1154 More exceptions for faculty women . . . and a few guys

OnCampus, the Ohio State Newspaper for faculty and staff, had this interesting item about the need for even more exceptions for part time female faculty, who can’t meet the expectations that promotion and tenure might involve 60 hour work weeks.

"In Ohio State’s 2003 faculty work/life survey, one-third of female assistant professors and 20 percent of male assistant professors expressed interest in reducing their work hours to have more time for family and personal needs. While the university has a provision in its faculty rules for part-time tenured and tenure-track appointments, fewer than two dozen of the nearly 3,000 regular, non-clinical faculty currently take advantage of this option and this mismatch between policy and behavior may be hampering not only retention but the recruitment of talented faculty."

"Institutional culture plays a key role in fostering acceptance of those who wish to take advantage of a part-time appointment. The work group found that most chairs, many deans and faculty governance leaders weren’t aware of the provision in Ohio State’s policies. “But the biggest issue is the cultural norm — the expectation that people must work 60-plus hours a week or they don’t get anywhere, and that unit excellence depends on 150 percent effort by each faculty. That is the cultural norm in academia, and that is the norm we have to break if we are going to embrace part-time tenured or tenure-track faculty,” Herbers said." OnCampus June 8, 2005

Call me crazy, but it would seem to me that if you are working part-time AND given more time to complete your research, you have waaaay more time at the library, lab or computer than the woman who shows up at work every day on the usual tenure clock. What am I missing here? Women who work full time and who have teen-agers in the home could teach these new mommies something about time management. I recall interviewing a faculty woman applying for research funds who had eleven children and was home schooling!

One of the ideas is to grant automatic extensions to the tenure clock for each baby (by birth or adoption) instead of making people request it. Come on. These are grown-ups! They need to read the rules and see what applies to their case. The baby rules are nothing compared to facing a panel of peer reviewers to get published. Women already get opportunity to purchase retirement credit for time off work when having or adopting a baby, although my case was a loophole because my tenuring unit (Libraries) changed retirement systems (from PERS to STRS) while I was off work in the 1960s raising my babies, and neither system would let me claim the time their own silly laws said I had coming to me.

Having been there, I have some advice for 18-19 year old women who are thinking of an academic career. Complete your education in a reasonable 6 year time table. Don’t live with your boyfriend before marriage or try to live in Europe or Asia just having fun--it really messes up the time schedule. Marry and have your babies (reversing that REALLY messes it up). Stay home, enjoy them and raise them to school age. Go back to work part-time. Ease into full time. You really do have enough time to do it all as long as you don’t extend your adolescence by 15-20 years with loans from daddy and Uncle Sam, messy relationships and out of wedlock babies. Also, without social security reform, you’ll be working until 75 anyway, so there’s plenty of time.