TY - BOOK
T1 - Vice-Chancellor's Gender Equality Fund Final Report 2017: Illuminating and Understanding Women's and Men's Experiences Navigating Family Care Responsibilities and Their Academic Careers
AU - O'Shea, Michelle
AU - Khan, Aila M.
AU - Smith, Meg
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The research project arose from the March 2017 meeting of the Vice Chancellor’s Gender Equality Committee. At that meeting there was an agreement that there was an opportunity for the Vice Chancellor to consider an additional project titled: ‘illuminating and interrogating the career experiences and interpretations of academic employees with family responsibilities’. By drawing on the constructs illuminating and interrogating, the present research addresses that part of the research which suggests that the dominant discourses and enacted practices that underpin gender inequities are often hidden, latent and less visible, in part because of ‘recent tendencies towards “gender denial” and suggestions that ‘the problem of gender in organizations has been “solved”’ (Lewis & Simpson 2012, p. 141). Further, the literature suggests that dominant discourses can reproduce a situation where women’s delayed career development and the difficulties some women experience securing, in the case of this research, full-time tenured academic positions are interpreted and constructed as unintentional and natural. Women are often understood or positioned as having different priorities and so their delayed career progression is a consequence of their personnel choices rather than gendered organisational practices. Accordingly, Simpson, Ross-Smith and Lewis (2010) argued that ‘discourses of choice’ can legitimate gendered workplace practices because organisations can ‘absolve themselves of responsibility’ (p. 205) for perceptions of differential career access and development. Further, Tatli, Ozturk and Woo (2017) claim that existing gender inequities and the lack of responsibility for tackling them has been legitimised ‘or rendered invisible through a belief in individual choice as the determining factor of career progression for women’ (p. 407). Thus, ‘blaming the victim’ [women] is a means of avoiding the address of gender inequity and so the practices and interactional dynamics involved in constructing and reproducing inequities are often unacknowledged and passively accepted rather than named and challenged. The timeliness and relevance of the research project is, in part, supported by the suggestion that ‘in university employment, particularly for academic staff ‘a strongly male dominated culture persists in which female academic employees (especially mothers) continue to experience discrimination’ (Strachan et al 2016, p. 44). For many women combining family responsibilities and academic career advancement continues to reflect the proposition, flexibility versus advancement (Valantine & Sandborg 2013). That is, despite robust work life integration policies and corresponding cultural values female academics experience and interpret their take up as limiting rather than advancing their academic careers. The present research is also a broader response to findings emerging from aspects of an ARC Linkage Grant Report titled ‘Gender and Employment Equity: Strategies for Advancement in Australian Universities’ (Strachan et al 2016). While bringing to light issues and complexities relevant to women’s academic careers the study was quantitative in orientation. Moreover, while addressing issues pertinent to family responsibilities and work life balance, the ARC project scope was significantly broader and so exploring women’s and men’s family and academic career experiences while important was one of several other focuses. Further supporting the studies’ emphasis, relevant research suggests that despite the development and implementation of family friendly policies, in contemporary workplaces there are tensions, ambiguities and gaps between policy formulation and enacted workplace practices (Cooper & Baird 2015; McDonald, Townsend & Wharton 2013; Putnam, Myers & Gailliard 2014). Fewer of these and like studies have explored these tensions and gaps in context to university workplaces. According, while policy supporting workplace flexibility remains an ongoing dialogue, a clear concern in these studies has been the dissonance between policy and practice which is a focus of the present study.
AB - The research project arose from the March 2017 meeting of the Vice Chancellor’s Gender Equality Committee. At that meeting there was an agreement that there was an opportunity for the Vice Chancellor to consider an additional project titled: ‘illuminating and interrogating the career experiences and interpretations of academic employees with family responsibilities’. By drawing on the constructs illuminating and interrogating, the present research addresses that part of the research which suggests that the dominant discourses and enacted practices that underpin gender inequities are often hidden, latent and less visible, in part because of ‘recent tendencies towards “gender denial” and suggestions that ‘the problem of gender in organizations has been “solved”’ (Lewis & Simpson 2012, p. 141). Further, the literature suggests that dominant discourses can reproduce a situation where women’s delayed career development and the difficulties some women experience securing, in the case of this research, full-time tenured academic positions are interpreted and constructed as unintentional and natural. Women are often understood or positioned as having different priorities and so their delayed career progression is a consequence of their personnel choices rather than gendered organisational practices. Accordingly, Simpson, Ross-Smith and Lewis (2010) argued that ‘discourses of choice’ can legitimate gendered workplace practices because organisations can ‘absolve themselves of responsibility’ (p. 205) for perceptions of differential career access and development. Further, Tatli, Ozturk and Woo (2017) claim that existing gender inequities and the lack of responsibility for tackling them has been legitimised ‘or rendered invisible through a belief in individual choice as the determining factor of career progression for women’ (p. 407). Thus, ‘blaming the victim’ [women] is a means of avoiding the address of gender inequity and so the practices and interactional dynamics involved in constructing and reproducing inequities are often unacknowledged and passively accepted rather than named and challenged. The timeliness and relevance of the research project is, in part, supported by the suggestion that ‘in university employment, particularly for academic staff ‘a strongly male dominated culture persists in which female academic employees (especially mothers) continue to experience discrimination’ (Strachan et al 2016, p. 44). For many women combining family responsibilities and academic career advancement continues to reflect the proposition, flexibility versus advancement (Valantine & Sandborg 2013). That is, despite robust work life integration policies and corresponding cultural values female academics experience and interpret their take up as limiting rather than advancing their academic careers. The present research is also a broader response to findings emerging from aspects of an ARC Linkage Grant Report titled ‘Gender and Employment Equity: Strategies for Advancement in Australian Universities’ (Strachan et al 2016). While bringing to light issues and complexities relevant to women’s academic careers the study was quantitative in orientation. Moreover, while addressing issues pertinent to family responsibilities and work life balance, the ARC project scope was significantly broader and so exploring women’s and men’s family and academic career experiences while important was one of several other focuses. Further supporting the studies’ emphasis, relevant research suggests that despite the development and implementation of family friendly policies, in contemporary workplaces there are tensions, ambiguities and gaps between policy formulation and enacted workplace practices (Cooper & Baird 2015; McDonald, Townsend & Wharton 2013; Putnam, Myers & Gailliard 2014). Fewer of these and like studies have explored these tensions and gaps in context to university workplaces. According, while policy supporting workplace flexibility remains an ongoing dialogue, a clear concern in these studies has been the dissonance between policy and practice which is a focus of the present study.
UR - https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:62450
UR - https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1784333/Illuminating_and_Understanding_Womens_and_Mens_Experiences_Navigating_Family_Care_Responsibilities_and_their_Academic_Careers.pdf
M3 - Research report
BT - Vice-Chancellor's Gender Equality Fund Final Report 2017: Illuminating and Understanding Women's and Men's Experiences Navigating Family Care Responsibilities and Their Academic Careers
PB - Western Sydney University
CY - Penrith, N.S.W.
ER -