The Balancing Act

by Bracken, Susan J.

• ISBN13: 9781579221492
• ISBN10: 1579221491
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-07-24
• Publisher: Stylus Pub Llc

Summary

* Of interest to all women in faculty ranks * Extensive academic marketing Why are women not entering academic careers at a rate proportional to their degree attainment? And once they enter academe, why are they are not achieving tenure or gaining promotion at the same rate as men? How can deeper understanding of attitudes toward academic women combined with research on their experiences within the academic environment, in particular those balancing family and academic careers, help us to shape more responsive institutional policies and environments? These questions are all the more urgent at a time when institutions recognize the need to recruit more women and faculty of color to meet their changing missions and student demographics. This book argues that creating healthy and equitable work environments for women is good for the whole academic community. Indeed, the authors make the point that, as the feminization of academe continues, failure to implement gender equity and family-friendly initiatives could be perilous. This book brings together new and original research--representing a broad range of institutional types--that reveals the pressures women face to postpone childbirth and limit the size of their families; that exposes the often the inequitable treatment of their scholarship when women are part of a dual-career couples; and that identifies other tacit and structural barriers to women's advancement. This book challenges assumptions about how men and women manage the boundaries between their personal and professional lives and suggests new ways to creatively and collaboratively combine productive work lives and satisfying personal lives. It shows how women have agency in structuring their careers and describes a multiplicity of solutions that they and institutions can adopt to create new couple- and family-friendly structures and practices that will encourage women to stay in the pipeline. This book, and its companion volumes in the Women in Academe series, offers compelling data and ideas both for women scholars seeking fulfillment in their professional and personal lives, and for adminstrators who recognize the need to transform their work places.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	vii
FOREWORD	ix
Ann E. Austin
INTRODUCTION: THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE	1	(8)
Women's Studies, Higher Education, and Praxis
Susan J. Bracken, Jeanie K. Allen, and Diane R. Dean
1 BABIES MATTER	9	(22)
Pushing the Gender Equity Revolution Forward
Mary Ann Mason, Marc Goulden, and Nicholas H. Wolfinger
2 HOW FEMALE AND MALE FACULTY WITH FAMILIES MANAGE WORK AND PERSONAL ROLES	31	(20)
Carol L. Colbeck
3 FACULTY WORK AND FAMILY LIFE	51	(22)
Policy Perspectives from Different Institutional Types
Lisa Wolf-Wendel and Kelly Ward
4 POLICIES THAT PART	73	(18)
Early Career Experiences of Coworking Academic Couples
Elizabeth G. Creamer
5 AGENTS OF LEARNING	91	(30)
Strategies for Assuming Agency, for Learning, in Tenured Faculty Careers
Anna Neumann, Aimee LaPointe Terosky, and Julie Schell
6 FACULTY CHANGE INITIATIVES	121	(26)
Responding to a Campus Climate Study
Jeni Hart
7 CONCLUSION	147	(12)
Ann E. Austin
APPENDIX	159	(4)
ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS	163	(6)
INDEX	169