Abstract
A recent report from the Committee on the Status of Women in Sociology argues that academic careers are based on the model of an unencumbered worker who has no competing responsibilities and is able to devote full attention to (usually his) professional life. As long as academic women continue to want babies and academic men have a higher rate of working wives than they did in the 1960s, the conflict between the need for scholarly productivity and the need for family time will continue.
To overturn the unencumbered worker model, a social movement composed of foundation officers, organizations of women in higher education, college personnel organizations, some university administrators, research and policy non-profits, and faculty unions is engaged in increasing the availability of work/family policies. Pressure from this movement has expanded the range of institutions of higher education that offer at least minimal work/family policy options. Movement activists have encouraged academic administrators to design and implement additional work/family policies beyond the Family and Medical Leave Act, including paid family leave, tenure clock breaks, modified teaching loads, part-time tenure-track positions, transitional support programs, and university-sponsored child care. The purpose of these policies is to allow parents of both sexes to make time for new or seriously ill family members while keeping their careers on track. They differ from previous “special treatment” maternity policies that were rooted in notions of separate spheres with women as caretakers and men as breadwinners. When implemented, they permit interruptions in academic activities and provide faculty with more control over time use for specified periods.
According to Erin Anderson’s and Catherine Richards Solomon’s introduction, Family-Friendly Policies and Practices in Academe provides new, cutting-edge research about work/family issues as well as guidance to administrators for implementing policies. The first section of the volume provides a series of quantitative and qualitative research studies that examine the effects of implementing policies. The second section, labeled “Tales from the Trenches,” is a series of case studies about the development and implementation of family-friendly policies at specific universities.
Most of the studies in the first section rely on data gathered at just one or two universities and are not generalizable. A chapter by Solomon is based on semi-structured interviews with a sample of faculty from two universities. She finds uneven knowledge of the variety of family-friendly policies. The perceptions and use of leave are gendered, with women knowing more than men. Catherine White Berheide and Rena Linden’s investigation employs a random sample and an online survey at two small, private colleges. The major finding is that while many faculty regard five types of work/family policies important for their careers, these policies are not significant in predicting the likelihood of quitting their positions. A chapter by Anderson is based on only 13 interviews with male faculty and staff and is more of a pretest than a fully completed study. Here again, a major finding for this small group is a lack of knowledge of policies and differential use among male faculty and male staff.
Rona J. Karasik, Debra L. Berke, and Scott D. Scheer contribute the only study on the use of elder care, using a life-course perspective and a national sample of faculty. The authors find that relatively few faculty members are engaged in a form of elder care, but they expect a greater burden from this type of caregiving as the population ages and suggest that institutions of higher education provide more resources to compensate for lost productivity. In general, the authors in this section of the book conclude that departmental culture is more important than specific policies.
The set of case studies starts with a review of federal and academic policies. Brandy A. Randall and Virginia Clark Johnson find that the most comprehensive coverage is provided by elite universities. A case study of the development of work/family policies, at an unnamed school, reports that obtaining a new policy when there is no existing policy took five years, starting with reviewing policies at other institutions. The authors suggest a series of steps including starting small, insuring that university policies are consistent with state policies, working with the institution’s legal counsel, and providing specific policy language rather than guidelines.
Stacey Oliker and Amanda I. Seligman describe the development and implementation of work/family policies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, a unionized campus. In this case, policy development took seven years, starting with a small committee that did not receive any resources for their work. As with the previous case study, they list a series of suggestions that include addressing different levels of administration and faculty, proposing state-level policies, publicizing creative practices, and organizing grass-roots interest groups. The authors claim that the latter is difficult given faculty members’ heavy workloads. In the end the authors describe the results of their efforts as modest.
A final case study describes a different policy strategy. Jennifer Sheriden and her collaborators describe the Vilas Life Cycle Professorship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Rather than emphasizing the expansion of work/family policies, Vilas professorship grants provide funds for continued research activity during periods of family leave or illness. These funds are to be used for research purposes, such as research assistants. The authors conducted face-to-face interviews with recipients and found positive impacts for research productivity, grants received, retention, and faculty loyalty. This research fits with my own findings that resources such as graduate assistants, travel money, and help in publishing may be more helpful in maintaining productivity than leave policies or at least are an important supplement to them.
In conclusion, the editors call for changes both in policy and in culture. The book is laudable, though perhaps not cutting edge, as part of ongoing research on the relationship between work/family policies, gender, and career trajectories; and it may be of particular use to administrators and faculty members interested in expanding or finding alternatives to traditional work/family policies. Nonetheless, the book has a number of shortcomings. Primary is the general lack of context, especially a shortage of institutional and cultural analysis, although some of the studies do touch on these theoretical explanations. In general there are limited strategies offered for change, especially for changing culture. Yet there have been at least moderate institutional and cultural changes, such as admitting women to all-male schools and changing norms about maintaining a blind eye to sexual harassment, that could be analyzed.
There is no discussion of specific state-level policies or successful efforts by women’s groups (such as the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, or Nine to Five) to expand these policies. There is relatively little analysis of changes in state higher education allocations or increasing standards for obtaining tenure. Finally, it is always tempting to want the editors and authors to produce a different book, and I am likewise tempted. The chapters and case studies do not relate to each other, and it’s not clear whether authors read one another’s work. In addition, I would suggest edited volumes such as this one on a single topic knit their literature reviews together into a single chapter that all the authors could call on. As it is, each chapter cites much of the same literature, with heavy and uncritical use of the work by Mary Ann Mason and her colleagues. I think a stronger book would have emerged had these issues been addressed.