Portuguese higher education is changing, with a significant impact on academic careers, reinforcing the academic "estate." The focus of this paper is the analysis not only of the gender differences per se, but it also relates them to other variables such as the higher education subsystem, career positioning, the sociocultural background and having children. The main findings show that there are some effective gender differences in the Portuguese academic career. Women are still less represented in academia. The gender gap tends to accentuate significantly at the top of the career structure, where there is a clear advantage to male academics. Concerning the sociocultural background of academics, most are the first generation in their families to reach higher education. Moreover, academics tend to raise families with spouses from the same educational level. Summing up, the Portuguese higher education system still has a long way to go before perfect equity is attained. (Contains 8 figures.)