Not 'news' to anyone here, I know, but scary article about motherhood and academia

[MalenkyRusskyDrakonchik]

www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/06/female_academics_pay_a_heavy_baby_penalty.html?fb_ref=sm_fb_share_chunky

I thought this was interesting, though hardly surprising. I find it quite a big concern given how much research we're constantly being shown, that 'proves' women are all [insert stereotype here]. This article looking at why so many women don't progress in academia - and in particular why mothers don't - perhaps gives a good reason why we might take some research with a pinch of salt: it's largely done by men and childless women.

Networking is hugely important in academia. I would bet this is the case in any field. Networking and mentoring. It gives you an extra push, it introduces you to the key people, it teaches you to speak and write in the "right" way, it helps you find your place inside the field, it gradually guilds your confidence. My supervisor did not give a shit about my thesis, but he did include me into all sorts of events in his field and introduced me to bigwigs. If only I followed in his path and did his type of research, I'd probably be rolling in publications by now. But we don't search for easy solutions, do we?

xenia so women are now responsible for gender roles in the homes, eh? I do buy the theory that women generally should look carefully at who they are hitching up with before it happens, but life is a long and complicated matter. Things and attitudes change. And generally, upon discovering that one's husband is a sexist pig, getting divorced, halving your income and becoming a single parent is not more conducive to one's publication record that staying with the said sexist pig. Let's be real. And I have an issue with the sexist assumption that it is the woman who is solely responsible for the equitable division of labour in a family. I find the notion that a woman can single-handedly change millenia of social conditioning that his her family, her male partner, and herself by refusing to wash his socks unrealistic.

dreamingbohemian, can I answer, please? He'd say "of course, darling, you are right, you have a go now". But then Arbitrary would still come home to piles of dishes. That's because for many (most?) men, whatever views they espouse publicly, housework and childcare is wifework deep inside.

ArbitraryUsername, that sounds dreadful.

Yes, networking is hugely important. I wouldn't mind so much only there is a myth of objectivity in a lot of areas, like grant applications and publishing, when really people are not objective in the least and despite it being officially anonymous you know damn well who wrote the paper.

The thing I dislike about academia, now I'm out of it, is that they believe they are so damn saintly. It is full of sexist blokes who, because they are broadly left-leaning, genuinely believe they are far less sexist than anyone in any career ever and hence if you dare draw attention to it you will be squashed like a mosquito.

(I must admit, I'm ecstatic to have escaped. It was such a headfuck.)

So what is so special about women ilke I am who manage to achieve non sexist marriages? Why don't women say - on your bike mate on the very first date he expects you to cook for him or iron his shirt? Were they brought up in an atmosphere of subservience that they will then ensure in their marriage they do as men say? Do they feel so privileged that a man has deigned to commit to them that they accept that second lower status in the union?

of course I don't blame women but in life we need to take responsibility not just moan or say we are entitled to work 2 hours a day and still be a leader in our field. Just about anyone who had worked for 30 years as I have without maternity leaves and pretty hard can do well. I am nothing special. however plenty of men and women cannot be bothered to work very hard or seize the first chance to be supported by a spouse and not do so much work. Or they just aren't very bothered about being successful and it is a huge pity it is women who get saddled with this lower status.

The question dreaming asked Arb is the nub of it - what would have happened if you women with sexist men say - hang on mate - I've done my bit now it's yours. Plenty of us do that - my husband moved for my job, not vice versa. before we married he said if nannies did not work out he would deal with the children (in fact they did work out so we both worked full time). Is the different because some women marry up, better, cleverer men who will do better who are older than they are because they want that higher status men and so they always play second fiddle to the man and wehre they do not or they marry equally and neither is sexist it works fine? In other words is it their greed for the money and status of the better man which means women are kept down?

You may be right autumn

And it's a good point too, that often the inequality can sneak up on you. I think actually for a lot of couples, it doesn't really come out until children arrive.

Xenia I think what's special about you is a specific set of circumstances that have worked in your favour as well as a lot of hard work and dedication on your part. I think a lot of people put in the work, but don't also have the circumstances that work for them, and end up not being as successful as they could.

There's a lot of talk at the moment about why women can't get ahead in science. I used to think that because I'd managed to get ahead in science, that there was no reason for other women not to. Now, I'm older and wiser, and think that there were many reasons beyond my control that, together with a lot of hard work, helped me get to where I am.

I have to say, even though sometimes I agree with you Xenia, your posts are almost perfect representations of the fundamental attribution error (wiki)

I really don't think it's about sitting back and congratulating yourself about having produced a 'non-sexist marriage' while blaming everyone else who doesn't have one.

If I were to say to DH that I want my career to come first, he'd say that we can both do it. No problem. But we can't. Working ourselves silly and tag team parenting is not a great life. Problem is he genuinely believes that he is being supportive (and he isn't terrible); it's just he gets very obsessed in his own work and forgets everything else.

There are all sorts of other circumstances that coalesce to make it much harder in my career than his. I have to commute a long at for work, which means that I use up my time away from the home on the drudge work of academia. I do actually like spending time with my children, and would like to see them.

My workload is utterly ludicrous so I have neither the time nor energy to do anything other than what the university immediately demand of me (and even then I can't do it all because I literally cannot be in two places at once, even though the university sometimes expects me to be). My university is incredibly stingy with travel and conference finding (and DH's is generous), so I would have to draw upon family money to pay for conferences (this particularly annoys me since they use something they give me neither time nor money to do as a way of monitoring my 'performance').

I have health issues too, that aren't going to go away. The university are actually supposed to adjust my workload, but since no one seems to care than I'm more than 1000 hours over what it should be a year anyway I don't see them reducing it further. This is a real issue and it makes it very difficult not to just let DH's career come first, because I can't actually rely on my health (although it would be much better with a sane workload).

Quite a bit more than 1000 hours too.

1000 hours!

Your department needs a workload model. Athena SWAN is big on that ...

Workload models are something else they do to claim objectivity and then fiddle though, aren't they? I've heard of plenty of cases where the amount of work ascribed to each task depends more on the influence of the person who does it than how long it actually takes.

We publish everything so everyone sees what everyone does. In principle anyway. I'm sure there are invisible tasks...

Ours are all secret.

My ludicrous workload comes from the standardised categories in the model, pretty much. It was already so laughably enormous on teaching and admin tasks alone that the categories where you get to assign timings to tasks yourself are pretty much empty. However, I have plenty of those tasks too. They automatically put in research time but you can get more. However, it's utterly moot when the basic teaching and admin tasks you've got (even when leaving some courses out) add up to more than your entire workload should.

Secret workload model. Not everyone agrees that ours is fair but at least it's open to debate, which perhaps is the best that can be done. It sounds really tough arbitrary. Is your department going for any of this Athena SWAN or other good practice initiatives?

Not as far as I know. But we're not STEM. Tbh, I'm going to have a meeting with my line manager in which I strip out everything possible to bring me in at what it's supposed to be. The management can worry about covering everything else.

Ours are all public too - it was found that male professors were doing hardly any teaching and it was all being picked up by the women, so now everyhing is much more transparent. It is such a shame there is no Athena swan for the humanities

I suspect that the male professors (and they are overwhelmingly male) that aren't pulling their weight teaching-wise. Another problem is that several of them use their grant money to buy out heir teaching. But you don't get another lecturer to replace them. No. You get a postgrad who will run a sort of workshop so long as you provide all the materials for them (seriously, I have to make all the student prep materials, put them on the VLE, provide them with power points and activities for the class and brief them on it, etc). So you end up with extra teaching and it's in someone else's workload model. I am not accepting any buy out on my modules in future. If I'm not getting an actual lecturer, then I'm claiming the hours myself and I'll bloody teach the classes myself. The problem is though, the professors all need the hours they're buying out on their workload and they're more powerful than me.

The thing I dislike about academia, now I'm out of it, is that they believe they are so damn saintly. It is full of sexist blokes who, because they are broadly left-leaning, genuinely believe they are far less sexist than anyone in any career ever and hence if you dare draw attention to it you will be squashed like a mosquito.

Yyyyy to this. This, for me, turned out to be the real headfuck.

I'm not a fully-fledged academic - doing a pt PhD, working in university admin, doing some teaching. Was in a tiny academic centre, not enough staff to accompany students on field trip, so I volunteered to go though it wasn't not part of my job description (I did have the necessary subject & regional knowledge). Was later told I wasn't needed, fine. A male colleague who did have it as part of his description pulled out at the last minute for no good reason - didn't want to do it.

Which of us was reprimanded by the centre director? Why, me, of course. He said he decided not to send me due to my lack of enthusiasm. Although I'd volunteered. He put the enthusiasm down to having a child. Understandable, of course, but counted against me in perpetuity. And not a word breathed against the male colleague who didn't go, who just happened to have worked with the director for years in a previous year (major, major issues with nepotism in recruitment).

Just one minor anecdote, nothing to compare with the serious structural issues you're all identifying. But it still makes me rage against the injustice of it. It was symptomatic of my treatment by an individual who considers himself a leading expert in ethics and equality. I would genuinely prefer if he was an unrepentent old sexist rather than someone who urged students on the merits of critical self-reflection while managing to be completely and utterly blind to all forms of male privilege.

Stupid typos.

The worst thing is, the same kind of behaviour is also found in some female university professors.