‘If you put pressure on yourself to produce then that's your responsibility’ : Mothers’ experiences of maternity leave and flexible work in the neoliberal university
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 26 (2019) 6, S 772–788
Inhalt: Women remain underrepresented in senior positions within universities and report barriers to career progression. Drawing on the concepts of Foucault and Bourdieu, with an emphasis on technologies of the self, this article aims to understand mothers’ academic career experiences. Interviews were conducted with 35 non‐STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) academics in Scotland and Australia, to reveal the gender dimensions of parents’ academic careers, in neoliberal university contexts. The data suggest that there are tensions between organizational policies, such as maternity leave and flexible work, and the contemporary demands of academic labour. New managerial discourses which individualize and make use of moral systems are particularly effectual in driving women to take up marketized research activity and compromise leave entitlements.
Excellent and gender equal? : Academic motherhood and ‘gender blindness' in Norwegian academia
Autor/in:
Thun, Cecilie
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 27 (2019) 2, S 166–180
Inhalt: This article explores Norwegian female academics' experiences with academic motherhood in an organizational perspective. A main finding is that academia as an organization is greedy, uncertain, and has ‘blind spots' that reveal gender bias related to gender and parental status, especially mothers. By analysing the link between gendered organization of work and the legitimatizing of gender inequality, the article reveals ‘gender blindness' in the academic organization concerning gender and parental status. The article concludes that changes in academia — in line with academic capitalism — may indicate that the Norwegian model of work–life balance is under pressure. This article suggests that the organizational conditions for academic motherhood are important factors in order to understand the persistence of gender inequality.
Should I stay or should I go? : The effects of precariousness on the gendered career aspirations of postdocs in Switzerland
Autor/in:
Bataille, Pierre; Le Feuvre, Nicky; Kradolfer Morales, Sabine
Quelle: European Educational Research Journal, 16 (2017) 2-3, S 313–331
Inhalt: The assumption that men are more likely to undertake and succeed in an academic career, because the requirements of professional success in this occupation are compatible with normative gender assumptions, particularly that of fulfilling a ‘male breadwinner’ or main household earner role, implying reduced domestic and care commitments, is discussed. It is suggested that Switzerland offers a particularly interesting case for this study, because of the combination of the specific structure of academic careers, the characteristics of the non-academic labour market and the dominant gender regime. It is shown that, in this particular context, the aspirations of postdocs to remain in academic employment or to look for non-academic jobs are directly related to their position within the domestic division of labour and to their personal and family circumstances. However, this does not necessarily lead to a clear-cut divide between work-committed men, who ‘succeed’ (and hence stay), and care-committed women who ‘fail’ to climb up the academic career ladder (and hence leave). The results suggest that the situation is more complex and requires a subtle distinction between different ideal-types of post-doctoral experiences that do not always cut neatly across gender lines.
‘Publish or perish’ : Family life and academic research productivity
Autor/in:
Callaghan, Chris W.
Quelle: SA j. hum. resour. manag. (SA Journal of Human Resource Management), 15 (2017) 2, 307 S
Inhalt: Research purpose: The influence of work-to-family and family-to-work spillovers is well documented in the human resources literature. However, little is known of the relationships between the pressures faced by academics to publish and the potential family life consequences of being a highly productive academic.
Research design, approach and method: This research sought to investigate these relationships within the context of a large South African university by testing associations between family life variables such as marriage and dependent children against measures of the following specific types of research publication: (1) South African Department of Higher Education and Training–accredited journal publications; (2) Thompson Reuters Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and ProQuest’s International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)– indexed journal article publications; (3) conference proceedings publications; (4) conference paper presentations; (5) book chapter publications; (6) book publications; and (7) gross research productivity, reflecting a volume or quantity measure of research publication.
Main findings: ISI and/or IBSS journal article publication is found to be negatively associated with dependent children, but only for male academics, and to be negatively associated with female gender over and above the effect of family life variables in testing.
Practical/managerial implications: Human resources managers in universities need to be cognisant of the specific pressures faced by staff that are required to produce ever more research publications, in order to help them achieve work–life balance.
Contribution: In a global context of increasing pressures for research publication, and for higher and higher numbers of publications, it is necessary to identify the potential costs involved for high-volume–producing academics, particularly in terms of family versus work.
Keywords: research productivity; family-work life balance
Schlagwörter:Familie; Forschungsproduktivität; Publikation; South Africa; Südafrika; Vereinbarkeit; work-life balance
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Quelle: European Educational Research Journal, 16 (2017) 2-3, S 332–351
Inhalt: This paper addresses the topic of work–life interferences in academic contexts. More specifically, it focuses on early career researchers in the Italian university system. The total availability required from those who work in the research sector is leading to significant transformations of the temporalities of work, especially among the new generation of researchers, whose condition is characterized by a higher degree of instability and uncertainty. Which are the experiences of the early career researchers in an academic context constituted by a growing competition for permanent positions and, as a consequence, by a greatly increased pressure? Which are the main gender differences? In what elements do Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics disciplines differ from Social Sciences and Humanities? The collected narratives reveal how the ongoing process of precarization is affecting both the everyday working activities and the private and family lives of early career researchers, with important consequences also on their future prospects.
Women in science : The persistence of traditional gender roles. A case study on work–life interface
Autor/in:
Cervia, Silvia; Biancheri, Rita
Quelle: European Educational Research Journal, 16 (2017) 2-3, S 215–229
Inhalt: The underrepresentation of women in academe has been the focus of both academic literature and European policy-makers. However, albeit the number of female scientists has increased, true gender equality has yet to be achieved. When examining the reasons for this, we have to consider the interconnection between the expectations surrounding gender and what it means to work in the scientific profession, operating at individual, interactional, and institutional levels. This paper presents the results (and methods) of a survey exploring work–life interfaces from a gender-sensitive perspective.
Our survey focused on the researchers and professors working in the medicine and engineering departments of the University of Pisa, where the gradient of female exclusion is most pronounced. The results allow for an interpretation of the ‘leaky pipeline’ (macro level), through a gender-sensitive analysis of gender-based social obligations and those associated with the scientific profession (micro perspective), by integrating said reading through a description of the dynamics of continuous negotiation in private and public life (university) (meso level). Essentially, science is a greedy institution, as is family life, which is a problem for a woman’s career, unless she is willing to make considerable concessions at home.
How do you take time? : Work–life balance policies versus neoliberal, social and cultural incentive mechanisms in Icelandic higher education
Autor/in:
Smidt, Thomas Brorsen; Pétursdóttir, Gyða Margrét; Einarsdóttir, Þorgerður
Quelle: European Educational Research Journal, 16 (2017) 2-3, S 123–140
Inhalt: It is suggested that the realization of work–life balance policies at the University of Iceland is compromised by an emphasis on neoliberal notions of growth and performance measurements in the form of new public management strategies. This is sustained by overt and covert incentive mechanisms, which in turn create a range of different gendered implications for academic staff. The results from semi-structured interviews suggest that while this tension field affects all academic staff, it is generally less favourable to women than to men. If women were granted time for the sake of family obligations, they risked a setback in their academic career due to decreased research activity. Women tended to view academic flexibility as an opportunity to engage in domestic responsibilities more so than men; and male interviewees tended to view the prioritization of family as a choice, while women tended to view it as a condition.
Schlagwörter:Gender; Geschlechterunterschied; Gleichstellungsmaßnahmen; incentive mechanisms; Island; neoliberal university; neoliberalism; new public management; Vereinbarkeit; wissenschaftliches Personal; work-life balance
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Understanding gender inequality and the role of the work/family interface in contemporary academia : An introduction
Autor/in:
Dubois-Shaik, Farah; Fusulier, Bernard
Quelle: European Educational Research Journal, 16 (2017) 2-3, S 99–105
Inhalt: This double special issue gathers a series of nuanced critically conceptual and case-study research showing that in the contemporary European context, despite regional differences in gender regimes, political and economic demands and organizational cultures, work/life balance policies and their translation into practice remains a highly ambiguous issue. Although work/life balance policies have undoubtedly entered the university institutional spaces, they are deterred by opposing institutional policy logics and particularly ‘greedy’ logics of the organizing of work that still aligns to outdated work-exclusive masculine organizational culture (outdated because men too are suffering the effects, and because the academic environment is feminized). Moreover, there are lingering gender stereotypes around the value and attribution of home and work duties, which are having a significant impact upon women’s professional and private spheres and experiences in academic work. The gathered research shows how university institutions are still quite far from having addressed the core issues that undermine women’s career advancement and their possibilities to access to academic membership and leadership, still obliging them (and their male counterparts) to align with a work and membership (selection and progression) logic and organization that does not take into consideration parenthood, family and personal spheres of life.
Job Satisfaction of Academics: Does Gender Matter?
Autor/in:
Machado-Taylor, Maria de Lourdes; White, Kate; Gouveia, Odilia
Quelle: High Educ Policy (Higher Education Policy), 27 (2013) 3, S 363–384
Inhalt: Academic work in higher education has been influenced by global trends such as accountability, massification and deteriorating financial support. Within this broader context, the performance of academic staff as teachers and researchers has an impact on student learning and implications for the quality of higher education institutions (HEIs). Therefore, satisfaction of academic staff is critical to the effective functioning of HEIs. This article reports on a study of academic career satisfaction in Portugal and gender differences with respect to academic job satisfaction. It found that male respondents in HEIs were in higher positions than women, but less so in private institutions. It also analysed some aspects of the professional context in which women and men work in order to explain similarities and/or differences in job satisfaction. The main difference was that women were less satisfied with personal and professional development, especially the balance between work and family.