Work-Family Roundtable Convened in Washington
On July 14 and 15, the AAUP convened a roundtable on faculty work and family issues in Washington, D.C. The roundtable was part of a two-year AAUP initiative titled "Access to the Profession" that is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The roundtable brought together researchers on work and family, representatives of higher education associations, and representatives from universities in California, Washington, and Wisconsin that are developing programs to aid their faculty in balancing career and family responsibilities.
Presenters discussed the latest research on the changing demographics of U.S. faculty, the need for and availability of institutional policies to provide faculty with support for their responsibilities outside of work, and obstacles to the adoption and implementation of such policies.
Jack Schuster of Claremont Graduate University and Martin Finkelstein of Seton Hall University noted that more than half of new full-time faculty appointments during the 1990s were not on the tenure track, and that in 1998—the most recent year for which data are available—women were overrepresented among non-tenure-track faculty.
Mary Ann Mason, a graduate dean at the University of California, Berkeley, and Marc Goulden, a research analyst there, presented preliminary results from ongoing research on the effects of family formation on careers. They used a "pipeline" metaphor to describe "leaks" of women out of the faculty tenure and promotion track at different points (for example, at the point at which they are up for tenure) because of the combined effects of family and gender.
Jerry Jacobs of the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the "time divide" between men and women faculty. His research indicates that faculty members at all ranks and all types of institutions work an average of more than fifty hours a week, with a substantial proportion reporting that they work more than sixty hours a week. Both men and women work long hours, but married male assistant professors with children work longer hours than do women in the same situation, perhaps indicating an "edge" for men in terms of time available to work toward tenure.
Kelly Ward of Washington State University and Lisa Wolf-Wendel of the University of Kansas described their ongoing study of faculty mothers, which indicates that different types of institutions provide different environments for faculty child rearing.
The AAUP's focus is on providing guidelines for helping faculty members exercise their family responsibilities without damaging their career prospects. Such guidelines are especially important for reducing the disadvantages women face in obtaining faculty positions, earning promotion and tenure, and achieving salary equity. In 2001, the Association's governing Council adopted a policy statement addressing these issues, the Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work.
The ideas discussed at the roundtable—along with other perspectives yet to be explored—will form the foundation of a special issue of Academe on faculty work and family issues, planned for late 2004. The AAUP is also developing a Web-based resource on institutional policies that support increased faculty participation in family responsibilities throughout life.
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