questions related to personal information and some of important factors for career barriers, which were suffering from mobbing, organizational commitment and job satisfaction levels. In the second part of the questionnaire, the Career Barriers Scale for Female Academicians developed by Alaçam and Altuntaş (2015) was used. The resulting data were analyzed by using the SPSS package. In the present study, Cronbach alpha values for the sub-dimensions of CBCFA were found as follows: 0.83 for organizational culture and politics, 0.86 for multiple roles, 0.85 for organizational conditions and 0.78 for stereotypical prejudices. The total Cronbach alpha value was 0.88. Findings: When examining the sub-dimensions of career barriers female academicians encounter, it was observed that the scores obtained from all the sub-dimensions were close to the average. This indicates that participants, in general, chose the "undecided" and "agreed" responses to the questions related to the sub-dimensions of "organizational culture and politics", "multiple roles", "organizational conditions", "stereotypical prejudices". The scores related to career barrier perception of female academicians suffering from mobbing in the sub-dimensions of "organizational culture and politics", "multiple roles" was higher than the scores related to career barrier perception of female academicians of those who did not suffer from mobbing. It was seen that as the job satisfaction perception increased, the perception of career barriers decreased in the sub-dimensions of "organizational culture and politics", "multiple roles", "organizational conditions", "stereotypical prejudices". It was also observed that as the perception of organizational commitment increased, the perception of career barriers decreased in the sub-dimensions of "organizational culture and politics", "multiple roles", "organizational conditions", "stereotypical prejudices". Conclusion: As a result of the research, it was revealed that female academicians encounter career barriers arising from "organizational culture and politics", "multiple roles", "organizational conditions", "stereotypical prejudices" and also suffer from mobbing. Moreover, their perception of job satisfaction and organizational commitment levels decreases due to career barriers. Keywords: Sports education, female academicians, career barriers.