“Regardless of how much I work, I try to make adjustments for my son’s sake”: Uses of timeline visualizations to understand gender inequalities in academia

Abstract

The objective of this article is to show how, in methodological terms, life trajectories in their qualitative component seem to provide information where data visualization - usually used by quantitative studies - could contribute enough to the data collection, analysis and the subsequent presentation. One of the main features of data visualization is that it would allow placing the information on a human scale, which would make comparing cases a more plausible process to perform. In this sense, this article hopes to show the usefulness of the visualization of qualitative data based on the comparison of four biographical lines of chemistry academics of a Chilean university. We use a particular definition of academic trajectory, namely, the overlap of work, family, personal and couple aspects that are developed in the academic context. With this definition as a starting point, these timelines were articulated with the academic narrative biographies. The use of colors, symbols according to the event, and quotes from the interviews in each of the events within the biographical lines, allow us to realize that, in the case of men, work trajectory follows a progressive linearity and it is distanced from the trajectory family. On the contrary, for women work trajectory is put into evaluation and stressedregarding the family trajectory. Thus, we concluded that the visualization of the timelines is a flexible tool because it can act as a memory aid to the interviewees during fieldwork. Besides, it allows to account for subjective aspects to be analyzed, to make comparisons, and to show the information amiably for the audience and research groups.