Women in Biology Internet Launch pages

Page 3b: Personal Life

If you just arrived, please start at the index page for an introduction to the site and an index to the topics at left (you can use the buttons to navigate between all the pages). The starting page also provides a special section for all recent additions to this site; these will eventually be moved to their appropriate category as new resources are added.

Links I consider to be of particular interest or use. Your mileage may vary.
Direct quotations are in color.

Section contents:
Private lives

Domestic prtnr
Dual career couples
Health

Personal lives

Balancing family and science: making the private and professional work together.

• Balancing family careers and family work: a special issue of Academe
• Realizing Gender Equality in Higher Education: The Need To Integrate Work/Family Issues (1991)
• Making the academic workplace humane and equitable
• Can science work 9-5?
• Does academic life lead to divorce? Here's a quote: [Many consider that] to be a serious scholar one must subjugate one's personal life to the professional, and, at the very least, never mention that one does have a personal life that might interfere with one's ability to do research or relocate for a job. To do otherwise is to raise the specter of dilettantishness, and, for women especially, to risk marginalization.
• Do you really have to ditch the boyfriend?
• Get a Life! New Options for Balancing Work and Home from The Beagle (password required, but free).
• Life out of sync: how to achieve harmony in academic life. Money quote: When we operate on the assumption that life is about the struggle to survive in a world of limited resources, we're unlikely to experience much balance. . That describes most professors' lives. Could this be why women leave them?
• Overworked Faculty: Job Stresses and Family Demands, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 596, No. 1, 104-129 (2004) . The data .... indicate that very long hours on the job greatly contribute to research productivity. The very long hours demanded by faculty jobs thus pose a dilemma for parents who want to spend time with their children and their families.
• See health section for more on stress
• Your spouse hates it here, but you love your job. From Ms Mentor.
• College and University Work/Family Association " provides information on work/family issues within the specialized environment of higher education".
• Get a life and a career: What a concept!
• Women College Presidents face many of the same challenges balancing their careers as more junior academics
• The faculty spouse: the stresses of the nonacademic partner--in this case, the husband. The series continues: finding friends and a job. From The Chronicle.
• Your money or your time
• Lessons for academic parents: giving your children the right kind of of time from The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
• A work-life odyssey: lessons from one part of your life can inform the other.
• Having a baby and a career too:
  • Reproductive success: Practical tips on how to look for a job while pregnant.
  • Giving birth in graduate school
  • Babies in grad school: good idea, bad idea?
  • Graduate School with children
  • Graduate School with children, first in a series.
  • The pregnant postdoc: several articles from Science's Nextwave discuss maternity in the in-between world of postdocs (password and possibly subscription required)
  • The physics of pregnancy: many postdocs have lousy benefits compared to "real" employees.
  • Postdoc talk: on choosing children from The Scientist
  • Academe's annual baby boom, or it's no coincidence that faculty babies come in the summer.
  • How babies alter academic careers
  • Academic careers with a baby, from UC Davis. If you are wondering how to coordinate the tenure track and having your children, check this out!
  • Where to have the baby
  • Do babies matter? The Effect of Family Formation on the Lifelong Careers of Academic Men and Women, from the AAUP. Take home message: while children definitely hinder the career progression of women academics, even childless women lag behind men, so it's not all about the family. Single women without children were also more likely than men to consider leaving academia. There was less of a predictable pattern here, but some such women mentioned social isolation as a negative factor. Bench laboratory science, the chosen specialty of most of these postdocs, can be very isolating--postdocs may meet few people outside of their laboratory. This is the group of women that is most likely to achieve tenure; but its members are also more likely than single men to remain single. All ... groups of women expressed concerns about mentoring, and 32 percent of women were dissatisfied with their relationships with their mentors in comparison to 18 percent of men.
  • Do Babies Matter Part II. Does achieving academic success first leave time for children later?
• Family friendly competition: lots of universities are starting to get on the band wagon to provide child support for young faculty. Among them, Princeton is also working toMake grad school family friendly. Nice to have money!
• Sylvia Ann Hewlitt's new book describes the conflict for women in high-powered careers between professional and family responsibilities, leading to a disproportionate number of single, childless professional women. A press release describes the underlying survey data. Two articles from the Chronicle discuss the academic perpective:
  • Great expectations: women, careers, and private lives, and
  • An immodest proposal: have children in graduate school.
• A backlash against parents?
  Academic bias against mothers? from The Chronicle
  • Choice feminism: whose choice is it anyway?
  • Discrimination against women and parents in promotion? This article from The Scientist provides an overview of a 1994 suit against Vassar College.
  • The backlash against academic parents " The problem, it seems to me, is that issues of equity have been framed in the context of balancing work and family life. Understandably, this renders the concerns of people without children or other family obligations as irrelevant. ..... Defining work-life issues as family issues tends to marginalize these dilemmas and to suggest they are only women's issues.....the same norms that block gender equity also undermine everyone's effort to integrate work into the fabric of their lives."
• or the other way around?
  • Who cheats the childless? and who is to blame for the backlash of ill feeling against family friendly policies? This article considers some of the reasons that spousal hires and childcare considerations have led to conflict in the ranks. For an example of that conflict, read some of the entries in this Chronicle on line colloquium.
  • Singular mistreatment: the unmarried professor is an outsider in academe.
  • Or not: An unexpected minority: she doesn't have kids. I couldn't believe that I was struggling to meet anyone who could go out for a drink.
• Why "family first" is not a win for academic feminists. "Female professors and would-be professors owe a lot to those who will follow us. We owe them a more family-friendly workplace, and we owe them a profession in which women and men take their jobs and their personal lives equally seriously."
• Parental leave policies
• Ê childcare policies
• Finding a balance between family and work, from The Chronicle. Also see Setting limits in the ivory tower, from a promising new column in the Chronicle about work and family called Balancing Act
• Balancing Family and academic work, from the AAUP provides a resource for faculty and institutions.
• Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work from the American Association of University Professors."Transforming the academic workplace into one that supports family life requires substantial changes in policy and, more significantly, changes in academic culture..... it is essential that the priorities, workloads, rewards structure, and values of the academy permit and support an integration of family and work. Without such support, the commitment to gender equity, for both women and men, will be seriously compromised."
• Domestic partnerships and GLBT scientists
  • Domestic partner benefits for faculty from the AAUP, and an update.
  • Employers who offer domestic partner benefits and stories of people who have used them. Also a primer on domestic partner issues in academe.
  • But they don't OFFER DP benefits....
  • From The Scientist: Gay And Lesbian Scientists Seek Workplace Equality from 1992, and a later article Gay scientists improve workplace conditions
  • Benefits and protection for gay couples
  • Leaving gay-unfriendly places: vote with your feet.
  • Career considerations for same sex couples
  • Academic equality: issues for GLBT faculty. From Academe, the journal of the AAUP.
  • From Science's Next Wave(may require password): GLBT scientists chart their own course, and also a student's perspective on Coming out in the sciences.
  • Teach who you are. The Ins and Outs of the closet on campus.
  • Being an 'out' president explains the importance of being an honest leader.
• When personal and professional intersect: students and professors, or employees and supervisors can get involved romantically or sexually. This is usually considered unprofessional on the part of the senior participant, and fraught with dangers for both. In trying to avoid this, some universities try to prohibit any personal relationships between students and professors.
  • Gender, power and sexuality: first, do no harm "The inevitable power difference between teacher and student, whatever the teacher's intention or motivation, makes it impossible for the student to be a fully consenting adult.Ê"
  • Just don't do it
  • This statement of good practices from U. Wyoming is a sound view of how to handle a genuine romance and avoid even the appearance of conflict, by removing any power relationship from the equation--the student/employee really has to go work for someone else.
  • Coercive or non-consensual interactions are always inappropriate, and fall under the sexual harrassment heading.
  • Love in the Lab from The Scientist. The potential problems are endless, and not only for those involved. This page does not render properly using the Safari browser.

• Resources for dual career couples--including case histories, different strategies, and links to other sites. Not specifically for scientists, but suitable for any professional couple.
• Opportunities expand for two-career couples, from The Scientist
• Dual science-career couples
• It's in their interest too. "Selling" flex time or leave time to your dept.
• Texas A & M makes a habit of hiring couples in science.
• How to succeed in science without being single, or how academic couples combine their science with marriage.
• The Dual Career Couple problem: the impact on women. From AWIS Also see this article.
• Settling for what you can get
• Two career couples, a series from Nextwave. Includes a discussion of how institutions can help. Password may be required; most institutions have subscriptions.
• Is your spouse hurting your career?
• Dual-Career Academic couples (PDF), from the ASCB-WICB columns describes a study at Stanford.
• The trailing spouse is the one who follows--a difficult situation.
  • The trailing spouse from The Beagle.
  • From the ever-arch Ms. Mentor, Whose career should be first?
  • Along the same lines, from The Chronicle: When a better job for your partner means a worse one for you.
  • More on the trailing spouse
  • The trailing spouse: when he gets a faculty job, they offer her a part-time postdoc. Never mind that she already has 3 years of postdoc experience....
  • The trailing spouse: job hints.
  • The trailing spouse: how to survive The trailing spouse: a fringe benefit?
• Keeping your relationship together
  • Naked ambition and the art of marital compromise, or, how to coordinate life together and your career choices when you are both in science. From The Chronicle of Higher Education careers site.
  • From the same site: The importance of compromise. (Do you sense a theme here?)
  • The tradeoffs in a marriage between academic scientists
  • Two careers, one offer: if he gets a great offer and there's nothing for here, what then?
• Job sharing is one still-uncommon option:
  • Two careers, one academic job, a discussion of the two-body problem in academics, and description of job-sharing.
  • Job sharing, getting two professors for the price of one, from The Chronicle
  • Working half time on the tenure track
  • But what happens if you get divorced?
• Some universities turn academic couples to their advantage: an article from Cornell
• Officemates and roommates: couples in the same department. From The Chronicle
• Couples in Cell Biology from the ASCB.
• But it's not always rosy: A backlash against hiring spouses?
• From The Scientist: Couples stymied by workplace attitudes.
• Nepotism:"Anti-nepotism policies are widespread in institutions of higher learning. These policies appear to be inordinately discriminatory to wives, usually due to the fact that husbands are employed first. Most policies are not specific; however, the majority of institutions covertly forbid the hiring of any relative even if the position in question does not involve a supervisor/subordinate relationship. In fact, special permission is sometimes required, especially in the case of hiring a spouse.". From a report on the Advancing Women Network. Since women tend to be married to other scientists, nepostism rules are an additional complication to the "two body" problem.
• Abstract of a paper from the San Diego law review argues that anti-nepotism rules "are antiquated policies, based on a traditional, conservative view of appropriate gender roles."
• Couples in one department. What IS the effect of an academic couple on their department? Can there be too many couples? What if they break up? This 2007 column discusses some of the concerns that work against hiring couples: some are reasonable, but most are, well, not. The alternative point of view was published a few months later.
• Resources for academic couples
• Report on dual career couple survey which was directed at physicists, but relevant for other disciplines. Of particular note:
  • Nepotism and resistance to hiring the spouse
  • Recommendations for institutions contemplating dual career hires
  • this description from one of the authors."At one institution, a manager stated that he would not consider dual-career couples in his section because it always led to trouble. That is like the person who says you don't want to hire a woman, because they did that once and it didn't work out."
  • Institutional help in spousal relocation
  • Also available as PDF.
• Hiring relatives: plus or minus for the bottom line?, a study from The Wharton School
• Dual career policies at American Universities, a study from Germany. (in English).
• A Stanford research Program on dual career science couples

Health, Medicine, and keeping it together

• Burnout prevention and recovery
• Feeling overwhelmed? Some tips to deal with it.
• Burnout relief for educators But you don't look sick: a site to help deal with chronic illness issues, e.g., lupus, cancer, etc.
• Academic drinking problems
• Creating possibility out of failure is a discussion of how to overcome setbacks. Women often suffer badly from internalizing failures; this excellent Chronicle column can help.
• Women in Medicine and Biology Web is focused more on medical than scientific issues.
• Women, work, stress and health: are academic women less healthy? From Science's Nextwave site (password may be required.
• Women's health forum, including a bulletin board and online answers for medical questions; active participation by physicians and medical professionals. Excellent resource for women's health questions.
• Women's health search page, good links to basic reference data.
• Women in Health History
• Women's health resources on the web: an index from the NY Times.

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Go to page 3a (Chilly climate in academe)
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Standard disclaimer: Any opinions are my own and do not represent the views of my employer.