PhDs Can’t Eat Prestige
The academy has often been criticized for its career advancement barriers to women. The time demands of research and publishing create difficulties in balancing work and family, resulting in what researchers have referred to as a leak in the academic pipeline from graduate school to faculty positions. Women in the academy are particularly underrepresented in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine and are significantly more likely to be childless than men, suggesting a need for family-friendly workplace policies to recruit and retain women researchers.
Postdocs are a widely unknown but growing class of academic workers. In the pipeline, they are positioned between graduate school and faculty positions. They are postdoctoral, academic workers who have earned their PhDs. Though some occasionally teach, they primarily conduct research with one or two professors typically under major research grants issued by such federal institutes as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense.
Postdocs also perform a bulk of the research for which universities receive grants, and universities often take half of this funding for overhead expenses. It is therefore surprising that workers – who are highly specialized, highly skilled, and justify a great proportion of funding to colleges and universities – are paid a meager average salary of $38,000.
As universities hire fewer and fewer tenure-track (non-temporary) faculty, postdoc positions have become increasingly common for workers who want a job in the academy. Many must complete two-to-six years of postdoctoral research to become competitive for tenure-track faculty positions. Additionally, many postdocs are in their late 20s and early 30s, a typical age for starting families. As short-term hires, many postdocs do not meet the employment eligibility requirements for leave under the FMLA or CFRA. Although the NIH and some universities may have leave policies, postdocs are often unaware of these policies, and there is little mechanism for enforcement.
In 2010, more than 6,000 postdocs at the University of California (UC) formed a union with the UAW, successfully negotiating the first union contract specifically for postdocs in the US. In addition to winning wage increases and retirement benefits, the contract also included 24 days of paid time-off and 12 paid sick days per 12-month period. Postdocs who take short-term disability leave, for reasons including childbirth, receive 70% of their earnings during leave. And unlike FMLA or CFRA leave, rights to these leaves are in effect on the first day of employment.
Another key contract victory was a strong grievance procedure that instituted an effective enforcement mechanism. Within the first full year of the contract, a UC postdoc had her appointment discontinued after her supervisor, a professor, learned she was pregnant. She worked with the UAW 5810 and won an extension of her appointment, an action that would not have been possible just one year earlier.
In forming unions, like UAW 5810, overall workplace standards for postdocs could improve, and their efforts could establish an academic system that acknowledges postdocs for their PhDs and rewards them for their commitment to expanding scientific, cultural, and historical knowledge. Their efforts to unionize may also improve the academy’s ability to retain skilled and valuable women researchers and effectively mend the leak in the academic pipeline.
Sources:
Villablanca, A. C., Beckett, L., Nettiksimmons, J., & Howell, L. P. (2011). Career flexibility and family-friendly policies: An NIH-funded study to enhance women’s careers in biomedical sciences. Journal of Women’s Health, 20(10):1485-1496.
Goulden, M., Mason, M. A., Frasch, K. (2011). Keeping women in the science pipeline. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 638(1): 141-162.
Cassandra Engeman is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and is a member of UAW Local 2865. She is writing her dissertation on union impacts on state-mandated leave benefits in the US.
Women and Children Are the Casualties of the State Budget Crisis
Low-income women and their families have been hit the hardest by recent budget cuts in California. A report released by the Women’s Foundation of California and the California Budget Project shows that the economic downturn and deep budget cuts implemented over the last five years have been devastating for women.
In addressing the state’s prolonged budget crisis, the “solution” has been to repeatedly slash already meager funding for vital health and human services programs, including CalWORKs, Medi-Cal, IHSS, SSI/SSP and child care. The people who rely on these programs are the poorest, most disadvantaged Californians, most of whom are women and children. The same group of low-income women has been dealt multiple blows as the programs they need to support their families, obtain medical care, and remain safely in their homes as they age have been targeted for cut after cut, year after year. To make matters worse, women comprise the vast majority of child care and IHSS providers, so cuts to these programs also deprive women of their jobs.
The recession’s weakened job market has hit single mothers particularly hard—women who have also been disproportionately impacted by recent state budget reductions. The employment rate for California’s single moms dropped by 10.4 percentage points between 2007 and 2010. Less than 60% of single mothers had jobs in 2010, the smallest percentage since 1996. Cuts to subsidized child care and CalWORKs have reduced resources available to these women, making it even more difficult to find and keep a job. How is a single mom supposed to hold down a paying job to support herself and her children when she doesn’t have access to child care??
The budget ax has also come down on public colleges and universities. The result is reduced access to higher education, which creates an additional barrier to higher earnings and economic security for women. Since 2007, enrollment in community colleges has declined by 129,612 students, with women accounting for 81.6% of this decline.
The Governor’s Proposed 2012-2013 Budget includes more of the same. The proposals include additional deep cuts to health and human services, child care and college financial aid. Additionally, the Governor proposes to completely eliminate the California Commission on the Status of Women, a state agency that for 47 years has been the only official voice within state government for California women and girls. The Commission’s advocacy for women is needed now more than ever and shouldn’t become another casualty of the budget wars.
The outlook for low-income women in California seems bleak and a big part of the problem is the repeated budget cuts aimed at women who are already struggling to make ends meet. The state has to stop balancing the budget on the backs of destitute women and children who have no other support system. The most vulnerable Californians should be given the highest, rather than lowest, priority in finding solutions to address the continuing fiscal crisis.
Beth McGovern is the Interim Executive Director for the California Commission on the Status of Women
Save Our Schools: Fighting School Closures in Oakland
By Rob Rooke, Member of Carpenters, Local 713
She pointed out of the car window every time we drove past it. Our five year-old talked Kindergarten all summer. For three years she walked to Maxwell Park Elementary School with her mom to drop off her older sister. Then she’d be off to pre-school. Now it was her turn to go to big school.
In August, Ilyana packed her backpack and began kindergarten at the public school that has served our neighborhood for 85 years. But she would not complete her elementary years at Maxwell Park. In September the Oakland Unified School District announced that our school was on a list of five schools for possible closure.
District leaders came to our school and heard dozens of parents plead to keep our school open. Children, parents, grandparents and even one great grandmother spoke. Our school is genuinely rooted in our community. We not only have students that are siblings and cousins, and many are the third and fourth generation in their families to attend Maxwell Park.
Like four of the five schools scheduled for closure, our student population is majority African American and 98% of our students are children of color. Our families are predominantly economically poor with 85% of kids eligible for free or subsidized lunch.
When District board members came to our school it felt like an exercise in political expedience. Parents were angry, tearful and focused. In contrast, the Board members appeared to be checking their watches, eager to get out of there. In the end, for all the arguments on the table, the issue was money. And when it’s money versus the people, money usually wins out. Especially when its money versus the group least likely to vote: the urban poor.
Many parents joined the 6-week fight between that meeting and the final School Board decision. Other parents felt it was already a done deal and didn’t want to fight. They were used to being ignored and treated with disrespect by those in power.
For those of us that joined the campaign, we marched on the School Board, packed hundreds into meetings, delivered a faux eviction notice to the steps of the District headquarters. Hundreds of children made home-made picket signs. We spoke on radio stations and on TV. We were drawn into the Occupy movement which helped us bring a thousand people to the school District under the banner of “Save our Schools” and another 3,000 people to rally outside one of the other closing schools. Finally, we organized a recall petition against Board members who voted to close our five schools, collecting many hundreds of signatures.
But the Board voted. It voted on the side of the status quo. On the side that supports bailouts for banks while the poor pay the price. The five schools are to be closed at the end of the school year.
In the wake of these closures there are hundreds of angry parents and disappointed children. But our five-school community has been drawn together. Our own school’s parent community is closer than it has ever been. Our children have been educated in their right to fight back and right to organize: a lesson that will last a lifetime.
When a school like Maxwell Park Elementary is closed, a thread of history is torn off. Memories are cut across and children are emotionally scarred, some more than others. When communities are split up, anger is nourished. But these cuts and bruises are the history of working people, and with it, our distant hope that one day we will win. With today’s rising tide against inequality, that day may well come. And when working people and the poor have a voice, children will be treated like people, not numbers.
Rob Rooke is former Recording Secretary of Carpenters Local 713. He is currently President of Maxwell Park PTA. Rob blogs about parenting at raisinghavana.blogspot.com where this blog was originally posted.