A Qualitative Study of Academic Mothers’ Sabbatical Experiences

• In Event: The Double Bind: Gendered Organizations and Work/Family (Im)Balance

Abstract

Description: Scholars report that women faculty continue to face significant barriers to career success in an organization that remains highly gendered (Acker, 1990); this is especially true for women who combine motherhood with their academic career (Armenti, 2004; Mason & Goulden, 2004; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2012; Wolf-Wendell & Ward, 2006). Given the little that exists in the literature regarding faculty professional development overall (hereafter referred to as sabbatical leave), it is not surprising that nothing has been reported in the literature on how academic mothers experience this time, negotiate family responsibilities during periods of sabbatical leave, or how this time of career development may be impacted by one’s status as a mother. This research, therefore, represents an attempt to close this knowledge gap by exploring facets of the sabbatical experience for women with children.

We assume the systemic gender biases known to negatively affect academic mothers in regards to tenure and promotion (Armenti, 2004; Mason & Goulden, 2004), advancement (Crosby, Williams, & Biernat, 2004; Iverson, 2011; Williams, 2005; Valian, 2004), and career satisfaction (Wolf-Wendell & Ward, 2006; Baer & Van Ummersen, 2005) will continue to impact these women during their sabbatical experience as well. Our work, therefore, draws upon critical feminist scholarship as we seek to question the interrelatedness of gender, power, policy, and organizational culture in the academy and problematize the socially constructed gender schemas guiding faculty experiences. Through our inquiry, we sought to make explicit the dynamics of the sabbatical experience that may further support the marginalization of academic mothers, and advance our research as critique of the broader discourses and structures that maintain it. Our goal is to initiate and encourage what we believe is a dialogue missing from the current literature on academic motherhood – one that we hope leads academic mothers to resist the expectation that they must adhere to male-dominated social norms surrounding their sabbatical leave decisions.

In this session, we present findings from a feminist qualitative study of 20+ women faculty members with children who had recently completed a sabbatical leave. Our inquiry revealed that rather than seeing this time as purely an exercise in academic or career advancement, academic mothers desire rebirth – as both scholars and as mothers – in that they saw sabbatical leave as a time to seek academic purpose, connection to family, balance, and health and rejuvenation of self. This research invites reconceptualizing the expectations guiding a “good” sabbatical and questions what these expectations might mean for the growing number of women in the academy who combine an academic career with motherhood.

Authors

• Susan V. Iverson, Kent State University

• Christin L Seher, The University of Akron