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[wildwest]

This article has me seething.

The academy will never change until a job candidate such as the author stands up to the committee and says boldly:  "No, I don't have cats.  As a matter of fact, I three kids, ages ____.  They are looking forward to seeing where mom gets a job and are eager to move to a new place.  I'm lucky to have a family that is so supportive of my work.  In my spare time, I spend time with them at school activities, etc."  Okay, the candidate might not get the job, but does she really want to work at a place with such attitudes?

Why is having kids, or having any life outside of one's work, so scandalous in this profession?  For me, this defies reason.  It is just another one of those attitudes that is influencing my own career movement away from the academy.  Most academics are not doing brain surgery, or negotiating international treaties.  Most can manage family responsibilites along with work.  Why the shame, why the secrecy?

I know numerous forums have been written on this before, but I just can't, for the life of me, get my head around these attitudes and the willingness of so many people to step delicately around them without challenging something that is so, so wrong.

[larryc]

What article is that?

[marlborough]

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/06/2008061201c/careers.html

I have the opposite problem--I seem to always be at meetings where colleagues introduce themselves and tell how many children, how old, and what cute thing said children are currently doing.  Lacking that, I joke about my dogs (although once, a parental unit glared and said "that is not the same at all).  I'm just not a member of the club.

However, this does signal that, alone in my department, I have loads of free time to do whatever inconvenient thing comes along.

[larryc]

Bah humbug. The author is paranoid.

"No one will ever hire a female parent, so the reason I did not get the job is that I let it slip out that I have children. I must do better the next time!"

Or you did not get the job for one of a thousand other equally likely and unknowable reasons. Just be your full human self.

[fiona]

Men often tend to underestimate the power of "maternal profiling" to be used against women.

Women who are defined as mommies do get discriminated against and passed over. It's easily documentable in every survey of academic women, including one released yesterday from UC-Irvine.

Yes, it's wrong, but don't dismiss it as not existing. It does exist, and it's very powerful.

Men as parents are considered sensitive good guys. Women as parents are considered as mommies first, then as teachers, last as scholars.

The Fiona

[larryc]

Hmmmm...you may be right. Anyone have a link to the study that Fiona mentions?

[fiona]

Here it is.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/12/women

The Fiona

[sad_goat]

I would make one clarification, that men who are very active in childrearing duties can also suffer a similar discrimination, even when not Mr. Mom. I have had personal experience with this one.

As a former employer, I can understand the logic. When a deadline is eating your ankles, or a long night is in the cards, you can't deliver if the key players have to pick up the kids at daycare . It does set a tone, an expectation.

But, not being King, I don't always get to set the expectations.

[johnr]

We would love have to have more mommies, and women in general, on our faculty. The students in our grad program are mostly women (65%) yet we have relatively few women applying for faculty positions in our department (close to five men for every one woman).  There's always at least one woman among our top three candidates, they are very qualified, highly sought after and usually end up having multiple offers and going to an R1 school (we are science department at a master's granting university). The women that we have managed to hire have stayed, started families (or came with one), get tenure, and like it here, so I think that the environment is welcoming. I really would like to know what to do to correct the situation and balance the ratio here but, in this particular situation (our department), I don't think that the problem is with maternal profiling.    

[mccfan]

You know the thing that struck me most about this woman's story was that she seems socially awkward.  If someone on the search committee asks you what you do in your spare time, it is most likely an attempt to get to know you better.  It allows the committee to get some idea of whether you will be an interesting person to work with should they hire you.  Some academically gifted people are socially awkward folk with whom it is almost impossible to make a conversation.  I am not sure I want to work for years with someone who cannot chat about something (anything) beyond the subject of their research, especially if there is someone who is both academically talented and socially adept.  I was on a search committee once where the guy we were interviewing was asked what he did when he wasn't working.  His answer was that he went to the gym and watched tv.  No elaboration about interesting shows or lifting techniques, just a flat statement that suggested to us that this guy couldn't make conversation.  

So, I would not automatically attribute the writer's rejection to being a mom.  I have gotten job offers despite being pregnant and/or having kids.  I'm not saying discrimination against mothers (or fathers) does not exist.  However, I don't think it's safe to assume motherhood was the source of this woman's problem.  I would find it more likely that they were bothered by her curt responses.

[larryc]

Here it is.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/12/women

The Fiona

Hmmmm...what the study shows is that many of the women surveyed feel that they have been discriminated against. No doubt some have, but these results are not exactly scientific.

[starfleet_grad]

I have often experienced the ambivalence toward parenthood as the "one rotten apple" syndrome.
In on of my Ph.D. courses, the prof canceled probably about 20-30% of all classes so she could attend her kids' various sporting events and school plays and whatnot, and large chunks of class were spent talking about the kids and showing pictures of them. (No, really, we were treated to a completely unrelated 30-minute slide show of the kids' various playtime activities.) Most useless class I ever took. We learned next to nothing, and the prof got slammed on the evals, I tell you what. OTOH, other professors never or rarely mentioned their children and always held class, but one egregious example, and that's all we remember and generalize from.

[wildwest]

Ok--I think it is a very good point that the problem with this article might be the author herself.  It is possible that the one faculty member who responds, "Cats, she has cats!" might be the odd-man-out.  The rest may be interested in her personal life.  Also telling was her response at an earlier job interview--when asked in a social setting (not the actual interview) if she had children, she responds that she can't answer the question--which is a disastrous move that shuts down communication.

The author does show a lack of confidence--a lack of confidence in how her different "selves" work together to make up a whole life.  I'm not talking about throwing one's parental status in other people's faces, but rather feeling comfortable enough in one's own life to not hide who one really is--letting the different lives mesh together seamlessly.

The problem is, there are way too many people who *do* have the lack of confidence/social skills that the author exhibits.  This enables certain attitudes to persist.  I'm sure it's probably the same in other fields, like law.

   

[doctor_torrseal]

Here it is.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/12/women

The Fiona

Hmmmm...what the study shows is that many of the women surveyed feel that they have been discriminated against. No doubt some have, but these results are not exactly scientific.

I may have a skewed view because I'm in the sciences, but the complaints in the Inside Higher Ed article sounded completely plausible to me.  Studies that have attempted to use objective measures (salary, lab space, etc) have found similar things - I'm thinking of the MIT study.  Discrimination now is more subtle than when it was old farts saying "Women can't do physics" openly; the people who engage in it may not even realize they're doing it.  In general, the women who have gotten all the way through the pipeline have to have enough steel that they aren't going to imagine instances of discrimination for the UCI survey.  I thought the university's response was pathetic ("Who me? I didn't eat the cookies!")  Even if written by a lawyer, it could have been written in a less see-no-evil manner.

[fiona]

A lot of the reactions here are typical. There's blaming the victim (she must have done wrong), and there's epistemological solipsism ("I don't see sexism [or racism, or homophobia], so it must not exist.")

Be aware that if you're white, you're not apt to see much racism. Likewise if you're male, re sexism.

Moreover, people do generalize from one example if the person isn't white male. I've seen colleagues called "typical Asian," for instance. And no one speaks about hiring "qualified white males," but "qualified" is routinely used for people of color or women.

You don't see the micro-inequities that women encounter every day--such as comments about looks, being a mom or not being a mom, clothes, weight, and so much more.

I could go on, but I'd rather get on with my life. One of the many inequities is that women, people of color, and other "minorities" are required to testify over and over and over about being victimized. What a waste of time.

The Fiona