Speaking of academia blues, Christy sent me another link this week to a press release from the University of Utah:
April 17, 2008 — A new study from the University of Utah shows that women in academia have fewer children compared to other professional women — primarily because it takes longer to achieve the job security of tenure — and concludes that gender equality in the "ivory tower" has come at a cost.
More accurately, gender equality in the "ivory tower" hasn’t happened at all. If it were equal, effects on males and on females ought not be so different, no? "Equality" is more about appearances than realities. You can always strive to improve it, but in the end men and women, on average, are coming from different directions and when you try to apply equal operators you don’t get the same effect.
The data shows that professors have fewer children than either doctors or lawyers…female professors have the lowest number of babies of all. Although male faculty are 21 percent less likely than male doctors to have a baby in their households, female faculty are 41 percent less likely than are their female physician counterparts.
Female professors are also more likely than female doctors or lawyers to be separated or divorced. The authors of the study apparently suggest that the structure of the tenure system — a profoundly anti-young-family structure, I think — is to blame. Women are disproportionately affected by anti-family structures, but it’s important to remember that involved fathers (and would-be involved fathers) are affected too.
One thing that is coming out of the research is a "Family-Friendly" initiative at University of California-Berkeley — some of the initiatives described there look like really good first steps.
(Cross-posted at Heart Mind and Strength, where I may have mentioned once that I co-blog.)
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