ABSTRACT
The chapter investigates how men and women professors in Norway and Japan account for their career trajectories, with an emphasis on what has helped them manage to stay in academia. The aim is to contribute insights on what are important inclusion factors for becoming a professor in Norway and Japan, and how these are gendered and contextual. The data material consists of in-depth qualitative interviews with 13 professors in Japan and 15 in Norway. The analysis shows that professors of both genders in both contexts experienced a strong motivation for and desire to stay in academia, and, to achieve their goal, they worked hard and endured precarious job situations; some even made quite substantial sacrifices. When we disregarded idiosyncratic factors, however, we found that gender and context made a difference and primarily in terms of domestic work division and childcare. Even if academia was considered a flexible work situation, domestic work and care for children was more challenging for women than men, and more so for women professors in Japan than in Norway. Gender discrimination was only mentioned by some women in the Japanese context.
