This double special issue gathers a series of nuanced critically conceptual and case-study research showing that in the contemporary European context, despite regional differences in gender regimes, political and economic demands and organizational cultures, work/life balance policies and their translation into practice remains a highly ambiguous issue. Although work/life balance policies have undoubtedly entered the university institutional spaces, they are deterred by opposing institutional policy logics and particularly ‘greedy’ logics of the organizing of work that still aligns to outdated work-exclusive masculine organizational culture (outdated because men too are suffering the effects, and because the academic environment is feminized). Moreover, there are lingering gender stereotypes around the value and attribution of home and work duties, which are having a significant impact upon women’s professional and private spheres and experiences in academic work. The gathered research shows how university institutions are still quite far from having addressed the core issues that undermine women’s career advancement and their possibilities to access to academic membership and leadership, still obliging them (and their male counterparts) to align with a work and membership (selection and progression) logic and organization that does not take into consideration parenthood, family and personal spheres of life.

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Men and women remain in unequal positions in coping with their scientific and academic careers. Several of the mechanisms dissuading or preventing women from pursuing scientific careers have already been described in the literature: women getting stuck with paltry, undervalued tasks, thus manufacturing a “sticky floor”; structuring the scientific field around a masculine habitus; and the “Matilda” effect for women. An additional cause of these inequalities is observed in the relationship between the private and professional aspects of the individuals’ lives. The university transmits a “gendered order” in its organizational structures, principles, customs and habits, in short in the practice of scientific work. That is due in particular to the ancient structuring of the university around a male figure: the “university professor” or “scientist” entirely invested in his work, freed from domestic necessities by an invisible carer (he or she who ‘cares’ for him), so he can devote himself to science. Hence the university was constructed on a “greedy” model expecting a total, voluntary and impassioned engagement in work, coupled with a model of work/family dissociation. Based on a research programme dealing with post-doctoral researchers and recently tenured researchers*, this article analyses the role of their private life and how it relates to the professional sphere in their experience of scientific work. In this respect, it provides some explanatory elements on both the greater vulnerability of women-mothers in the university game and on the configurational supports (configurations of professional life and private life) needed to offset that vulnerability.

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