Academia Thrives on Women’s Unpaid Labor

Greedy Institutions

In the 1880s, Harvard “Computers” hired by astronomer Edward Charles Pickering were known as "Pickering's Harem"—they catalogued thousands of stars.

The structure of academia assumes that the individual does not have significant demands on their time outside of their work. In the 1970s, sociologist Rose Laub Coser explored the intersection of women and academia—and how the inherent ‘greediness’ of the institution excluded women’s career advancement.

A “greedy” institution exerts claims over an individual’s time in such a manner that his or her ties in other groups (e.g., unions, volunteer communities, social groups, families) are typically weakened or prevented from forming (L. A. Coser 1974). Greedy institutions tend to “seek exclusive and undivided loyalty and they attempt to reduce the claims of competing roles and status positions on those they wish to encompass withing their boundaries” (4). A typical example is the Catholic Church requiring celibacy in priests to reduce competing claims on their time. Academia meets their requirements for a greedy institution with its rigorous standards for hiring and promotion and heavy workloads.

In 1971, Coser and Rokoff were one of the first to articulate this “motherhood penalty” by tracking female Ph.D. recipients (R. L. Coser and Rokoff 1971). In their study, 96.3% of unmarried female Ph.Ds. were employed full-time compared to 59.3% of married female Ph.Ds. with children (p. 544). Women in high-status careers are expected to devote as much time and energy to their career as their male counterparts but are still expected to prioritize family over work. Therefore, it was much more common for single women to be in the status of full professor than married women.

This high proportion of female scientists who were single was confirmed in Rossiter’s 1982 Women Scientists in America, which placed particular emphasis on how marriage and paid, full-time separate scientific careers were nearly incompatible, especially if one were married to a male scientist.

In order to meet the various demands of their jobs, many male faculty members relied on the efforts of their unpaid and oftentimes unrecognized spouses (Pycior, Slack, and Abir-AM 1996). The wives of many STEM faculty members not only managed household tasks and childcare, but often performed typing, proofreading, grading, lecture preparation, or laboratory tasks for their spouses (Pycior, Slack, and Abir-AM 1996) (Anonymous 2020; Rossiter 1982).

However, part-time work was considered acceptable for many wives and mothers in the mid-20^th century as it was viewed as supplementing expenses for their children or husbands (L. A. Coser and Coser 1974). Indeed, many female Ph.D. recipients worked as “lecturers” or research assistants part-time for low pay.

Labor in the 21st century

In the 21^st century, female faculty members are unlikely to have this type of assistance. However, they are more likely to be assigned more ‘housekeeping’ tasks-student advising, service work, outreach, administration, record keeping, and coffee making (indeed one female grad student in my group was ‘assigned’ the task of purchasing and making coffee for the lab group).

Furthermore, there is literal ‘housekeeping’ in the home to contend with. Even though these women are more likely to be married to a spouse who works full time or is also in academia (Jacobs 2004), it is the woman who is still primarily responsible for household tasks and childcare (Suitor, Mecom, and Feld 2001; Dryfhout and Estes 2010).

In a 2022 national survey, women report making more contributions than men to publications. However, they are less likely to receive credit for such contributions.

Academic environments typically have limited accommodations for women’s caretaking responsibilities (Monroe et al. 2014). Subsequently, women with young children are more likely to face negative consequences in their careers, also known as a “motherhood penalty”. Therefore, a self-perpetuating cycle developed in which women were excluded from professional institutions because it was assumed they would become married and quit, or women who were married with children experienced time conflicts with developing a professional career and were provided no accommodations by these institutions or society (e.g., daycares, parental leave) and had to leave.

For example, by the mid 2000s, women with young children at home were 22% less likely to obtain a tenure-track faculty position (Wolfinger, Mason, and Goulden 2008). However, male tenure-track faculty members with children spent 41% more time on research than their female counterparts (Suitor, Mecom, and Feld 2001). Moreover, women faculty members received 80-85% of pay than that their male colleagues across all fields in academia (Monroe et al. 2014). In the workplace, female faculty often were often tasked with additional service work, in addition to additional caring and housework responsibilities in the home. Women were more likely to report areas of their job, including teaching loads, research and publication, and service loads were stress producing (Hart and Cress 2008). Women reported that feminist perspectives in their research were a source of stress and dismissed by colleagues (Hart and Cress 2008). Women faculty may not speak up about gender bias and structural inequalities in academia for fear of backlash.

Fatherhood Premium

On the other hand, male faculty tend to benefit from “fatherhood premiums”, or career advantages for being married and having children (Kelly and Grant 2012). Damaske, Ecklund, Lincoln, & White in 2014 examined male academic perceptions of work-life balance. A random sample of 3455 graduate students, postdocs, and tenure-stream/tenured faculty members in top 20 American Ph.D. programs in astronomy, biology, or physics were selected for in-depth interviews and these were the results:

• About 15% of male scientists forwent childbearing all together

• 28% chose to be egalitarian partners in which childcare and domestic work was actively split with a partner in academic science

• 22% of respondents were neotraditional dual earns in which the husband was less responsible for childcare and domestic work, but the partner also worked

• 30% of respondents were “traditional breadwinners” in which the spouse was primarily responsible for childcare and domestic tasks

Overall, the majority of those interviewed placed work commitments over family, though to varying degrees. The “traditional” breadwinners tended to have higher levels of career achievement compared to the other groups, and many attributed their success to having a stay-at-home spouse.

Constrained Choices

Women’s career choices are often constrained by considerations of family. Beddoes and Pawley interviewed faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and agriculture at large public research midwestern university, in 2009-2011 (Beddoes and Pawley 2014). Overall, responses indicated that interviewed women did not make autonomous career choices but in relation to family. Many reported that faculty jobs were not family-friendly and required long hours, and negative reactions by colleagues and stigma about pregnancies. Female faculty members also were concerned that having children would limit travel that could hurt them in the tenure process.

Respondents also emphasized that leaving academia was a choice not a failure. There is the implication that if women “choose” to have children, they have to accept the damage it will do to their careers. Beddoes & Pawley argued that this “choice” narrative was a way to mask structural inequalities and provide the illusion of agency to these female faculty members.

Xu examined three common theories for the low number of women faculty in STEM:

• distraction by increased domestic responsibilities

• a low number of women at earlier stages in the pipeline

• institutional structure

After examining survey data from over 1000 tenured and tenure-track full time male and female faculty in STEM disciplines across multiple universities in the U.S., the most significant factor for turnover intention for female faculty was institutional structure regarding advancement opportunity, research support, and free expression of ideas (Xu 2008)

However, repeated reports and surveys of both male and female doctoral students in STEM attribute the lower number of female faculty to a lower pool of female doctoral students in previous generations and biological sex differences, rather than institutional bias against women. This is reinforced by ignoring the labor hierarchy of academic research and attacks on diversity.

Conclusion

Because the duties of the research institution are all-consuming—teaching, research, publishing, extension, service work, and mentoring—many ‘superstar’ faculty members are likely extracting labor from teaching assistants, grad students and technicians, stay-at-home spouses, at a fraction of the cost. Providing on-sight affordable childcare, accommodations for parents, spousal hiring programs, and anti-harassment policies can improve the perceived departmental climate. However, there needs to be a broader recognition and correction of institutional biases against women, the exploitation of underpaid labor.

References

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