Career Compromise in Academic Relationships: Unequal Burdens on Women, Shared Struggles, and Implications for Institutional Programs

• In Event: 30414 - New Approaches to Recurring Issues in the Sociology of Higher Education

Abstract

More than one-third of academics are partnered with another academic. The extant literature about such “academic couples” finds that women fare worse than men within academic couples both because of hiring biases and gender norms encouraging them to subordinate their career goals for their relationship or family. While universities have made important strides in accommodating academic couples through “partner-hire programs,” challenges remain. Using data from a national survey of academics at 100 US colleges and universities, we investigate two research questions, focusing on gender disparities: To what extent do academics perceive they and their academic partners have compromised their careers for their relationships (RQ1)? How do academic relationships affect academics’ perception of their mobility and productivity (RQ1)?

Regression results for RQ1 show that among academic couples (full sample), both women respondents and women partners make higher levels of career compromises than their male counterparts for their relationship. However, among those who have successfully gone through the partner-hiring process (subsample), there are no gender differences in how much compromise respondents perceive they have had to make. Yet, we still find gender disparities in the compromises that partners are perceived to make. While respondents do not feel their own gender has affected their level of compromise, their perceptions of their partner’s compromises are seen through the lens of gender norms. For RQ2, ordered logistic regression results show that, among both samples, gender does not affect respondents’ mobility or productivity in the context of academic relationships. Both genders experience significant mobility constraints due to their academic relationships, although the impacts on productivity are mixed. These findings reveal some positive social changes in gendered experiences in the academic workforce. Possible facilitators include partner-hiring policies, although with limited impact. These findings underscore the importance of structural-level changes to improve academics’ and academic couples’ work experience.

Authors

• Yu Tao, Stevens Institute of Technology

• Jill A. Fisher, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• Margaret Waltz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Torin Monahan, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill