This volume discusses why faculty and administrators of academe should care about implementing family-friendly policies and practices, as well as how they can advocate for policy changes. In section one, the book’s focus is on empirical studies that demonstrate the need for innovative programs and policies for faculty at colleges and universities. These pieces explore issues such as the value of work/life programs for employee retention, the need for a variety of family support policies including elder care, and the influence of workplace culture on the use of existing policies. Section two includes case studies of the process of formulating family-friendly policies and their adoption at a variety of universities. The subjects of these chapters include use of the Family and Medical Leave Act, the enactment of a parental leave policy, the development of a unique “life cycle professorship program,” and strategies used to implement new policies. The case study chapters provide descriptions of the identification of faculty and staff needs and the process of policy development as well as advice to faculty and administrators who seek to develop similar policies at their institutions.

This comprehensive, two-volume handbook compiles the current case law, management practices, and social science research on workplace discrimination, including federal- and state-protected categories. Despite guidelines for investigating complaints of discrimination and establishing preventative measures, statistics indicate that employers may not be properly implementing antidiscrimination laws in their organizations. The Praeger Handbook on Understanding and Preventing Workplace Discrimination was written to provide companies with the necessary toolkits to prevent all types of discrimination in the workplace-and to deal with them if and when they occur. This two-volume handbook offers employers a comprehensive approach to understanding, preventing, and dealing with hostile work environments through an integrated model that encompasses legal responsibilities, management theories and practice, and social science research. Volume one provides an overview of workplace discrimination through an examination of federally protected categories, such as age, disability, equal compensation, national origin, pregnancy, race/color, religion, sex, and sexual harassment. Volume two offers strategies related to "reasonable care" in terms of preventing workplace discrimination through policies, procedures, and training programs.

About half of the undergraduate and roughly 40 percent of graduate degree recipients in science and engineering are women. As increasing numbers of these women pursue research careers in science, many who choose to have children discover the unique difficulties of balancing a professional life in these highly competitive (and often male-dominated) fields with the demands of motherhood. Although this issue directly affects the career advancement of women scientists, it is rarely discussed as a professional concern, leaving individuals to face the dilemma on their own. To address this obvious but unacknowledged crisis—the elephant in the laboratory, according to one scientist—Emily Monosson, an independent toxicologist, has brought together 34 women scientists from overlapping generations and several fields of research—including physics, chemistry, geography, paleontology, and ecology, among others—to share their experiences. From women who began their careers in the 1970s and brought their newborns to work, breastfeeding them under ponchos, to graduate students today, the authors of the candid essays written for this groundbreaking volume reveal a range of career choices: the authors work part-time and full-time; they opt out and then opt back in; they become entrepreneurs and job share; they teach high school and have achieved tenure. The personal stories that comprise Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory not only show the many ways in which women can successfully combine motherhood and a career in science but also address and redefine what it means to be a successful scientist. These valuable narratives encourage institutions of higher education and scientific research to accommodate the needs of scientists who decide to have children.

Shaping Work-Life Culture in Higher Education provides strategies to implement beneficial work-life policies in colleges and universities. As compared to the corporate sector, higher education institutions have been slow to implement policies aimed at fostering diversity and a healthy work-life balance, which can result in lower morale, job satisfaction, and productivity, and causes poor recruitment and retention. Based on extensive research, this book argues that an effective organizational culture is one in which managers and supervisors recognize that professional and personal lives are not mutually exclusive. With concrete guidelines, recommendations, techniques, and additional resources throughout, this book outlines best practices for creating a beneficial work-life culture on campus, and documents cases of supportive department chairs and administrators. A necessary guide for higher education leaders, this book will inform administrators about how they can foster positive work-life cultures in their departments and institutions.

Featuring forthright testimonials by women who are or have been mothers as undergraduates, graduate students, academic staff, administrators, and professors, Mothers in Academia intimately portrays the experiences of women at various stages of motherhood while theoretically and empirically considering the conditions of working motherhood as academic life has become more laborious. As higher learning institutions have moved toward more corporate-based models of teaching, immense structural and cultural changes have transformed women's academic lives and, by extension, their families. Hoping to push reform as well as build recognition and a sense of community, this collection offers several potential solutions for integrating female scholars more wholly into academic life. Essays also reveal the often stark differences between women's encounters with the academy and the disparities among various ranks of women working in academia. Contributors—including many women of color—call attention to tokenism, scarce valuable networks, and the persistent burden to prove academic credentials. They also explore gendered parenting within the contexts of colonialism, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, ageism, and heterosexism.

Grounded in scholarship but written for busy institutional leaders, Building Gender Equity in the Academy is a handbook of actionable strategies for faculty and administrators working to improve the inclusion and visibility of women and others who are marginalized in the sciences and in academe more broadly.

The new generation of scholars differs in many ways from its predecessor of just a few decades ago. Academia once consisted largely of men in traditional single-earner families. Today, men and women fill the doctoral student ranks in nearly equal numbers and most will experience both the benefits and challenges of living in dual-income households. This generation also has new expectations and values, notably the desire for flexibility and balance between careers and other life goals. However, changes to the structure and culture of academia have not kept pace with young scholars’ desires for work-family balance. Do Babies Matter? is the first comprehensive examination of the relationship between family formation and the academic careers of men and women. The book begins with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, moves on to early and mid-career years, and ends with retirement. Individual chapters examine graduate school, how recent PhD recipients get into the academic game, the tenure process, and life after tenure. The authors explore the family sacrifices women often have to make to get ahead in academia and consider how gender and family interact to affect promotion to full professor, salaries, and retirement. Concrete strategies are suggested for transforming the university into a family-friendly environment at every career stage. The book draws on over a decade of research using unprecedented data resources, including the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, a nationally representative panel survey of PhDs in America, and multiple surveys of faculty and graduate students at the ten-campus University of California system..