Understanding gender inequality and the role of the work/family interface in contemporary academia: An introduction

If the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu could still use the expression ‘man of science’ in 1976 to embed his theorization on the scientific field (Bourdieu, 1976), today the university is largely feminized. However, despite this important change, the inequalities between the positions of women and men remain in terms of a scientific and academic career. Women’s academic careers remain markedly characterized by strong vertical segregation. According to She Figures (2013), the proportion of female students (55%) and graduates (59%) exceeded that of male students, but men outnumbered women among PhD students and graduates (the proportion of female students stood at 49% and that of PhD graduates at 46%). Furthermore, women represented only 44% of grade C academic staff, 37% of grade B academic staff and 20% of grade A academic staff. Moreover, the under-representation of women is even more striking in the field of science and engineering, whereby the proportion of women among full professors was highest in the humanities and the social sciences, respectively 28.4% and 19.4%, and lowest in engineering and technology, at 7.9%.

These figures can underline in a photographic manner that a ‘leaky pipeline’ (Alper, 1993; Berryman, 1983) and a ‘glass ceiling’ (Hymowitz and Schellhardt, 1986) continue to persist in the academic world. The academic insertion of women is accompanied by their progressive evaporation in the advancement of the career ladder and their access to professionally high-value positions. A number of mechanisms, which dissuade or present hurdles for women in pursuing a scientific career, have been already well described in the literature: the structuring of the scientific field by a masculine habitus (Beaufays and Krais, 2005; Dany et al., 2011); the ‘getting stuck’ of women in less valued tasks, constituting a ‘sticky floor’ phenomenon (Booth et al., 2003); a ‘Matilda’ effect for women (Rossiter, 1993) versus a ‘Matthew’ effect (Merton, 1968) for men; the cooptation logic and the existence of the ‘old boys’ club’: ‘an informal but powerful collective of like individuals who either explicitly or implicitly signal whether full membership in an organization is granted or denied’ (Case and Richley, 2012: 14); a work/family conflict that is particularly present for women (e.g. Barbier and Fusulier, 2015; Etzkowitz et al., 2000; Marry and Jonas, 2005). In view of this, it is hardly surprising that women who are engaged in a scientific career are often those who have the tendency to have fewer children (see Genis Lab, 2012).

Our assumption is that the university is a ‘gendered organization’ (Acker, 1990): it vehicles a ‘gendered order’ in its structures, its principle of organization, its customs and ways of doing things; in short in the practice of scientific work. This notably is connected to the old structure of the university built around a masculine figure: the ‘professor of the university’ or ‘man of science’ who is entirely engaged in his work, freed from domestic necessities by the presence of an invisible carer (the person taking care), in order to devote himself entirely and unrestrainedly to his work. The university has thus constructed itself upon a model of a ‘greedy institution’ (Coser, 1974; del Rio Carral and Fusulier, 2013; Grant et al., 2000; Hendrickson et al., 2011) expecting a total engagement in work, which is voluntary and passionate in nature; and furthermore upon a model of dissociation of work/family (Kanter, 1977), which by the way is characteristic of a labour society (Fusulier and Nicole-Drancourt, 2015). In this sense, it espouses a gender regime that distributes socially useful activities unequally between men and women. Because they are historically defined as heads or chiefs of the family (pater familias), the qualities of whom are presumed to be self-affirmation, technicality and rationality or strength, men are primarily assigned to the productive sphere and to paid work. In opposition, women are historically considered as sentimental beings, whose virtues excel in service-orientated relations, and are assigned to the familial sphere and to unpaid work. These forms of stereotypes which associate rationality to the masculine and emotivity to the feminine have contributed in construing ‘science’ as a masculine activity.

The feminist claims and the acquisitions in gender studies, which denounce and deconstruct naturalist arguments, have certainly transformed the university sphere. This latter proclaims itself to be open to women and sensitive to the requirements of individuals to reconcile their professional and family lives (one can find a recent example of this in the signature of the European Charter for Researchers ¹ ). But the stereotypes are far from being completely delegitimized and have not entirely disappeared. Moreover, the university continues to construct itself upon the model of dissociation and of the sexual assignation of work/family. Even worse is that the institutional demands towards professional engagement are reinforced by the influence of a certain number of scientific and managerial policies, and thus framed by neoliberal influences. The latter accentuate the pressures of professional implication via a new regulation, such as: a pressure to produce, a pressure to be mobile, a pressure of competition and of ‘accountability’ (Thomas and Davies, 2005; Willmott, 1995). In sum, there is an ‘increased tension’ which characterizes the situation of researchers today (Fusulier and del Rio Carral, 2012), in a context in which the volume of researchers in precarious professional situations has increased, reinforcing competition towards the access to permanent positions, which are proportionally rare (Archer, 2008; Ylijoki, 2010). In its mode of functioning, its criteria of evaluation and processes of selection (Dubois-Shaik and Fusulier, 2016), the university always implicitly intervenes in private situations and the life conditions of its researchers, which does not or hardly takes into account the differences that remain between women and men and in their investment in the domestic sphere. The presupposition of a total engagement in the career and the institution obliges the researchers to adjust their private lives around their work, or to have the necessary strong support in order to realize their careers. This constitutes a gendered and masked demand of ‘scientific excellence’, of requiring to be a pure genius and ‘lonely hero’ (Benschop and Brouns, 2003), stranger to all ordinary considerations.

This special issue, based on an open call, has resulted in gathering research that adopts various conceptual, contextual and empirical angles, and demonstrates how much the pursuit of a scientific career interferes with private and family life, and how much this interference is gendered. This special issue aims at targeting the following indicative question: What are possible configurations, experiences and tools of work/family balance in contemporary research and academia in national and comparative contexts? Responding to this question, this issue gathers four sets of papers with four broad themes: 1. Neoliberalizing transformations and work/life balance practice in academia; 2. Gender roles and gendered systems in academic work/life balance; 3. Equality policies and their translation in work and life practice in academic/research institutions; 4. Crucial career and life stages and work/life balance.

A first set of papers deals with transformations in academic working systems that correspond to the idea of neoliberalizing policies, by looking at how these transformations rearrange spheres like family work and parenthood for ‘academic parents’. A first paper illustrates through a German case how the ambiguity of freely configurable elements of academic work, such as flexible time management, are juxtapositioned with experiences of an ‘extreme acceleration’ in the academic field in terms of productivity. These developments, the authors observe through discourse and biographical analysis, make it even more difficult for academic parents to reconcile family and science, ultimately showing a favouring of childless profiles for succeeding in the academic career (see Bomert and Leinfellner). Similarly, an Icelandic critical policy analysis and its translation in the academic institutional context raises questions about how work/life balance policies, although formally in place, can be deterred by neoliberal organizational logics (see Einarsdóttir, Pétursdóttir, Smidt). These logics include measures such as informal research production point systems, which rate the productivity of academics and researchers by granting points that give them easier access to funding and institutional membership. On the other hand, flexibility and the way academic work is organized today prevent parents being able to reconcile their work and family lives. Similar phenomena are addressed in the case of Polish female academics in a post-Soviet era, where equality rights are shown to be far from put into practice in academic institutions (see Czarnacka, Finkielsztein, Wagner). A host of configurations undermining women’s academic careers, such as traditional gender roles, symbolic value of women’s work, the absence of work/life balance policies and structures, the difficulty to reconcile children and careers, neoliberal influences of demands of hyper-productivity and -mobility are identified amongst other reasons about why women are still far less represented in the academic institutions. Traditional gender ideologies are explored in a Czech case (see Vohlídalová), where the author examines dual academic careers. The difficulties of both male and female partners in finding the right configurations to advance in their respective careers is nuanced by influences from traditional gender roles, distributions in family caring and housework tasks, but also in the type of couple configuration (traditional versus egalitarian) we can find. Differences are observed between generations of couples, economic era and the demands of the labour market and the increasing demands of academic careers that play a major role in the way academic couples are able or not to fulfil their professional and personal aspirations. A Kazakh case study analyses in a nuanced way a host of possible reasons why women are less likely to attain academic leadership in university institutions in a Kazakh post-Soviet context (see Almukhambetova, Kuzhabekova). The authors critically examine a host of correlated phenomena, such as glass ceiling effects, the existence of old boys’ clubs, psychosocial theories on self-confidence and motivation levels of women, economic regimes in different regions with differences in leadership rates and organizational work cultures. These sets of phenomena are shown to be contributing to low leadership rates for women, whereby low confidence levels, paired with masculine organizational work logics and gender stereotypes play a significant role. However, they discuss how larger cities with economic concerns tend to value the needs for leadership in institutions regardless of gender and are less prone to discriminate against women, showing how different economic demands and social norms conflict and play out differently according to regional priorities.

A second set of papers explores concepts such as academic housework and their actual translation in academic/research environment discourses and practices. The authors explore the perception and experience of ‘academic housework’ across six European countries, with different emphases and nuances between the genders and departments (see Einarsdóttir, Heijstra, Pétursdóttir, Steinþórsdóttir). Gender plays a role especially when it comes to certain undervalued tasks and how they are earmarked for women. The authors examine whether housework in the private sphere can ‘spill over’ to the academic sphere in the case of women. An important exploration is how the concept of academic housework can vary, but can also imprison certain academic tasks into undervalued representations and conflict with personal (and organizational) ideas of career progression and professional identity formation. Another paper depicting an Italian university case addresses the effects of socially constructed gender-based roles and gender-based systems translated in social institutions such as universities that reinforce the perception of mutual exclusivity between the role of mother and wife/partner and the role of the academic (see Biancheri, Cervia). They point out to the dangers of theories of ‘balance’ that are achieved by successful academics that fail ultimately to explain why so many women leave academia. The authors discuss how the persisting unequal distribution of sharing duties in families continues to distribute childcare duties more to women, which then impacts upon their share of professional duties, whereas men have a stronghold on the exclusivity of professional duties. A third paper with the theme of the domestic basis of academic work compares two national European case studies (France and Norway) in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields (see Brathen, Bry, Gaillard, Loison, Paye, Pelabon, Schermann Legionnet). The authors discuss findings on differences of success in academic careers between men and women, and point out various possible reasons such as the timing of crucial, stepping-stone and demanding career stages and family building phases, the distribution of work and family duties and the distribution of teaching loads. This article also shows the importance of taking into account the societal level in order to explain the variation between the phenomena in the same discipline.

A third set of papers critically explores equality policies, such as gender mainstreaming, and examines the conception of how equality policy is actually translated in work/life balance practices. In the first paper, the author shows how in Finnish academia equality reforms have not brought about the changes that were thought to be the root of the problem, approached from a leaky pipeline point of view, of needing more numbers of women (see Lätti). However, these mainstreaming policies fail to neglect local organizational and national gender and work cultures, family structures, but also oppose policy logics of equality (individualist versus collective). Another paper critically examines equal opportunity programmes and policies for women in Germany (see Baader, Boehringer, Korff, Roman). The German case is discussed by showing how equal opportunities is addressed through exclusive and self-promoting programmes for women that ultimately penalize more than advance them, as the programmes focus on deficits, taking a lot of personal initiative and time investment. These kinds of programmes, the authors argue, deflect the equal opportunities issue from more subtle phenomena such as work/life conciliation, workload and pace and time pressures. Other types of equality measures, such as dual academic couple career services in European Higher institutions, are examined in another paper, which compares what the US offers with the emerging European services (see Tzanakou). The author points out the challenges that dual academic career couples face and what kinds of measures Higher Education Insitutions (HEI) can adopt in providing the right resources in view of these challenges that the ‘two bodies’ face in their careers and family life. These services are discussed by looking at how they address mobility in dual careers, career stages and progression and work/life balance in terms of stages of family building and career building.

A final set of papers explores questions about the precariousness of the postdoctoral phase and work/life interferences. Authors of a Swiss case study discuss how the erosion of the traditional academic career path is particularly significant while looking at why women and men may leave their careers (see Bataille, Kradolfer, Le Feuvre). They explore through different personal career and life path choices, socio-economic configurations as well as family structure configurations how career choices are very diverse and cannot be generalized for female and male postdoctoral fellows, but are always influenced by the ‘greedy’ nature of the academic institution, the overlap of work and life stages and the precariousness of the labour market in which the academic career is based. A second paper that broaches the topic of the postdoctoral phase is an Italian case study that explores three concerns raised for postdoctoral fellows: the question of changes in flexibility of the organization of work that makes boundary-setting increasingly difficult for young researchers in their work/life interferences (see Bozzon, Murgia, Poggio, Rapetti); secondly, the authors discuss how academic careers are increasingly precarious in terms of economic and professional stabilization due to their short-term character and lack of institutional membership; the third concern is raised by looking at how the postdoctoral phase coincides with family building and child bearing and rearing years in women’s lives, and the difficulty of increasing institutional and career requirements. A further paper examining postdocs and tenured researchers in Belgium shows through narrative material the extent to which interference between working life and private life is an important dimension not only in the development of relationships to the scientific career of postdoctoral researchers (engaged, optimistic, ambivalent and distant) but also of ‘winning’ trajectories among female researchers having obtained a highly valued tenured position in academic space (see Fusulier, Barbier, Dubois-Shaik). The authors show how there is vast importance with regard to configurational support (both material and immaterial) that researchers find (or don’t find) both in their professional environment (a supportive promoter, access to a carrier network, a well published article, benevolent colleagues…) and in their private milieu (few conjugal or family constraints, or strong support from parents and partner, easy access to services, living near the workplace…). The paper discusses how women have a more difficult context in terms of gathering and balancing these ‘right’ configurations than men for a host of reasons, and that this influences the way they experience their academic careers with respect to work and family interference.

This double special issue gathers a series of nuanced critically conceptual and case-study research showing that in the contemporary European context, despite regional differences in gender regimes, political and economic demands and organizational cultures, work/life balance policies and their translation into practice remains a highly ambiguous issue. Although work/life balance policies have undoubtedly entered the university institutional spaces, they are deterred by opposing institutional policy logics and particularly ‘greedy’ logics of the organizing of work that still aligns to outdated work-exclusive masculine organizational culture (outdated because men too are suffering the effects, and because the academic environment is feminized). Moreover, there are lingering gender stereotypes around the value and attribution of home and work duties that are having a significant impact upon women’s professional and private spheres and experiences in academic work. The gathered research shows how university institutions are still quite far from having addressed the core issues that undermine women’s career advancement and their possibilities to access to academic membership and leadership, still obliging them (and their male counterparts) to align with a work and membership (selection and progression) logic and organization that does not take into consideration parenthood, family and personal spheres of life. Integrating a real strategy of gender equality in academia, promoting a women-friendly organization and contributing to reduce the work/family conflict are not in contradiction with the production of good science. They are, on the contrary, an opportunity to create a more efficient organization, avoiding discrimination on the basis of unscientific reasons.