Flexible working conditions often mean mothers in academia do more childcare than men. Credit: Jelena Cvetkovic/Alamy
Studies published this year suggest that flexible-work policies intended to support parents and caregivers can unintentionally reinforce traditional gender roles. In academia, women often use flexibility to take on a larger share of childcare, while men may use the same arrangements to explain why they do less.
Cassidy Sugimoto, an information scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said that universities’ extensive family policies, combined with the growing number of women in science, can create the impression that women participate in the workforce on equal terms with men. But, she said, “the problem is being solved, with women taking on an outsized burden.”
Previous research has shown that parenthood affects the careers of female academics more than those of male academics. Sugimoto and her colleagues wanted to determine how much childcare academics provide and how those responsibilities affect their productivity.
The researchers surveyed more than 10,000 academics with children and with academic or non-academic partners at universities and research institutions around the world.1 They found that women academics were more likely to be the lead parent and to carry out most child-rearing tasks. Even when childcare was shared, or when women took a supporting role — described by the authors as “satellite parenting” — they generally did more than men in equivalent roles. The only activity that men consistently did more often than women was coaching children’s sports teams, says study co-author Gemma Derrick, a meta-researcher at the University of Bristol, UK.
The researchers then examined why women academics do more childcare. They found that women were adopting flexible-work policies, such as shifting their working hours earlier or later in the day, to take on additional childcare responsibilities.2 In academic couples, however, men sometimes used workplace flexibility to justify doing less childcare than their female partners. Some men said their partners had chosen more flexible careers so that they could look after the children.
In one study, British female academics said their flexible jobs made it easier to rely on their partners to care for their children “all the time.” A US academic described the demands this way: “I have the flexibility to pick up and drop off my children, send them to all their activities, feed them. I have the flexibility to make up in the evening the work time I give up during the day and work until 2 a.m. or at least midnight.”
Sanji Perera, a workforce researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia, says academia offers an “illusion of flexibility” because researchers have greater autonomy to arrange their work around childcare. At the same time, researchers are expected to publish papers, secure external funding, supervise and mentor students, and attend conferences. “It’s almost like an unlimited workload,” she says.
Career consequences
When male academics have tried to use flexible working arrangements to take on more childcare, they have often faced derogatory comments and career repercussions, Derrick says. Although perceptions of parenting as a gendered responsibility have changed over time, she asks: “Are we changing fast enough?”
Another investigation, based on a survey of 26 British female academics by Guoxin Ma, a workplace-equity researcher at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, UK, and colleagues, found that policies such as working from home and adjusting working hours can make it harder for women to advance after having children.3
Some respondents said colleagues viewed them as less committed because they worked from home, left work early, or worked part-time. Others said they continued working during vacations because no one else was available to complete their tasks.
The pandemic’s impact
Childcare became more equal in many families during the coronavirus pandemic, Sugimoto says. Some couples alternated days or worked in “shifts” to care for their children, particularly when one parent had fixed working hours. Flexible working arrangements existed before the pandemic, but hybrid practices such as online classes and meetings are now more common.4
Source: www.nature.com