I've been having a great email exchange with another blogger about the current flare-up of the battle over women in academic science, and he brought to my attention a bothersome feature of this New York Times interview with Dr. Ben A. Barres:
Q. How does this bias [that men have an innate advantage in science over women] manifest itself?
A. It is very much harder for women to be successful, to get jobs, to get grants, especially big grants. And then, and this is a huge part of the problem, they don't get the resources they need to be successful. Right now, what's fundamentally missing and absolutely vital is that women get better child care support. This is such an obvious no-brainer. If you just do this with a small amount of resources, you could explode the number of women scientists.
Q. Why isn't there more support for scientists who have children?
A. The male leadership is not doing it, but women are not demanding it. I think if women would just start demanding fairness, they might get it. But they might buy in a little bit to all this brainwashing. They are less self-confident. And when women speak out, men just see them as asking for undeserved benefits.
(Bold emphasis added.)
At first, this sounds kind of sensible. If you have a problem, say something about it so that it can be fixed. Don't assume that the folks with the power to fix things can read your mind and thus magically know which circumstances are keeping you down.
But reflect on this a bit more. Since when does simply identifying a problem -- or even asking that it be fixed -- guarantee that anything will be done about it at all? Especially in the belly of a bureaucracy like your standard U.S. university? Aren't bureaucrats pretty good at resisting change for as long as possible? What kind of form would a "demand" need to take to have a reasonable chance of bringing about the desired change?
Start demanding fairness? No chance that will be spun as women in the academy being high maintanence.
As my correspondent points out, not only does the way Barres formulates the problem ("Women, speak up for what you need!) leave the burden of childcare (whether providing it or securing it) primarily on women, but it saddles them with the additional burden of righting an institutional wrong. It's almost like no one else in the institution has any reason to want things to change, so it's totally on the women to complain until they get what they need. (And this is totally what we said would happen if we started hiring women in the first place!)
I'm sure that means that if universities were suddenly to provide quality child care, only the women would utilize it, right? Because it would be pretty slimy for men to be free-riders in such a situation (especially if, say, they made a big deal about how much their female colleagues complained about the lack of such support).
My point here is not that academia is especially problematic, but rather that it is getting into trouble by reproducing societal biases and unequal burdens from the larger community in which it is embedded. It's not that universities are trying extra hard to keep women down; it's just that they're not doing enough to change the conditions already in place in the wider world that keep them down. They seem to be assuming that the truly worthy women will be the ones who succeed even while the larger world gives them extra burdens to manage. But it's hard to believe that these residual inequalities won't interfere with the goal of making academia the meritocracy people want it to be.
So maybe we should start taking the "ivory tower" thing seriously and try to implement circumstances that depart from the "real world" in significant ways -- for instance, transforming childrearing from a woman's responsibility to something the whole community has a stake in. If it works out in university settings, maybe some of these changes could even be shared with the larger society.
On a related note, this post at academicsecret about shoe-horning a family into one's academic career has me considering whether I should blog about my own experiences here. But ... I guess I'm not sure whether my experience is at all helpful to anyone else trying to make her (or his) own decisions about this. And I'm afraid that being honest about the challenges might convince some people to give up on even trying to have an academic career and a life, which just entrenches the sub-optimal conditions we have now. At the same time, I'm afraid that the fact that I can (kind of) pull this off will make it look so do-able that people might rush into similar choices without being prepared for the real challenges involved, and then people can blame the fallout on those would-be academics who didn't have well-ordered desires (i.e., who couldn't hack it because they took on too much).
So, dear readers, what do you want me to do about this situation? Should I back slowly away from the idea of sharing my own experience, or should I spill it?
Spill.
One of the base, most fundamental problems we have is that implicitly, we assume that our academics aren't people. We assume that they are publishing machines who will completely dedicate their lives to their chosen professions in order to utterly excel in it. This isn't just academia, but all of "high-powered" employment in the USA. You're expected to sacrifice family and life for career, to make sure that Career Is All. And there are some who will, and if you can't complete, people can hold them up and say "these people are betting for our institution."
We need to recognize that there is more to human life than our jobs, even if our jobs are in academia pursuing the field that we love. We have to recognize that people have other things that time and energy goes to -- such as family -- and that people are people and have lacks of confidence and so forth. (I've written extensively about the latter.)
I really believe that most, or at least many, of the people in academia would believe this, but most of us are afraid to say too much about ourselves for fear of exposing our imperfection in the face of a system that demands us all to look like utterly-driven utterly-confident uttlery-self-sacrificing career types. We need more people to speak up as to what the reality of the situation is so that general awareness of some of the inhumanities of the situation many hopefully lead to an understanding that you might even get better creative work out of people for a longer period if you let them be people instead of "human capital" or some such.
Janet, I share your feelings of being torn about discussing your experience. This also occurred to me when I was reading the comments on your earlier post about this issue, and at least one commenter wrote essentially that no women at HIS institution had experienced any problematic treatment. I know that in my own case I have long ago given up talking about the things that have happened to me and the things I have had to go through, because it so often comes across (or is interpreted) as whining, and it just takes even more energy away from the things I want to be doing, and - like you - I am concerned that talking too much about the problems may even more discourage young women following me.
All that having been said, it was also very useful to me when other women in mathematics spoke with me about their experiences. I can recall one wonderful and very eye-opening talk with Cathleen Morawetz, and she's far from being a whiner. It reassures a person to know that she is not imagining the things that she experiences, that others experience them (and worse) as well but get through anyway.
So, what the heck, go for it.
I've got something to say about both issues. First, though "women have to speak up" is obviously not the whole story, it has to be part of it, though let's amend that to "everyone should speak up". I think you point this out nicely by suggesting that we start with changing thinking about children and childcare in the academy. Admittedly bringing about change is another balancing act though. My way of engaging in this act was to both worked my ass off so that no one would think I couldn't do as good a job as the next guy and to press for childrearing needs of the faculty as a whole to be taken into consideration in schedules and so on. Admittedly how successful I was depended a great deal on the pre-existing attitudes of those making the big decisions. So at one college, that my children needed me at home was a respected constraint on how my classes were scheduled, whereas at another it was never taken into consideration.
This brings us to the second question you raise. I think that we should all talk about this! There are many different ways that we manage. My kids are grown now and I am not sure I could really describe quite how I did it, but the fact that I did and so it is possible counts for something. But all the choices we make come with consequences. Why spare those who are coming up on those choices from that realization? That is the one illusion of my youth I wish I'd give up sooner. But seriously, recognizing that it can be done, that it is difficult, that there are lots of different ways to do it is important. Also, more importantly, saying loudly that family is important and an issue to talk about in relation to career breaks down a public/private distinction that supports the status quo.
Oh, my! Miz. Dr. Freeride (our Dear Abby/Margo of Science!). Spill it all, lay it on us, I can't sleep tonight until I hear it!Meanwhile, I'll tell you my own solution. If we are serious about all this we got to use logic and fight nature and the hormone (estrogen v. androgen), evolution's gift of survival of the species, and consequent unfair consequences of aging outside reproductive years.Stop giving into that hormone-driven random mating with a male at the peak of androgen-driven turkey/peacock rut as a sperm donor before you test him out for long term sharing of nest responsibilities. Mate with an older male (you're 21-40, he's 51-70) after all that has died down, he's still fertile compared to you at the same age, and ready for nurturing, gonna live to 90 in good health nowadays, plenty of resources on average, and will relieve you to achieve to the limit of your ability.Leave general productivity responsibilities in addition to your contribution to all those alpha males of equal age until they reach maturity and mellow out. (ca. age 50). See Gene Expression. Most agree that it's all over for even the most aggressive males in science at age 30-35 anyway.Or do they need us to drive them?Polly A.
I think it always helps to hear people's stories of how things work (or not) for them. If enough people do the same, those who are looking to see whether they can/want to be an academic can see the full range of options and make a more informed decision, rather than being surprised by the reality.
Spill, spill! Lately I've found myself with an endless appetite for academic career stories - they really are helpful in working through my own career angst. And I promise not to make any bad decisions based solely on your story ;)
Before spilling, please consider how the spillage will read when your kids find it five years from now, while surfing at the house of their permissively parented friends.
Um, women are not demanding it? How about the 103 women who were arrested in civil disobedience on December 10th 2003 with Barbara Ehrenreich to protest labor conditions for women at Yale (which includes problems with dependent health care and child care)? How about all the grad employee unions across the country who consistently demand better treatment for women at the grad student end of the pipeline?
Female faculty need more childcare support, more flexibility, more departmental sensitivity training to family issues, and much more. But I know too many women who dropped out of grad school to have kids, or because they already had them and couldn't manage it. The whole pipeline needs re-evaluation and it's frustrating when I hear the significant activist work of my colleagues so blithely dismissed by Barres.
My issue with putting the burden on women scientists is that the problem is much larger that a single person at an institution, and while feminists make and have made a lot of sacrifices for other women, for change to happen during the scientific lifetime of many of our women scientists it will essentially become a full time job, and many peopel would shy away from such a burden. Many of these scientists have chosen that the way they want to change the world is by being a great scientist, but it seems like some men just say "if you want it that bad just demand it" like it would be so easy, like all of these women have to make even greater sacrifices with their Norma Rae moments, and of course if anyone chose not to and by default had to accept the shitty status quo, they of course are deemed to not have wanted it enough.
What pains me is Dr. Barres is a HUGE advocate for women in science. What he fails to realize is that if he so obviously pointed out the single biggest problem for women in science- child care issues- then it is basically clear to everyone and institutions are either serious about the problem or not. They are not, because they don't have to be. Perhaps he could suggest that women scientists have a Lysistrata protest? I know that seems extreme to say, but that is how sexist I think the comment was. I don't consider for a moment that Dr. Barres is a sexist, I urge readers to read the entire interview. He is really an eloquent and forceful advocate for women (almost all the time)
I am a practicing ENT surgeon in a full-time job. That means, I work in a hospital- 8AM to 5PM EVERYDAY of the week including Saturdays and have to manage the rest of my commitments around this. I feel that I need to devote more time to my family. I also feel that anyone who cannot admit to the importance of a family well reared is not doing justice to the basic structure of human society- the family. We may be offered attractive pay packets for working 8 or 10 or more, even, hours a day. What would we do with the money then? When we get back home- the markets are alreday closed for the day and those for whom you would want to spend have already slept off! So what would you do with the pieces of paper? true these papers never see the inside of a dustbin... but it works only as an exchange value for another comoddity or service or product. It is just a piece of paper if not used!
As for coming across as more committed if you scarifice your family for your career- I would say this appears generally to be the usual scenario. If you are unable to leave a sick child to himself or day care because you have a dead line to meet, you are not committed enough! HAs anyone stopped to find out what you would do IF you were deemed committed enough? If you were to sacrifice your family and be labelled committed what would you achieve?
How many people remember the N obel winners of five years ago? or ten years ago? Do they remember the teacher who lovingly taught them in kindergarten? Would you be able to recount the five past gol medalists at any given event? Would you be able to name five people who have made your life easier or EVEN more difficult!
The acid test is not what you do and how... it is whether you can do justice to your mission on earth. If your mission is to make a difference to the children you gave birth to, no matter of banter or whining is going to be able to ,make you say a Yes to anything less!
I could write LOADS... I am in India and have suffered enough to know what works and how! I will not!
To anyone who wants to ride both horses... while it can be done- you have to be really careful of the speeds opf both and committed to make both run together! Which is also possible!!!!
Nice to have found this blog!