Dreams of Balance: Intersections of Gender and Race/Ethnicity in Doctoral Student Ideas about Work-life Balance

• In Event: 540 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Scientific Careers and Education

Abstract

This paper addresses how biomedical doctoral students construct ideas about current and future work-life balance. We argue that balance acts as a present concern for “doing things different than science” and an organizational principle for future decision-making. We draw on interviews with 20 biomedical doctoral students (five women and five men from groups under and over represented in the sciences) conducted prior to/at the beginning and end of their first graduate school year. We find a dichotomy between students’ reported “ideals” of work-life balance in the future and their lived realities of work-life balance. As expected from the literature, we find that many students plan on adjusting their career trajectories around future family needs. More surprising, these planned adjustments are equally distributed among women and men. However, the way that young women and men constructed meanings around work-life balance, the challenges they anticipated, and the adjustments they might make reflected gendered notions of parenting and family-centeredness. We also find a parallel process where students worry about life-balance issues in their current day-to-day lives. Gender related norms and ideologies do not appear to be major influences in students’ discussions of current graduate school life. Student constructions of current work-life balance differ from the traditional graduate school model, where students expect, and are expected to, sacrifice current work-life balance for a better life in the future. Instead most women and men spoke of the importance of work-life balance in graduate school and were satisfied with the balance they had.

Authors

• Christine Virginia Wood, Northwestern University

• Lynn Gazley, Northwestern University

• Patricia Campbell, Campbell-Kibler Associates, Inc.