Male academics with wives/partners who don't work. Anyone else noticed this?

[Eglantiny]

First, I'll start with an apology
I'm not generalizing to all male academics. I'm sure there are some good ones out there.
And I'm not intending any shade on the women I'm talking about at all.

But I'm getting increasingly frustrated with male academics who have female wives/partners who either don't work, or who work in "non-professional" jobs.

I've noticed a few things about these men.
Firstly, they have high expectations of what an academic career should look like, and/or what's a reasonable set of outputs over a particular period of time.
I think this is simply because they have more time and headspace for actually getting stuff done because they've delegate life admin and responsibility to someone else.

Secondly, they don't give much of a shit about teaching and measure academic success on research alone.
I think this is because teaching relies on soft-skills, organisation, relationships etc. which they don't value or excel at, so assume isn't important.

Thirdly, they surround themselves with other odious men with similar approaches to life and academia.
I think this is partly affinity (we all want to be around people similar to us) but also because these men manufacture time/space to build networks that exclude others - after-work drinks, evening seminars, conference events etc.

Fourthly, they have a strange way of working with women. It's hard to pinpoint exactly but I find they only tend to work with women who are either super-big-time professors or early-career researchers.
I'm not too sure what my theory is for this. Maybe they don't see women as their professional equals. I think they work with big-time professors who can offer them something, and ECRs who they can be in charge of.

Fifthly, this only really applies to the social sciences disciplines but these men don't actually do much empirical research with people. They are good at spouting theory and at running quantitative models, but they do much less human data collection.
I think this is because human data collection relies on soft-skills which they don't have and don't value. They see theorizing and number-crunching as 'proper' academic research. I do also think some of them are quite insecure about being social science academics and try to get close to STEM-type methods.

Has anyone else noticed this ?

There's quite a lot of these men in my Department - RG, social sciences - and I just find them generally tiresome to deal with.

You need a culture where working excessive hours is viewed negatively, not rewarded. A culture where your manager will notice excessive work hours and tell you to rein it in, not praise you for your ‘output’.

What you should despise is how low status people like you regard roles associated with women as being, such as raising children.

A huge aggravating factor in academia (and some other careers) is the pyramid nature of the workforce. 90% of staff are grad students or ECRs who don't have kids yet. This normalises the culture in which work is your life- and means that weekend conferences and after work drinks are well populated.

some male professors just carry on that way post kids and women quietly fade out. The balance will never tip because there are so many people with that kind of availability.

I work in professional services for an RG social sciences university. From my experience many of the academics I work with, their wives are also academics at the same place or other institutions. Or have professional careers. I am sure there are some privately who expect their wives to carry the load but I certainly know others who are more an equal partnership. I am working with onE HOD in particular who is Very proactive in making sure women have equal standing in the Dept from undergrad through to post doc and staff too.

Have you ever heard of golf buggies? Its sexist to say that golf is a mans game BTW.

This post explains it all so clearly. Obviously the wife is expected to change their life entirely for the important man.

Also I think it depends on the age/stage. In my field it is usual for there to be an age gap, eg because the woman meets the man during her PhD and he might be further along his or even a postdoc (or already a lecturer) - or perhaps they meet when she’s an UG project student.

the couples I know with two academic careers tend to be those who are similar in age, and so it made sense to bet on both horses at that time. But then parenthood is very much delayed…

This is not limited to academia, how many women do we know have take a step back, go part time or become a SAHM to look after their DCs and carry the majority of the household drudge while their DH soars ahead with their career. Even if they work full time they are still more likely to be the one to do the school/ nursery drop off and racing to work. It is always the mums who get the dreaded call from nursery or school to say their child is ill. Men just carry on with working like they don't have any children.

I wouldn’t be surprised. My SIL is a leading professor in her area, (I won’t claim to understand it, it’s STEM based) with high profile grants etc for her research, and the stories and bullshit she tells me about the sexism she’s experienced has really shocked me. She is child free and my brother WFH, so don’t have the experience you mentioned but she tries her best to support other women who are coming up who do have children, caring commitments etc but it’s really surprising to me given all the focus on women & girls in STEM particularly that academia still seems very patriarchal.

@Phphion I’ve seen and lived the parenthood penalty.

But, the flexibility also creates a 24/7 environment - you have every hour of the day to do the work, no one cares when. So, some (me!) will just about squeeze in FT hours because of their other commitments. Others will work those 24/7 hours and so of course they are the ones that will progress.

I’m grateful for the flexibility offered by academia and ability to wfh that existed long before covid. Without being able to squeeze in the necessary hours in a 24/7 environment, I wouldn’t have been able to work FT.

However, I’ve also seen how many (NAAALT) successful academics in my area (RG social sciences) either don’t have any children or they have spouses working part time / SAHP and this applies to both male and female colleagues.

Having said that, it’s noticeable that ALL the SLT are men. Promotion helped by attending numerous conferences, after work seminars, networking dinners in London, participating in national or international initiatives etc. and, crucially, having the time to research and write.

If I wanted to progress, then I’d have to do take the unpaid and yet additional work by participating in those university/national/international projects that I don’t have the physical or emotional bandwidth for on top of my sandwich caring responsibilities. So I accept I’m going no further up the ladder.

Whatever I have lost in my own career, I have gained with the time I got to have with my children that my husband did not.

Yes absolutely agree with this as well. The ‘motherhood’ penalty is alive and well.

It's depressing how many men not only don't pull their weight, but also fail to recognise and own the way they exploit others for their own benefit.

I guess those people have chosen to structure their lives like that as it works best for them and their family unit. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me. It may feel unfair to some female colleagues who don't have that level of support within their family, but how other people / families choose to do things and organise their lives, depending on their own set up, is up to them.

You talk about the 'soft' skills required. Don't you think the 'hard' skills he has are essential for academia as well?

With male academics I've worked with their wives often seem to be in the same or similar fields or in same field in clinical instead of academic.

This is interesting because in the mad old unenlightened days, I'm talking late 70's early 80's it was in many ways a more level playing field, albeit with a large sex imbalance. The men were so busy showing us all how right on they were with their children and domestic duties that we sailed right on past them. I'm being slightly tongue in cheek here.

Whatever household structure works for individual people is, of course, reasonable @StEImosFire (loved that film). I don’t think anyone here is criticising spouses for their choices.

I’m not even sure that I characterise academic promotion as ‘unfair’. More, I accept that this is how reward works in practice. As a pp pointed out, this is what happens in other disciplines as well. It won’t change until and unless those who make it into leadership positions have similar problems and I don’t see that happening.

We are, however, allowed to vent on a discussion forum and listen to other’s experiences. It’s interesting to hear other views.

Reading the thread and nodding along and agreeing with pretty much every post, even when they disagree with each other.

I don't think this is particularly an academia issue though, I've seen similar in the financial services and I'm sure friends in law and medicine have too.

Yes.

I've only done a couple of postdocs many years ago. But it is the same in the sciences.

It's very difficult, if not completely impossible, to advance in academia without a SAHP to take up all the life chores.

Yep yep yep.

23% woman professors at our local uni. Scandalous. I know two of them - both child free.

This! Absolutely this!

No female professors in my (large) school. I think there's a female reader but I can't actually think who...