Conditions of Work for Women Historians in the Twenty-First Century: A Response

I have sat down three different times today to begin writing this essay. Each time I have been interrupted by something "more pressing" than my own academic work: a committee meeting on campus, a daughter who needs to be moved from diving practice to a softball game, and a sick dog that needs to go to the vet today. Even as I sit here in my darkened office with the lights off (maybe no one will know I am here and bother me) I wait for the phone to ring or someone to knock on my door. And where is my husband—the other half of this chauffeur/cook/laundry-person/farm-hand dynamic duo? He is desperately trying to finish an essay that is weeks overdue after grading over one hundred law school exams. So, he is in a worse position than I am in at the moment and he is of little help. I am on my own today.

I wish that I could say that this is an atypical day in my household. But, honestly, I can not remember a day since I had my first child thirteen years ago, which was also the year of my first tenure track job, that I have not faced the familiar, and at times overwhelming, pressure of balancing work and family. When you are one of two working parents who are both trying to keep their careers moving forward while raising a family, the balancing act seems nearly impossible. As President Lawrence Summers of Harvard University said in his now infamous comments in January 2005 to the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference: "[T]he most prestigious activities in our society expect of people who are going to rise to leadership positions in their forties near total commitments to their work. They expect a large number of hours in the office, they expect a flexibility of schedules to respond to contingency, they expect a continuity of effort through the life cycle, and they expect—and this is harder to measure—but they expect that the mind is always working on the problems that are in the job, even when the job is not taking place."¹ I agree with his observation: those are the demands that are placed upon us daily. But, while President Summers takes this "commitment" as a necessary success indicator for granted, others of us wonder if it's not more productive to take a step back and ask if this is the kind of standard we should apply to ourselves if we really want to develop the profession and open it up to all those qualified to thrive as academics. Even more troubling about President Summers's observations was the comment that followed. "And it is a fact about our society that that is a level of commitment that a much higher fraction of married men have been historically prepared to make than of married women."

That may be also true, because, if you are like most working moms, you are already working over ninety hours a week at your two jobs of building a career and maintaining your home. My calendar on any given week has over fifty entries for me and my children, and I am responsible for making sure that everyone gets to where they are supposed to be with the right tools in hand—a tenure review report, a pair of sharpened skates, a softball glove—and we must all be healthy and well fed in order to achieve the goals we set for ourselves. No small task at the height of flu season when campus life demands my daily presence for long hours. Some weeks I think that being an air traffic controller would be an easier, less stressful job than being a working parent . . . at least you get to sit down and eat at your desk.

And yet, I realize that I occupy a relatively privileged position in this profession. Although I am a first-generation college graduate, I attended Ivy League schools and I teach at a respected and...