Do Babies Matter?: Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower

Chapter 2. Getting into the Game

26 Perhaps the most important turning point in a young scholar’s life is the decision to pursue employment after graduate school. Given that the average doctoral student takes eight years to finish, this decision is a long time coming.1 As we saw in the previous chapter, many doctoral students, women more often than men, decide during their student years that a research professor’s life is not for them. Both men and women worry about having balanced lives in the academy, but for women, concern about combining a family with the demanding life of a tenure-track professorship is the overriding factor. Nevertheless, many students will view a tenure-track job as the normal outcome of doctoral training, the goal expected by their advisors and many of their peers, if not always the most common result (about one in three graduate students gets a tenure-track position after graduate school and, sometimes, a postdoc).2 Those who do seek tenure-track employment will find that the job hunt is an involved process. An aspiring professor must assemble an application dossier , typically comprising a cover letter, a vita, sample dissertation chapters or publications, and letters of recommendation from several faculty mentors. The job seeker then embarks on a national search—only the hottest candidates can be choosy about location—that culminates in a move to an unfamiliar town or city. This geographical upheaval occurs in few other professions. But first the candidate must likely pass a preliminary screening at the annual meeting of a professional association (this varies by field), and in all cases undergo an on-campus interview. The academic interview is a uniquely protracted affair, generally lasting at least one and a half days. In a few fields, job candidates will have to make more than one visit. If all goes well, the applicant will be offered a job that he or she could potentially hold until retirement. 2 Getting into the Game Should women get special conditions? I come from a European country with a lot of protection for mothers. What’s the effect? Impossible to get hired, unless you put your uterus in a jar of alcohol on the desk. —A forum post at the Chronicle of Higher Education GETTING INTO THE GAME 27 Getting into the academic game is a complex process that bears little similarity to job searches outside the ivory tower. As we will see, the outcome of this critical professional transition is strongly influenced by gender, marriage, and children. This chapter also considers which young scholars fall into the second tier of contingent professorships, and whether faculty in this second tier manage to make it back to the tenure track. The experience of Anna Westerstahl Stenport, the Swedish humanities scholar introduced in the previous chapter, illustrates some of the issues women confront when seeking their first academic position.3 Despite an extensive track record of publications, Anna declined to wear her wedding band while interviewing for faculty positions at an academic meeting—she didn’t want to signal to prospective employers that her family relationships might compromise her ability to relocate, or to perform once hired. By the time she was ready for oncampus interviews, she was visibly pregnant with her second child. This was ultimately not held against her, and she landed a tenure-track faculty position at a good school. Anna, as we will see, was fortunate. She had a few busy years combining motherhood with graduate school and, later on, her assistant professorship. Many married women, especially mothers, never get that far. Jackie faces a less certain future in academia.4 Like Anna, she obtained her Ph.D. from a top research university. Jackie’s degree is in the life sciences. Her husband, Grayson , has a Ph.D. in the same field and the two are now postdoctoral fellows together. Two years into her postdoc, Jackie is weeks away from giving birth to her first child. A couple of years down the road, she will confront the academic job market with a toddler. Perhaps more daunting, Jackie and Grayson face the “two body” problem: having to get two academic jobs in the same metropolitan area.5 As the mother, Jackie will probably spend more time caring for their child. This will make it difficult for her to travel to job interviews. Unless she and Grayson are lucky enough to land two jobs in the same region, one of them will likely leave academia, or at least...