Faculty Work-Family Issues:
Finding the Balance at a Liberal
Arts College
SUZANNE AMADOR KANE, Physics Department,
Haverford College
MARISSA GOLDEN, Political Science Department, Bryn
Mawr College
or:
Would You Watch my Kids for Me
While I Give This Talk?
Don’t worry—Charlie’s got it covered!
Outline
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Small (liberal arts colleges) vs. large
(research universities): an alternative
career track & its outlook for women
What are the Work/family issues for
faculty?
Recommendations
Some off-the-cuff concluding remarks
Why Liberal Arts Colleges?
Bachelor’s-only institutions are 30% of
the physics faculty nationwide
Bachelor’s-only departments have a larger %
female faculty
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Larger departments have
lower percentages of
female faculty (10% at
Harvard, 7% at MIT)
Main reason: larger
departments tend to have
more senior faculty
Small numbers mean many
small departments have
none at all (but the %
climbs steeply as women
are hired)
“Women in Physics & Astronomy, 2005” AIP
“Where are the female physicists?” Robert Ehrlich, CWSP Gazette, pg. 3, Fall 2007.
% women in physics & astronomy
at some of our peer colleges:
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Carleton 43%
Haverford 33%
Swarthmore 22%
Williams 14%
Reed 11%
Wesleyan 0%
Amherst 0%
3
2
2
1
1
0
0
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
7
6 total
9
7
9
9
6
Differences…
Research University
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2 courses / year (fewer in
some cases)
Few new course preps
High publication rate in top
journals required for tenure
Expectation of significant grant
funding
Service load & student
advising spread over a larger #
faculty
Access to grad students and
postdocs
Lower tenure rates typical
Liberal Arts College
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e.g., 5 courses / year (one may
be student research)
Teach across the curriculum
Research productivity required
for tenure (but average
publication rate of 0.5 to 1
article /year (Research Corp.)
Less funding pressure (and no
need to cover salaries) with
alternative funding sources
More service load & student
advising per faculty
Work primarily with
undergraduates
Higher tenure rates typical
Are work/family issues important
for (women) faculty?
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Main studies based on surveys of doctorate recipients
(160,000 PhD recipients in all disciplines) and 4,400 UC
faculty & 800 UC Berkeley postdocs (bio & physics)
Similar patterns found in humanities, social sciences &
natural sciences, and across institution type
But…these results apply up to 1995 PhD’s, and most
have not been extended more recently!
Haverford data cited here is for all natural science faculty
in 2008
Mason, M.A. & M. Goulden (2004), "Do Babies Matter (Part II)? Closing the Baby
Gap", Academe, November—December 2004.
Mason, M.A., & Goulden, M., "Do Babies Matter: The Effect of Family Formation on
the Lifelong Careers of Academic Men and Women", Academe, November—
December 2002, 88(6).
Earlier studies found work-family
conflicts…
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Do Babies Matter: Women who have children
within 5 years of their PhD are less likely (56%)
to get tenure than men who do the same (77%)
Haverford Science: same tenure rates (85%
often quoted as institutional average)
Do Babies Matter: Women with tenure are less
likely to be married (63%) or have children
(55%) than men (85% & 74%)
Haverford Science: 100% women and men
tenured faculty are married; rates similar for
junior faculty; All but 1 female / 1 male tenured
faculty have children (70% F, 78% M all faculty)
Do Babies Matter: Women faculty
spend more time on family-related
work than do men
How do liberal arts colleges differ
on work-family issues?
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Research expectations (grants, publication rates) more
consistent with periods of variable productivity because
of major family events
More teaching can be constraining (you can put off a
meeting with a grad student more easily than a class)
But smaller departments can mean more flexibility
(swapping class coverage; flexibility in scheduling
teaching & committees)
Some places require less postdoc experience—fewer
dual-career couple moves?
Main issue: all institutions require the same support
structures for success!
Core work/family policies need to
be in place
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Childbirth, adoption, new parent and
eldercare leave policies in writing (not just
possibly negotiable)
Tenure-clock stoppage for major events
Readily-available, nearby childcare
Signs that current faculty use these policies
2nd & 3rd wave ideas are helpful,
but less likely to be in place:
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Family/self illness & emergency leave options
Afterschool programs & summer for school-age
children
Emergency & drop-in childcare
Coordination of local school district and
institution calendars (holidays, start & stop dates
in agreement)
Technician help to smooth over life events
Help when sabbatticals get sabotaged by major
life events
Dual-career Couples
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Extensive networks/databases of local jobs for
relocation
Policies to facilitate hiring partners (career
counselors, openness to hiring for nonacademic
jobs in the institution)
Coordination with other academic institutions in
hiring
Temporary postdoc style support for partners to
smooth over transitions
Openness to dual-couple job-sharing
arrangements where there is interest (e.g., two
2/3 positions)
How do liberal arts colleges do in all
this? Results from a informal 2007
survey of 14 selective COFHE schools
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100% offer parental/maternity leave
100% offer tenure clock stoppage options
4/14 offer part-time tenure-track, unpaid leave
options for flexibility
10 have on-campus (or nearby) daycare centers
6 offer drop-in childcare options
4 have summer childcare programs
10 have networks to help dual-career couples
What else to look for…
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Climate: sympathetic, inclusive senior
colleagues & administration
Family-friendly department & college schedules
(e.g., few events after 5pm)
Women shouldn’t be overloaded with service
relative to male peers
OTHER WOMEN FACULTY (in physics or other
natural sciences, at least in the building)
Plan ahead:
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Don’t blaze a trail: find a department that
has already worked this out ahead of
time!
Locate mentors in your home institution &
elsewhere—before you need them!
Select teaching & committee assignments
that offer more flexibility (e.g., a teaching
schedule that coordinates with a partner’s,
one intense period of committee work /
semester vs. weekly 4-6pm meetings)
Plan ahead (part 2)
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Find projects that you can work on during
events like childbirth & new parenting overload
E.g., write up papers, even a book while on
pregnancy bedrest or maternity leave, write a
grant proposal when you can’t get into the lab
as much; think of projects for students that can
be managed more easily in this mode
Stockpile service and other assignments against
future disruptions
Focus on what you can do to offset what you
can’t do
Ditto afterwork commitments
And now for the tacit knowledge
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Negotiate! Salary, startup, summer salary,
office/lab space, teaching & service
reductions…
Your future raises & other support are
conditioned on this
Childcare, flexibility, etc. are all easier to
navigate with more money!
Especially important because women are less
likely to relocate later to increase their
salaries & other support
More tacit knowledge
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Don’t work in a place that has (too many)
jerks
If you must work with jerks, try to insulate
yourself with supportive colleagues
Also, make sure one senior person knows
about any bad treatment; document
egregious examples
Don’t get dragged into internal politics if you
can avoid it (don’t take sides needlessly)
Learn alpha behavior (like the “hard stare”) to
confront inappropriate actions or remarks
Still more tacit knowledge
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Make sure present junior faculty aren’t too
intimidated to make use of official policies
and resources
Notice whether existing faculty actually know
about and utilize family-friendly policies
themselves
Don’t do unimportant stuff when you can get
away with it
Dial back on as much service as possible-have you every heard of someone getting
tenure based on extraordinary service?
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Learn to see the equivalents between what you
need and what others assume they get by right
(e.g., lifelong healthcare for nonworking spouses
is a given, but less expensive maternity leave for
employees is an unfair perk? Years off for
military service is OK—but not maternity leave?)
Make sure everyone knows about what you do
contribute—talk this up so it’s not forgotten
when you have to take a day off to stay home
with a sick child
Make room for blocks of family and personal
time, not just slivers (an entire month over the
summer, a week off over December, etc.)
Take care of your friends, health and integrity
too…
Make sure you have on your end:
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Peers/friend support network (can be informal or
institutional)—moral support plus on-the-ground
logistics (trading off last minute help, giving
advice about specific decisions, etc.)
Help when you need it: take advantage of
services for housekeeping, yardwork, etc.
No Super Woman level expectations from you,
your family or your colleagues!
And finally…when you make it
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Make it clear that you, the senior person, still
have to navigate these issues; let others see
how
RETURN THE FAVOR TO OTHER JUNIOR
COLLEAGUES (Male & Female) AS A MENTOR
CHANGE THE SYSTEM WHEN IT NEEDS IT
Selected Resources
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“Hunting for Jobs at Liberal Arts Colleges” Suzanne
Amador Kane & Kenneth Laws, Physics Today November
2006 59 (11) 38.
Dual-Career Couples website by Laurie McNeil and Marc
Sher http://www.physics.wm.edu/dualcareer.html
Mothers on the fast track : how a new generation can
balance family and careers, Mary Ann Mason and Eve
Mason Ekman, Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Getting to Yes: negotiating agreement without giving in,
Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton, 2003.
Eric Jensen’s site on Resources for Academic Couples at:
http://astro.swarthmore.edu/~jensen/couples.html