Dare to care: Negotiating organizational norms on combining career and care in an engineering faculty

Conforming, accommodating, or resisting? How parents in academia negotiate their professional identity

“…In this discourse of hegemonic masculinity, childbirth, raising children, and fulfilling care responsibilities challenge academic's professional identity (Halrynjo 2009;Knights and Richards 2003;Fletcher et al 2007;Kvande 2009;Raddon 2002). Parents in academia therefore permanently need to reinstate and negotiate their professional identity (Herman and Lewis 2012;Herschberg et al 2014). In this paper, we show that both mothers and fathers in academia who claim time for caregiving need to safeguard their professional identities.…”

“…Not so much has changed. Recent research still depicts the academic as someone who is fully devoted to work unencumbered with care responsibilities (Damaske et al 2014;Halrynjo 2009;Herschberg et al 2014;Ylijoki, 2013).…”

“…In contrast, mothers in academia were supposed to have care and household responsibilities next to their academic work, hindering full devotion to their work (Wolfinger, Mason, and Goulden 2008). Yet, due to the increasing number of dual earner couples among academics both men and women in academia have care and household responsibilities (Herschberg et al 2014;Reddick et al 2012) and therefore need to permanently reinstate and negotiate their professional identity. We further this discussion by examining how professionals in a Dutch university address the contradictory claims of academia and parenthood.…”

“…Combining parenthood and academia is not yet a matter of course (Hardy et al 2018;Harris, Myers, and Ravenswood 2019;Sallee 2013;Santos and Cabral-Cardoso 2008). Academia as a profession is often construed to be all-encompassing and even a 'calling' without much room for other identities (Fox, Fonseca, and Bao 2011;Herschberg et al 2014;Maranto and Griffin 2011;Sallee 2013). The dominant discourse expects academics to work long hours, be available 24-7, avoid teaching and administration duties in favour of a single-minded pursuit of status-promoting research (Bleijenbergh, van Engen, and Vinkenburg 2013).…”

Myriad potential for mentoring: Understanding the process of transformational change through a gender equality intervention

“…Moreover, he changed current work practices by creating room for discussing the role of gender in the group's work activities and trying to set a good example by being open minded and critically reflective on his own behaviour in the group. Her mentor Evelyn addressed the gendered norm of the 'ideal academic' not having sufficient opportunity to perform care responsibilities (Herschberg, Vinkenburg, Bleijenbergh, & Van Engen, 2014) when her mentee's supervisor questioned her commitment when she talked about combining her career with care. She used her positional power as a full professor to address gendered organizational norms and work practices on behalf of the mentee and critically discussed the gendered norm of being a 'good academic' at the highest levels in the organization, holding administrators accountable for gendered work practices.…”