Issue
26(2)
Challenge
of Balancing Faculty Careers and Family Work.
(2005).
John W. Curtis, (Editor).
Indianapolis, IN: John Wiley & Sons, 120 pp., Price $ 29.00.
ISBN # 0-7879-8190-7.
Review
by: Michelle
M. White
Director,
Academic Advisement
Millersville
University
As the title
suggests before it became a topic of research and policy formulation,
the "challenge" of balancing family and career was played out
primarily in the lives of women in academia. The representation
of women among college and university faculty has been increasing
since the 1960s (U.S. Department of Education, 2003). Despite
this progress, gender inequities remain in various aspects of
faculty life, including such employment outcomes as salaries,
rank, and tenure. Likewise the challenge manifests itself in the
family-related outcomes of marriage and children.
For
decades, women who pursued advanced degrees and careers in the
academy faced obstacles and conflicts. The contributors suggest
that the legal, formal, and visible hurtles have been largely,
but not entirely removed, leaving more subtle structural disadvantages:
forms of bias and discrimination that could be characterized as
unconscious or unintended. The authors recognize that when faced
with choices between fulfilling the obligations of family and
pursuing an academic career many women have sacrificed their careers
by accepting positions at teaching-oriented colleges that offered
a more predictable workload.
The
premise of this volume is that the challenge of balancing faculty
careers and family work is not one that individuals-men or women-should
face alone. It is also a challenge for colleges/ universities
if they are to recruit and retain the most able faculty. As long
as women feel they can not pursue faculty careers to the full
extent of their abilities, colleges/ universities will not draw
from a complete pool of potential faculty members. The contributors
do an excellent job addressing the increased use of contingent
faculty positions to meet growing enrollments as part of a broader
transformation of colleges/universities toward a more corporate
model. They maintain the glass ceiling and the maternal wall affect
women (and men who choose nontraditional roles) in all professions;
academia is not immune to gender stereotyping and cognitive bias.
The authors suggest that the gender wars are particularly acute
in academia as represented by the large numbers of childless women.
Strengths
of this book include its identification of barriers to achieve
gender equity in family and employment as well as the recommendations
offered for institutional policy and practices such as stopping
the tenure clock, working part-time on tenure track, and negotiating
with department chairs to modify teaching duties. The contributors
emphasize that demonstration and establishment of work-related
policies are not enough; faculty must know how to use these policies
to explore the more varied career paths, to and through academia.
Due
to the rise of contingent appointment as the model situation for
new faculty hires and a growing emphasis on corporate models for
higher education, institutions must consider how to maintain a
faculty who are fully engaged in teaching, research, and institutional
governance and possess academic freedom protected by tenure. At
the same time, the academic community needs to make room for new
voices and new perspectives. Detailed and workable measures that
enable faculty to balance their academic careers with their lives
off-campus are ways to meet that challenge. This is concise, well-written
book for women faculty members employed in various roles-part
time, full time, and tenure track. It is a multifaceted resource
that would be a useful resource in any faculty member's library.
Reference
U. S. Department of Education. Digest
of Education Statistics 2002 . Washington, D. C.: National
Center
for Education Statistics,
2003.
