Colleges are attempting to close the numerical gap between tenuretrack male and female faculty, but some schools, particularly larger institutions, are having more success than others at accommodating women’s needs.
I had mentors who told me not to have children before going up for tenure,” says Dr. Catherine Squires, now the John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles Professor of Journalism, Diversity and Equality at the University of Minnesota and mother of 6-year-old twins.
In another case, in an irony that is more than semantic, Dr. Elise Bartosik-Velez went into labor the day she deposited her dissertation. Completing her doctoral studies in comparative literature at the University of Illinois coincided with a whirlwind of interviews for a tenure-track job, which she landed at Dickenson College in Carlisle, Pa. She interviewed in one city on a Friday, in another on the following Monday and then defended her thesis the following day.
“The committee told me I looked tired,” says Bartosik-Velez. “I kind of divide my life up into three parts: scholarship, teaching and my family. The fourth part is me and that just doesn’t happen.”
Tenure or baby? Motherhood or Dr. Mom? Many women in higher education still view family and career as an either/or proposition, while the institutions they work in profess to be making strides that would lessen their burden.
