There’s a fantastic article in this week’s Chronicle outlining an important issue in academia in the United States: the link between an increase in the use of non-tenured staff (ie part-timers or those on temporary contracts) and the rise of women in the academic workplace. Although the system is slightly different in the UK I think that the comparison raises some important issues for lecturers and researchers to consider the world over.
The article by Mary Ann Mason points out that achieving tenure in the US (moving from an insecure permanent position to a secure one) happens between 5 and 7 years after completing a PhD. Many of you may not have realised that in the US getting a PhD generally takes longer, so most people are in their early 30s on completing a PhD in the States. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that the tenure track stage of a woman’s career will come in her mid-late thirties, just as the impulse to have a family kicks in for some. Many women feel they don’t want the stress of going for tenure because they won’t be able to take time off to have a family, while others are putting off having a family because they don’t want their career to suffer. Are we really still in a situation where the best and brightest women are having to choose one or the other?
Mason does come up with some solutions which I think could be really important in the British academic system too. She would like to see a lot more flexibility in working practice, without anyone losing the security of a tenured (or permanent) position. She thinks that faculty members should be able to shift between full and part time working as their home life demands. Crucially she also thinks that part-time faculty members should be offered any permanent position that comes up before it’s advertised outside. This is controversial and could be seen as an attempt to go back to the era of ‘jobs for the boys’ if you’ll pardon the gender-related pun. But I think we’ve gone too far away from this idea in the UK. Here part-timers are offered nothing by their home department and big names are jetted in over their heads from outside.
Finally Mason recommends that hiring committees or job interview panels ignore gaps in a woman’s CV caused by child rearing. In 2009 I can’t believe that this doesn’t already happen, but obviously the idea still prevails that a woman cannot be 100% dedicated to her career if she is also caring for a family. Lots of food for thought in Mason’s article, and it just shows how far we have still got to go.
