Last night, after class, talking to one of my fellow grads. This is a fellow grad who often complains about The Program (yeah, I know, that doesn't narrow it down, but that's the point). He was the only male among us, resulting in a 4-1 ratio. Some standard bitching regarding grad school ensued. Long story short, I pointed out that female academics make sacrifices beyond merely financial sacrifices for grad school, namely, that it is virtually unheard of, even in these days, and even in the liberal elitist academy, for a woman to get tenure if she has children. Further, that women often feel intense pressure to delay or abandon plans to procreate in order to be a successful academic, and that men have no such pressure. Male grad student's response was twofold. First, he said, "But plenty of professors have children." Pause. One of my fellow women took up the banner and pointed out that plenty of male professor's wives have children, and that these two things are not equivalent. Let's not forget that we had just left a class which is taught by a professor who is engaged to a 24- year-old, and he is 40.
Male grad student paused, and then said, (after spending eight weeks of the semester bitching about 'mentoring failures!') "You know, you can blame everything on institutional or structural factors, but doesn't it really come down to individual initiative?"
Thanks, man. I'll keep that in mind.
Here is a parting thought, via Academic Coach:
Female Faculty More Stressed
Man_and_woman_2 A couple of weeks ago, I posted some thoughts on the IHE article that reported that Community College faculty are somewhat more satisfied with their jobs than faculty at 4 year institutions. The same survey of faculty attitudes, conducted by folks at UCLA, included comparisons of male and female responses.
The study found that a higher proportion women reported feeling stressed about a variety of different factors. Here are some of the findings highlighted in the IHE article:
Managing household responsibilities
% of Men Citing as Cause of Stress: 68.0%
% of Women Citing as Cause of Stress: 81.8%
Review/promotion process
% of Men Citing as Cause of Stress:40.3
% of Women Citing as Cause of Stress:50.8
Subtle discrimination
% of Men Citing as Cause of Stress:17.9
% of Women Citing as Cause of Stress:34.2
Teaching load
% of Men Citing as Cause of Stress:61.6
% of Women Citing as Cause of Stress:70.8
Lack of personal time
% of Men Citing as Cause of Stress:68.5
% of Women Citing as Cause of Stress:81.9
Being part of 2-career couple
% of Men Citing as Cause of Stress:31.0
% of Women Citing as Cause of Stress:41.6
Self-imposed expectations
% of Men Citing as Cause of Stress:75.0
% of Women Citing as Cause of Stress:84.4
I've said it before, I'll say it again: men attribute their success to their natural ability and hard work, and their failures to fortune, luck or other people. Women attribute their success to fortune or luck, and failure to their own, personal failings.
3 comments:
Oy. This anecdote and the recent exchanges on the listserv have made me miss grad school not one bit. I love that we always come back to individual initiative as the panacea for what ails.
Everyone who goes through grad school gives up a lot, except those rare freaks who live for forced solitude and sleep deprivation and who have a very narrow conception of what is valuable in life. Family is one of those things that, to some extent, has to be sacrificed to be even a marginally successful academic (Van Evera's reference to family and friends as "enemies of knowledge" who should be avoided was, I think, only very minimally tongue-in-cheek). To suggest that women do not bear that sacrifice more heavily is to betray a complete lack of understanding regarding the family and gender and, beyond that, limited knowledge of social and economic relations in general.
A rather large part of the reason that I chose to leave the academic track was my desire to have a family and to be part of a wider community in a sustained and meaningful way. I could not imagine a way to fulfill my desires regarding the family while also achieving a small amount of success as an academic (by that I mostly mean keeping a job and being a semi-competent professor - not exactly academic superstar status). The structure of the academy and of the tenure process militates against the sort of "extracurricular" involvement that a family demands of anyone involved in it, but especially of a mother. I saw no way to be a good academic and a good partner and parent, and, even with my consistent disdain for grad school, it was not an easy choice for me to make regarding which one had to be sacrificed. Ultimately I decided that my commitment to family was obviously more important, but that was a tough decision to come to.
The point is, though, that I as a male did not feel that I could successfully combine both family and an academic career. I could have kept the academic career and done a half-assed job of parenting; while that is an unattractive option, it at least is an option. That choice does not seem to be there for female academics, though. You can't halfway carry a pregnancy to term. Given biological constraints, having a child entails more time out of a woman's life than a man's and often needs to come at a particularly inconvenient time in the tenure process. In some ways only people that have aspired to be or have been involved in that process can understand what a death blow that time out can be to an academic career, which makes it especially frustrating that your colleague failed to recognize that fact. Academia on the whole fails to recognize that, or does not care, and to suggest that those institutional or structural constraints aren't relevant or are easily surmountable is both bizarre and ignorant.
I think that there are many men in the academy who would appreciate a deeper understanding of and sensitivity to the demands and rewards of family life as regards those institutional structures. I would have been one of that number. But I was never so delusional as to think that the sacrifice would have been as great for me as it would a female counterpart. I could have sustained a career and had a family that I was not as involved in as I would have liked. In the end, that was a choice that I could not live with. But it was a choice, and one that is not nearly as available, if at all, to women in similar positions. Motherhood and a successful academic career remain disturbingly incompatible.
Brett--
Thank you for the thoughtful post. I had someone ask me yesterday if grad school was "worth it" and I gave my usual answer, which is, if you would study what you want to study in grad school for free, forever, then maybe. I kept emphasizing, though, that grad school is difficult, that it works best if you don't have any significant relationships you have to maintain (and sometimes not even then). She seemed skeptical, and I realized it sounded like I was lauding myself for making it through such a difficult process. But I was honestly just trying to convey that the academy is a peculiar place for peculiar people, and that trying to jam oneself into that mold can be emotionally and physically exhausting in a way nothing else I've ever done was. Staying in grad school requires a certain amount of masochism.
I feared this was me for a moment and cried, "Blasphemy," I wouldn't say that. So really, AP?
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