0 comments
Studies show a direct correlation between motherhood and a decline in academic tenure, with one in three women leaving academia after becoming mothers.
When I was a student, I remember being struck by how many women were on my Art History course. Out of our 50-or-so cohort, I could count the men on one hand. But it was a very different picture when you looked at the staff.
We had several women professors, but all of the senior academics in our department were men. So, if the microcosm of our course was anything to go by, somewhere along the line all the women pursuing Art History were abandoning academia, while the few men studying the same degree were sticking it out.
It’s hardly surprising that women are disproportionately represented in senior academic roles. It’s the same story across the professional landscape. But now studies are backing up the trend with hard evidence. Parenthood is seemingly a huge factor in who continues to pursue an academic career for the long-run.
Persistent gender gaps in the labour market are largely driven by a lack of women in the top earning roles. Within academia specifically, 1 in 3 women leave after becoming mothers, and those that do continue see a persistent decline in research output.
A large analysis of academics in Denmark found that women have almost five times the amount of responsibilities that men have after becoming parents. This means that women aren’t often making the decision to leave academia of their own accord, but rather are driven by external factors and pressures.
These are even more restrictive in highly competitive environments, and workplaces without senior female role models – creating a vicious cycle of gender inequity that’s difficult to break.
For a short period following the pandemic, remote working policies made strides for mothers (and parents of all genders) across the workplace. Balancing childcare and geographical restrictions became a much easier task, and parents were able to continue their work in a flexible manner.
But many workplaces are now enforcing returns to the office, which places unfair demands on employees to be based within or close to economic hubs (often in major cities). These are usually more expensive, and less practical for raising children – meaning new parents are disproportionately impacted.
For heterosexual couples, studies show women often bear the load of parenting responsibilities. Men continue to work, knowing they can fall back on their female partner to stay at home and care for the children.
