<p>Since previous discussions have dealt with the future of tenure, does the system negatively impact women?</p>
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[quote]
The fear of failure influences many female academics to delay starting a family until after they have earned tenure. That same fear influences other women to avoid the tenure track entirely and decide that they must choose family over career. Shirley M. Tilghman, the first woman to be president of Princeton University, famously argued that the tenure system should be dropped because it is "no friend to women." She pointed out that it makes huge demands at a time when women are already stressed out with young families.</p>
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<p>Would women be better off without a 19th-century career model that was conceived when only men were professors and their stay-at-home wives cared for the children?
<p>Gee I wonder which answer the writer would give…</p>
<p>Anyway, the article seems less about tenure itself and more about the process of getting tenure. I think a system that forgives having children early on is a great idea. Many of my professors in their 50’s have young (single digit) children as a result of this ultra-competitive system as it currently is.</p>
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<p>Haha, bullsh**, women aren’t the Mexicans of academia; there are plenty of people of both genders relegated to adjunct positions. The problem is oversupply of academics, period.</p>
<p>It’s pretty clear the author is some kind of feminist. Fathers have the same sorts of issues nowadays that women do with regard to this issue of tenure if only because more and more women are working. Men are expected more and more to fulfill similar duties to women in childcare.</p>
<p>tenisghs…interesting article. Glad you posted it. </p>
<p>It is interesting to note that the author of the article fully supports tenure, as do I.</p>
<p>I think some changes in the process of getting tenure would be a good idea. Life happens and there will always be gaps on people’s CV. Sometimes you’ll need to go part-time for family reasons. I really do think that these part-time options should be available for both women and men. Both sexes share the financial and caretaking burden for children.</p>
<p>I basically agree with gthopful…without refering to mexicans though…the author is making a huge leap to say that all of these adjuct positions and part-time positions are for women only and were created as a response to women in the work force. You’d need to show me some serious statistics to find any correlation there. I know many men who are dead-ended in adjuct positions also. It’d be worth discussing and looking at the statistics though.</p>
<p>Speaking as a tenured female prof who also has children, I support the author’s final conclusion in its entirety. Tenure is essential. Tenured faculty can take the riskier tasks (research, family and otherwise), that non-tenured faculty and staff cannot for fear of termination. These riskier stances are not always for personal gain and reward, rather the tenured faculty can take stances that protect the non-tenured.</p>
<p>For reference:
"A university without tenure would not allow the creative, challenging environment in which discovery and scholarship flourish. It would be, instead, a corporation staffed by part-time and contingent employees who could be hired or fired at the will and whim of the full-time corporate administrators. That would be a loss for students, for faculty members, and for the future of knowledge and innovation.</p>
<p>The tenure system, for all its faults, must be promoted, not extinguished. But it must be made more flexible to level the playing field and suit the modern realities of professors’ lives."</p>
<p>while many men are dead-ended in adjunct positions, that’s because many people in general are dead-ended in adjunct positions. my understanding is that a much larger percentage (relative to the number of women getting PhDs in a given field) of these adjuncts are female, though.</p>
<p>in a field with fewer women in general, of course you’ll see more male adjuncts than female. but the ratio of adjunct to tenure-track for women is higher than that for men in almost every discipline. sucks, but i’ve only ever seen statistics to corroborate this, never to reverse the trend or even make it seem gender-neutral.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that I agree that the university as we know it would collapse without the tenure system; I think that academics say this because it’s self-serving. I’m on the fence as to whether tenure should be preserved or abolished in favor of seven-year-contracts, particularly in a time during which universities are churning out new Ph.Ds but older professors who are eligible for retirement, long past performing any research, and are only teaching one or two classes are holding on tight to their professorships. I had a few at my alma mater.</p>
<p>That aside, tenure can be especially hard on women. Yes, men are taking on increasing roles in their families, but the majority of the brunt of child-rearing (and all of the brunt on child-bearing) lies with women. One of the major reasons a tenure-track job is on the back burner for me is because of the tenure process.</p>
<p>Isn’t the problem here not having tenure (as opposed to tenure itself)? What I mean is, if you abolish tenure in favor of 7-year contracts, will the women (and men) who want to take some time off to have families be forced to prove themselves as researchers every seven years? That would seem to make it more difficult rather than less to ever have a family.</p>
<p>I don’t think tenure is a trap for anyone because academics who begin the process know precisely what they’re getting into. It would only be a ‘trap’ if people entering the process were misled about the nature and risks of the process.</p>
<p>Is getting tenure stressful - it can be depending on the university and the specific department. At some schools the tenure process is much less risky. But in any case getting tenure is quite rewarding - so at worst this is a high-risk, high-reward endeavor. (At best it is a moderate-risk, high-reward endeavor.) There are lots of high-risk, potentially high-reward career paths out there. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with having a certain career path (such as the tenured academic path) be a high-risk, high-reward path. People who enter the path know, or should know, what they are getting into, so I really don’t see the problem.</p>
<p>Aceflyer - that’s true. Anyone on the road to a Ph.D knows exactly what they’re having to do.</p>
<p>elenlin - not sure what the exact plan is for it - I read it in an article written by an academic in the New York Times. He suggested 7-year contracts and I know some colleges (notably Georgia Gwinnett College, which has already done this and signs all faculty to 3-5 year contracts) are considering abolishing tenure altogether to hire contract employees. I would assume that if this were done, the hiring structure would change.</p>
<p>"It’s pretty clear the author is some kind of feminist. " Who Cares? And if so what kind? </p>
<p>Anyhow, there are many adjuncts out there who refuse to move or live in another part of the country and would prefer to adjunct because they want to be in a particular locale.
I feel ZERO sympathy for them unless they are bound by some kind of specific situation (sick parents, must be in certain climate due to illness etc)</p>
<p>But there are too many people in particular areas of academia, because graduate programs only care about getting cheap TAs and screw what happens to them once they get their Ph.D.</p>