Still Gendered after All These Years: A Comparison of Faculty Work-Life Balance across Institutional Type

• In Event: 161 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 21. Work and Family

Abstract

We analyze survey data from over 900 faculty at three teaching-intensive colleges and one research-intensive university to identify and explain both institutional and gender differences in work-life integration (work-family conflict and satisfaction with balance). After controlling for gender and rank, we find no differences in work-life integration across institution type. Instead, we find significant variation in our potential mechanisms, with research-intensive university faculty having more work-supportive families but less family-friendly workplaces than teaching-intensive college faculty. Across gender, having less work-supportive families completely explains why women report higher levels of family-to-work conflict and less satisfaction with their work-life balance. Work-supportive families, however, only partially explained why women report more work-to-family conflict than men.

Authors

• Catherine White Berheide, Skidmore College

• Megumi Watanabe, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Christina Falci, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Diane C. Bates, The College of New Jersey

• Elizabeth Borland, The College of New Jersey

• Cay Anderson-Hanley, Union College