Chronicle: Is Tenure a Trap for Women?

Parent Cafe
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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>

<p>Even members of Congress are focusing on the problem. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat and senior member of the House Science Committee, has introduced legislation that would, among other reforms, stop the university tenure clock for scientists with newborn responsibilities. "Federal policy makers must be more proactive in stopping the leaky pipeline that results in women departing at every major transition point while pursuing careers in engineering, physics, technology, and related fields," she said.</p>

<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?

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<p>Is</a> Tenure a Trap for Women? - Chronicle.com</p>

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<p>I don’t know if tenure is a trap but I know that pretending only women can care for children is b.s.</p>

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<p>Hear, hear!!</p>

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<p>The alternatives I have seen to tenure would not address the problem. If anything, they would exacerbate it. Instead of having to make the grade at 3-yr. review, then assembling your case during year five for a decision during year six, after which the pressure lessens considerably, the alternatives call for significant reviews, including outside evaluations, every seven years. How is that better? Kids require a lot of time and effort for a long time.</p>

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<p>I don’t think they’re pretending that only women CAN care for children. I think they’re acknowledging the reality that for the most part, it’s women who DO care for children.</p>

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<p>I left before I achieved tenure at a college. Took a four year leave, two for each kid as allowed by contract. Then I got tenure at my college.</p>

<p>Had no choice – was already 36 when first babe was born. 38 with second. And I just wasn’t able to work through their infancy. A hormonal urge to be with them was unfightable in my case.</p>

<p>It worked out fine, but many younger college has said they don’t have the guts for it and have worked through infancy and put kids in day care. I tried, but I was too conflicted.</p>

<p>Now I’ve been at my job for 23 years. The only result of the 4 years off is a slightly smaller retirement account.</p>

<p>I think for college teaching tenure is a must. Sensitive and political things are discussed all the time, and parents and administrators do sometimes get involved. Free speech would be an issue without tenure. I am sure of it.</p>

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<p>Many female professors are part of a two-professor couple. Tenure makes it even worse, because you have two early-career hires who are both trying to get tenure while caring for young children. If both partners are at the same campus, that does make it easier to share child care. But if you’re in the same town/city but at different campuses, or one person is doing the long-distance commuting thing, then there’s going to be an imbalance in responsibility. Or, you’ve got a female assistant prof trying to get tenure, not earning much, with a partner who is also early career outside of academia.</p>

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<p>don’t most schools extend the tenure-tracking period for men and women who are raising families?</p>

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<p>No, tenure is not a trap for women, once it’s been awarded. It provides the security to work on difficult, long-term problems, instead of just those that have immediate payoff. I think this is especially valuable for anyone who is a principal care-giver for son(s) or daughter(s), and also wants to tackle really important issues, professionally. Child-care of infants is very time-consuming, yes, but the existence of the CC Parents Forum itself is just one indicator that the demands don’t drop to zero as the children become young adults.</p>

<p>The timing of the tenure decision is problematic, though. The most common arrangement allows for a one-year extension of the tenure clock for each birth (or adoption, at some universities). This completely compensates for the added time demands of child-rearing. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, no.</p>

<p>As an undergraduate, I was advised that my department had not tenured any married Assistant Professors in the past ten years. I ignored this later on.</p>

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<p>very interesting thread, but it would be even more interesting to me if posters would be willing to identify themselves as male or female if their screen names don’t make it obvious.</p>

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<p>Oh gee, another worry about my academic minded kid…
Wasn’t there a time when they were in diapers that we somehow thought that at 18, or at 21, or at college graduation, that we would quit worrying about them?</p>

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<p>Those who deserve tenure don’t need it.
Those who need tenure don’t deserve it.</p>

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<p>Um no. Tenure protects against firings based on unpopular opinions. And sometimes voicing those unpopular opinions is the most pedagogically sophisticated act an educator can offer.</p>

<p>I was lucky. My institution granted two years (unpaid) leave for each child, and I had them back to back. No paid leave.</p>

<p>Am an assistant prof. Never made it to associate or full, but that has more to do with health issues than demands of child rearing.</p>

<p>Hired as a single woman. Had kids. Got married later. Been at my department for 23 years. Plan to teach at least 10 more. Four years I was out was good for my department – my courses were taught by adjuncts. They actually saved money from my leave.</p>

<p>All were cordial when I returned – back to the grindstone. Had one sabbatical when the kids were in 1st and 3rd grade. That was heaven.</p>

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<p>Linus Pauling’s example shows that “unpopular opinions” can be hazardous in scientific fields as well as history, literature, sociology, and economics. </p>

<p>Pauling was denied a passport by the U.S. Department of State in 1952, when he wanted to go to England to attend a scientific conference, because he was suspected of being a Communist sympathizer. Had he been able to travel, he almost certainly would have seen Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray crystallographic “photo” of DNA, and he very likely would have deduced the structure of DNA before Watson and Crick.</p>

<p>Two years later, Pauling won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (anyway). So, did he “need” tenure to protect him from the excesses of the McCarthy era? Well, to the extent that wikipedia is reliable, Pauling "was ordered to appear before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which termed him ‘the number one scientific name in virtually every major activity of the Communist peace offensive in this country.’ " </p>

<p>Later, in 1962, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Again, according to wikipedia, "Life magazine characterized his 1962 Nobel Prize as ‘A Weird Insult from Norway.’ " The Department of Chemistry at Caltech apparently did nothing to recognize this award, although it made Pauling the only individual (so far) to be awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes.</p>

<p>Pauling discovered the change in the amino acid sequence of the hemoglobin molecule that causes sickle-cell anemia. In the 1970’s, at a scientific talk he gave, I heard him shouted down as racist, because he had suggested (in a different venue) that people who carried the recessive gene for sickle-cell anemia should not marry. I understand the views on both sides.</p>

<p>In his later years, Pauling’s advocacy of mega-doses of Vitamin C as preventive medicine was treated with polite skepticism in some quarters and with the label “mega-kook” in others.</p>

<p>Linus Pauling certainly deserved tenure. I’m inclined to think that he needed it as well. His example is an extreme, both in talent and in political fallout, to be sure–but anyone who is familiar with academic politics knows that many excellent academics do “need” tenure.</p>

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<p>Rock on! Just the inspiring story I need to hear this morning.</p>

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<p>I agree. Our family solution was for husband to stay home with the kids. First one arrived when I was 35 (hubby was 44) and 2nd at 37. College, med school, residency (at that time having a child during residency was unheard of unless your due date was after you were done.) Then infertility set in. </p>

<p>The problem is really a two career family and having a stay at home parent. While it is bs that it has to be the women staying home, it usually still is. And that makes for problems more for women then men. In two career families, where both spouses have equal/similar positions/degrees, society still tends to dictate that the woman is somehow of lesser value and should be the one to give things up and stay home. That is the real problem. Just because the woman is the bearer of children, and produces the milk, does not mean that it has to be the women who stays home or goes part time for the next 2 or 5 or 10 years. But as a society we are still raising children who grow up to be adults with those principles. Maybe a change in policy is overdue</p>

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<p>I’ve seen this over and over again. I seen profs protected against unreasonable complaints and profs protected from their own prejudices/biases (in any other workplace they would be fired in a heartbeat). I’ve also seen tenure used to punished profs such as the female prof who never made it past associate prof because she wasn’t “liked” by the two full (male) profs in her area. Her record clearly indicated she had met all requirements to be a full prof, but was denied on recommendation of her two colleagues. (This info was given to me by another prof from another area.) Then there was the female candidate who was passed over for the assistant prof job because she was pregnant at the time of her interview. Again, it was the two male profs mentioned above that turned her down b/c “she would have to take time away from work to tend to the baby.” (Again, I got this info from a source who had a hard copy of the email sent by one of the male profs discussing the “pregnant candidate”.) </p>

<p>Overall, I think tenure is a tool of protection needed by profs so they can fully explore their areas of expertise and pass that info on to their students and the rest of the academic world.</p>

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<p>I had my daughter at 36, only child, no leave, and was tenured a few years later, but on the basis of work that I had mostly finished before I had my child.</p>

<p>Tenure is crucial not just for doing good, long range work, and unpopular opinions relating to research, but for curricular and administrative innovation. A lot of the heavy-lifting work (identifying and developing grants, reviewing curricula, assisting in the hiring process, developing cross-disciplinary programs) that keeps universities running and (hopefully) innovating is done by tenured faculty. Or is done by people in tenure-track appts who aren’t tenured yet. </p>

<p>Yes, there are downsides to tenure, well known, that don’t need to be rehearsed. But the far greater scandal is not tenure. Rather, it’s the way that the system has come to rely on non-tenured, part-time faculty who are extremely vulnerable to administrative whim. </p>

<p>The poster who points to how many women have spouses who are also academics makes a good point. When the economy was better, it was, for a while, easier for such couples to both find good jobs. Now that few universities are hiring, I’m not sure how this is going to pan out for the long run. One thing for sure is that it takes a lot of creativity, persistence plus good luck and help to raise children well - the same qualities as one needs to do well as an academic generally.</p>

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<p>No, tenure pretty much protects the lazy and incompetent from market forces. There may have been a time when courageous, hard-working academics with unpopular political views would have been hounded off campus but for their tenure, but most campuses these days are hotbeds of liberal, politically correct views. Professors with tenure can choose to coast the rest of their careers without fear of losing their positions to more productive newcomers.</p>

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<p>“In two career families, where both spouses have equal/similar positions/degrees, society still tends to dictate that the woman is somehow of lesser value and should be the one to give things up and stay home.”</p>

<p>Isn’t it possible that “society” dictates no such thing, but rather more mothers than fathers actually prefer to be their child’s primary caregiver, and find that work more intrinsically rewarding than a high-level professional career?</p>