Amy Heard: Letters from the Gilded Age -- Sloan Grant

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Sloan Grant, Developing a family friendly package for UC ladder rank faculty]

What, then, can institutions of higher education do to reform themselves so as to encourage women PhDs to stay in the pipeline to tenure and feel satisfied with both their career and family lives? Since the late 1980s, the University of California along with many other institutions of higher education have taken some important steps in implementing family-friendly policies designed to level the play field for women and men academics. Perhaps the best known of these family-friendly policies for ladder-rank faculty are active service-modified duties (ASMD) and tenure clock extension/stoppage. The active service-modified duties arrangement typically offers birth mothers (and in some cases substantial caregivers, as is the case with the UC policy) relief from professional duties -typically teaching relief- around the time of the birth or adoption event. Tenure clock extension/stoppage is formulated to allow birth mothers/substantial caregivers who are assistant professors and birth or adopt children up to a year off the tenure clock per child-related event.

As part of the UC Work and Family survey, we asked faculty about their use of family friendly policies. We found that among eligible UC women and men faculty, individuals who had experienced a birth/adoption event after the policies were in place, the use rates were lower than one might hope. Specifically, 52% of eligible women who already had tenure at the time of the birth/adoption event made use of ASMD and only 45% of pre-tenure women at time of event did so. Among men, the use rates were quite low: only 8% of eligible tenured men made use of ASMD and 7% of pre-tenure men. Tenure-clock extension was used even less, with just 30% of eligible pre-tenure women and 8% of pre-tenure men using the policy. When we asked eligible UC women and men why they did not use the policies, two major issues came up: lack of knowledge about the policies and fear of using them. With a multi-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we are now seeking to enhance UC�s existing family-friendly policies, propose additions to the polices and available family-friendly resources, and encourage a family-friendly culture within the UC. Work is already under way by the University of California Office of the President to make two key changes to the existing policies:

To require the campuses to fund active service-modified duties and family leaves centrally so that small departments do not experience an undue burden from the policy and thus discourage its use;
To change the default for family friendly policy use from "may request"to a "will be granted"type of language.

Additionally, there is a proposal to allow ladder-rank faculty the option of going part-time for limited periods of service (e.g., up to five years) as life-course needs arise, including birth/adoption events, other parenting issues, personal illness, adult dependent care responsibilities, and phased retirement. We also know from the UC Work and Family survey that high quality, readily available childcare and infant care facilities, regular and emergency, are extremely important to faculty parents. We are suggesting, therefore, that the University of California needs to consider this to be part of the necessary infrastructure of a premier institution. If parking spaces can be considered in all new building plans, perhaps child care and infant care slots should be part of the equation too. Facilities on or near campuses save faculty parents time and help to minimize the time-bind that many faculty parents, particularly mothers, experience.

As part of a larger focus on the institutional culture of the UC community, we also recommend that every campus have in place a work and family advisery committee and host an annual school for new department chairs, which would serve the purpose of ensuring that the front-line administrators who are directly involved with the use of family-friendly policies would fully understand their appropriate use. This is particularly important given the high turn-over rate among chairs and the fact that � as data from the Work and Family Survey show � department chairs play a pivotal role in the interpretation of policies, sometime taking on a gatekeeper role.

Lastly, to assist in the relocation of new faculty hires and to help with recruitment, particularly for married women who are much more likely than married men to have a spouse with a full-time career, we propose that all campuses have in place a relocation specialist who can provide faculty recruits with counsel and resources related to spousal employment, schools, housing, and so forth. No single policy or resource will be a panacea, so we are proposing a package concept that helps to meet faculty�s needs as their life and family situation changes over time. With the UC Family Friendly Package in place, we believe that we will be well-positioned to encourage women to stay in the pipeline to tenure and enjoy a satisfied work and family life as a UC professor.

REFERENCES

Allison, Paul D. 1995. Survival Analysis using the SAS System: A Practical Guide. Cary, North Carolina: SAS Institute, Inc.

Mason, Mary Ann, Angelica Stacy, and Marc Goulden. 2003. "The UC Faculty Work and Family Survey." Data source.

Mason, Mary Ann, and Marc Goulden. December 2002. "Do Babies Matter: The Effect of Family Formation on the Lifelong Careers of Academic Men and Women." Academe 88, Number 6: 21-27.

Mason, Mary Ann, and Marc Goulden. 2004. "Marriage and Baby Blues: Re-defining Gender Equity in the Academy." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Forthcoming. National Center for Education Statistics. 2003. "The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Completions Survey." Washington, DC: NCES.

Mason, Mary Ann, and Marc Goulden. 2001. "The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Salaries, Tenure, and Fringe Benefits of Full-Time Instructional Faculty Survey." Washington, DC: NCES. National Science Foundation. 1995. "Changes to the Survey of Doctorate Recipients in 1991 and 1993: Implications for Data Users.�

Mason, Mary Ann, and Marc Goulden. 1999. "Characteristics of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers in the United States: 1997." Arlington, Virginia: NSF.

Mason, Mary Ann, and Marc Goulden. 2004b. "Survey of Doctorate Recipients."<http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/ssdr/start.htm> Valian, Virginia. 1998. Why So Slow?: The Advancement of Women. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Williams, Joan. 2000. Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Wolfinger, Nicholas, Mary Mason, and Marc Goulden. 2004. "Problems in the Pipeline: Gender, Marriage, and Fertility in the Ivory Tower." Unpublished paper.

Robert M. Gray, September 12, 2004

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