Quelle: AK Chancengleichheit der DPG; Berlin, 2020.
Inhalt: Bad Honnef, 9. Februar 2021 – Seit April 2020 leben ca. 80% aller Arbeitskräfte weltweit aufgrund der COVID-19-Pandemie mit obligatorischen oder empfohlenen Schließungen von Arbeitsplätzen. Arbeitskräfte sind gezuwungen von Zuhause aus zu arbeiten. Bei der Arbeit im Homeoffice führen die fehlende Trennung von Beruf und Familie sowie die zusätzliche Belastung durch Homeschooling zu Stress, insbesondere bei Frauen. Das zeigt eine weltweit angelegte Online-Umfrage des Arbeitskreises Chancengleichheit der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft (DPG), an der zwischen Mitte April und Ende Juni 2020 über 1500 überwiegend aus Europa stammende Beschäftigte teilnahmen.
70 Prozent der Befragten hatten eine akademische Position inne und 43 Prozent einen Hintergrund in Physik. Paare (ohne Kinder) im Alter zwischen 30 und 39 Jahren mit mehr als zehn Jahren Berufserfahrung stellten dabei die größte Gruppe dar.
Die hauptsächlichen Stressfaktoren bei der Arbeit im Homeoffice waren die fehlende Trennung von Beruf und Familie sowie das Gefühl der Isolation. Weibliche Teilnehmende bewerteten diese Stressfaktoren signifikant höher als männliche. Der am häufigsten genannte Begriff in Freitextfeldern war dementsprechend „mangelnde Work-Life-Balance“ gefolgt von „Homeschooling“ und „emotionalen und mentalen Problemen“. Führungskräfte litten dabei mehr unter Stress durch Homeoffice als Personen ohne Führungsaufgaben. Trotzdem waren sie mit der Leistung ihrer Mitarbeiter sehr zufrieden.
Europäische Akademikerinnen sorgten sich insbesondere um negative soziale Auswirkungen; die häufigste Sorge bei europäischen Männern war hingegen eine finanzielle Stagnation bzw. Rezession für die Zeit nach der Pandemie. Das betraf vor allem Nichtakademier. Am meisten vermisst wurde das fehlende Feedback von Managern bzw. Kollegen.
Bei der Analyse der Freitexteinträge zeichnen sich zwei Gruppen ab: Eine Gruppe war überzeugt, dass die Pandemie eine Chance ist, Fernarbeit und Fernunterricht zu reformieren. Die zweite Gruppe fürchtete dagegen, dass der verstärkte Einsatz von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien die herkömmlichen Arbeitsinstrumente und -methoden ersetzen könnte.
40 Prozent aller fürchteten den Verlust ihres Arbeitsplatzes. Viele (35 Prozent) sorgten sich allerdings auch um den Wegfall der Möglichkeit, nach der Covid-19-Krise weiter im Homeoffice arbeiten zu können. Das betraf fast die Hälfte der weiblichen Akademiker in Europa und 26 Prozent der männlichen.
Productivity takes Leave? : Maternity benefits and career opportunities of women in academia
Autor/in:
Tröger, Vera
Quelle: Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (University of Warwick); Warwick, 2018.
Inhalt: “May” children, holiday babies and post-tenure pregnancies: these are some of the labels attached to women’s choices of having children in an academic environment. Academic women seem to share a common burden in scheduling their maternity plans: to survive in academia and advance through the faculty ranks, women tend either to give birth during vacation time, or to postpone their motherhood status to the end of their probation period and the achievement of tenure.
The end result is, generally, an underrepresentation of women in higher academic positions (also known as the “leaking pipe problem”), lower salaries, lower research outcomes and rates of promotion, lower fertility, and higher rates of family dissolution – while family and children seem to have either no impact or even a positive effect on the patterns of men’s performance in the academic ranks. Thus, motherhood and professional achievements appear as conflicting goals even for women in academia, an environment that is usually praised for its flexibility in terms of working hours and thus family friendliness.
In this paper, Vera Troeger, Professor of Quantitative Political Economy at the University of Warwick and Research Theme Leader at the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) looks at the effect of maternity benefits on the career opportunities of women in academia.
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.
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.
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.