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But even our own children can see that the pace we maintain as academics, clinicians, and family members can be, well...insane. The demands placed on our time can significantly diminish or even eradicate the flexibility in being available for our family life. Chief among the complaints of an academic life for both men and women raised repeatedly in the scholarly literature are time constraints. It is likely that the work will exceed 55 hours per week for at least one-quarter of us, with much of this work (over half) done evenings or weekends (Kinman
& Jones, 2003). Other challenges for faculty include lack of reward and recognition, limited resources, poor communication, and lack of support (Kinman, & Jones, 2003). Nearly half of these academics reported the stress from the work is accompanied by depression and anxiety, also noting that the work stress has increased in recent years
and expect it to increase in future years (Kinman & Jones, 2003).
The constraints enumerated here may be especially pronounced for women. Part of this has to do with the proportion of women in academia. Because there tend to be fewer numbers of women in academia, our participation in certain activities is partitioned differently. For example, female faculty spend more time on advising, teaching, and service than male faculty (Misra, Lundquist, Holes, & Agiomavritis, 2011). Further,
in the field of psychology, for example, academic men publish more than their female counterparts early in their careers, but those differences disappear with how many years one is in the field (Duffy, Jadidian, Webster, & Sandell, 2011). Women’s progress in academia has been impeded due to problematic work environments, preference
toward research on non-gendered topics, and pressure of balancing activities to achieve tenure and family responsibilities (Hancock, Baum, & Breuning, 2013). It is no surprise, then, that female faculty have lower levels of job satisfaction particularly when it comes to salary and promotion (McCoy, Newell, & Gardner, 2012; Sabharwal & Corley, 2009).
Additionally, much of the pressure we experience may be self-imposed.
Women’s progress
in academia has been impeded due
to problematic
work environments, preference toward research on non- gendered topics, and pressure of balancing activities to achieve tenure and family responsibilities
Fotaki (2013) asserts female academics go through a process by which they separate from what it means to be a woman to gain equal footing as a man
in academia (which does not end up being equal). The net result is women being complicit in their marginalization. In addition, several studies have demonstrated that women’s academic work is rated lower than the work of men despite being the same publication record (Horrell, 1990; Sandler & Hall, 1986). The gender socialization regarding what it means to be a woman may put more responsibility on the women who hold these positions to act in typically- male ways (Lester, 2008) whether 1) the pressure is intentional, and 2) women perceive it is present.
In order to wrap my head around
this phenomenon, a team of talented academic women in MFT and I did
what many researchers do: study that which affected us. While we hope
the study findings will be presented
in a future publication, we wanted to share with readers of Family Therapy magazine the context around being
an academic woman in MFT. First,
we found that female academics in
MFT described experiences common
to other academic women—conflict, discrimination, and support. Second,
we asked participants to complete the Career-Family Attitudes Measure, which seeks to determine one’s beliefs about labor distribution, education, childcare, marriage/partnerships, etc. Items that
were strongly endorsed by female academics in MFT/family studies were those items which reflect valuing being a parent and having an education and
a career (e.g., I believe that being an involved mother is important; I believe getting an education is important) and egalitarian attitudes about both partners’ careers being valued (e.g., I expect to go as far as I can in my career and expect encouragement from my partner; I intend to encourage my partner to fully develop his or her career). Interestingly, the ratings for “I believe having a career” were nearly identical to the ratings for
“I believe being an involved mother is important,” indicating high agreement to those statements and quantitative proof elucidating the conflict we feel.
The average number of publications
for MFTs in doctoral programs is one article every two years (DuPree, White, Meredith, Ruddick, & Anderson, 2009). This is also consistent with research conducted by Hancock, Baum, and Breuning (2013) noting that in their early years, 90% of professors published one journal article, with one-third publishing between three and five peer- reviewed articles—with men publishing statistically significantly more at both ends of the publishing spectrum.
The publication record of women
in our study met that benchmark; it
The gender socialization regarding what
it means to be a woman may put more responsibility on the women who hold these positions to act in typically- male ways whether 1) the pressure is intentional, and 2) women perceive it is present.
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