Balance, Schmalance and Why the Ivory Tower is not really a Tower...

Someone recently forwarded me an article from the New York Times about women professors at MIT:see  Gains, Drawbacks for Women Professors. And almost immediately I started noticing that everyone and their sister was sharing it on Facebook and on their blogs, so of course now I want to comment too. 

Some have suggested that this story uncovers a broad, general problem in academia as a whole: that women professors everywhere are feeling this kind of bias. Indeed, the article suggests that MIT is a "national model for addressing gender inequity" on campuses.

I have to say, calling MIT a model in this area is rather a stretch.  MIT's questions about women's participation have come after other institutions have looked at and attempted to fix structural issues.   Note, for example, Duke University's Women's Initiative. There, women faculty noted (in 2003, four years after MIT's initial report uncovering disparities among faculty salaries, office space and percentage of faculty, and only a year after MIT completed its initial study of women at its engineering school) that women's salaries had parity with men's salaries, relative to research, experience in the field, and rank.   On that point, Duke and other schools (including both the institutions for which I have worked) did better than MIT at the point when MIT was just beginning to uncover the difficulties mentioned in the article.


More troubling in the Duke report, is that women continue to have lower numbers of people at rank (associate and full professor).  This is, indeed a nationwide trend that was found at MIT as well.  My own university sees those same kinds of numbers (though it has relatively more women at associate professor level than Duke appears to have had in that report).  The presumption is that reaching full professor necessarily has fewer women because the people who could make full professor now came to the university at a time when the ratios between men and women were much more disparate. The big question for schools now will be how to give women the resources they need to receive tenure and promotion.  Office space, lab space, time for writing, are all at issue and MIT is correct to focus on that. 

So it would seem that there are a couple of factors to consider in all this.  One is the institutional culture of the school and the ways specific schools have to respond to the unique difficulties women at those institutions experience.  It does not really surprise me that MIT should have found such radical disparities between male and female faculty in the late 90s, after many other schools had already noted such things and worked to correct them.  MIT's focus on scientific and technological fields, fields that have difficulty retaining women even in private sector jobs, would make the gender question an issue along different lines than it would be at other institutions. 

Consider for example, the unique gender questions I had when I went to teach at an all-male school: teaching all male students was sometimes a real difficulty, and posed concerns that MIT faculty would not likely have encountered in 1999 when they did their survey.  On the other hand, my colleagues were terrific and close knit, partly because the school was in a small town.  This was also a school that had/has one of the best maternity leave policies in the country, something that spurs envy among friends at other institutions.  The maternity leave policy did not magically appear, of course; it took a lot of hard work by a lot of good people (men and women both) but it was created by, and itself created, an overall distinctive atmosphere from the one evidenced at MIT.

But the second consideration is cultural awareness of women as a whole, and this is what MIT faculty commentators get exactly right:  “The more fundamental issues are societal,” Professor Kastner said, “and M.I.T. can’t solve them on its own.”  The so-called Ivory Tower is, in fact, affected by so-called "real life."

I don't know if it is more fundamental, but the whole question of balance is one that women ask, academic or not.   For example, it does seem ubiquitous that a woman is always asked about work/life balance, as the MIT professors discuss in the article.  Consider my own blog: what is it supposedly about, but a balance between work and motherhood?  Have I implicitly complied with patriarchal structures by even considering the question?  Another group of women say that this is just the problem that working mothers have: they are, de facto, the ones who have to think about child care and home economics alongside work and are therefore the ones who need to find that mythical balance.

But as I have said in other posts, I do think that "balance" is a myth: having to negotiate parenthood and work is part of life itself and places of work need to recognize this.  Work does not exist for its own sake; it is part of community building as a whole.  I do not think it is the case that women have to do this more than men, I just think men are the ones who have had to be more silent about it and who also think about that balance in different ways.  Real life is work and family combined; how we go about doing that in good ways is something that we all (including our places of work) need to consider.

Academic Job Search V - The Contract

For other posts in this series:
Beginning a search  Networking    First Interview      On Campus Interview     Rejections

The contract stage - easily the most confusing stage of the job search.  Lots of people make the  mistake of being so overjoyed about having a job that they don't negotiate the contract.  Sometimes that's justified, other times not.  As I mentioned in Part IV, you want to make the job livable for you and the school has an interest in doing so as well, because they don't want to be back doing the same darned job search in a year or two or three.

So - things to consider requesting when you negotiate:

1. Salary - there is not generally a lot of leeway with the salary they quote you if you are a person entering the field for the first time.  That said, if you have have another job offer, you can do some negotiating - keep in mind disparities between cost of living in the two schools' areas before pushing for too much, though.  Also, if you've published a significant piece or two, or won an award for teaching or something else that gives you a bit of an edge, go ahead and ask for a bit of a salary bump. (By a "bit" I mean $1000-$3000 higher...)  They can always say no, but sometimes they'll give you something - less than you asked for, more than you were originally quoted.

Do double check the AAUP rankings (http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/) if you didn't do this before the campus interview.  AAUP lists each institution and salary ranges by rank (and make SURE you're looking at the correct rank...); the lower end of the range is generally for first and second year assistant profs in humanities; the higher end is for econ and computer science (or law and business, if at a university) with 5-6 years' experience. Make sure that the salary they quote is at the least on the lower end of the range for that specific institution.  You can also double check institutions surrounding your potential institution.  If there are disparities between your quote and your institution's range, definitely ask for a pay bump by citing AAUP.  If there are disparities between your institution and surrounding institutions, you might be able to argue for a small addition in pay.

FYI: Many schools pay less for people who will come in with no finished degree.

2. Time - If you are ABD and anticipate still being ABD when you arrive, you can ask for a reduced course load or a delayed start to your teaching. (Say, spring semester rather than fall....)  This can give you needed time to finish the dissertation (which, again, the school has a great deal of interest in you doing).

You can also consider negotiating a reduced course load during the first semester to get acclimated.  I have known some people successfully ask for this.

Considering School C from my "Academic Job Search IV" post, I would definitely ask for "time" in my contract, especially since they expect a person to be heading up an institute.  I'd probably ask for a course release for the entire year, and perhaps stipulate that I have only two new preps (academic slang for course preparation) per semester, so that at least one of the courses is a repeat.

I might request "time" from School B as well, depending on whether they were able to provide a good salary or not (which, remember, would be one of my big concerns following the on campus interview).

3. Time further out - You may want to negotiate an earlier sabbatical depending on tenure requirements at the school.  Some schools automatically give third year sabbaticals; others may be research heavy but not give a sabbatical automatically.  Knowing tenure requirements will help you decide this. 

4. Maternity/paternity leave - You may also want to negotiate specific terms of a maternity leave or paternity leave even if not currently expecting and if your institution appears to have no stated policy.  Here it is helpful to know the laws of the state where you will reside: New Jersey has a paternity leave policy on the books.  Other states don't.

When it comes to maternity leave, I recommend at the very least negotiating that the semester in which you are due, you have no teaching responsibilities.  If your due date is post-Thanksgiving, I recommend negotiating for having the Spring semester off from teaching.  You should brush up on FMLA and also at least get the six paid weeks of full maternity leave (no research or service responsibilities either) but you might want to negotiate that for beyond six weeks too.

5.  Spousal hire - Many more academics arrive with spouses who are also academics than in the past and universities have become more open to possibilities regarding spousal hires.  You can request that the school help you find a job for your spouse.


6. Research equipment, books or money - This is specific to your research needs but often it is vital to have some extra funding to be able to do your research - consider a range of things you might need, including software, book allowance, specific scientific equipment, and the like.

7. Space - Particularly if you have special research needs, you may want to negotiate office space.  As a junior faculty member, you will not generally have your pick of office space (which is usually at a premium anyway) but if you're the only researcher doing X and X needs a certain kind of space, you've got good grounds for requesting it.


Consider the needs of the school too - do not try to negotiate more than 2-3 of these, so consider what you need to make this a good job for you.  Also consider, you will probably not get everything you want - ask for a bit more than you need with the aim always being to give yourself, and the school, the job you need so that you can commit to the institution for the foreseeable future.

Finally, those who have documented disabilities, do not be afraid to ask for the accomodations that you need for your work.  These are not negotiable, but are important things to bring up at this stage.

Any other tips out there that I've forgotten?

How to "leave" gracefully? Or, maternity leave - how DO women do it?

I continue to be somewhat amazed by how blurry the idea of "leave" is - I don't know that I'm really "leaving" except that I don't have official teaching classes this semester.  I know that people say the key to leaving is just to refuse to participate - easier said than done.  Besides which, maternity leave is a bit different.  I'm having a good time so far hanging out with the baby but I do have to go back fairly soon so it's helpful to keep up with things.  Consider what I've got going during my "leave":

TEACHING

• Continued issues with grades from last semester.  Hope to have this one done this week if possible!Can't just drop the students who protest grades from a previous semester; can't hand this off to someone else either.
• Directed reading with master's student (meets once a week online during leave, in office once I'm back).  This is from a student who originally was a master's thesis advisee, then decided to do the work in a directed reading instead.  I agreed to be her thesis advisor; don't feel like/don't want to drop the directed reading now...
• Honors thesis student advising - review and grade thesis writing; agreed to this 1.5 years ago and need to honor that...
• Masters' thesis students - I have two current students - meet and revise writing as needed; agreed to do this at least a year ago; need to honor that...
• Possibly 2 more letters of recommendation, depending on whether said students decide to apply or not

RESEARCH

• Presentation at the Symposium on The Powers (a la the books by Walter Wink; I'll be writing about him more in the coming days) - agreed to do this a while ago; could probably miss if I HAD to.
• 6 more chapters to write on The Book - 4 of which are partially written in some form, phew
• Proposal for a conference paper on children and moral formation - could sidestep this one if necessary, though that would "put me back" in terms of having research to do next year. 
• NB: Actually this relates to one of the key problems pre tenured academic women find they have if they take maternity leave.  Their research goes way down, and that's because a lot of academic conferences/publications/etc. require the foresight of a year or two of advance planning.  That's why insitutions with good policies stop the tenure clock, to allow women to jump back in to things after they've returned and "make up" some of the "lost" time.  (I'm a bit loathe to call spending time healing from pregnancy and labor, and raising a newborn "lost" though)
• Continued work on a collective theology blog in progress for the past year.

SERVICE

• Department chair seach, involving attending the public and departmental presentations.  I COULD argue to sidestep this one, actually, but that's probably not a good idea all in all.
• Assistant professor search - same as above, but this one I may actually sidestep; depends how baby is.
• University wide committee I'm on - need to continue to participate in once-a-month meetings even through maternity leave because of the topic and its relationship to other things I do at the uni.

I do actually have a point to saying all this beyond a kind of "hey look at all the stuff I do" ego statement.  Several studies have suggested that untenured women with children have a more difficult time getting tenure (the opposite is true for men, apparently!)  This really interesting 2010 study suggests some of the same thing I've experienced - the never ending nature of the job affects the way one understands family once children are in the picture.  While academia has the BIG advantage of being flexible, its very flexibility is also perceived as a liability for women with children.  Flexibility means one has a bit more control over time during a typical 9 to 5 day; it also means that there are often required events that happen outside a typical day.

But unlike the article I've linked, I think that non-acadmics face some of the same issues that academics do.    What say you, other women out there? How do you manage being on "leave" while also knowing you'll be back in a pretty short amount of time?  How do you manage the mommy track issues faced by women who have careers and children?