‘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.
Why the paradigm of work–family conflict is no longer sustainable : Towards more empowering social imaginaries to understand women's identities
Autor/in:
Grünberg, Laura; Matei, Ștefania
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 7 (2019) 1, 263 S
Inhalt: The paradigm of work–family conflict is challenged by the fluid realities of the actual world. Through an innovative phenomenographic study of women's understanding of their lives, we show that the social imaginary of work–family conflict assumes that vulnerability is a constitutive reality for women. Consequently, with respect to the perspectives through which women are invited to make sense of their lives, the metaphor of conflict enforces a worldview based on traditional gender roles. Organizational policies that rely heavily on a social imaginary of work–family conflict may prove ineffective. On the one hand, they ignore the diversity of morphologies and vocabularies used by women today to understand themselves in relation to their family and workplace. On the other, work–family conflict arises as a product of policy measures and bureaucratic practices rather than as an experiential reality. Policy statements on work–family conflict have a performative character: they communicate a message about women's social status and identity. Therefore, effective organizational policies should integrate vocabularies and assumptions that make women aware of themselves in a confident manner by relying on social imaginaries that encourage agency and empowered participation in the world.
Supporting women scholars’ paths to academia : An examination of family-friendly policies of public affairs doctoral programs
Autor/in:
Bodkin, Candice Pippin; Fleming, Casey J.
Quelle: Journal of Public Affairs Education, 27 (2019) 2, S 1–25
Inhalt: Despite earning roughly half the doctoral degrees in public administration, women remain underrepresented in public affairs programs, particularly in senior positions. Studies describe a leaky pipeline from which women exit the academic career, and there is growing interest in removing administrative, structural, and cultural barriers facing women scholars as well as supporting healthy career-life balance. Considerable research examines family-friendly workplace initiatives for faculty, yet little attention is paid to the availability of such policies for students. Drawing from archival and survey data, this study investigates the availability of specific family-friendly policies for doctoral students of public affairs programs in the U.S., potentially effective human resource management approaches to addressing exit points between graduate school and faculty membership. Findings reveal inconsistent and relatively insubstantial provision of formal policies; however, informal workarounds appear to be a common strategy for meeting the needs of graduate students who become parents during doctoral studies.
Work–life balance for native and migrant scholars in German academia : Meanings and practices
Autor/in:
Gewinner, Irina
Quelle: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, (2019)
Inhalt: The purpose of this paper is to address notions and practices relating to work–life balance for native German scholars and researchers who have migrated from the former Soviet Union (FSU). Issues will be explored from a cultural perspective, identifying culturally based interpretations of work–life balance.
Schlagwörter:caregiving; culture-sensitive approach; Diversity; german academia; motherhood; native and migrant scholars; Vereinbarkeit; WissenschaflerIn; work-life balance
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf
“I Want to be Both, but Is that Possible?”: : Communicating Mother-Scholar Uncertainty During Doctoral Candidacy
Autor/in:
Abetz, Jenna S.
Quelle: Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education, 12 (2019) 1, S 70–87
Inhalt: Doctoral study is a vulnerable time when students are faced with the task of establishing a new professional identity in a competitive environment, with financial stress, an uncertain future, and low status. This significant period of uncertainty is a particularly ripe context for higher education researchers to explore, as it simultaneously falls during important family formation and childbearing years. Through in-depth, semistructured interviews of 30 married women doctoral candidates, largely within the humanities and social sciences and the lens of uncertainty management theory, this investigation examines how women construct and manage uncertainty surrounding the mother-scholar identity.
Schlagwörter:motherhood; mother-scholar; Professor; Promotionsphase; women in higher education; work-life balance
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf
Community College Single-Parent Students’ Angst : Inequities Balancing Roles as Parent and Student
Autor/in:
Lovell, Elyse D’nn; Scott, Ravyn
Quelle: Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 98 (2019) 12, S 1–4
Inhalt: Single-parent students are predominantly female, identified as a marginalized group, and a growing population on community college campuses which poignantly suggests an opportunity for change. Single-parent students (n = 12) described angst as they balanced their roles and responsibilities between single-parent and student. Meg stated, “friends are not a priority. It’s like this constant balancing act. Everything is going a million miles a minute, so fast-the teaching, homework, learning, my kids, the days, studying.” Using a qualitative approach, interviews were conducted, themes generated, and needs established. The themes of structure, stress, and isolation were used to identify homework-support needs, and from the themes of guilt and isolation, family-friendly social activities were considered. The meaning was clarified to implement student–parent homework support groups and family-friendly social activities. This study was conducted by a single-parent undergraduate-researcher as a freshman with her faculty mentor; as a sophomore work-study student, she coordinates the student–parent program.
Schlagwörter:community college; parenthood; single parent; students' angst
CEWS Kategorie:Studium und Studierende, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf
Gender in the Labor Market : The Role of Equal Opportunity and Family-Friendly Policies
Autor/in:
Doran; Bartel; Waldfogel
Quelle: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 5 (2019) 5, S 168–197
Inhalt: Although the gender wage gap in the United States has narrowed, women’s career trajectories diverge from men’s after the birth of children, suggesting a potential role for family-friendly policies. We provide new evidence on employer provision of these policies. Using the American Time Use Survey, we find that women are less likely than men to have access to any employer-provided paid leave and this differential is entirely explained by part-time status. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we find that young women are more likely to have access to specifically designated paid parental leave, even in part-time jobs. Both data sets show insignificant gender differentials in access to employer-subsidized childcare and access to scheduling flexibility. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications.
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.
Impact of Flexible Work Arrangements on Job Satisfaction Among the Female Teachers in the Higher Education Sector
Autor/in:
Rahman, Mayeesha Fairuz
Quelle: EJBM (European Journal of Business and Management), 11 (2019) 18
Inhalt: A remarkable growth of female participation has been observed in the job market of Bangladesh over the past few years. The number of female employees and their contribution is likely to increase further with the pace of the country’s development in terms of the literacy rate and employment scope. Among the several thriving sectors of the country, the significance of the education sector especially in the tertiary level is highlighted by the noble contribution they make to the economy. Due the rapid increase in the number of private universities over the past few years in the country, quite a large number of women have chosen to embark on this field with the hopes of establishing themselves as academicians. However, one of the existing impediments which obstructs several women to reach their zenith professionally is rigid company policies specifically lack of flexibility. The importance of Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA) has recently gained the attention of academicians as well as practitioners to improve employee performance. Since participation of women in a noble sector like education is highly desired; hence, the present study aims to investigate the relationship between Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA), Employee Job satisfaction and Work-life Balance of the female teachers in the higher education sector of the country. Based on the analysis of diverse literature from the secondary data, hypotheses were developed and in order to test those, primary data had been collected, responses from 203 female teachers were analyzed through SPSS. The findings have confirmed that FWA have positive and significant impact both on Employee Job Satisfaction and Work-life Balance as well as Work-life Balance has a positive impact on Job Satisfaction. However, one of the elements of FWA, namely, Compressed Workweek, is found to have values lower than the significance level after performing regression analysis.
Quelle: APSC (PS: Political Science & Politics), 52 (2019) 1, S 35–38
Inhalt: We are three women political scientists. Two of us are women of color (black women), two are mothers, one has a chronic illness; we all identify as first-generation college students. We care about our students and about our research; we strive for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. We know that the expectation for managing our complex lives is to find work–life balance. Work–life balance is a gold standard: something employers are meant to help us achieve and something for which we are supposed to strive. We have even come to expect it for ourselves.