Feminism and Work-Life "Conflict": Waves of Difference

• In Event: 18.064 - Waves of Change in Institutional Transformation: The Role of Feminism

Abstract

As a Co-PI on UMaine’s ADVANCE grant, I was asked recently to serve on a panel of women faculty to discuss academic careers in STEM. A woman graduate student asked the panel, “When is the right time to have a baby?” The panelist before me – a highly successful full professor on our campus and self-described feminist in her 50s – proceeded to advise the student to follow in her footsteps: time the birth of children for breaks, hide pregnancies at work, never hang up photos of her children in her office, and never miss meetings or work-related functions to attend children’s school events or the like. I looked at the female graduate student who had asked the question and saw tears in her eyes. My turn to respond was next. I told the graduate student, “Those women who want babies should have them whenever they want to have them. Don’t let academia tell you how and when it should be done.” My response reflected not only a different generational view but also a different view of feminism. I recognized that the senior woman on the panelist was socialized to see her role differently than I had – particularly given her underrepresented status in her discipline for many years. These generational differences in understanding about topics such as work and family are pertinent to institutional change efforts.

For example, Mason and Goulden’s (2002) oft-cited article regarding “work and family conflict” in academia found that “babies do matter” in academic careers of men and women – particularly the timing of babies. They stipulated, “There is a consistent and large gap in achieving tenure between women who have early babies and men who have early babies, and this gap is surprisingly uniform across the disciplines and across types of institutions” (p. 24). At the same time, they utilized data from 1973 to 1999 for their analysis. It is not my intention to dispute these data or their analysis, but rather to point out the context in which those data were collected. Certainly, those data represent a different time not only in academia but in society. Rarely is the temporal nature of those data mentioned. Instead, the assumption is that this context still exists in academia and it is this assumption, as well as others like it, that often form the foundation upon which many institutional transformation efforts are built.

In this presentation I will discuss data and theoretical perspectives to support my contention that many of these ADVANCE-related programs and policies are formed with outdated knowledge about the nature of women in academic STEM careers today. Moreover, I contend that these outdated notions of womanhood and feminism, work-life “conflict,” notions of “having it all” amongst a newer generation of faculty (Trower, 2008), and institutional culture may contribute to rifts between generations of women faculty on our campuses and the lack of overall success in such institutional transformation efforts.

Author

• Susan K. Gardner, University of Maine