Study (N=163) finds women professors did 75% of internal service work; men 25%. Women viewed it as compliance or an investment; men dodged with evasiveness or used barter. Yet men did 50% of external service work, which was more career-enhancing. https://kifinfo.no/en/2024/03/women-end-doing-academic-housework
@amydiehl you are not an author but I would to ask if you see this as something positive or negative? that women should do more avoidance? If you consider that this is a duty, aren't we assuming that the academic should become more bureaucrat instead of promoting intellectual pursuits?
@tmv office housework and service tasks are essential for keeping the organization running well. The organization should value and reward them.
@amydiehl corresponds very closely with a more exhaustive study about motivation to engage with playing games http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/pdf/3-2.pdf
@amydiehl my favourite excuse from male colleagues- “I have kids”. Like I don’t.
So they're saying that they are bad at time management. :D
Harvard Business Review has posted often about the issue of career limiting busywork & non-promotable tasks assigned only to women.
https://hbr.org/2022/04/are-you-taking-on-too-many-non-promotable-tasks
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-No-Club/Linda-Babcock/9781982152338
https://hbr.org/2015/04/office-housework-gets-in-womens-way
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/women-careers-volunteering-work.html
https://evoke.ie/2023/08/31/promoted/office-housework-at-work-jobbio
https://www.theswaddle.com/what-is-office-housework-and-why-are-women-mostly-in-charge-of-it
@Npars01 @amydiehl I still struggle to NOT take on those tasks voluntarily even though I’ve become painfully aware of the price in career stagnation and burnout. Not because I particularly enjoy them, it’s just lifetime ingrained behavior. (Sorry if I’m crashing the party, I’m not an academic but this hit close to home)
@amydiehl Like many such studies, I feel that this is framing the results the wrong way around. The problem isn’t that women are doing this work, it’s that institutions regard certain categories of work as vital and yet don’t factor it into promotion decisions. The fix is simple:
Promote the people who do the essential work, don’t promote the people who try to duck out of it.
You will end up with a far more effective faculty.
@amydiehl One more reason why academia should be shut down. It just perpetuates conservative social norms and gives more power to the powerful.
@amydiehl this is true in many other instances based on my life experience. True for every Board I ever served on, true for every committee regardless of topic I ever participated in, true for just about every coed endeavor. We (women) know guys won’t do their share because “they shouldn’t have to”. The privileged class just want the glory and have no problem taking credit they often don’t earn. And don’t get me started about guys stealing my ideas, happens regularly…
#sad