|
« AAUP Homepage
|
Balancing Work and Family Not Easy for Women Faculty
Women faculty are more likely than men to minimize family commitments in order to avoid bias in the workplace, according to preliminary research results released in May by the Mapping Project. The project, based at Pennsylvania State University, focuses on work and family issues in academe. Such "bias avoidance" behavior, the researchers explain, occurs when "individuals deny themselves the opportunity to take on family commitments, attempt to minimize the impact of existing family commitments on work performance, or try to hide the performance of family tasks from co-workers or employers, all for the purpose of being perceived as committed and thereby securing career advancement."
As one part of a larger project, the researchers surveyed 5,000 men and women faculty members in chemistry and English departments, asking them about their families and about the amount of support their supervisors and institutions provide for family commitments. The researchers selected chemistry and English because each field has a preponderance of faculty of one sex (men in chemistry, women in English) but has faculty members of both sexes to be compared.
The survey found that women faculty across the board perceived less supervisor and institutional support for parenting, and that women faculty were less likely to be parents or to be married or living in a committed relationship. The average number of children was lower for women faculty than for men in both chemistry and English and in all types of institutions surveyed.
In addition to assessing whether bias avoidance behaviors are more common among women faculty members, the preliminary report focuses on three other questions: Are bias avoidance behaviors more often found at research institutions than at teaching institutions? Are such behaviors mainly associated with male-dominated, as opposed to female-dominated, disciplines? Do some individuals deliberately seek out non-tenure-track positions as being more conducive to child raising?
While not conclusive, the evidence does not support any of these hypotheses. Women at institutions offering associate degrees had, on average, fewer children than women at bachelor’s, master’s, and research institutions, not more. The data did not indicate that the male-dominated discipline of chemistry was any less conducive to child rearing than the female-dominated discipline of English. And both men and women in non-tenure-track positions have slightly fewer children than those on the tenure track. The report is available at <lsir.la.psu.edu/workfam/prelimresults.htm>.
The AAUP’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Academic Profession has also studied the subject of academic work and family, and its Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work was adopted in 2001 by the Association’s Council.
|