Power and the perception of pregnancy in the academy
Autor/in:
Percival Carter, Erin
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: Becoming pregnant as an academic is risky. Many who want to become or find themselves pregnant structure their lives and careers to try to mitigate the potential negative effects of pregnancy on their future careers. Yet research continues to suggest that having been pregnant or being a mother significantly reduces the likelihood of career success compared to either being child-free or a father. While in some cases success is defined as research productivity, in many cases, it is defined as simply remaining in academia. Governments, societies, and institutions bemoan the resulting “leaky pipelines” and speculate as to the causes of seemingly reinforced glass ceilings. Yet, underlying so many of the formal and informal conversations, norms, and policies surrounding pregnancy and academia is an implicit assumption that pregnancy and pregnant people are the problem to be solved and solutions thus require repairing some deficit created in the individual by pregnancy. In this article, I argue that pregnancy discrimination in academia is in large part a problem resulting from power and how it is wielded against pregnant people, both by institutions and by individuals. Using both a personal narrative account of the process, experience, and outcomes of pregnancy in the academy resulting in filing a formal Title IX complaint and a review of contemporary research on power, discrimination, and pregnancy, I explore how academic structures and systems nominally tasked with supporting equity can instead serve to exaggerate power differences and foster discrimination.
Caring during COVID‐19 : A gendered analysis of Australian university responses to managing remote working and caring responsibilities
Autor/in:
Nash, Meredith; Churchill, Brendan
Quelle: Gender, Work & Organization, 27 (2020) 5, S 833–846
Inhalt: OVID‐19 is dramatically reconfiguring paid work and care. Emerging evidence in the global media suggests that academic women with caring responsibilities are being proportionately impacted. This article fills a key knowledge gap by examining how Australian universities are supporting academics to manage remote work and caring during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We conducted a desktop analysis of public information about remote working and care from 41 Australian universities and compared them to the world’s top 10 ranked universities. Findings suggest that during the pandemic, the Australian higher education sector positions decisions about caring leave and participation in the paid labour force as ‘private’ matters in which employees (mainly women) design their own ‘solutions’ when compared with international institutional counterparts. We argue that COVID‐19 provides another context in which universities have evaded their responsibility to ensure women’s full participation in the labour force.
Academic motherhood during COVID‐19 : Navigating our dual roles as educators and mothers
Autor/in:
Guy, Batsheva; Arthur, Brittany
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 2 (2020) 1, 155 S
Inhalt: During the COVID‐19 crisis, being a working mother has taken on a whole new meaning, as mothers navigate working from home while juggling childcare, as well as coming to terms with their intersecting identities. The current article is a feminist, heartful autoethnographic account, couched in Relational‐Cultural Theory, surrounding our authentic experiences working from home and raising children during the worldwide pandemic. We explore academic motherhood, working from home, mental health, and coping during coronavirus and stay‐at‐home orders through engaged dialogue. We hope that showcasing our vulnerability can lead to change in the expectations we put on mothers in academia, while at the same time connect with readers who may be going through similar challenges.
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 26 (2019) 4, S 448–462
Inhalt: This article examines the rise in precarious academic employment in Ireland as an outcome of the higher education restructuring following OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development), government initiatives and post‐crisis austerity. Presenting the narratives of academic women at different career stages, we claim that a focus on care sheds new light on the debate on precarity. A more complete understanding of precarity should take account not only of the contractual security but also affective relational security in the lives of employees. The intersectionality of paid work and care work lives was a dominant theme in our interviews among academic women. In a globalized academic market, premised on the care‐free masculinized ideals of competitive performance, 24/7 work and geographical mobility, women who opt out of these norms, suffer labour‐led contractual precarity and are over‐represented in part‐time and fixed‐term positions. Women who comply with these organizational commands need to peripheralize their relational lives and experience care‐led affective precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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.
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.
Can Anyone Have It All? Gendered Views on Parenting and Academic Careers
Autor/in:
Sallee, Margaret; Ward, Kelly; Wolf-Wendel, Lisa
Quelle: Innovative Higher Education, 41 (2016) 3, S 187–202
Inhalt: This article is based on data from two qualitative studies that examined the experiences of 93 tenure-line faculty members who are also mothers and fathers. Using gender schemas and ideal worker norms as a guide, we examined the pressures that professors experience amid unrealistic expectations in their work and home lives. Women participants reported performing a disproportionate amount of care in the home while simultaneously feeling unable to take advantage of family-friendly policies. In contrast, men acknowledged that, although their partners performed more care in the home, they felt penalized for wanting to be involved parents.
Schlagwörter:Elternschaft; familienfreundliche Hochschule; Geschlechterunterschied; Mutterschaft; USA; Vater; wissenschaftliches Personal
Wandel der Wissenschaft und Geschlechterarrangements : Organisations und Steuerungspolitiken in Deutschland, Österreich, Großbritannien und Schweden
Autor/in:
Aulenbacher, Brigitte; Binner, Kristina; Riegraf, Birgit; Weber, Lena
Quelle: Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung, 37 (2015) 3, S 22–38
Inhalt: Die universitäre Wissenschaft befindet sich in einem tief greifenden und weit reichenden Umbauprozess. Eine dominierende Entwicklungstendenz ist die Ökonomisierung, die sowohl das Verhältnis zwischen Organisation und Profession, als auch zwischen Staat und Markt neujustiert. Daneben lassen sich weitere Entwicklungen feststellen, etwa die Standardisierung der Studiengänge im Rahmen des Bologna-Prozesses, die Implementation von Gender Mainstreaming und Diversity Policies, sowie Auditierungen und Zertifizierungen, welche Universitäten eine neue Familienfreundlichkeit und Geschlechtergerechtigkeit bescheinigen. Diese Prozesse berühren die Geschlechterarrangements in der Wissenschaft. Der Beitrag fragt, wie die verschiedenen Entwicklungen einander beeinflussen und wirken. Er zeigt, dass die Gewichtung der verschiedenen Tendenzen, ihr Zusammenspiel und die Folgen für die Geschlechterarrangements länder- und organisationsspezifisch variieren.
Tagungsbericht "Gleichstellung, Dual Career und Bestenauslese" : Tagung des Vereins zur Förderung des deutschen & internationalen Wissenschaftsrechts ; 7.-8. November 2013 Universität zu Köln
Autor/in:
Metzger, Marie
Quelle: Wissenschaftsrecht, 47 (2014) 1, S 91–100
Inhalt: On November 7th and 8th 2013 the Society of German and International Scholarly Law hosted a conference on gender equality, ,Dual Career' and selection of best at the University of Cologne. The diverse program with contributions by speakers from various backgrounds kept what the selection of topics promised. In addition to the legal analysis of the interplay between tender procedures, selection of the best and effective gender equality measures in academic life, numerous practical aspects in the field of gender equality were addressed. Thus an insight into the model of 'Dual Career' was achieved whose successes were later exemplified using the ETH Zurich. Towards the end of the event the 'cascade model' was introduced and a speech on recruitment and gender-blindness rounded off the program. The discussions after each contribution showed the topicality of the gender issue. All in all the hosts had their finger on the pulse of time with the selection of the subjects gender equality, 'dual career' and selection of the best. (HRK / Abstract übernommen)
Schlagwörter:Dual Career Couple; Familie-Beruf; Gleichstellung; Gleichstellungsmaßnahmen; Hochschule; Leistungsbewertung; Recht; Wissenschaft
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.